A Baseball Dad is Born

The mid-season NAO tournament was this past weekend and man was that a lot of baseball!  It started on Thursday night with Diego's game.  Then two each for both teams on Saturday, then one more for Diego on Sunday, along with two more for Jackson's team (the Manor Hellcats), who made a nice run and ended up ranked fourth in their age group.  Both boys, in their first times out there playing the sport, have become important members of their respective teams.

Unlike their dad back in his day, both my sons seem to want the ball to come their way, to see what they can do with it.  Jackson is an infielder, like his Uncle Mike, and gets a good deal of action standing at the pitcher's mound during t-ball.  Diego is in left field, as I was at his age.  Unlike me, however, Diego gets disappointed when no balls get hit to him in the course of a game.  I always heaved a big sigh of relief when the defensive half of the inning went by without anything coming to me.

I did have a pretty strong throwing arm, which Diego seems to have inherited.  He has had a few nice put outs -- of kids rounding first, surprised to see the ball end up behind them in the first baseman's glove, of kids trying to stretch singles into doubles, thanks to overzealous first base coaches, and one beauty at home plate.  On this last one, Diego threw a strike from left, and it got there so quickly, the poor kid tried to run back to third before the catcher tagged him out.

Jackson stands at the pitcher's mound with so much confidence, I can't help but think it's where he belongs.  He's caught a couple of line drives for outs, and gobbles up ground balls with beautiful footwork, before tossing the ball to his first baseman, who almost always drops it. 

In the heat of competition I have had to check my responses.  I don't want to be That Dad, and never thought I would be.  Honestly though, he's in there, lurking near the surface.  When I watch either boy compete, I inch closer to the edge of my seat, palms sweating and I have to remind myself to keep breathing and keep smiling.

Bite

I learned something crucial about myself, and my feelings around a very serious aspect of parenting last night.

I had joined my friend Neil, along with a couple of his friends from high school, in order to celebrate his 200th variety of beer at the Flying Saucer in Austin. Just as I mentioned her to the group, my wife called me.

"Hey, I just conjured you up!" I said, cheerfully.

Her voice was panicked. "Dan! There's something wrong with Ally. She won't stop crying and shaking, and she's panting really heavily." Ally is our one and a half year old shepherd mix that we rescued from the Town Lake Animal Center this past August.

I had just started eating a really delicious burger, and downing a lovely brew, so I tried to suggest that I would finish before leaving, but the desperation in her voice rose, when she said, "Come home now. Please."

I gulped down a bit more of the beer and put my burger and fries in a to-go box, then said good-bye to Neil and his friends, before making my way back home.

At 9:00 on a Saturday night, the only place you can take a pet in distress is the Emergency Animal Hospital of Northwest Austin. Like almost every other money-making concern in that area, it's a storefront in a strip mall. Its sign shines in bright red hospital block lettering and can be seen from Route 183, which flies by overhead at 65+ mph. My six year old insisted on accompanying me and Ally, the latter of whom had compliantly hopped up into the car and sat next to me in the passenger seat the whole way there.

Luckily there was no one else in the waiting room when we arrived. The receptionist, nurses and vet were all very kind to us and to Ally, and we were in and out of there in less than an hour. As it turned out, Ally had suffered an injury to the soft tissue in her tail -- maybe a torn ligament or something. When I questioned Jackson about it, he claimed that one of his friends had been pulling on Ally's tail earlier in the day.

There are a couple of strong reactions I found myself having, once I confirmed the story with his older brother. First, there's the whole complicity of watching someone hurt another creature, especially one who is thought of as a member of your family. I expect my children to step in and intervene -- to stop cruelty from happening, or to report it, at the very least. That being said, I was a kid once, and I can remember some dark things I did to animals that I'd rather not recount. Never, though, was a family pet the victim of any of this violence.

Also, Ally is such a sweet dog that it breaks my heart. The reason she'd been crying was that she could not resist the urge to wag her tail -- a dog's version of smiling -- despite her injury. Even as a child was pulling at her body, giving her extreme pain, she never struck back, never protected herself. Never bit.

I must reiterate for my boys that no one has the right to hurt them. There are people out there who may try and hurt you. When they do, you must strike back. Protect yourself.

"Bite."

Cabin Fever

Yes, I love my family, and yes, the births of my children are the two greatest days of my life. It is beyond question that I would do anything at all for my family, up to and including "taking a bullet."

Now let me qualify all those lovely and true sentiments with an even truer one: We have spent these past two weeks plus together and we need some TIME APART. As much as we all love each other, we have spent, essentially, 100% of our time in each other's presence, since Friday, 12/23. And I don't care what they tell you, that's just not right. Parents and their children are not meant to spend all their time together. If you don't believe me, go rent two films that illustrate the point: Mosquito Coast, in which Harrison Ford decides to take his family "off the grid" and Tempest, Paul Mazursky's re-telling of Shakespeare's tale of Prospero, played in this version by an amazing, scenery-chewing John Cassavetes, at the end of his life and the height of his acting powers. In both instances, the notion that a family can spend all its time together is de-bunked, to tragic (and comic) results.

I suppose one could make the argument that there are "other cultures" in this world -- pygmies and the like -- who keep their young 'uns with them always. I have no doubt this is true, but it's a cradle-to-grave thing. We're a modern American family. We are social creatures outside the nucleus of our little gene puddle. For the children, school plays an important role in this regard. It's not only the place where they learn to read and write and do math; it's where they practice navigating relationships, without the help of their adoring parents. It's practice for real life.

As for me, I'll be honest: I like working. If I'm in a place that feels professional and that values what I put into it, then I tend to get more than my share out of it. My present job has me feeling more comfortable and "at peace" ( not something you hear from an AP all too often) than I have since I left Satellite Academy in 2004.

I can't speak for my wife except to say that I know she feels valued at work, despite all the challenges it entails. She has been good enough to look after those people for the past couple of days while I have since gone back to work, breathing a sigh of relief as I backed the car out of the driveway on Monday. I'm sure Mrs. Fuchs will do the same thing later this morning.

Let me repeat: I love my children dearly. For those of you who look, starry-eyed, at your little ones as they slumber in their cribs, wishing you could spend 24/7/365 with God's Little Blessings, I say three things: 1) more power to you, 2) please try not to judge me, and 3) BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR . . .

Being Awake Throughout the Journey

I’m sitting in the quasi-comfortable Southwest Airlines waiting chairs at Austin Bergstrom International Airport – big, imitation leather armchairs with outlets for all your electronic toys – watching people walk this way and that, to the gates that will lead them to the planes that will fly them to their destinations. A woman walks by, with a baby in a Baby Bjorn harness strapped on her front. The baby is about four or five months old, and is looking around, wide-eyed, at all the people that rush past.

“I remember that time,” I think. I had Diego strapped to one of those things during much of our first trip to Santo Domingo together, back in 2003. It occurs to me that, challenging though it was, that was a lovely time in life – a lovely “moment.”

Recently, by way of a two-day professional development session I attended, I made the acquaintance of a number of older parents with grown-up, or close to grown-up, children. This one’s in college, this one will be a senior in high school next year. The other one is about to make their mama and daddy grandparents for the first time.

“Wow,” I usually remark, “that must blow your mind.”

Almost everyone admits that time has flown to this point. The blink of an eye, one told me in heavily-accented “Texan.” She’s from a part of Texas I politely pretend to have heard of before.

Others say things like “You wake up one morning and they’re grown.” It’s the same idea.

Whatever the comment, I’m always left with a feeling of wishing time could slow down. But it’s not about that. It’s really about me taking care of myself and my business in a manner that allows me to be present in every single moment. As you might have noticed, I am prone to sentimentalism and “yearning.” I need to train myself (or get some help from someone else) to be better at being “in the moment,” as my acting teachers used to say.

“Waking up one day” implies sleeping through part of this journey. Life is too precious. I don’t want to sleep through it. So if you catch me “napping” (metaphorically speaking that is, as in missing out on key moments in my life and the lives of my kids), by all means, nudge, slap or pinch me. Just do whatever you can as my friend/family/loved one to help me enjoy every step of the way.

Diego Reyes Fuchs, 8 Years Old Today

Eight years ago today, without really knowing what to expect in the slightest, J and I became parents for the first time.

J spent the day “nesting,” putting final touches on what had been our office and would now be the baby’s room. She was up on a step-ladder, stenciling friendly dinosaurs along the top of the wall when I came home a little earlier than usual from work, due to the exciting/terrifying news that she was officially In Labor.

“Contractions are getting closer together,” she said from her perch on the ladder.

She had been timing them all day, and now, in the late afternoon on a Friday, we made our way, with my mother-in-law on board, to the Elizabeth Seton Childbearing Center on West 14^th Street in Manhattan, ironically just across the street from the creepy apartment where I lived a sad, lonely existence ten years earlier, during my first failed attempt at marriage.

After dropping my wife and her mother off at the birth center, I found a place to park the car overnight, just in case. When I came back, J looked crestfallen.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked, holding back nightmare scenarios regarding fetal health and viability.

“It’s fine. The baby’s fine,” she said.

“What is it?” I asked again.

“I’m only one centimeter dilated,” she said. “They’re checking to see whether or not they can admit me.”

“What? But you’re in labor.”

I backed off, realizing I was arguing with the wrong person. Just as I was looking for someone to fight this out with, a midwife came through a door and said, “Okay, Jeanette, come right this way.”

They ran a few more tests, explaining that even though the contractions were coming closer and closer together, the cervix was nowhere near ready at its current dilation. They had sent women home in this situation. I muttered something about rush hour traffic, but the midwife cut me off, saying, “It’s fine. You can stay.”

So we “settled in” to what was a lovely little room. The Seton Center had gone to great lengths to create an atmosphere for their patients that felt far removed from what one thinks of when one thinks of a conventional hospital birth. There was a double bed, rather than the usual single. In addition, there were quilts and matching floral window treatments and a hot tub, to help the mother relax, and for the option of a water birth.

A couple of hours in to worsening labor pains, J began to express an interest in receiving some assistance with the pain in the form of an epidural. Obviously, this kind of place is set up for natural child birth, and the only way we’d be able to get an epidural would be by admitting J to the hospital two blocks south. The midwife explained all this to us in her hippie dippy way, and J chose to ride out the pains for a couple more hours.

Finally, at 10:17 pm on Friday, May 16, 2003, Diego Reyes Fuchs came swimming into a murky, warm tub in New York City. I got to cut the cord, my emotions pouring forth at the realization of what J and I had accomplished together.

As always, my mother-in-law was a great support and calming presence. J’s brother and sister were wonderful visitors that night, as well.

J and I spent the night bonding with Diego, lying in that lovely room, talking to lactation specialists about “latching on” and pumping, and trying as best we could to comprehend just how much our lives had just been changed for ever.

Climbing the "Rock" Wall of Life

One of the best features of the fitness center we belong to – along with many other great features – is that it has a room devoted to rock climbing. I did it once – once – and I’m here to tell you that if you’re someone my size, who has suffered the fate of a slowing metabolism, paralleled by a propensity for beer and an addiction to sugar, it is not easy. There’s a counterweight pulley system that allows you to climb safely, but it really means you are pulling your own weight, quite literally.

That’s why the kids make it look so easy. Their weight and their strength to pull it are much more closely matched than mine. It’s amazing to watch them scale the walls so quickly. There is absolutely no fear of heights, and falling when harnessed into a counterweight pulley system is downright fun, so they certainly don’t fear that.

In one sense, the rock wall is a metaphor for their growth, as they overcome challenges, and go from, “I can’t do this” to “Hey, I did it, and I’m proud.” It is the week-by-week manifestation of their growing confidence and sense of their own ability. On the other hand, however, it occurs to me that it also represents a bit of a set-up.

The rock wall at Lifetime Fitness is not a rock wall at all. In fact, it’s made of some kind of rubberized plastic composite, so that when you whack your knee on it, your knee bounces off the “wall.” You feel your weight only when pulling up from whatever point you are currently at, to the next destination. As soon as you move downward, the counterweight kicks in and lowers you gently to the ground. The ground is not rock either. It is a leaf pile of recycled auto tire flakes. One could argue that children are being given a false sense of what it means to climb a rock. If and when they ever do decide to dig some pitons into an actual rock face, they will learn in the first minute that they are in a completely new, and very real situation.

It’s sort of analogous to the kind of parent I’m trying to move away from being. When you’re the Fun Daddy, and you never discipline your children, you become the rubberized rock wall, and you deprive your children of the knee scrapes that will help them develop real strength of character. By “protecting” my children from pain, I am really putting them at a disadvantage in later life, a disadvantage they may very well resent me for.

The secret I’m learning as I get better at this parenting stuff is that you can do both. You can be rock when they need the rock and recycled tire flakes when they need that softness. The important thing for you to remember is not to let one parent become all rubber and the other to become all rock. That’s the way the whole wall comes tumbling down, and then everybody loses.

Match Game 2011 . . . ALREADY?

My wife and are I incredulous. Are they really doing this already? The strains of that familiar tune are unmistakable:

Jackson and Gabriella, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,

First comes love, then come marriage,

Then comes Baby in the baby carriage.

When the tune comes around to "Malik" (our next-door neighbor, a first-grader, who I've written about in these pages previously) Jeanette and I decide we can stay silent no longer.

"Okay wait," I say, "who is this girl they have you sitting in a tree with?"

Amidst much giggling, Malik grins his crooked grin and shyly repeats the name from the song.

"And what do you love about her?" J. asks.

"Her clothes."

More giggling.

We look at each other and shake our heads in disbelief. Jeanette gets up from the dinner table to retrieve something from the kitchen. On her way there she says over her shoulder, “Just don’t worry about that baby carriage part. There’s plenty of time for that.”

I don’t remember how old I was when my friends and I started accusing each other of sitting up in trees and kissing girls. It was more that than anything else – an accusation. The song held you to task for being the guy doing something yucky, while betraying the trust of the all-male club at the same time. Fraternity is important to young boys; it’s all about who’s “in” and who isn’t. Each of these boys needs to be able to say they could, in theory be up in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g someone. And that someone – based on the age-old rules of boyhood – must be named in this song.

When I think back to my own childhood, I’ll bet there was a big gulf between when I played this “Match Game” and when I first actually did start with the k-i-s-s-i-n-g. If, let’s say, I played the game with my brother Mike and best friend Miki in 1971, which would have made me about the age Diego is now, that’s a good six years before I first kissed a girl.

So, by that math, there’s time to prepare ourselves.

For Diego, anyway. Something tells us (and something has told us this from very early on) that we will have less time to prepare for Jackson. We need to keep a close eye out on his doings up in trees. Because as Jeanette pointed out, we do not want to be thinking about no baby carriages for a long, LONG time around here.

As Their World Grows, Mine Becomes More Terrifying

In the beginning, there was the womb. Picture that most traditional of heartwarming images: Mom and Dad-to-be lying in bed, both of them holding the distended belly in their hands, lovingly, speaking in hushed tones about hopes and dreams for the unborn person in there, waiting to make him or herself known to the world. You do that most imaginative of empathic leaps, as you try to picture what it must be like for him in there -- so dark, so moist, so comforting.

So safe...

After uterus comes the crib. Although the bars reassure you that your child will sleep safe and sound, they are comical at first... until the climbing begins. Then your imagination fills with images of escape, and what that could entail for your toddler's cranium. And so their world gets a little wider, with the introduction of the "Big Boy (or Girl) Bed." This purchase gives way not only to your child's new sense of self-esteem and maturity, but also to those nights when you wake with a chill down your spine as you see two little eyes peering at you through the peppered darkness from just above the edge of your mattress: for a moment, you think of the toy clown in Poltergeist. But no, it's just your little one, not so little any more, come to ask you for water, or if you could shove over and make room...

Eventually, there is the backyard or playground, and you marvel at how they run and play, throwing and climbing, running and falling, with no apparent regard for personal safety. A far cry from the womb, this space still affords a modicum of safety, you believe; it is self-contained, surrounded by fencing on all sides.

It is only a matter of time, however, before that front door must open up, and your child must be allowed to blink in the sun of the Outside World, replete with all its wonders and dangers. Being a dutiful parent, you purchase the vehicles that will, by increments, take your child farther and father away from you as time goes on. First, and briefly, it's the tricycle. You shoot video and marvel as your child propels himself in tiny circles, monkey-like. Then comes the bike with the training wheels. You watch as he rides down the street, making his way to cul-de-sac, and you become aware of how far away that circle seems to you now -- farther, in fact, than it has ever seemed before. You call out your child's name: "Watch out for cars!" And your child gives you the "duh" look, one side of his mouth moving downward, as he rolls his eyes.

Then comes the Big Moment, the one you remember well from your own childhood -- the Removing of the Training Wheels. Your heart fills with ambivalence, because you know what an exciting moment this is for your child, while, simultaneously, you were nowhere near prepared for how squarely it would throw all your fears right into your face. You hear his cries of "Let go, Daddy! Let go!" and, despite all those ancestral voices whispering in your ear to the contrary, you comply. One hand comes off his sinewy shoulder, the other releases the bicycle seat, and you are suddenly alone, all alone, in that island of parental joy and terror, and, as you watch him recede into the distance, you are amazed at your ability to hold two apparently contradictory emotions so solidly in your heart at the same exact moment in time.

And you yell, "Go! You're doing it! Go, go!"

It's then, as you hear your own words coming out, strained a bit by a catch in your throat, that you realize that this push and pull, this excitement and fear, is what your life will be all about from now until the very end.