Wednesday, June 30, 2010

The Double Scoop Boy

Summer is now upon us. School is over. Lacrosse season is over. Chloe celebrated her eleventh birthday. And last weekend we enjoyed this summer’s first ballroom dance event. The whole family went. Chloe brought her friend Wendy along. Philip and I wore dress pants, dress shirts, ties and blazers. Amelia, Chloe and Wendy wore formal dresses. The event was held at an ideal location. Just outside the ballroom was a large deck overlooking a three acre pond brilliantly reflecting a rising full moon.

Chloe and Wendy were nearly the only tweens who showed up for the dance event. There was just one tween boy besides them. Everyone else was either a teen or an adult. As the evening began to move forward, Chloe and Wendy discovered that nobody was asking them to dance. The one tween boy present was sticking close to a handful of teenage girls who were his sisters and cousins. And the thirteen and fourteen year old teen boys were giving their attention exclusively to the teenage girls. Eventually, the two came over to me to complain about their predicament. “Nobody is asking us to dance,” they said in near stereo.

Why don’t you two go together, walk up to a group of boys and ask two of them to dance?” I asked. Their response was immediate, negative, certain and in perfect stereo. “Well,” I continued. “What if I offered you ice cream as a reward for asking?

Wendy continued to shake her head, but Chloe got a gleam in her eye and said “Maybe.”

Alright,” I responded. “You two decide what boys you would like to ask. Come back and talk to me at the end of the next song.”

Chloe knew how best to get what she wanted from me. So at the end of the next song Chloe walked up to me with Wendy at her side and said, “We want to know how much ice cream we get.”

I paused and looked around the room. “There is one boy your age in the room. Asking him to dance will get you a kiddie scoop. You can take turns asking him.” Having asked a boy to dance last summer, Chloe was much more comfortable with the idea than Wendy. Chloe simply waited for the next song to begin and then approached the tween boy who immediately accepted Chloe’s proposal. Chloe returned to us victorious at the beginning of the next song, but Chloe’s success did not inspire the necessary bravery in Wendy. But Chloe’s bravery had inspired the same in another. The tween boy approached us one song latter and asked Wendy to dance.

Getting the tween boy to dance was a good start, but I knew it was not enough. I carefully scanned the younger teen boys not knowing exactly what I was looking for until I spotted him. The Double Scoop Boy was standing confidently with three other boys close to his age. I had already seen him dancing with plenty of girls close to his age. He was not shy, and he seemed to be genuinely enjoying the evening. He had brown eyes, dark hair, light skin and just a few freckles. He was wearing a well pressed white oxford shirt, dark pants and a dark tie. His face still held some of the angelic features of a young boy. “OK, girls,” I said. “If you ask any teen boy to dance, I’ll buy you a single scoop. And if you ask the dark-haired boy in the white shirt to dance, I’ll buy you a double scoop.”

Chloe continued to take the lead. She asked a tall boy with a crew cut who was perhaps fourteen years old to dance. Then two songs later, Chloe approached The Double Scoop Boy and asked him. The Double Scoop Boy jokingly acted deeply flattered by opening his mouth and holding both palms forward before he relaxed into a smile and accepted Chloe’s proposal. He took advantage of the fact that he was taller than Chloe to twirl her as often as the music would allow.

The dance with The Double Scoop Boy had the effect I had intended. The boy with the crew cut stepped forward and asked Wendy to dance. Everyone saw the two girls having fun twirling beneath their young teen dance partners. And for the rest of the evening, Double Scoop Boy, the tween boy and a small band of young teenage boys (including one boy who had a mustache) kept Chloe and Wendy on the dance floor as often as any teenage girl was on the dance floor.

In the end, we all had a great evening. And now I am looking forward to another great evening. I will be spending it with Chloe and Wendy at the local ice cream shop where they will claim the double scoops I promised them.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Sharing the Mundane

Love is what emotionally healthy people do. Nearly everyone wants to love and nearly everyone wants to be loved. I love my wife and my children, and they in turn love me. The key difference that makes love greater than like is sharing life together. This is not to say that people who like each other do not share life together. But what I am saying is that sharing life together is an essential ingredient in love, but it is not an essential ingredient in like.

When I look back at the most meaningful memories in my life, nearly all of them were shared with someone close. And the most meaningful of all were shared with a loved one. This comes as no surprise. But within that collection of meaningful memories, there is a surprise. The surprise is that what was going on during so many of those most meaningful memories was something entirely mundane. In fact, the more I love someone, the more I want to share the most mundane parts of that person’s life.

With Chloe for example, it would have been both easy and normal to simply let her out of the car during the handful of mornings this past spring when I dropped her off at school. But Chloe had a request that once asked I was quite happy to grant. Chloe wanted me to walk with her from the parking lot across the street. In fact the further I walked with her from the parking lot to her classroom, the happier she would be. And sure enough, now that the school year is behind us those memories of walking Chloe across the street those few mornings are particularly treasured memories.

Over four years older than Chloe, Philip is significantly more complicated. His natural desire to explore and assert his independence and my natural desire as a parent to ensure he explores and asserts his developing independence often operate in direct conflict with our mutual desire to share life. If I take too great an interest in Philip’s affairs—especially his most private affairs—Philip reacts quickly and decisively to protect his independence. For his most private affairs and musings both Amelia and I now need to let Philip come to us. And when he does, it is always a treasured memory.

The imbalanced interest in sharing life between a teenager and his or her parents is often a source of great frustration on both sides. But I think I have found the solution to this frustration. The solution is found in sharing the mundane whenever the opportunity presents itself. My grandfather, for example, taught me how to drive a car. He endured what was in theory endless hours of driving nowhere particularly special. But I expect my grandfather never tired of my teenage driving. I got to assert my independence. He got to support it. And the two of us got to share the mundane. My grandfather died over a decade ago. And my one of my most cherished memories of him was the driving lessons.

And so the other morning, I chose to seize an opportunity to share a mundane part of Philip’s life. As he was heading out to walk to the city bus stop in order to get to work, I asked him if I could walk with him. He was happy to say yes to a companion for the otherwise uneventful walk. But for me, I got to experience a small part of his teenage life. The walk took only five minutes. And then we waited for the bus for another five. We talked, but we didn’t talk about anything particularly interesting. And there were long stretches of silence. When the bus came, I couldn’t help but notice how different it seemed watching him get on a bus to go to work from watching him get on a bus to go to school. If nothing else, he was at least ten years younger than everyone else riding the bus. He seemed to step onto the bus differently. There was no threat of accidently doing something socially inept. He simply got on the bus and the bus simply left.

Alone at the bus stop, I was glad I had elected to take that mundane walk. I will never forget that walk, and I will never forget the image of Philip disappearing into the city bus. I look forward to sharing more mundane parts of Philip’s life, perhaps even more than I look forward to sharing the non-mundane parts of his life.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Taking it in from the Bleachers

There is a unique smell that permeates a high school campus in the springtime. The smell gets especially pungent in the afternoons on and around the athletic fields. It is as if a unique grass grows on high school athletic fields and nowhere else, yet the use of artificial turf does little to deter the emergence of that springtime high school campus aroma. It seems to hold the same on both rural campuses as well as urban campuses. And the afternoon pungency lingers well into evening for any event that draws in parents and other members of the community after hours.

The first day I picked up Philip after lacrosse practice, the smell of the campus and the athletic fields brought me back almost instantly to my own high school decades in the past in a completely different part of the country. It was nearly the same smell. I could hear the lacrosse coaches shouting commands targeted toward the young adolescent male athletic psyches. The inflections Philip’s coaches put into each word echoed the same authority and temperament of my own high school coaches.

I made it a point to attend as many lacrosse games as possible during Philip’s freshman season. To sit on the bleachers for home games, I had to ascend a steep incline that normal erosion would never permit, but earth-moving equipment had nonetheless established in order to ensure level ground for the football-soccer-lacrosse field below the equally level softball field above. For the first lacrosse game, I had to also endure not-yet-mowed thick grass and weeds that had grown up during the intense seasonal rainfall that had ended only a couple weeks before. A parent I recognized jokingly told me to check for ticks when I reached the foot of the bleachers.

I was not expecting to see Philip get much game time as a freshman. Instead I was expecting a token amount of time at the end of each game in which the score was not too close. Early in the season, my expectations were mostly true. Philip and his freshman peers did not see any field time until Hermes was ahead by double digits. But over the course of the season that slowly changed. The first freshmen to see significant game time were Walter and one other particularly large, aggressive football player. What they lacked in core skills, Walter and his freshman football comrade made up for with tenacity and raw determination. Walter was particularly and impressively aggressive. But for Philip in his fifth lacrosse season, seeing Walter regularly drop the ball was a source of some frustration.

Philip’s day came later in the season. The older, more experienced players began to notice Philip’s competence and consistency perhaps two or three weeks before the coaches did. Philip knew the plays, could keep the ball in his net even when double-teamed and had an eye for when to pass for a teammate to score. By the final games of the regular season and all the way to the championship game, Philip was part of the regular varsity line-up rotating into the midfield, normally as center.

It was a slow change I witnessed while drinking in the familiar smells of a springtime high school campus. As Philip’s freshman season unfolded, I remembered knowing players who were like Philip. As freshman they slowly gained the respect of their coaches and teammates. Philip could not claim to be a star, but he was emerging. His position on next year’s varsity line-up was no longer in question.

To me taking it all in from the bleachers, it was the emergence that was so captivating. And when combined with the smell of the campus and my own high school memories it all evoked, I became keenly aware of the ticking clock. Philip has been under our roof for over fifteen years. But in the spring of his eighteenth year, Philip will graduate from Hermes High School and will soon after head off to pursue his adulthood. I want to savor every moment of what remains of Philip’s time under our roof. And somehow, the smell of the Hermes High School campus is part of that savor.