Today is Father’s Day here in Australia and as such I feel compelled to confess it. Admitting that the more he traveled, the more excuses he often found for not wanting to have children.
But, the truth is, when all was said and done, I could have saved myself the effort. The truth is that it all boils down to more or less a single memory of an event more than thirty-five years earlier.
It was an ‘event’ that began with little more than a pleading look and culminated in a late afternoon sporty triathlon in the front yard. As such, over the years I have often wondered, when it seems my memory has frequently failed me on other, substantially more important matters, how or why did my long-term memory manage to hold on to such a fleeting moment? ?
The look would be a non-verbal exchange of communication between my mother and father after I had ambushed my father to shoot some hoops in the front yard moments after he got home from a long day of teaching at school. high school. Dad looked at Mom there in the kitchen with eyes that silently begged her to speak.
Playing the part of the dutiful wife and explaining to her eldest son that his father was tired. That she had to rest before going out, like she used to, at night to referee a couple of basketball games. Or any of the 101 legitimate excuses to avoid this unexpected date with parental obligation.
Just as I remember, Mom shrugged and smiled. She then went back to whatever she had been doing as we both entered. Her verdict was in, all that was left was for dad to change and for us to go out. Which we did.
For thirty minutes we took turns shooting baskets before I was ready for a change and ran to the garage to play a football, after which father and son took turns running passes for another thirty minutes that probably seemed like hours. to Dad.
And yet, it wasn’t over.
Because it was only then that each of us finally put on our baseball gloves where I went striking out countless unseen batters while Dad squatted on his sore legs and his hand itched and eventually his shins were repeatedly hit by the ball. occasional ‘on the ground’. Usually, that was the sign that WE HAD enough.
For years, the images of the three sports shows that afternoon and the ‘look’ that followed stayed with me. I could hide behind the allure of all the smiles, memories, and good times the road had once brought me, but the truth was, that memory from so many years ago just scared me. It was, she knew, what it meant to be a father, and as such, the bar had been set to a height she wasn’t prepared to reach.
So things just happen.
Today, just over two years later, although organized sport is still not on the scene, there are still books to read, movies to play, blocks to stack, trips to the beach, and too many parks to visit at any one time. late given. And always, it seems, immediately after not getting enough sleep.
It is in those moments that I remember the exchange between my parents: the sigh, the roll of the eyes, the shrug and the smile, and that fear is buried much deeper.
It is then that, as my father did with me, I discover the energy that all good fathers manage to harness in some way. The energy to keep reaching for the bar.