The son also rises

I  gotta be honest here. Don’t you love it when people say that? It implies that, up until that moment, he or she has been less than honest, calling into question your entire relationship with said apparent serial liar.
But I digress.
See how I got that out of the way early? Now I can breathe and write easy. Not well, but easy.
I wrestle often with my dad rankings. Am I in the top 10? Am I in the bottom 50? I find myself walking a balance between staying in the moment with my boys and taking a step back to evaluate my job performance as their dad. All this analysis is not necessarily healthy, but I give myself a pat on the back for being self-aware enough to question whether I am being maybe a little too self-aware.
My eldest is 12 going on 19. We have had several run-ins lately. Often I believe that the only reason we are having these dust-ups is his need to see just how far he can push me. Having once been a 12-year-old boy myself I understand that impulse. Indeed, there is a part of me that would be a little concerned if he wasn’t trying to push all my buttons. Sometimes simultaneously.
I feel like he has been pulling away lately and it hit me hard when he stopped wanting me to read to him at night. That was our ritual. Each night I would lie in bed with him and read a chapter or two of a book. Mostly sports books that dealt with real issues but were still PG. I relished this time because I knew that, no matter how much turbulence we had endured during the day, we would always reconnect at bedtime.
But alas, a few weeks back my lad said he didn’t feel like having me read that night. And that’s the way it’s been since. I discovered he has his first girlfriend. He hangs out with her at school, they text, Instagram and such but don’t really go on any dates. I offered, to his horror, to take them to the movies if he wanted. I’m sure to him it sounded as if I was offering to take him and his gal to the malt shop. I felt him pulling away, being surly, snarky and other ‘s’ words I can’t write in a family newspaper.
And then baseball season started. I was a bit worried this season, as his passion has seemed to wane. He missed practices, complained of a variety of injuries, and generally seemed lukewarm about the season. As you know, my one regret in life is that I will never be the starting shortstop for the Giants. Unless…
In any case, he had many distractions, school, his new GF, being on the fast track to puberty, and baseball took a back seat in the dugout of life (sorry, couldn’t resist).
But then his first games came. A doubleheader in Gualala.
The drive over started uninspiringly. When I picked him up from his Mom’s he had headphones dangling around his neck and was barely awake. Great, I thought. I had in my head that we would delve into deep and serious subjects – sex, drugs, rock n’ roll – but I let that go and just tried to talk to – and listen to – my son. We touched briefly on his girlfriend and on school, but mostly it was just fun talk about random stuff. What would be my ideal job? (see above) Who should we try to trade on our fantasy baseball team? Why is the car in front of us going sooo sloooow?
The games were played at the aptly named Dust Bowl in Gualala. My boy’s team dropped the first game but routed the home team in the second. He played a flawless second base, pitched three shutout innings and was involved in the play of the day – a relay double play in which his perfect throw nailed a runner at the plate. Hitting wise not so great, but all in all a great beginning to the season. Most important, he played with joy.
The drive home was relaxed, easy and fun. He talked practically nonstop. The last time I remember that happening was our first trip to Disneyland when he was 6. And the headphones remained unused all day.
For a while there, as we navigated the twists and turns of the drive home, I felt like something had straightened out in our relationship. It may not last long, but for that Saturday afternoon, I looked across at the passenger seat and saw my boy again. And I knew that, even though there will be times he will disappear, he will never truly leave me.
Steven welcomes your comments. You can reach him at [email protected].