We got a letter from Albertville Primary (and his teacher, the mysteriously named “New Hire”) informing us that he will have be in the morning half-day group.
“Trevvy,” said Jodi, “that means you’ll get to ride to school with Brendan and Gabe and Emma!”
Trevor looked concerned and a little sad. “But Mom,” he said. “I like to get up in real morning.”
“What do you mean by real morning?” asked Jodi.
You know,” he said. “Like, when the sun’s already up!”
While we were visiting friends in Michigan last weekend, they were saying goodbye to a loved one. We offered to stay away — to not burden them with guest beds and towels and six extra mouths to feed. They insisted we come, to share what they had to give. “We may have to leave for a few hours,” said the wife and mother of three. “And we may eat hot dogs,” said the husband and father.
I don’t want this to come across the wrong way — like taking pleasure in pain — but there is something beautiful about being invited to share in the sorrows of another. I’ve said before: it’s easy to share in the good times — anyone can do that. But vulnerability requires trust, and real empathy is hard work. The intimacy of a family drawing together at the close of a life can be deeply moving, and in this case, the opportunity for us to share these moments and to feel strong and useful, able to listen and to be leaned upon, was a source of great peace and joy to me. Like all hard labor for a good end, the ache I feel for our friends brings with it a little smile — the result of shared and genuine emotion, of loving and being loved.
Does that make sense? I commented to a friend not long ago that genuine emotion seems to be a rare thing. And I know for my part that I am a sponge for it — I’ll soak any source ’til I’m dripping (usually from the eyes). Our work-a-day lives too often require cold calculation and compromise, a daily quest for the brightest shade of grey. A splash of color — even the deepest of blues — resonates, and we are grateful.
Thank you, friends, for sharing your lives with us. We love you.
Sorry about the long layoff. Just back from Michigan and way behind. Great trip. Much to tell. No time.
Can I just say: 22-pound flathead catfish. Life and death, love and family. Serious squirt guns. Numerous dogs. A ’68 Airstream. A new blog(gish) project.
More soon!
I summoned Gabe to the top of the stairs yesterday morning in order to wish him a happy birthday before I left for work. He is now nine and is not a morning person, nor does he happily submit to parental scrutiny, discipline, or full frontal affection. So he ascends the stairs with a look of vague trepidation.
I sit on the edge of the coffee table and beckon with both hands. He comes a step closer, then two, then stops. I smile and beckon again. He takes a step, the anxiousness now solidifying in his face.
“Gabe, come here!” I laugh, lean forward, grip his skinny body on either side, right at the ticklish spot below the ribs, so he nearly crumbles to the floor, helplessly squirming. I hug him close and say, “Happy Birthday, son!” He mumbles a sheepish thanks, and on my back I feel the flutter of his hands, patting my back quickly to ward off awkwardness.
Gabe is not generally a head-on hugger. He prefers to sidle under an arm and slip his own around your waist, or back himself into a soft lap and warm embrace. A kiss is an instantly blush-worthy event, and a kiss in the generally vicinity of the lips (cheek, nose, etc.) will turn him inside-out with embarrassment. He simply isn’t an aggressive type, in anger, affection, or otherwise.
But something is changing in Gabe. It started this spring, when we traveled to Michigan to see my cousin Al before he deployed to Iraq. Brendan and a group of Thorp cousins we seldom get to see decided to play baseball, and Gabe, who plays soccer in the spring and rarely puts on a mitt, decided to play, too. Not only that, but to pitch.
After only 10 minutes or so of play, my cousin Mel tossed a pitch back to Gabe, and it sailed just above his mitt and smacked him solidly in the forehead. Gabe fell to the lawn holding his head, his eye welling with tears. I went to him, but as I approached, he got to his feet, hissing air in and out through his teeth, still holding his forehead, walking in rough circles near where he had fallen.
“Are you okay?” I asked. He nodded, eyes wet, jaw set.
“You wanna sit out a minute?”
He shook his head, picked up the ball, and returned to the scuff in the grass from which he had been pitching.
I quietly expressed my amazement to my sister. This was not like Gabriel.
A short while later, he took another baseball to the forehead, this one off a bat, I think. Oh no! I thought, running back out to him. His eyes were glassy again, but he rubbed his head with the heel of his hand and smiled. I moved his hand. You could see the stitches from the baseball imprinted in deep red on his skin. I told him so, and his eyes flashed panic, but only for a second. He went back to pitching.
He talked about both injuries throughout the day, both as points of pride and of sympathy, but never complained and never quit playing.
Fast forward to our trip to South Dakota over the Fourth of July. Gabe has an inexplicable affection for a large goat that perennially appears in the Piedmont (SD) Fourth of July Parade and could not wait to see Jacob this summer. Jodi took him to Jacob’s keeper’s farm a day or so early to visit, and Gabe was invited to march in the parade with the family and the goat.
This should have been a no-brainer, except that Gabe isn’t the most social of our children, especially around people he doesn’t know well, and wouldn’t offer any immediate response about whether he intended to do it.
Ultimately he agreed to do walk with them, and Jodi took him over before the parade to get dressed and ready. He would have to line up with the family, of course, so for the next couple hours he would be without familiar faces, except, of course, Jacob’s.
The results of the parade you can see in the photo above — a joy-filled kid and an alter-ego that still makes frequent appearances at our house: Mr. Patriotic. But the change seems to have gone deeper. Immediately following the parade, Gabe was verbally sparring with his siblings and cousins, keeping pace with their jabs and meeting them with wit and outright hilarity. He was more outspoken about his opinions. And at Brendan’s baseball picnic last weekend, he played pickup baseball with Bren’s team, mostly older boys and strangers, and although he started swimming lessons this year as though last year’s lessons had never happened, he ran into the water at the lake and played and splashed with Bren and his teammates until finally I had to (quietly) remind him that he doesn’t really swim.
How does one do that: admire and encourage the newfound confidence of his son and still protect him from the dunking natures of boys twice his size who don’t know that three months ago, he would barely jump into the water?
I went to soccer practice with him last night. He took a hard-kicked ball right between the eyes; his head jerked backward, and the coach’s wife seated next to me gasped. The coach asked several times if Gabe was okay. He shook his head to clear out the stars, laughed, and said yes.
Then he looked at his coach, smiled wryly, and said, “I got hit in the face … on my BIRTHDAY!” And he laughed again.
Happy birthday, Gabe — we are so proud of you!
Pictured above: Not the fabled game-winner chronicled below, but representative. Get ’em, Bren!
Those who know me best know that I’m an emotional sort, so it will come as no surprise to them that I choked up at Bren’s baseball game last Thursday. His team was playing for a chance at the consolation finals (a shot at third place in the league), and fell behind by seven or eight runs in the first inning. They kept pace after that with scrappy play, including a five-run inning that started on the third strike of the third out, when the opposing catcher lost his handle on the pitch and Bren’s teammate scampered to first.
But they were still down by eight when they came up to bat in the bottom of the sixth and final inning. Slowly, steadily, they chipped away — now a hit, now a walk, now stealing home on a wild pitch — so when Brendan came up to bat, the score was tied with two outs and the winning run on third.
Brendan had a hit earlier in the game, and his coach had mentioned he had a great round of batting practice before the game. Even so, my heart was in my throat. Those who know me best also know that I was a poor athlete, and a particularly ungifted hitter in three short years of baseball. I had not wanted to bat in such situations, and I wasn’t sure I wanted it for him.
The first pitch sailed high over his head and into the backstop; the catcher scrambled, and the third-base coach sagely held the runner against the boy’s better judgment. The second pitch slipped neatly down the middle and into the catcher’s glove as Brendan watched it pass: STRIKE!
Oh no! I thought. That was the one! The dad next to me said, “Now you’ve seen it, Brendan.” I followed with a cheerful, “Alright now, Bren — be ready up there!”
I didn’t feel cheerful.
Maybe there was another pitch or two in there somewhere; maybe not. The next pitch I actually remember met the bat with a metallic PING! and flew high into the air. Bren started toward first with all his father’s speed, watching the ball as it fell down, down. (Just run! my heart shrieked.) The runner at third tagged up and headed home.
There was a relatively narrow expanse of grass between the infielders and the out, and Bren’s towering fly ball fell exactly there, behind the backpedaling shortstop, and in front of the racing left- and center-fielders. When it bounced on the grass, Bren grinned, spread his arms wide like wings, and stomped firmly on first base as his teammate crossed the plate — the walkoff RBI; the winning run. His teammates mobbed him, shouting their joy. I grinned, laughed, cried.
We are friends with the family of the opposing team’s catcher, and it must’ve been a heartbreaking loss. But for Brendan, it was the pinnacle of a season. it earned him the game ball, and when his team circled up and put their hands together in the center, the cheer was, “1, 2, 3, BRENDAN!”
He works hard at being a good ballplayer, and he has accomplished so much that I never did. They won their game Saturday, as well, to earn third-place trophies all around. Congratulations, Bren and team, for a great season!
Archangel Stomp 