I had not spoken with Raul in over a year. But suddenly he was standing next to me saying, “Hey Coach.”
Raul was Philip’s first friend in Hermes. In 2002, before moving from San Geraldo to Hermes, we signed up Philip for Little League Baseball in Hermes. We figured Philip would meet a bunch of kids on the team, and that one of them would almost certainly be in the same first grade class on Philip’s first day at a new school more than half way through the school year. When Philip started at his new elementary school in Hermes, he found Raul there waving him into the same class. The two shared a great season of Little League. For second grade and third grade, I coached the soccer teams on which Philip and Raul played together. To the degree that an adult and a child from different families can be friends, Raul and I have been friends for many years now.
This Fall, Philip has been practicing lacrosse twice a week at Hermes with the other players who are not presently absorbed by football. The off-season lacrosse players have a small patch of fenced-in artificial turf for two hours on Mondays and Wednesdays while the Freshman, JV and Varsity football teams dominate the wide open athletic fields on the Hermes High School campus for the entire week. I arrived on campus from my now fifty minute commute home about fifteen minutes before the lacrosse coach ended practice.
To keep the locker room from being over-crowded, the football coaches release the teams in reverse order of seniority half an hour apart. Raul has been playing on the JV squad this year. While the rest of the sophomore and junior players on the JV team walked by the artificial turf without even slowing to watch, Raul took the opportunity to catch up with me. Like Philip, Raul is lean and now taller than me. I asked him about football and told him I intended to see at least part of the upcoming JV game. He asked about Philip’s lacrosse team and for help identifying Philip from behind the helmets and light body armor. When I asked him how his younger sister was adjusting to high school, he sounded like his father. “She’s adjusting well. If anything, she’s adjusting a little too well in my opinion.” The conversation lasted a little over five minutes.
Like Philip, Raul looked ever so close to adulthood. Our conversation was not far from what would be said between two adults watching the scrimmage at the end of a high school lacrosse practice. I was proud of the boy I had coached and had under my home on multiple occasions. And I was proud of the young man he was today. Raul was healthy and confident. And he was completely comfortable engaging an adult as an equal.
Among Philip’s peers, some have always stood out as special to me. Many of these were ones I had coached along the way. Raul has always been one of the special ones. Coaches, family friends, teachers and others who work with youth in extracurricular activities get to play a minor role in a child’s upbringing for a brief window of life. There is a special satisfaction at the time. There is a special satisfaction that endures. And that enduring satisfaction comes to the surface whenever I get to speak with a kid I had once coached. For the special ones like Raul, the feeling of satisfaction is particularly enjoyable.
The last of the JV players walked just after I told Raul I was planning to catch at least part of his game. He smiled and said, “That would be great.” He then seemed to notice he was going to be the last into the locker room. “I should go get changed so I my dad doesn’t have to wait.” He turned and disappeared into the small current of JV football practice jerseys. And I couldn’t help smiling as I turned my attention back to the lacrosse scrimmage.
Some day Raul will be a full adult. If he and I still live in Hermes ten years from now, I suspect Raul and I will still be friends, and we will enjoy the kind of friendships older adults share with younger adults who are not from the same family.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Friends off Campus
Some friendships are temporal and some friendships are lasting. Most friendships are born out of shared experiences and values. In my experience, temporal friendships are sustained mainly by proximity. Lasting friendships are sustained by something deeper. For a tween or even a teen navigating the world of friendships, it is not always clear which friendships at school are lasting and which are temporal, but the ones off campus are almost always lasting friendships. Either way, the friendships off campus carry an important benefit.
Growing up, one finds value in friends to be more than just the state of having playmates. The best friends are those one can trust. But during a four to six year window that includes all or nearly all of middle school, the gap between the need for a trustworthy friend and a friend’s ability to be trustworthy is significant.
One wants to share private things with a friend who will keep one’s secret. But the temptation to expose another’s secrets normally exceeds the depth of a tween or early teen’s resolve to keep a confidence. As a result, friends off campus are safer, more reliable and more trustworthy merely as a function of their lack of proximity.
For this reason, Amelia and I have actively encouraged Philip and Chloe to develop friendships off campus. Within weeks of moving to Hermes back when Philip was in the first grade, Philip and Chloe had both formed friendships with the Rivera family. Joshua Rivera is one Philip’s best friends. Debbie Rivera has gotten close to both Philip and Chloe. And Abby Rivera is also one of Chloe’s friends. Over a longer period of time, Jack Rivera, their father, has come to be my best friend while Chelsea Rivera, their mom, has become one of Amelia’s best friends. With the exception of the two years Philip attended Oak Hills Charter School, Philip and Chloe have never gone to the same school with the Rivera’s.
Philip has fully grasped the idea that Joshua is the friend to whom the most private confidences can be revealed. Whenever we go to the Rivera house, Philip and Joshua go behind the house to where the two can lift weights and chat. Girls and parents are forbidden from joining them and they work hard to maintain their privacy by insisting that any interruption be important.
Chloe’s best friend off campus is Savannah. Samantha was the one who invited Chloe to participate in the play last summer. Over the course of the summer, Savannah introduced Chloe to her friend Holly. Holly also does not go to Chloe’s school. Lately, Chloe and Holly have been getting together and most of what they do is talk. During a recent lacrosse event in which Philip got to play with Division II college lacrosse players under the lights at Cabrillo High School, Chloe invited Holly to come along. During the two hour event, the two girls spent nearly the entire time walking around the track together while Amelia, Holly’s father and I were up in the bleachers watching the event.
Having friends off campus is something Amelia and I have encouraged and cultivated for Philip and Chloe. Now that they have reached the difficult years, the effort seems to be paying off. Each has friends with whom secrets can be shared and be kept safe. And no matter what happens on campus, there will always be supportive friends for them off campus.
Growing up, one finds value in friends to be more than just the state of having playmates. The best friends are those one can trust. But during a four to six year window that includes all or nearly all of middle school, the gap between the need for a trustworthy friend and a friend’s ability to be trustworthy is significant.
One wants to share private things with a friend who will keep one’s secret. But the temptation to expose another’s secrets normally exceeds the depth of a tween or early teen’s resolve to keep a confidence. As a result, friends off campus are safer, more reliable and more trustworthy merely as a function of their lack of proximity.
For this reason, Amelia and I have actively encouraged Philip and Chloe to develop friendships off campus. Within weeks of moving to Hermes back when Philip was in the first grade, Philip and Chloe had both formed friendships with the Rivera family. Joshua Rivera is one Philip’s best friends. Debbie Rivera has gotten close to both Philip and Chloe. And Abby Rivera is also one of Chloe’s friends. Over a longer period of time, Jack Rivera, their father, has come to be my best friend while Chelsea Rivera, their mom, has become one of Amelia’s best friends. With the exception of the two years Philip attended Oak Hills Charter School, Philip and Chloe have never gone to the same school with the Rivera’s.
Philip has fully grasped the idea that Joshua is the friend to whom the most private confidences can be revealed. Whenever we go to the Rivera house, Philip and Joshua go behind the house to where the two can lift weights and chat. Girls and parents are forbidden from joining them and they work hard to maintain their privacy by insisting that any interruption be important.
Chloe’s best friend off campus is Savannah. Samantha was the one who invited Chloe to participate in the play last summer. Over the course of the summer, Savannah introduced Chloe to her friend Holly. Holly also does not go to Chloe’s school. Lately, Chloe and Holly have been getting together and most of what they do is talk. During a recent lacrosse event in which Philip got to play with Division II college lacrosse players under the lights at Cabrillo High School, Chloe invited Holly to come along. During the two hour event, the two girls spent nearly the entire time walking around the track together while Amelia, Holly’s father and I were up in the bleachers watching the event.
Having friends off campus is something Amelia and I have encouraged and cultivated for Philip and Chloe. Now that they have reached the difficult years, the effort seems to be paying off. Each has friends with whom secrets can be shared and be kept safe. And no matter what happens on campus, there will always be supportive friends for them off campus.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Sustaining the Connection
For me, my sophomore year in high school was the turning point. Suddenly, I could feel adulthood looming on the horizon. Now nearly thirty years later, Philip is a sophomore in high school and I suddenly sense the ticking calendar. He loves me. But he needs me less than he has ever needed me. At the same time, he craves autonomy more than ever before. At unexpected times, Philip wants to fully engage. Most of the time, however, he prefers to be alone in his room with just the computer and his own musings to keep him company. But there are two exceptions to his unpredictable willingness to interact.
The first exception is the television. Philip’s tastes range from action and science fiction to documentaries. During the school year, our family rule is that the television goes off at 4:30pm on weekday school nights. That leaves only the weekend for me to share watching television with Philip. We have found a number of television shows available on DVD to watch over time. On many weekend nights, it is the last thing Philip and I do before we each head off to bed. But occasionally I get lucky. At the end of a show, when his mother and sister have often gone to bed, Philip will sometimes leverage these private times to talk to me about what is on his mind.
The other exception is sports and exercise. Philip is very willing to include me when I can help. In this new school year, it has meant signing him up for off-season indoor lacrosse in San Geraldo and regularly serving as the driver for him and other players from the area playing on his team
Philip’s intense interest in exercise went to an even higher level some time in the summer. We had expected him to sleep as late as possible each morning. But instead Philip set his alarm to go off before the first signs of light. He began doing push-ups and various abdominal exercises. Philip’s morning exercise routine has given me the opportunity to take him on multiple shopping trips to the local sporting goods stores. We’ve purchased athletic shoes, dumbbells and ankle weights. Now, half an hour before my own alarm is scheduled to play a local radio station, I hear the siren of Philip’s alarm clock. It is followed by the sound of him climbing out of his bunk bed and then either the stomp of his lunges or the clink of his dumbbells.
On an outing to the grocery store, I took Philip alone and encouraged him to browse the men's magazines. He took no interest in the publications that focused on body-building, gaming, cars or fashion. But the more broad-based publication, Men's Health, appealed to him, so I added the five dollar newsstand price to that day's grocery bill. After Philip devoured the August issue, I invested around twenty dollars to get him an annual subscription. Now every so often, he emerges from his room to show me a new exercise he read about and wanted to try.
For a while, all of Philip's dawn exercises were a private affair. But he wanted to start running. I volunteered to manage his stopwatch while he worked to improve his time on a neighborhood run of roughly seven hundred meters. Now when I hear the alarm go off, I get out of bed myself. I throw on shorts, a tank top and a sweatshirt. I knock on his door and tell him to get me when he is ready to run. Five to twenty-five minutes go by while I cat nap. If my own alarm goes off, I know Philip won't be running. But normally he chooses to run. I leap up and join him downstairs. We lace our athletic shoes together and head outside. Philip may stretch or do some quick warm-ups, but he is normally ready to go almost immediately.
With Philip at the edge of our driveway, leaning forward ready to launch into a sprint, I speak a crisp "Ready … set … go!" He disappears into the darkness down the street. I turn the opposite direction and briskly walk to our meeting point at a nearby intersection. In the quiet of the morning, I never fully lose the sound of his feet slamming into the pavement with a rhythmic beat from somewhere in the neighborhood. Shortly after I arrive at our meeting point, the rhythm starts to get louder. He picks up the pace for the final stretch of his morning run. Soon he passes the finish mark and I tell him how much time elapsed. The sound of Philip's fast, heavy breathing replaces the first rhythm with a new one. Together we enjoy the short walk back to our house.
Over the past few weeks Philip's morning sprint has become a ritual that helps me relish what is left of the time I have with Philip under my roof. But whether it is the rhythm of his running or the rhythm of his breathing, it is still the sound of the ticking calendar to me.
The first exception is the television. Philip’s tastes range from action and science fiction to documentaries. During the school year, our family rule is that the television goes off at 4:30pm on weekday school nights. That leaves only the weekend for me to share watching television with Philip. We have found a number of television shows available on DVD to watch over time. On many weekend nights, it is the last thing Philip and I do before we each head off to bed. But occasionally I get lucky. At the end of a show, when his mother and sister have often gone to bed, Philip will sometimes leverage these private times to talk to me about what is on his mind.
The other exception is sports and exercise. Philip is very willing to include me when I can help. In this new school year, it has meant signing him up for off-season indoor lacrosse in San Geraldo and regularly serving as the driver for him and other players from the area playing on his team
Philip’s intense interest in exercise went to an even higher level some time in the summer. We had expected him to sleep as late as possible each morning. But instead Philip set his alarm to go off before the first signs of light. He began doing push-ups and various abdominal exercises. Philip’s morning exercise routine has given me the opportunity to take him on multiple shopping trips to the local sporting goods stores. We’ve purchased athletic shoes, dumbbells and ankle weights. Now, half an hour before my own alarm is scheduled to play a local radio station, I hear the siren of Philip’s alarm clock. It is followed by the sound of him climbing out of his bunk bed and then either the stomp of his lunges or the clink of his dumbbells.
On an outing to the grocery store, I took Philip alone and encouraged him to browse the men's magazines. He took no interest in the publications that focused on body-building, gaming, cars or fashion. But the more broad-based publication, Men's Health, appealed to him, so I added the five dollar newsstand price to that day's grocery bill. After Philip devoured the August issue, I invested around twenty dollars to get him an annual subscription. Now every so often, he emerges from his room to show me a new exercise he read about and wanted to try.
For a while, all of Philip's dawn exercises were a private affair. But he wanted to start running. I volunteered to manage his stopwatch while he worked to improve his time on a neighborhood run of roughly seven hundred meters. Now when I hear the alarm go off, I get out of bed myself. I throw on shorts, a tank top and a sweatshirt. I knock on his door and tell him to get me when he is ready to run. Five to twenty-five minutes go by while I cat nap. If my own alarm goes off, I know Philip won't be running. But normally he chooses to run. I leap up and join him downstairs. We lace our athletic shoes together and head outside. Philip may stretch or do some quick warm-ups, but he is normally ready to go almost immediately.
With Philip at the edge of our driveway, leaning forward ready to launch into a sprint, I speak a crisp "Ready … set … go!" He disappears into the darkness down the street. I turn the opposite direction and briskly walk to our meeting point at a nearby intersection. In the quiet of the morning, I never fully lose the sound of his feet slamming into the pavement with a rhythmic beat from somewhere in the neighborhood. Shortly after I arrive at our meeting point, the rhythm starts to get louder. He picks up the pace for the final stretch of his morning run. Soon he passes the finish mark and I tell him how much time elapsed. The sound of Philip's fast, heavy breathing replaces the first rhythm with a new one. Together we enjoy the short walk back to our house.
Over the past few weeks Philip's morning sprint has become a ritual that helps me relish what is left of the time I have with Philip under my roof. But whether it is the rhythm of his running or the rhythm of his breathing, it is still the sound of the ticking calendar to me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)