To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So just do it.

― Kurt Vonnegut

Sunday, June 21, 2015

I will always watch.

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.

No comments:

Post a Comment