Metamorphosis

The World Cup is imminent, and the planet dreams. Without the certainty of actual results, the imagination can hope that this is the year that balls bounce off of the post the right way, that the crosses are clean, that goaltenders are walls, and that refs can see Argentine handballs. Hope is alive.

Once these men were boys and they must have dreamed as well. Certainly, they wouldn’t be here without all the work, the sprained ankles, the play in the rain, the camps, and the coaches; but they also needed the belief that it could happen, that they could wear the jersey. And more than likely their families dreamt that too.

My oldest son refused soccer, and so it was up to my David to try. He is an awkward child, the kind that is a little too much into Stephen King. He tips over when he runs, yet he runs slower than everybody else. He has a distinct lack of awareness that leads to wrong shoes on the wrong feet and shirts worn backwards.

I still had hopes for soccer, because the beauty of the sport is that it is a great place to hide. Soccer is the sport of the subjunctive, where things almost happen. You are almost on sides, you almost make the right pass. At the highest level, teams spend most of their time almost scoring until it seems, one accidentally does.

Unlike baseball where you can’t escape the batters box or the mound, or basketball where you actually have to catch and dribble, in soccer you can survive by just pretending that you are well-intentioned. Run around, be kind to your opponents, and tell jokes on the sidelines is a great way to go through life. On good days you might get orange slices.

David’s team was fine with him out there, which is the luxury of being particularly good. The school has an athletic narrative to it. At last year's graduation, speech after speech talked about their victories over Town School, a place equally obsessed. It isn’t that I think they shouldn’t celebrate their victories, life is short enough that you should celebrate every one you can. It is that I hoped that graduation would have higher themes like social justice, or surviving a pandemic. But the truth is that pandemics feel random and there is less nobility in making it through than in the world of sports where winners are deserving of hard work even if they don’t want to admit to the chance of bouncing balls.

David’s team was well beyond luck. It was a shock for me to see this group that when I previously watch them they were either hitting themselves with sticks or rummaging through Pokemon cards, turned into a German machine. They were suddenly taller and blonder than their opponents. The baby fat was gone, and they had lean muscles of gazelles or cheetahs depending upon the position. They crushed the first team so badly they had to take a couple of boys off the pitch, and with David out there it was if they were three down. Still they scored. They were faster and could see angles that the other kids couldn’t.

David sees a different kind of angle. As part of his speech therapy, he gets homework, and occasionally I test him on other subjects. Right now he is crushing fractions which is something his older brother hasn’t even started. In reading his decoding skills are also above grade level. He completely decoded the word “metamorphosis” on his own. He is a Messi around phonemes, except there aren't the crowds to cheer him on as he breaks through the tricky “ph” digraph in the middle of the word. One cheers reading silently as if it were tennis or golf.

Perhaps I should try them because he hated soccer. After a mound of occupational therapy, he is starting to get the awareness of which shoe goes on which foot, but he is also gaining awareness that he just isn’t that good at soccer. He knows he is different.

A question for fathers is how much of Pinocchio's Geppetto should they be. How much should they try to carve to make their boy ordinary? With speech and OT, I was definitely pushing and soccer seemed like the next step toward sanding off some of the weird bits. He just needs to kick the ball, and so I pleaded:

Kick the ball, and there are pizza parties or ice cream after games.

Kick the ball, and your classmates will think you are part of their team.

Kick the ball, and girls will find you much more attractive in High School.

Kick the ball, and during interviews, you can share how they kicked the ball as well.

Kick the ball, and be healthy.

Kick the ball, and grow stronger.

Kick the ball.

He still refused, and then became disruptive during practices. He had to make jokes, because if soccer mattered then he didn’t.

So we stopped.

The dreams of the World Cup had become of him just being on the pitch. Then that, too, faded.

Our children aren’t made of wood. David is wonderful in his messy brilliance. He dreams of kingdoms of werewolf spiders, and planets of multiple copies of David running around. He dreams of kings that die and Palaces of Crystal. (Which I should have pointed out is a soccer team). He makes up his own math problems and writes his own books. He braved sleep-away camp and summer of headgear. He is mostly successful in climbing trees, and after we teach him about ropes and harnesses that should improve.

He will find his group, and if he is like his father then perhaps he will play Dungeons and Dragons with them. He will listen to music that I won’t understand.

Because children aren’t the only ones that need to grow. I certainly need to learn from him and change. If only there was a word for that…

-Arthur