You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Watching something and and wondering if this is the last time you will ever see it again.
While the other parents stand around the track talking nonsensical parent talk, I sit Indian style on the edge of the field.
“Hey you being anti social?” one dad says with a laugh from the edge of the track.
Anti social? I can barely acknowledge the question. I feel sick to my stomach.
I don’t even look his way. I am focused on the field, watching something I hoped I wouldn’t see.
I am so sad, I feel like kicking the ground, or throwing a rock or screaming.
But what good will it do?
I can’t fix tendons that are sore? I can’t relax muscles that are stretched to the breaking point during an absurd growth spurt that would make the Jolly Green Giant wince.
So I watch the slow motion car wreck, knowing that my reality is changing before my very eyes.
I am staring at 14 year old boys who I have seen play for years. It should be mundane, pedestrian, matter of fact. In the over all scope of soccer, this is a nothing, a get to know the new coach scrimmage.
Christ, only 9 kids showed up. It’s summer time and its almost practice optional.
I’ve been to hundreds of soccer practices. This one should barely register a pulse.
But to me it is a beating heart, filling my brain with sadness, with memories.
As I watch my son limp across the field, dragging his injured body into the action, I grimace. He sees the play, but he gets there 2 steps too late. He is non existent. He is a moving cone.
Receiving and passing look excruciating. He is gutting it out, wincing, grabbing his knee. He is hurt, but he is not complaining. the other parents wouldn’t even know. The kids know. They don’t want to pass him the ball. The coach also knows and eventually he will have to inquire why this limping slow kid is on the 2nd team.
The good news in all this? He’s growing like a weed. The bad news? His knees are killing him. What’s ailing him? Who knows? The doctors are stupid. They are building a vacation home with all the money I’ve spent on MRI’s and therapy. They can’t tell me anything. One doctor talks about possibly doing something surgical. A 2nd opinion nixes that talk in favor of therapy.
He goes to rehab and he does exercises that have as much effect as a one man wave in a stadium full of apathy.
So here I am, on the edge of the grass, my head in my hands, staring at my son. I watch him knowing that it is all about to change. I see him move so stridently, like a cam shaft that has thrown a rod. I remember when he moved like a gazelle. I inhale the complexity of this simple scrimmage knowing that my son is a liability. A liability. He use to be the go to kid. When he was little he was a star, scoring so many goals, they had to take him out of the game so other parents didn’t get angry.
As he got older, his game became more reserved. Most recently, he has become a solid defender who plays unselfishly, rarely looking for the limelight, just looking to make plays.
In this moment, the memories of his once adroit skills fill my thoughts. Then I watch him move about like a car with a blown tire and I have to honestly assess him as a liability.
I can’t in good conscious let him play and further hurt himself or take a spot from another kid who deserves it more.
The coach approaches me during a water break.
“Hi I’m the coach. Whose dad re you?”
A million thoughts dance through my mind. I’m so sad I can’t stand it. I want to scream. I’m the dad of the kid limping across your field. I’m the dad of the kid who once upon a time use to score 11 goals a game. I’m the dad of the kid who use to spring like a cheetah to a spot that only he saw before the ball even got there making a defensive play that was artistic cat burglary.
Instead I point to my boy.
“He’s not doing too well,” I say choking back emotion.
“Growing pains?” the coach chuckles.
“He’s grown a lot,” I say, kicking the ground.
The kids mother is sure that he will quit. That’s because she would quit. But I can’t let him quit. I never quit.
The kid scrimmages for 90 minutes playing defense like a slab of cold beef.
Finally, mercifully, it ends.
He loves being out here with these guys, his buddies. I see his face light up. I let him walk with them for a little bit.
Then I yell.
“Hey, come here”
He walks to me. I marvel at how much he has grown in just a few months. No wonder he is in pain. In a summer he has grown taller than his sister who is 4 years older.
He smiles knowing what he thinks i’m about to say.
But what I say on the quiet of the field, where only he can hear, is perhaps as shocking to him as it is to me.
I tell him that we can’t play like this. We can’t play in pain and risk further injury. I tell him we have to relinquish a spot on this team for another boy who deserves to be here. I tell he has to focus on getting better. I tell him that some around this field aren’t convinced that he can come back after missing a season of travel soccer.
He is surprised by my intensity, but he is listening.
I am getting angry, emotional, motivated.
I want to motivate him like a dad-coach.
“Some say you will never be back. But we don’t give up,” I say.
His eyes grow wide. He didn’t expect this pep talk.
“Promise me, you’ll come back. Promise me you’ll work hard and you’ll make the next team.”
“OK,” he says a little bewildered.
“We don’t quit,” I say as I walk him to the parking lot. “I’ll work with you. We’ll surprise them. You’ll be faster and bigger and we’ll be back. Promise me.”
“I promise,” he says.
I’m angry. I’m sad. I want to punch something.
What good would it do?
I wonder if he got the message. Maybe his mother is right. Maybe once you miss a season of competitive travel ball, you can never catch back up. The other boys are also getting bigger and stronger and faster and they are honing their skills.
I realize he can’t get there if he doesn’t burn to get there.
I can force him to play, but I can’t hold his hand for him. This is a life moment, this average, nothing night of soccer is a transition. This is a wake up call, his wake up call, where he will decide who he is as a young man and what is he made of are yet to be determined.
I wonder if this terrible, limping, sorry ass practice is the last time I will ever see him play.
I sure love watching him play. I take pride when he does well. I feel badly when he messes up. I’ve been a soccer dad for 10 years.
As I climb into my car, the sweat rolling down my temple and the mosquitoes buzzing around furiously, I think about what I will miss.
My calendar was once filled with road trips and friendly soccer matches and state league games all over the state. I use to bitch about how much time and money it took.
I haven’t even officially pulled him from the league, and all ready I’m missing it.
10 years of Saturdays and Sundays filled with soccer. I will miss the colder than cold mornings. I will miss the rainy afternoons playing in a quagmire. I will miss the hotter than sweltering hot days when shade can be sold for a premium.
I’ll miss the comraderie and the side line banter and the boys just being boys before and after the games.
So I enter a new phase. A phase probably without soccer for a while. It will be a time for my boy to rebuild, to heal, to prove that he wants it so much that nothing can stop him from climbing back.
Can he do it? Of course he can.
He just needs to get healthy.
Promise.
Life’s Crazy™