The Raging Elitist

I’ve hit a streak of immature male first person narrators. Each one seems to get worse. First it was Barbara Kingsolver’s incisive, stubborn junky Demon Copperhead, then Wally Lamb’s angry, self-absorbed Dominick Birdsee, and now, it’s Richard Ford’s smug, defeatist Frank Bascombe. Frank is brutally apropos of these three weeks between our return from Sapphire and the start of the full swim team schedule: “It’s exactly like when you were young and dreaming of your family’s vacation;” he says, “only when the trip was over, you were left with the empty husks of your dreams and the fear that that’s what life will mostly be – the husks of your dreams lying around you.” Frank has a really depressing outlook on life, but he’s not always wrong. For instance, empty husks of dreams do lie around.

Since we got back, I’ve dreaded swim team cranking up in earnest. Last week I stood up in front of 150 parents and promised them I’d be at the pool coaching for the entirety of our fifty-week season, extolling the value of stacking weeks on weeks, months on months, and years on years. When I was twenty-eight, after my first four-year stint of year-round coaching, I told myself I’d never do it again. Now here I am at forty-two, failed in all my other endeavors, desperate to show my kids that I can do something and do it successfully. Not infrequently, I wonder how long I’ll have to coach before I can call this latest try a success. Scotty has ten more years before he graduates, and in terms of swim seasons, that sounds like an eternity.

While my stress builds during this period of limbo between vacation and work, I’ve excelled at making the kids cry, particularly Cartter. He cried one night when he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to finish all the food on his dinner plate; he cried when I found out he got hit in the neck with a plastic bat in the neighbors’ garage; and he cried when I discovered he failed to tell his “Intro to Middle School” teacher (who’s also the principal) he was going to be absent. There are explanations for all these incidents that would paint me as a dad doing a decent job with his ten-year-old, but the more relevant common thread is the pain Cartter feels about potentially disappointing me. He’s scared he isn’t good enough. Which is a little heartbreaking.

Scotty shares Cartter’s and my concern about not being good enough, although it doesn’t manifest in tears quite so often as it does with his brother. His little episode came when I showed him a Radiohead song on the piano, one I thought might be easy for him to pick up, “Everything in its Right Place.” The fingering turned out to be a little tricky for him, and he sank into a little empty husk on the bench beside me, not moving or speaking, hanging his head while the tears rolled down his face.

Ironically, the kids have no doubt about their involvement in swim team. To them, swim is a necessary, fun, and rewarding part of life. While I stew about whether I’m doing right by pulling them down the same road I took as a kid, they revel in the companionship that comes with being part of a team and the attention they get from their daddy, the coach, on the deck. I’ve got a full staff this year at the sports complex, and it’s allowed me to slide over and help out with the younger kids more, which Scotty likes. I caught him in a private celebration one day when I announced I’d be with his group. “Yes!” he said under his breath with a little fist pump as he turned toward his lane, his head sheathed in the orange Hokies cap his Granny gave him. Another day, after practice was over and all the kids were gathering round, he came right up to me, reached out, and lightly touched my upper arm. With a sweet smile, he ran his hand over my skin before dropping it to his side, letting me know that I belonged to him. It was so natural that I’m pretty sure no one noticed, and I couldn’t help but feel a little shocked and humbled at the gesture.

Like Scotty, Cartter has no fear of regret when it comes to the time we devote to swim, no concept of ever resenting me for it. “I want to quit swimming and do homework with you every night,” I told him at bedtime after we spent hours getting ahead on his classwork before going out of town. He wanted to know why we would do such a thing, and I joked that he could be valedictorian and go to Harvard and become president. He said what’s a valedictorian, and why would he want to be that if it meant he had to give a speech? Besides, I already got to spend time with him at swim practice.

To Cartter and Scotty, there is no other way of life, no better alternative waiting to be discovered, no fear of the empty husks of dead dreams. For them, everything is as pure and simple as the moment I’m on the deck with a lesson plan folded up in my pocket and a group of kids to teach. Their purpose is a given: Don’t get in trouble. Make your daddy proud. Play. They are what Frank Bascombe and I both wish we could be – trusting, generous, authentically themselves, and their lives are wonderful adventures full of mystery. I’m terrified of leading them the wrong direction and screwing it up for them.

Self, Actually

One of the problems Frank wrestles with is the ability to be himself. He’s satisfied when in speaking he thinks he hears his true voice, but oftentimes, he finds the tone and content of his speech to be a little off key. Surely, this is a problem that a lot of people run into around middle age. Cartter has noticed something of the sort in his school’s headmaster: “He always has that stupid fake smile,” he said the other night. “It’s like he can’t get it off his face.” Then he did an impression of the man wearing a cheesy grin while at a hypothetical memorial for a dead student, a passable one at that.

Cartter enjoys mocking people who try to assert their identity and end up striking false notes. He questioned why I needed to run a meeting for the parents, and I told him I needed to explain how the team worked and make sure nobody was confused. “Why would they be confused?” he asked. I told him I really just wanted to let them know the staff was going to do a good job and to build trust with them. “So you have to be like Porter-Gaud,” he said, which instantly instructed me that I better be careful not to come off condescending.

Question of the Day

Cartter’s favorite question these days is, “What’s the worst thing you had to do today?” I find it tough to come up with an honest answer and worry about him judging me. Meanwhile, his brother has lately ended each day with the recurring question, “Why don’t women grow beards?”

Memory Lane

We took the kids to the aquarium for the first time in years, and it was like visiting the ghosts of toddlerdom past. After an impromptu death march over the Ravenel, we ate in an empty dining room at East Bay Deli late Sunday morning, and tromped across the street to where we used to push the kids in strollers at least once a week.

Cartter and Scotty were happy enough to visit and remembered all the exhibits, but a sort of sad pall hung over the day’s proceedings. I lost myself staring through the glass at something called a Brazilian Barb Fish, its gills flaring and its black eyes looking back at me with all of nature’s empty indifference. The kids were tired and sat in front of the big tank looking quietly at a jackfish whose side had been torn open by one of the sharks. We ended up killing a mere forty-five minutes. Afterwards, I thought about when we used to lie around the house, passing hours doing nothing, the boys playing in their pretend kitchen and bringing us pretend food, Cartter pretending to tuck me in while I pretended to sleep in his bed. All of it gone and never to be lived again.