The stopwatch that never stops
Today is Father's Day, my ninth as both a father and a son. After reading a great post from Bill Oram, a co-worker of mine at The Salt Lake Tribune, I was a bit inspired to write my own Father's Day post.
My father is 62 and I am 41. You don't see many father-son combos that close in age. I read and hear about sons who strive to connect with their fathers, and I'm surprised because I've never seemed that disparate with my dad's interests. He liked sports when he was younger, so I naturally wanted to play and follow sports, to the point that I don't think I would have become a sports journalist if I hadn't seen so many of his softball and basketball games as a kid. When I hurt my knee over these past days, I knew exactly from whom to seek advice. I've never resisted or dreaded just hanging out with him.
In 2000, Dad sprung for a two-day golf instruction in Lake Geneva. I learned much golf-wise that weekend (including a change in my grip that curtailed the endless slicing I had endured since 1984), but my favorite moment of the weekend wasn't on the golf course -- it was hanging out in the hotel bar, drinking a few beers, watching a baseball game. Three months later, Lori and I moved to Utah, and we see him only a couple times a year. Not being able for him to see his grandsons as much as I'd like is tough, but simply not hanging out with him is tough as well. Of course, I never appreciated that as a kid because I didn't understand it. Perhaps because I was a boy, he took me to all those ball games, more than he took the girls. He came to all my sporting events, never disappointed that I wasn't that good an athlete.
My father has three teenagers from his second marriage, and they got much more of him than my sisters and I did when we were growing up. I'm not bitter about that -- Dad in his 40s and 50s was a wiser, different man than him in his 20s and 30s -- but I hope they figure out soon how lucky they are to have him around.
When Dad came to visit last month, he played catch with Michael after the boys' baseball game. Michael wanted to play on the playground, so Dad and I started playing catch. His youngest son, now 16, stopped playing baseball a couple years ago, so Dad doesn't get these catches anymore. Pardon me for descending into a "Field a Dreams" moment, but playing catch with him was great. The boys aren't quite competent enough to do this with the ball being caught by them and getting back to me every time (though Michael is close), so that day, I was the kid again playing catch with his father instead of the father throwing to my kid. It felt as easy as it did 30 years ago.
And that's where my father and I share a common bond -- not as fathers and sons, but as fathers. His oldest teenager leaves for college in a couple months, and all three will be out of high school in a couple years. His first divorce notwithstanding, Dad didn't have much of a break without having a kid still being a kid. My little sister turned 18 in 1993, and my first half-sister was born a month later. Does he hear the stopwatch ticking? I hear the stopwatch ticking -- a stopwatch that can't be stopped -- and I'm 12 years away from both boys being done with high school (though with the cost of college climbing, who knows when they'll actually move out). The ticking must be so loud for him. This part of fatherhood is finite, and he's gotten more than four decades out of it. I want to ask him how he's preparing for it, if he's scared, sad, proud, confused, ecstatic, melancholy. I want his wisdom on this, just like I wanted his wisdom on knee pain and being a good coach and being a good dad. I want this wisdom to give me a decade to prepare when Michael grows up and grows out of the house. But, I'm thinking, on this he doesn't have the answers. At least not yet, maybe not ever. He'll know when he gets there, and I guess I will, too, when I get there.
Dad and I are fathers. This may be the most important thing we have in common.
My father is 62 and I am 41. You don't see many father-son combos that close in age. I read and hear about sons who strive to connect with their fathers, and I'm surprised because I've never seemed that disparate with my dad's interests. He liked sports when he was younger, so I naturally wanted to play and follow sports, to the point that I don't think I would have become a sports journalist if I hadn't seen so many of his softball and basketball games as a kid. When I hurt my knee over these past days, I knew exactly from whom to seek advice. I've never resisted or dreaded just hanging out with him.
In 2000, Dad sprung for a two-day golf instruction in Lake Geneva. I learned much golf-wise that weekend (including a change in my grip that curtailed the endless slicing I had endured since 1984), but my favorite moment of the weekend wasn't on the golf course -- it was hanging out in the hotel bar, drinking a few beers, watching a baseball game. Three months later, Lori and I moved to Utah, and we see him only a couple times a year. Not being able for him to see his grandsons as much as I'd like is tough, but simply not hanging out with him is tough as well. Of course, I never appreciated that as a kid because I didn't understand it. Perhaps because I was a boy, he took me to all those ball games, more than he took the girls. He came to all my sporting events, never disappointed that I wasn't that good an athlete.
My father has three teenagers from his second marriage, and they got much more of him than my sisters and I did when we were growing up. I'm not bitter about that -- Dad in his 40s and 50s was a wiser, different man than him in his 20s and 30s -- but I hope they figure out soon how lucky they are to have him around.
When Dad came to visit last month, he played catch with Michael after the boys' baseball game. Michael wanted to play on the playground, so Dad and I started playing catch. His youngest son, now 16, stopped playing baseball a couple years ago, so Dad doesn't get these catches anymore. Pardon me for descending into a "Field a Dreams" moment, but playing catch with him was great. The boys aren't quite competent enough to do this with the ball being caught by them and getting back to me every time (though Michael is close), so that day, I was the kid again playing catch with his father instead of the father throwing to my kid. It felt as easy as it did 30 years ago.
And that's where my father and I share a common bond -- not as fathers and sons, but as fathers. His oldest teenager leaves for college in a couple months, and all three will be out of high school in a couple years. His first divorce notwithstanding, Dad didn't have much of a break without having a kid still being a kid. My little sister turned 18 in 1993, and my first half-sister was born a month later. Does he hear the stopwatch ticking? I hear the stopwatch ticking -- a stopwatch that can't be stopped -- and I'm 12 years away from both boys being done with high school (though with the cost of college climbing, who knows when they'll actually move out). The ticking must be so loud for him. This part of fatherhood is finite, and he's gotten more than four decades out of it. I want to ask him how he's preparing for it, if he's scared, sad, proud, confused, ecstatic, melancholy. I want his wisdom on this, just like I wanted his wisdom on knee pain and being a good coach and being a good dad. I want this wisdom to give me a decade to prepare when Michael grows up and grows out of the house. But, I'm thinking, on this he doesn't have the answers. At least not yet, maybe not ever. He'll know when he gets there, and I guess I will, too, when I get there.
Dad and I are fathers. This may be the most important thing we have in common.
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