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 1st 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?
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For the first time in 14 years, I'm not sitting in the cold, sleet, or rain watching my son play baseball. There are no score-sheets to fill out, no statistics to calculate, and no walks through mud and wet grass to get to the field. I'm not sitting in 40 mph winds in the cold on one day, and roasting in heat and humidity the next. There is no racing home from work and grabbing fast-food on the way to the field for a practice or game. I don't have to hear parents complaining about their son not playing short-stop, or sitting the bench, or being asked for a bunt or "hit and run" when they could be swinging away. Nobody argues that their son should have a hit recorded instead of an error, because the ball bounced off 2 blades of grass and was traveling over X miles per hour causing the short stop to drop it from his glove.
Tyler put of lot of hours into being a good baseball player. He went to hundreds of practices and games. He attended hitting and pitching lessons. He discovered that talent only goes so far and then you must work. For a while Tyler worked very hard. He was a pretty good ball player. He played short-stop, out field and pitched. His junior year of high school, he pitched more innings than anyone on the varsity team. His ERA was 2.3. He received the "Most Improved Player" award and was elected to the Michigan Baseball Coaches Association First Academic Team.
One day, during his junior year, his team was playing Rochester High School. He had a hit and was on 1st base. I could see he was thinking about something and then he started talking to the 1st baseman. After the game, I asked him what they were talking about. He said, he was calculating the effect that the hit would have on his batting average. The 1st baseman heard him talking to himself and asked why he was doing calculations during a game. Tyler explained that "Everything that happened in a baseball game could be represented by mathematical equations. For example, you could calculate the speed and trajectory of the next pitch and then figure out that based on the contact point and bat swing, that the ball would be a hard grounder passing between the short-stop and 2nd base." The conversation ended at that point because that is exactly what happened and Tyler was off to 2nd base, leaving a befuddled 1st baseman.
Tyler chose not to play baseball his senior year of high school. It wasn't because of disgruntled parents. It wasn't because of a coach who wanted to marginalize his talent over other favored players and it wasn't because he injured his pitching hand during the basketball season. It was because of numbers. There is another calculation one can do. It's result is the ratio of successful engineering/math students to college athletes. It is a very low number. It is low because it is very hard to work out, train, and play a sport that takes a minimum of 40 hours per week, take 16 credit hours of STEM courses, and study enough to keep a decent GPA.
Tyler opted to devote his time to studying for 3 Advanced Placement tests, a summer internship, and computer programming. At the moment, he is in Indianapolis at the Business Professionals of America National Leadership Conference. As the 1st place finisher at the Michigan competition in Computer Concepts, he qualified to go to "Nationals". There he will also take a number of certification tests.
So, no more spring baseball. What to do? What to do?
You know, there is a calculation for where in a stream your dry fly will land if you apply the right back-cast, trajectory and speed to a Cortland double tapered floating tip line with a 3 foot 4X tippet.
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When you are 17 and in your senior year of high school,
certain things take on added meaning. A
few weeks ago, when Tyler’s basketball team played their arch rival, he tweeted
“People don’t realize how bittersweet events like that game are. For 2 hours we are a linked community. Seniors may never feel that way again.” That rivalry game was a big deal. The crowd at the game was the biggest all
season.
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 3rd,
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.
I suppose that a broken finger and a few missed games is not
a big deal in the whole scheme of things.
But certainly Tyler is disappointed.
As a father, you don’t like to see your kids feeling that way. You certainly don’t like to see them
injured. Feeling a little sad for Tyler,
got me to thinking about my dad, that and the fact that his birthday is coming
up. When you are a kid and bad things
happen, you mostly think about yourself.
You don’t really wonder how it makes your parents feel. Then you become a parent and you find out
what it is like, first hand, seeing you child hurt and disappointed.
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.
So, I was feeling a little sad about Tyler and it suddenly
hit me. How did my dad feel when I was
screaming in pain? When I had to use
crutches all that time? When unused
muscle began to atrophy? Well, I can’t
remember him saying much of anything about it.
But, if I feel a little sad about Tyler’s finger and 5 or 6 basketball
games, what must he have felt. It kind
of explains why over the years, whenever we met, or talked on the phone, he
would always, without fail, ask the question “how’s your hip?”
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.
My sisters and I were lucky to have our dad. Many kids don’t grow up with one, or what
they get is kind of sub-par. We grew up
in the 60s and 70s. Back then, our
mother was a home-maker. She worked real
hard, but nobody gave her a paycheck.
Our family’s income came from dad.
And dad was a factory worker. I
am not sure how he did it. I know he worked a lot of hours. He was gone before we got up for school in
the morning. He wasn’t back until dinner
in the evening. He worked 5 or 6 hours
on every Saturday. For 13 years after
high school, I worked in factories. It
was tedious, boring, dirty, and totally unrewarding. I have no idea how you could do that for all
the years he did, and know that you needed all the hours you could get in that
place, in order to support your family.
I can’t remember him ever complaining.
And, I can’t remember really feeling like we had less than anybody else.
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.
I am pretty sure I remember my sisters and I always calling
him “daddy” when we were little. Even, I
think, not so little. Something like
that becomes an unthinking habit. I
remember driving from their home in Machesney Park, IL out to mine near
Shirland one day. So, that would have to
be when I was in my mid-twenties. I was
remembering a conversation we’d had that day and it suddenly struck me that I
had, at that age, still said “daddy”. I
felt totally embarrassed. How lame and
childish was it, that I was still calling him that at my age. I never said that again.
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”.
I remember being at church when I was a kid. I think it might have been a Bible
study. The topic came up “what will the
kingdom be like”. Some may refer to it
as heaven, others the after-life, but we thought of it as “the kingdom”. Dad told everyone that he thought there would
be streams and lakes and he would be out there fishing. Logically, that may seem weird. You don’t have to eat, so you don’t need the fish,
and there shouldn’t be any killing there anyway. But, to dad, I think that made perfect sense
because he was thinking in terms of “what is the most enjoyable thing I can
think of doing for eternity”.
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.
It is interesting how these random thoughts about your dad
seem to pop into your head on almost a daily basis. Many experiences with sons relate back to
something similar that happened in the past between you and your own dad. You
remember what he said or did that somehow stuck with you through all the years. They are things that seem to define who you
are. If you are a good father, it might
be because you learned many things from your dad. There are always a few things you discard, or
strive to make better or do a better way.
Most of dad’s lessons were those that didn’t need changing.
Thanks Daddy
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For the last 4 years, we can tell when it is autumn by the sound in our neighborhood. Sandhill Cranes visit our yards and their trumpeting is heard most early mornings. There is nothing like waking up to that pre-historic sound wafting through your open window.
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Tyler just received his first official college acceptance letter. It is from Milwaukee School of Engineering and includes a $48,000 merit scholarship.
MSOE ranked #10 in US News Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs
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| Norris University Center - Northwestern University |
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| Outside the NU Library |
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| Touring the grounds, Northwestern University |
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| Nike Town - Michigan Ave., Chicago |
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| Garret's Popcorn Shop - Michigan Ave., Chicago |
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