Bachelor and Sons

When you are backpacking, canoeing, or back-country skiing, your trips sometimes take you to a divide that marks the boundary between watersheds. When you are right there at the apex, a short distance in any direction can lead you down a path that is completely different and separate from any other. Your decision can mean the difference between heading downstream towards the Pacific Ocean or to the Mississippi River. You could end up in Canada or Minnesota. Whichever way you go will probably be downhill or downstream.  You can’t easily turn back, at least not without a lot of effort.  You are committed. It is a defining moment.

The same thing happens in your life.  You don’t always know it at the time, but a single decision or event can have you heading into a watershed that changes everything about your destination, who you are, and what you will become.

I’ve reached a few of these watershed moments.  One occurred when I was 10. I was diagnosed with Legg-Perthes disease which for the short term, 18 months, left me on crutches and in the long term meant years of pain, loss of mobility, and will eventually mean a hip replacement. Along that path, I learned a love for reading as well as swimming, as many other activities were out of the question. When I graduated from high school, I opted out of attending college. That decision was partly due to anger but mostly to stupidity. It took 13 years of drudgery in factories and the destruction of a marriage to figure out just how stupid it was.

When you head down a certain watershed, you often find things along the trail you like and other things you don’t. It was that way in 1992, when I headed to Park City, Utah for a job. On that trail I found a second wife.  It was however, a serpentine trail that led me back to the Midwest. The good things were the birth of 2 sons. The “not so good”, was discovering your wife was, in her own words, “not cut out to be a mother”.

That brings me to my latest watershed. For the last 12 years I’ve been in the valley of “single parenthood”. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a parent before Zachary came along. It seemed like a lot of work, mess, and trouble. But sometimes, when you end up in a particularly rough watershed, you learn something you didn’t know about yourself. I learned I was good at being a father and liked it.

When you have a full time salaried career, and suddenly find yourself forced into dealing with that job and the responsibilities of parenting 2 young boys, along with maintaining a home and good environment all alone, it puts you in a cold sweat. Your life suddenly becomes getting 3 individuals up for breakfast and ready for school/work, stop by the daycare on your way home, make dinner, homework assistance, getting them to bed, and repeat. You become a scheduler, taxi driver, house cleaner, yard worker, cook, nurse, and coach. Your bank account looks like a rollercoaster at Cedar Point with ever diminishing peaks between the valleys of each month.

Sometimes your path takes you away from the stream and into dark woods. When my manager asked if I could travel, I said “no I have 2 boys which I must take to and from daycare each day and at night there is nobody else”. A day later, I was laid off. Other times the trail brings you back to a sunny sparkling stream. After 2 months without a job, my new manager told me I could flex my hours and work from home when it was necessary to meet the demands of being a single parent. There was the time Zach spent the night with stomach pain in the emergency room and the time when Tyler tore a growth plate and was told he might never throw a baseball again and might live with a deformed arm. There were the ever escalating day care costs when you could see no way to pay the bills at the end of the month. But there were also the baseball tournaments where Tyler built a collection of trophies and the first goal Zach made playing soccer. We experienced trips to swim with the dolphins and watched Yellowstone bison trundle by 10 feet away from our car. I attended band concerts and academic award ceremonies.

Twelve years ago, I was greatly concerned. You read and hear about a lot of bad outcomes for children of broken homes. Most are adversely affected. So, I asked a very wise person how I could protect Zach and Tyler. She said “They will be fine as long as they have a parent who truly loves them. But you have to always demonstrate with your actions, that they are the first priority in your life.” So I attended over 400 baseball games (missing only one because I thought I had a broken arm), a couple dozen band concerts, dozens of soccer games, and 2 middle school and 4 high school seasons of basketball games. I went to 12 years of parent teacher conferences, school open houses, and award nights. I drove my boys to practices, school, day care, friend’s parties, play days, over-nighters, and study groups. To do that, I flexed my work hours, left work early, skipped work, took sick days, used vacations, sneaked out early, arrived late, lied, omitted, and quit, so that they were always number one. No excuses were given about having to work for a living, not feeling well, being tired, bored, stressed, wanting to relax in front of the TV, or having a date.

So, am I looking for a metal? Well, I already got it. I have one son, now a young man, who is one of the most gentle, kind hearted fellows you could ever want to meet. He graduated from high school and is now attending the local community college. He never used drugs, drank alcohol, smoked, got suspended from school, bullied or beat up another student, or was arrested for any reason. He is fun to be around, with a happy go-lucky attitude, often making goofy sounds and joking around. He is a great buddy to have along for a sci-fi movie. Another son, Tyler, is the rare combination of talented athlete and gifted academic. He has played baseball since age 5, always being one of the better hitters on his team. He has innumerable trophies for placing in tournaments. He made it through 6 years of basketball tryouts and was a varsity team captain this last year in which they one their league (the first time in 34 years). At the same time, he has maintained a 4.0 grade point average for 4 years of high school and is ranked number 3 in a class of 390. Last year he was elected to the Michigan Baseball Coaches Association 1^st All State Academic Team. He just enrolled at the University of Colorado, Boulder’s College of Engineering where he received a Presidential Scholarship and grants totaling over $80,000.

Today was Tyler’s last day of high school. How is it that when he was in 1st grade it seems like an age ago, yet the time flew by so quickly. And now I’ve reached another watershed moment. Which way to turn now? Which path to take?

Of course, the game that seniors think about and remember the most is the last home game of their senior year.  That one is truly bittersweet, as they know it will be the last one they ever play as a team or on any team, for that matter.  On February 3^rd, while overwhelming Hazel Park High School in a game, Tyler injured his hand.  The next day he tweeted “Senior year and my hand is injured. #unlucky”.  Since then, X-rays revealed that the index finger of his shooting hand was fractured.  His season is cut short.  The Hazel Park game was the last game of his senior year.  He just didn’t have the benefit of knowing it, thinking about it, or savoring the moment.

When I was 10 years old, I was diagnosed with Legg-Perthes disease.  It is a childhood hip disorder initiated by low blood flow to the ball of the upper leg bone.  The bone dies and stops growing.  You find out about it because you experience excruciating pain in the hip.  Continued weight on the bone, causes it to deform.  Thus, that leg becomes shorter, in my case, by an inch or so.  The treatment in the 1960s was to place the leg in a sling and walk with crutches, so you don’t put weight on the ball and cause further damage.  Eventually, in my case about 16 months, the bone re-hardens.  Of course, you kind of have to learn how to walk again, though a little lopsided.  And for the rest of your life, that deformed ball tears away at the cartilage in your hip joint, leading to osteoarthritis.  A hip replacement is in your future.

In a few days, my father will have a birthday.  He is into the second half of his 80s.  He and my mother live in a retirement complex in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, near my sister Connie.  So, we don’t see them a lot.  With one son in college and the other in high school, the opportunities to make the 12 hour drive, or cost of a flight, make it difficult.  We talk on the phone every couple of weeks.  He and my mother share a cell phone.  Whenever I see that incoming number come up on my iPhone, I wonder if this will be the call I don’t want to get.  Face it, there are only a small handful of people that really care whether you ever existed on this earth.  It is not fun to think about losing one of those.

Just because he worked in a factory, doesn’t mean our dad wasn’t smart.  Perhaps, he could best be described as wise, the wisdom being gained through tough experience and hard knocks.  Things he told us and advice he gave served us well through the years.  We still ask for it on occasion.

As I mentioned, my dad worked a lot of hours.  He did find time, once in a while, to go fishing.  Fishing is one of the things he enjoys the most.  I liked to go with him.  We caught some fish, but a lot of times we just sat on the shore or in the boat for hours, and nothing happened.  I don’t think that catching anything was ever really the point.  It was the “being there”.

When he was younger, Tyler used to be curious about metaphysics.  That is defined as “philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world that encompasses it”.  He had lots of questions like “what is really there” and “what is it like”.  So one day, when he was 7 or 8 years old, he asked “what happens when you are dead?”  So I explained how some think you just cease to exist. Forever.  Others believe there is some type of after-life, or heaven, or kingdom.  And then I told him how grandpa Scott thinks he will be fishing.  He replied, “so if I die, I should find out where the good fishing spots are, so when grandpa gets there, he will know.  And I’ll find a baseball diamond so I can pitch”.  That works for me.  I can’t think of much I’d rather do for a really long time, than fish with my dad, and watch my son play baseball.

Thanks Daddy