46 pages • 1 hour read
Mitch AlbomFor One More Day
Fiction | Novel | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 18-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary: "Miss Thelma"
Chick prepares to accompany his mother to a second appointment. The doorbell rings. Chick opens the door, and sees a bright light shining in his face and hears the voice of the policeman he heard earlier over the phone. He looks away, and when he looks back, he sees that instead it is Thelma, his family’s African-American housekeeper from his childhood. Thelma is “lean and narrow-shouldered, with a broad smile and a quick temper” (83). He remembers how she gave him his nickname, Chick, even though his father wanted him to be called Chuck: “‘Boy, the way you holler, you’re like a rooster. Chuckadoodle-doo!’ And my sister, who was then a preschooler, said ‘Chickadoodle-doo! Chickadoodle-doo!’ and, I don’t know, somehow, the ‘Chick’ part stuck” (84).
Thelma drives them to her house in her car. She lies down on the bed and his mother begins to take out her tools. Chick finds it strange that after so many years of Thelma working for his parents, his mother now works for her.
The narrative flashes back to Chick’s college baseball career. After his father witnesses a string of successful games, they meet by the team’s bus. His father tells Chick to ask the coach to let him drive Chick back that day. Chick considers saying something to his father about the pain he has caused his mother and their family, but instead he goes with him.
The narrative returns to Thelma’s house. Thelma tells them she has cancer, and that she would like to look healthier so as not to worry her family. Chick’s mother begins to work, and then admits to Chick that she paid for her children’s college education by cleaning houses together with Thelma.
In college, Chick’s father became a regular presence in his life once again, acting as his manager and pressing him to show off his skills to recruiters from the major leagues. After his first recruiter approaches him, he is happy to see that his father is pleased, and they go drink a beer together, “as men do” (89). He tells his mother about seeing his father, and asks her permission to keep seeing him. Though she is obviously disappointed, she does not forbid it. He realizes with a flash of guilt that, as he was drinking beer with his father, his mother was cleaning houses to pay Chick’s bills.
Chick remembers a phone conversation with his fifteen-year-old sister about how their mother might remarry. Chick is made uncomfortable by the idea: “[Chick’s sister] was fifteen. I was twenty. She had no idea about my father. I had seen him and talked to him. She wanted my mother happy. I wanted her to stay the same” (92).
Chapter 19 Summary: "Chick Makes His Choice"
Chick shares the highs and the lows of his time at college. The high point comes at a party, when he sings his mother’s favorite song, “This Could Be the Start of Something Big.” Though the music strikes the crowd as old-fashioned, he wins them over with his energy and humor. He meets Catherine, his future wife, who is charmed by his antics. He has just received good grades, and he calls his mother to tell her all the news, and she is overjoyed.
In contrast with this happy moment, he remembers how, one year later, he drops out of college to play minor league baseball, at the advice of his father and “to his mother’s everlasting disappointment” (94). He flies to San Juan, Puerto Rico to join a minor league club. To avoid his mother’s disapproval, he does not stop at home before departing. When he calls home to tell her, he can hear her disappointment through the phone: “I don’t suppose I could have broken my mother’s heart any more if I tried” (96).
Chapters 18-19 Analysis
By the end of Chapter 18, Chick appreciates how profoundly both his parents have shaped his adult personality. At the same time, he notices more and more a distinct difference between his mother, whose love and support, while essential, often went unnoticed by Chick, and his father. He realizes his father became a presence in his life once again only when it seemed Chick might have the potential to succeed as a baseball player, but his father’s presence and approval were so intoxicating after so many years of absence that he would have done almost anything to please him. His mother’s presence, in the present day, as unexpected as it might be, affirms her role as a source of constant, unchanging love. Chick, rather than seeing this as a “flaw” on her part, as he did earlier in the story, is beginning to be grateful for all she has done for him.
Chapter 19 is a key turning point of the narrative. The title, “Chick Makes His Choice,” echoes his father’s statement early in the book - that a child can choose one parent to be loyal to. When he chooses baseball over finishing college, he has chosen to pursue the career in baseball that his father wants for him and gives up on the education that his mother has worked so hard to make possible. The pain of disappointing his mother is increased by his awareness that he has absorbed this either-or mentality from his father, and that he himself believed and accepted at that moment that he was abandoning his mother.
This is also the moment when his dream of becoming a baseball player begins to unravel. The passages that describe his hurried decision and subsequent flight to San Juan do not have the triumphant tone that might be expected at such a momentous occasion. Instead, they are filled with the guilt and loneliness that an older Chick now feels when he reflects on his years as a baseball player.
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By Mitch Albom
