Son, I hope you get the chance...

A story of my walk with Ben, my 9-year old son, and how I hope he gets the chance to appreciate life like I do....

Last week was “Dress-up as your favorite hero” day at Ben’s school. There was never any doubt: he would go as Michael Jackson. He watched MJ videos to prepare. “Smooth Criminal” was his favorite, with MJ in all white with a fedora hat and black shirt. Ben wanted to be just like that.

By the time the day arrived, he had found a suitable outfit with an open white dress shirt and a dark grey t-shirt underneath. His Papa Mac helped him paint his top hat from blue velvet to white and bought him a sequined glove that Gigi helped him size down to fit his hand. And he also bought the crowning glory: a sparkly fake mic.

The Smoove Criminal

I couldn’t see him the morning he went to school, so I went at lunch to see his outfit. As I walked down the school mall, kids ran past me in KISS outfits and fifties dresses. Other boys, uninterested in music heroes, wore Minnesota Vikings and Miami Heat jerseys. They played tag or chase in the green lawn.

Ben was not playing tag or chase.

To the right of the green lawn in the shade of an overhead walkway, one of the teachers had set up a wireless speaker and was playing songs by request for the “second grade dance party.” Here is where I found Ben, dancing like MJ in absolute abandonment and joy. 

He lip-synched lyrics into the mic. He twirled and finished in MJ poses up on his toes. He cascaded his top hat in a single fancy move from his hands down and up to the top of his head. He was overcome with the joy of the music and dancing. No one was especially watching him…. He was just dancing and “shingin’ shome shongs.” It was a pleasure for me to watch him.

Later that night, I was strategic in asking him to go on a walk with me. I had something I wanted to talk to him about.

We started the walk by playing with a new light-up lacrosse ball I bought for just such occasions. It’s super hard to catch at night because its light is hard to accommodate with nighttime depth perception. As we walked, I told Ben about when I had played with a similar ball on my friend Abe’s ranch one time when he and I and several other friends went out for his 40^th birthday. It still is a lifelong memory for me.

As Ben and I progressed around the block we talked about the light-up ball and making sure to catch it or it would go down the storm drains. We talked about Ben’s whistling and how he should keep at it no matter what, that it will bring him happiness and keep him company. And of course, we talked about which girls he liked. (It’s a secret!)

I let the conversation go along like that for a while, and then I got very serious. I wanted to make an impact with what I said next. I wanted to be very careful about how I said it. I wanted to make Ben absorb what I said, and to want what I would describe to him so badly that he could see the benefit through the work it would take to get there.

“Ben,” I said, “I want to talk to you about something very serious. I want to give you a gift that you will have your whole life. It’s a wonderful gift that you can share with friends that will make those friends even better friends. It will provide opportunities to you that you might not ever even know about otherwise. It will get you girlfriends. (We laughed.) And it might even make you money one day. But above all, it will make you happy. It’s a beautiful gift, Ben. Do you want it?” Of course Ben said, “Yes, I want it.”

I continued, “Do you remember at school today when you were dancing in front of that speaker?”

“Yes.”

“How did you feel when you were dancing?”

He thought a long while, trying to put words to how he felt, “Cool. Happy.”

“Ben, do you think you felt ‘joy’ at being able to hold that mic and dance around and sing, maybe even a little bit because some of the other kids watched you and you could tell that they were enjoying your performance a little bit?”

“Yes.”

“You gotta know something Ben: that is an amazing feeling, to get to dance and sing and have other people get joy from watching you do it. You were really lucky today to get to do that.”

I then stopped walking and acted like I was sitting behind a drum kit, drumming. (Ben has been wanting drums.) I asked Ben if he thought I could dance around while playing the drums. He said no. I said, “the drums are really, really cool Ben. And there are a lot of lead singers who can play the drums…like Jack White. And they play one or two or even three other instruments.”

He began to work this over with me, and quickly figured out I was talking about him learning to play the guitar, more specifically, the electric guitar.

I told him, “Dude. As the lead singer of a band where you’re playing the electric guitar, you can control a crowd, you can dance on stage, you can sing into a mic, you can sing and play songs you have written and people in the crowd will know the lyrics and will sing your song back to you, just like you do with Twenty One Pilots.”

“Ben!” I said. I let his name settle in the darkness... “Playing the guitar is a gateway to the joy you felt today on the playground! If you learn how to play now, you will never regret knowing how to play. Sometimes it will be hard, and you might want to stop. But if you remember how you felt today, you push though those hard times because you know it will make you happy in so many ways, including bringing you joy when you sing and play in front of an audience.”

He began to think of songs we know together that have a guitar in them: Juke Box Hero by Foreigner; Separate Ways by Journey; Panama by Van Halen … And then he got quiet thinking of other songs he knew.

We walked along quietly.

To my surprise he began to sing the chorus of a song we have only listened to together once: Tim McGraw's song, "Live Like You Were Dying."

"And I went sky divin'
I went Rocky Mountain climbin'
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull name Fumanchu
And I loved deeper (Here I joined in with Ben and we walked along singing together.)
And I spoke sweeter (Here he trailed off as he didn't know the rest of the words.)
And I gave forgiveness I'd been denyin'
And I said, 'Son I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dyin'.'"

The last line left my mouth clearly. I could imagine it floating away from us.… The night air around Ben and me was silent. Ben, who usually follows every verbal thought with another one, was quiet.

We walked along the damp pavement under the slow-moving branches… a newly built fence, oddly luminescent on the right side of the road. I put my arm around him, his warm shoulder radiating through his t-shirt up through my hand.

It was a beautiful moment, filled with sadness and longing and irony.

I broke the silence, “Ben, these are moments we need to remember. Help me remember to write you a note about these things we’ve talked about tonight. They’re special, and I want you to have this memory forever. The best way for me to give you that is to write you a note.” He reminded me the next day....

I don’t want Ben to ever have to face a life with a visible end point. But the rewards of knowing that it’s all going away before you thought it would are so deep and rich that I would love for him to experience it somehow.

To relish, savor and appreciate life while we have it colors it more vividly.

I want all my family members to live like they were dying, and to play the guitar. Ben is my last shot for the guitar. Here’s hoping the third time is a charm.

...

For anyone who wants to keep reading about the rest of our fun, fun night…

Ben and I were not ready for bed when we returned, and Will, poor guy, was doing homework. So Ben and I decided to hang out in the back yard while Will finished his homework and throw the light-up lacrosse ball back and forth.

We went out by the pool and were throwing it. It kept getting past me and landing in the bushes. As I would reach down to get it, its bright glow would silhouette the leaves between me and it, and it would spook me about something being down there beside the ball that I couldn’t see, like a snake.

I mentioned to Ben that I was happy there were no poisonous snakes here in our neighborhood because I was a little spooked by the ball being in the bushes. I could see Ben’s eyes grow a little wary as he thought of trying to get the ball out of the bushes and that there might be a snake there, poisonous or not. It was a perfect opportunity to play inside little Ben’s head. Any good father would see it, but only a really good father would take it… Or maybe not. Anyway, I took it.

I said again, “Yeah, the poisonous snakes are all gone these days except the ‘Texas Yard Snakes.’ They live on the outside of the yards around a neighborhood under bushes and stuff, next to the fences.” I then proceeded to bounce the ball over his head and into the yard next to the dark fence.

As we stood in the safety of the lighted side yard, he and I went back and forth about how to go about getting the ball quickly out of the dark bushes beside the fence while avoiding any Texas Yard Snake bites. Once the ball was retrieved, I would tell him, “Whew. Okay, now we know there are no Yard Snakes there…,” as I would bounce the ball past him “accidentally” into another, unexplored dark section of the yard.

We both laughed so hard at ourselves being scared. And then at the end, I told him there were no such things as poisonous “Texas Yard Snakes,” and we walked the perimeter of the lawn to prove it to ourselves. (And a few days later we found “Barney” the Texas Brown Snake. Sure enough, he was totally harmless and fun.)

After we finished throwing the ball back and forth and talking, Will came out and it was time for shooting it into the lacrosse goal. Will and Ben would whip it in and I would stand a good five feet behind the net, having learned the hard way that the net gives a good bit when a ball hits it going 40-70 miles an hour. (Will threw it once when I was videoing and hit my ‘special purpose,’ causing me to utter words that are not-suitable for work, but which are captured forever on digital video.) 

The two of them throwing that light-up ball into the net was an absolute blast because the ball seems to come at you so fast. It was a great surprise gift for the two of them. And a great, predictable and anticipated memory for me.

Live like you were dyin'...