“How did it go Saturday bud?” I ask my son on the way to school. “Good,” he gives me the expected one word answer. “Were there many catchers trying out?” I risk asking another question and totally shutting him down, but he is in a talkative mood today. “There were six catchers trying out,” he offers with a tone that lets me know it’s okay to continue. “How many catchers will they take on each team?” I ask, already guessing in my head, two or three. “Two, I think,” he says. “I am faster than most of them,” he offers, seeming to know that I am desperate for this added bonus information.
That I am old enough to have a Freshman in high school is tough enough. The added pain of being an ex-high school athlete is almost too much to bare in the car as I listen to my son talking about the first round of three days of tryouts they are attempting to coordinate in the middle of one of our worst winters here.
“How do they test your hitting with those squishy balls?” I wonder, genuinely curious about how the coaches will grade hitting skills during an indoor baseball tryout. “They don’t care if you can bomb the ball Mom, they look at technique,” he says. “Ah, okay, so how’s yours?” I ask. “Good, I think,” he replies with some amount of confidence. “Did you have a chance to call plays last weekend?” I ask, proud that I know some baseball terminology. “No, I think we will do that today,” he answers, validating the correctness of my question. “Okay, so remember to be confident. They are looking to you to see if you can call the plays and be confident enough to run the game from behind the plate,” I slide in as much advice as I can, not really knowing anything about what my son will be graded on, but trying to make the best guess I can. His dad is better than me at the baseball talk.
Already this conversation has gone on longer than most I have had with my son. If you are not talking about Call Of Duty or baseball, he isn’t much interested in carrying out a thoughtful conversation. And God forbid you start the wrong kind of conversation with him, like about girls, or what he might want to do with his life. His shyness and indecision take over like a wild fire and drive you out of the room.
Today we are talking about baseball and all is right and good in the world. I soak up the words, tone and emotion in his voice like I will never hear it again. I sit smiling inside of myself but keep a mildly serious listening face to keep things going. I ache for this.
My mild mannered, kind, funny, smart boy became a little man somewhere over the summer between eighth and ninth grade. Yes, it is much easier to say ninth grade than Freshman. He also passed me up in height over that same time period, not that five three is hard to beat. But there is something about looking up rather than down at your baby and his almost mustache.
“Good luck today bud, have a great day. I will pick you up at four,” I say as he grabs his gear and heads off down the sidewalk outside of the high school. He doesn’t answer. I didn’t ask a question, so I can’t expect an answer.
Did you ever want your kid to succeed at something so much that it feels like your own worry and gut clench could be enough for your whole city block? I have learned that thing about letting them fail so that they can solve their own problems and develop the confidence and self esteem it takes to be in the big bad world, but baseball? I want this for him. Bad.
High school soccer saved me. Literally. From being a Coke-head. I know, I know, I don’t seem like the druggie type, but lack of self esteem mixed with a severe introverted personality made for some mean desperation in my teenage years. I fit in in the ways I could and back then thought that being high was the answer.
“I can’t play coach. I am sick.” I still feel the disgust in my voice as I had to tell the coach I couldn’t play in our game after a night of partying. That day changed my life. My team was more important than anything else. Thank God.
So as my son drags his gear across campus I pray. Please God, let him make the team. It’s not a particularly important prayer in the grand scheme of things. Not about world hunger, or peace or curing cancer…but this prayer might save one of the most important lives in my world. Making the team would create a different kind of peace, the kind a shy kid who is finding his place in the world needs most of all. The kind called belonging.
Later the same day of the above writing:
My daughter and I pile in the car with our paraphernalia and are on the way to pick up her brother at school after day two out of three of tryouts. “Where is he?!!” She shouts at me, getting more exasperated as the minutes tick on, convinced she will be late to her cheer practice. “I don’t know,” I reply, “He isn’t answering my texts. He was supposed to be done at 4:00 p.m.” “Well it’s 4:17 and I am going to be late!” My daughter puffs out with extra emphasis on the T in late.
“There he is!” She points at the door and we can both see him inside through the double wide, glass doors, standing in the hallway. “Why isn’t he coming out?” She asks me, and at the same time texting him to hurry. She reads me his reply, “I am waiting for some stuff,” while I wonder how come he hadn’t answered my four texts.
Finally I see him in my rear view mirror trying to manage the button to open the trunk while toting his bag filled with catcher’s gear. I look at the clock and realize we are still good, make a plan to take him with me instead of home first, and another to stop at Five Guys for dinner somewhere in between drives.
“Hey bud, how’d it go?” I ask when he slides into the back seat. “Good,” his expected one word answer comes again. “Did you have a good day?” I ask. “Yeah,” he says stepping over the stuff I had put on the floor behind my seat. “Oh, and, I made the team,” he sneaks this last part in and I quickly look in the rear view mirror again, just in time to see the proud smirk he has on his face as I then react in true Mom form and say, “OMG! That is awesome! OMG! Congratulations buddy!” And stick my hand backwards behind me in between the two front seats for a sideways five.
He made the team.
Bulldogs “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
