Michael Malone is thrilled his daughter, Charlotte, inherited his love of sports, even if she doesn’t want to share it with him.
I always
dreamed of watching my son excel on the ball field. Two kids later, I still do.
Before I
became a father, my visions of fatherhood were — like many men, I’m sure —centered
around sports: Me standing on the sidelines or sitting in the bleachers,
cheering my impossibly swift and exceedingly dexterous son as he scored a goal,
ran for a touchdown, or rifled a double into the gap.
And before I
ever glimpsed a fuzzy sonogram image, those visions of the future involved a
son, not a daughter.
I’d like to
think some other dadhood images crept in — me misting up as the kid got his
diploma, standing up for him at his wedding — but I only remember sports ones. And
always with a boy.
I come from
a sports family. While none of us was a particularly gifted athlete, we all
played something. I have happy memories of attending the softball games of both
my father and mother before I was old enough for tee ball. According to family
legend, my mom even made a daring outfield catch and doubled a guy off base
during a picnic pickup game the day before she gave birth to me.
Baseball,
football and basketball dominated our TV and often our conversations. Family
outings with open greenspace in view often erupted into Kennedy-esque games of
kickball or football.
My wife comes
from a similar background — a mantel full of baseball, squash and swimming baubles
back home in Boston, brothers with glorious 300-yard drives off the tee, Red
Sox ornaments on the Christmas tree. (‘Papi’ holidays to all!)
So it didn’t
seem too much to expect for our son to inherit our athletic genes.
At an early
age, Gavin seemed to possess them. He ran fast with a noticeable efficiency in
his movement. (“Groggy fast!” he would yell while sprinting, before he could
properly pronounce his name.) Gavin could wallop a wiffle ball the length of
our back yard (evidence of which still exists in the deep recesses of YouTube).
We bought him Mets t-shirts and Red Sox caps, and took him to watch Little
League baseball and high school football.
Yet when he
was old enough to play organized sports, Gavin had very little interest. We
signed him up for Under 6 soccer (he didn’t ask to join, but neither did he
veto the idea), and each week proved more of a struggle to get him onto the
field.
Gavin was
full of passion, but it was for dinosaurs, snakes, lizards, horses, Harry
Potter, skyscrapers, airplanes, cruise ships and rockets — all of which he
could draw with undeniable aplomb.
Gavin’s a
great kid — an energetic Cub Scout, an excellent student and, more important, a
friend to all in his class (his teacher’s observation, not mine). But his
analytical mind and easygoing nature have conspired to make the very concept of
competitive sports pointless: If the Jets are so intent on moving the ball into
the end zone, why then would the team in the blue shirts try so hard to stop
them? Or, if the Mets guy wants to hit the baseball, why is the pitcher
throwing it so fast?
My daughter,
two and a half years younger, has shown more of a competitive streak (though
Mr. Rogers himself might have had more of a competitive streak than Gavin). I started
to wonder if she might be the one to fulfill those offspring sporting fantasies
I’d had years before. We signed Charlotte up for soccer, and on a brilliantly
sunny Saturday morning that was full of promise, I slipped pink and black
cleats — so cute you might want to hang them from your rear-view mirror — over
her tiny feet, and drove her to the field to meet the rest of her “Hot Wheels”
teammates.
Within
moments, Charlotte’s mood soured.
The uniform,
the cleats, the coach, a bunch of kids she didn’t know — it was all too much. There
were tears. There were scared looks to the sideline as the coach walked the
team through drills, which I responded to with hopeful smiles. Memories of
standing on that same cleat-marked field two years before came flooding back,
imploring my son, begging my son, bribing
my son — OK, two Dunkin Donuts after the game… all right, three, and that’s
my final offer — to finish the game.
Halfway
through her first session, when practice turns to a 3-on-3 game, Charlotte
lasted a lone 60-second shift before spending the rest of the game crying on
the sidelines.
But we
Malones do not quit. Since my wife is better at coercing the kids — after all,
she’s responsible for getting them to eat a few times a day — she suggested that
she take our daughter to soccer the next week. As I held my breath the next
Saturday morning, Charlotte slipped on her shin guards and uniform and those
cute cleats, and followed Mom out the door.
Gavin and I
stayed home, making Lego airplanes. I was tempted to call my wife every 10
minutes, but waited until an hour had passed.
“How’s she
doing?” I asked anxiously.
“Good,” said
my wife. “She’s having fun.”
Warmth
spread from my chest to my gut.
“That’s
great,” I said.
“Oh, and she
scored a goal!”
My daughter
scored a goal! The fatherhood fantasies I’d harbored for a decade were finally fulfilled
— while I was sitting on the floor of our family room, making Lego airplanes. I
was ecstatic for her, if a little sad for myself.
I asked Charlotte
the next week if I could come along, and she said no. She wouldn’t say why — only
that she did not want me there. (Mind you, I’m not the dad on the sidelines,
screaming at his kid. I’ve seen that dad; I’m not him.) So I stayed home with
Gavin again, and we constructed a replica of the Intrepid aircraft carrier out
of cardboard and duct tape.
And so it
went: the girls off to soccer Saturday mornings, while Gavin and I turned the
basement into a haunted house, or made the Statue of Liberty in scrap-paper
mosaic, or created Magic Kingdom out of Superstructs, or built K’NEX robots for
the first annual Robot Marathon around our family room.
I thought Charlotte
might actually grant me permission to watch the final game of the season, but I
got the same determined shake of the head from her, and no explanation as to
why soccer worked so much better with me back at home.
I watched her
slip on those cute cleats, round up her ball and head for the car; a season of
soccer under her belt, and all I got to see were a couple shaky video clips.
My son
snapped me out of my reverie. We had sticks in the back yard to gather and
sharpen, Gavin said. Cheering my daughter from the sideline sure would be fun,
but making bows and arrows from twigs and fishing line is pretty cool, too.
Michael Malone lives in Hawthorne with his
family. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Westchester Magazine
and the San Francisco Chronicle. His books include “Notes From the Captain
Lawrence Tasting Room” and the novel “No Never No More.”