Changing tides

Remember when beach trips were incredibly relaxing?

Lying by the ocean for hours, listening to the symphony of the waves, entirely relaxed.  Feeling somehow closer to heaven.  At peace, even with hundreds of people all around.  Kicking the worries of melanoma down the road.

Relaxing is not a word I would use to describe taking your 6-year-old and 8-year-old to the beach.  Because now those peaceful waves that once lulled you to sleep have become danger-ridden death traps.  And those other people?  The ones you once could pretend were a million miles away?  Any one of them could be a child-snatcher.  Or even worse, someone who wants to radicalize kids into being kind and tolerant.  You must be vigilant! 

And lying by the ocean for hours?  Don't make me laugh -- or, cry. (Hang on, I need a moment.)

There's no time for that.  For now, we must build sandcastles -- or, at least, serve as an errand boy and waddle your aging rear down to the water to collect pailfuls for those who do build.  

We must also play football.  Yes, football.  American football.  Not only that, we must make a football field in the sand, with goalposts and yard lines and yard line numbers.  And if it should get washed away by the waves or destroyed by footprints, well we must make it again the very next day.  Thus says the gospel according to Lucas: Year 8, Month 4.

But you find joy in other things.  Not physical joy, but nonetheless.

It comes as you watch them run towards the chilly waves before screaming and turning to run away as the uprush gushes over their feet and ankles.

As you see your son's excitement over seeing a shark.  (Or maybe a dolphin.  There was some debate on the sand.)  And again when he piles up little balls of wet sand so you ask what he's doing, and he answers almost breathlessly, "This is shark bait.  The shark is gonna look up here and see it and think it's food, and he will swim towards shore so we can get a better look at him."

But friends, I feel the tide beginning to change, so to speak.

Last October, we slipped away to Perdido for a four-day weekend while the kids had fall break, staying with my uncle and his partner, whom I shall henceforth refer to as "the uncles."

Our first day on the beach Mrs. B and I found ourselves in the water when a most unexpected event occurred.  Were we approached by a hungry bullshark?  Swarmed by a school of stingrays?  Pulled into peril by a fierce riptide?

No, not this trip.  What happened that day was even more unlikely.  An occurrence so rare that it hadn't happened in over eight years.  Many thought it would never be seen again.

We found ourselves alone.  Together.  In the ocean.

It was so inconceivable that it took ten or fifteen minutes before we even realized it.  Looking coastward we saw both kids playing contentedly with the uncles.  

So this is what freedom feels like.

This March, we returned for spring break.  The emancipation of the dependents continued to progress.  The uncles kept the kids while Mrs. B and I got not one night out to dinner, but two.

The kids have gone from only wanting to play in the sand and not even go near the water, to only going in the water if one of us is holding them, to running into the waves with reckless abandon while giving Dad multiple near heart attacks.

To have a child is to re-experience life, to re-experience the world anew.  It's as if your heart has exited your body and is forever traveling with them wherever they go, always on the verge of breaking, or leaping.

Relaxing, it is not.

Rewarding?  More than I could have ever imagined.

Very different goals

Tuesdays can be tough.  

It was opening night for the local 8U soccer league.  (I'll pause to allow the excitement and anticipation to abate... that should be sufficient.)  For reasons unbeknownst to me, your coach decided to put you in goal.  You had only played goalie for a quarter here and there last season.

You did well enough, not allowing any goals in regulation.  But of course, the fates would not allow that to be it.  Both teams were scoreless.  The game would be decided by penalty kicks, something you had never practiced.

Most of the fifty or so people in attendance wouldn't have noticed a thing.

But a parent knows.  

I immediately noticed your cheeks become flushed.  I imagined the nerves and uncertainty you must be feeling as the referee briefly explained the rules to you.  I was feeling them, too.

There would be five kicks per team.  The other team would go first.  It was a good kick.  You got a hand on it, but it wasn't quite enough as the ball trickled agonizingly across the goal line.  1-0.

While one of your teammates kicked and missed, I yelled to you that you didn't have to worry about catching the ball like you try to do in regulation to prevent a rebound.  Just knock it away from the goal.  You would tell me later if you had known that you think you could have stopped the first one.

You stopped the next four shots, including diving to your right to smother one on the ground.  Unfortunately, none of your teammates had managed to score and your team trailed 1-0.  The coach picked you to take the last shot.

Oh buddy, you hit it solid.  It was the best shot out of the five your team would take.  You got good air under it, but it caught the goalie's' left shoulder and bounded away harmlessly.

Those damned fates again.

And while I could not have been more proud of you for handling an unfamiliar and unexpected situation so well, you saw it differently.

You felt you had let your team down, both by allowing the goal and by missing the final kick.  It was like making the last out of a baseball game.

"I had one job," you said, crestfallen. "And I failed."

I tried to look on the bright side, or at least take the "it could always be worse" angle, because that's what I do.  Or maybe that's what the Prozac does.  Either way.

I mean, you could have saved zero shots.  This could turn out to be a valuable life lesson for you.  Your mama could have yelled even more often and loudly than she already did.

You didn't seem to have any lingering effects on Wednesday and Thursday, not outwardly anyway.  I'm sure you replayed things in your mind, but you seemed ready to go for game two on Friday night.

You started in goal but after the first quarter the coach switched you to forward.  I figured you were probably happier there.  And I was thankful that at least you weren't feeling the weight of the whole team as you did in goal.

And then it happened.

You took a rebound and neatly angled it past the opposing goalie.  Your team's first goal of the year.  It would be the only goal of the game.  Your team won 1-0 and in a complete reversal you had scored the only goal of the game.

After lining up to tell the other team they played a good game, you ran towards us with the biggest smile and launched yourself into your mama's arms.

And all was well.  The disappointment of three nights before may as well have been ten thousand light years away.  What a perfect night.

I can't help but believe sports have been good for you.  And seeing you interact with your teammates at practice and on the sideline.  Seeing you being such an encourager to them during games.  Seeing you overcome the Tuesdays to enjoy the Fridays.  Those are the things that keep my heart seemingly on perpetual overflow.

Maybe you will read this one day and realize how proud I am of you.  Hopefully you will realize that without having to read this.  Maybe you'll have a kid of your own and know exactly how I feel. I hope they have a mama who is their biggest (and loudest) fan. And when you write about it all, perhaps you will be able to do so in a way that is far less syrupy  than your dad did.

And somewhere along the way you'll probably realize that a lot of times in life, maybe even most times, you learn more from the Tuesdays than you do the Fridays.

Wireless-less

Imagine if you will a middle-aged male, one who has not been in any sort of shape for the better part of a  decade, traipsing through life completely naked.  

Not a pretty sight, is it?

Well, that's exactly how I felt for an entire week.  Naked.  Was it freeing?  Somewhat, yes.  But more so, it was unsettling.  I felt exposed.  Sort of like that dream where you show up to school wearing only underwear.

'Twas a Monday when one of my offspring (who shall remain nameless just in case she reads this some day) inadvertently left my phone outside.  After awhile I noticed a quiet rain had begun to fall.  Then as one is wont to do I began to wonder where my phone was.

Turns out it had crossed over to that big Apple store in the sky.

Stripped of my personal voice assistant, access to every song in the known universe, and the ability to play the wordle any time and any place, I was left to survive with virtually no connection to the outside world.  I mean, I still had internet access on the computer.  And access to my wife's phone, if needed.  As if any of us can remember anyone's phone number at this point in human existence.

Driving to and from work?  What if I was in an accident?  Had car trouble?  Got lost?  Granted, the last one isn't likely, but at my age you can't completely rule it out.

I think I missed my music most of all.  A couple of times I almost broke down when I started to say, "Siri, play..." before realizing she was no longer there.

And don't even get me started on using the bathroom.  I'm just sitting there, like an idiot, twiddling my thumbs!

At long last, after $623 to pay off my old phone, my new little bundle of memes, songs, and vitriolic political social media posts arrived.

Slowly, things have gotten back to normal.  I'm wordling, sharing hilarious memes, and most importantly of all, listening to any song I want to.

To think we used to have to buy individual albums, then flip the cassette over and guess how long you needed to fast forward the tape so that you could re-listen to a song all because your tape deck didn't have a rewind button.

To think people used to take long car trips with no cell phone.  What happened when they had car trouble?  It's impossible to know.  

Most probably walked to a payphone or got help from a kind passerby.  The rest?  They were most likely kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. Or worse, eaten by wolves or bears.  A lucky few simply starved to death.

Funny to think if I had a question about something, I would have to ask someone and just trust whatever they said.  Or go look it up in my father's twenty-year-old set of encyclopedias.  Thank Al Gore for the internet where anyone can post anything at all so you know you are getting the most complete and accurate information available.

So what was it like without a phone?  Sure it was nice to spend more time with the kids and not have to ask my wife three times what she just said.  

But would I want to go back to a time before phones?

Probably.

But only if you could guarantee I'd have a quality tape deck.  With fast forward and rewind.  

And the Bic pen with the blue cap and clear hexagonal barrel, so that I can spend ten minutes reeling the tape back in when it inevitably unwinds.