He said he wanted a Clone Hero competition.
I could have said, “Sure. Have your friends over, they can play.” That would have been a fine birthday. But I wanted it to be special, and I didn’t know how.
(more…)Tag: family
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Some Good, Some Bad
We were in the car, on the way to an appointment. It was after school, and we had done our “three things” conversation already, where he tells me three things about his school day.
We passed a car on the side of the road, and the conversation shifted to owning a car. Maintenance, or insurance, something about what it costs to keep one running.
“At least I don’t have to worry about that,” he said. “Because I can’t drive.”
He said it the way he’d say anything else. No weight on it. It sat in the middle of a sentence about something other than him.
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Once a Month
The text came in at 7:15 on a Thursday night. Hey. Please do me a favor and play tomorrow. No charge. I hate 5 players. Messes up the drills. Pleeeeeeze.
I’d told him a few weeks earlier that I was cutting back. Tennis had been my thing for years. I liked the people. I liked him. I’d driven him to a cataract surgery once, sat in the waiting room like it was nothing. We had a rhythm on the court, the kind that builds up over enough Saturdays that you stop thinking about it.
The divorce didn’t leave room for it. French lessons went first. I’m still doing Duolingo, which keeps something alive even if it’s not the same as sitting across from a real person working through conversation. Guitar lessons went too, mine, not his. His stayed. That wasn’t a hard call.
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To Live Without You
Perhaps that is what it means to be a father — to teach your child to live without you.
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
Sometimes I think that’s exactly right.
Sometimes I think it’s only half of it.
The practical side I understand. Teaching him to live without me means teaching him what will hold him up when I’m not there. How to shave. How to read a label at the grocery store, compare prices, figure out what to make with what’s available. How to take his medications, manage a schedule, navigate a system that wasn’t built with him in mind. Life skills, one by one, transferred from my hands to his.
Some of those I’ve been teaching deliberately. Some of them he’s picked up on his own without me realizing. He learned to trim his nails while I wasn’t paying attention. He manages more than I sometimes give him credit for.
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The Thing About Ted Lasso
I’ve written about Ted Lasso before. About curiosity, about being curious not judgmental. That’s the part of him that’s easy to take. The warmth, the belief in people, the way he walks into a room and makes everyone feel like they matter.
But lately I’ve been thinking about the part that’s harder to see.
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