There is a moment in a Dad’s life when his son puts his back
to him, and feeling no remorse, runs away to something other.
I have experienced this twice. I remember each time. I
remember the boy running and not looking back. Although I can’t see their faces
– couldn’t – the excitement of the time ahead is captured in their quick,
confident steps toward the other place, the other kids, the other-“ness” of
something aside from me.
Selfishly I want to say, “Hey! Come back! Tell me goodbye.
Give me a chance to hug you and say I love you before letting you go. Let me
hang on to you for a second more.” But I don’t. Or at least not at that moment.
I let them go away without an informal wave or glance back.
I guess the reason I remember these moments is because of
the sadness that accompanies learning some of the lessons we all should learn
as Dads.
Learning is good. That is right. I don’t think of true learning
in a negative sense. Even when I was young I knew learning was good for me. I
was never a kid who moaned, “When am I going to use subjunctive voice?” or “Who
needs fractions?” I knew, somehow, that because I was learning these things
they were important. I don’t know how I knew. But I remember knowing.
Just like I know now that watching my son run away from
me to something else healthy is good for me.
Now, I can’t say that I loved learning fractions. Likewise,
I can’t say that I love learning from my boys running away from me. That said,
there is a deep respect and appreciation for their development process that I
have internalized as a result of watching the event and then doing some serious
soul searching afterward.
It happened this morning, Father’s Day, 2015. It’s a Sunday
and we went to church. Ben goes to kids’ church, upstairs on the second floor
in another building from the main room where Deb and I go. I have climbed those
stairs when my legs hurt from cycling the day before and when my legs hurt from
muscle atrophy. This morning as I climbed the stairs my legs weren’t kicking it
up the required notches to keep up with Ben’s benergy. He raced up as he
sometimes does, but instead of turning and welcoming me up to take him to his
group, he continued to race forward into the gathering maelstrom of kids, air
hockey and brightly clad, smiling leaders.
I was eight or ten steps down as I watched his head bob away
from me, each step taking it lower and lower, down toward my sight line, cut
off by the top stair. He didn’t turn. He didn’t wave. He ran to his friends.
I watched him go and blessed him silently in the quiet,
abandoned and echoing chapel of my head. He is fearless and single-minded when
he wants something. So I guess this morning, he wanted to be with others who
were thinking and talking about God. That, among other things, is certainly
something I hope for him.
I know that some of my friends would look at me with a raised
eyebrow if I told them this made an impression on me. Well, seeing your son run
away from you can be tough. I am thankful I have been through this once before,
and that I can wash my experience this morning with the torn rags of my last
one.
The first experience with this phenomenon was about 10
months ago when Will, then 12, went to his first lacrosse practice with the
Westlake team. He had been playing with Trinity, our school since his
kindergarten, and had no qualms about me being there to watch him, whether it
was a practice or a game. But this time was new. He was both excited and
nervous.
When I dropped him, I was beside the field in the fire lane.
The field was big, and made from those small pieces of black rubber that fume
into fantails as NFL players scrape along the ground after making super-human
catches. The Westlake players were, to my eyes, intimidating. They
wore the crimson of the Westlake Chaparrals, to whom we had lost soundly many
times. They were seemingly big. And they were making fine, crisp throws in the
late evening air from one lacrosse pocket to another as they warmed up,
waiting for others to show up for try-outs.
As I pulled into a convenient slot to watch as Will tried
out, he opened the door, “Dad, please don’t stay to watch.” His words hung in
the Jeep without any response.
I said “good luck” and drove away, his back, the
lacrosse bag, and his light, trotting steps away from me under the lights of
tryouts disappearing behind me.
My first reaction was sadness, deep sadness. I grappled with
it in a knife fight of reasoning. I slept with it on my pillow. I woke to it in
the dim early morning, worn out. And I realized I had seen him grow a bit,
rapidly, in a fast-forward, unfair time warp.
What is more inevitable than growth and maturation through
living? One way or another, it comes. I realized that Will was struggling with
newness and that I was too. When he ran onto the field, helmet on, no head
turn, my chest hurt like a broken heart. But once I realized what he was
running from, or more accurately, running to, the hurt subsided and I was once
again put in a position to demonstrate how much I loved him, this time by watching
him go.
I talked through it with him later, after my hurt was no
longer in the way.
I love to walk with my kids, and when doing so, barriers
diminish themselves with the quiet background of cicadas or crickets or stars
or soft, side-by-side steps. Walking, I told him that I have few things in this
life that I love more than watching him and his brother play sports. I told him
that I am blessed by having boys who know how to handle a lacrosse stick and a
basket ball.
And I told him that the next time he needs me to not be
present for something, to take my love of watching him into account so that I
can prepare myself to let him grow up before my eyes.
To Will’s immense credit he understood what his old Dad was
saying. And he invited me to watch other practices, “I don’t care what the
other kids think.” I didn’t, but secretly I did. I arrived “early” a few times
to see him make shots or passes, and put a smile on my face. I don’t know if he
noticed or not. It’s a silent agreement.
When you have a kid, whether girl or boy, you are fortunate
that there are moments like these. Moments when you love them so much that
their numbered back running away from you is lily sweet. It kills something;
something important. But in its place something grows; grows from its passing.
Life to that point, with all its walks and movies and proudly-built Legos and
watched practices yields a fertile place for an older love.
Nothing comes from nothing.
This learned lesson is borne of a loving father watching his
sons and daughters grow up in dappled spots of light. You see them still and
unchanging, and suddenly without expectation their evolution is revealed,
quickly, mercilessly, lethal. But with careful handling the sadness that
accompanies brings new rewards and new depth.
I don’t have that many more of these in my future. My kids
are growing up and I am growing knowledgeable about how it feels and what to
expect. I am sure there will be others that drive deep into the heart and look
expectantly for wisdom. But for now, I can love the back of their heads. I can
imagine their faces. And I know their hearts.
And one day without really knowing the lessons they have
been teaching me, they will find that they have a close friend who has known
them since a time when they looked back to make sure Dad was still there, watching.
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