Switchbacks

The Department of Proliferation and Parenthood wants everyone to have kids. Their brochures are packed with glossy images of giddy families drenched in hope, nostalgia, and slanted backlighting. Then, family and friends run with this ball of propaganda, assisted by likely amnesia about the bad times – or even the internal conflicts during the good times. The message is then bolstered by the experts who write books, flinging them at nascent parents who, in the sleep deprived clusterdance of child raising, just want to be told what the hell to do and when anyone can donate an hour of babysitting. Yet in the pursuit of a well-intentioned payday, these advisors disagree with each other, if not themselves a major percentage of the time.

All this is forgivable – from the DPP brochure to the experts’ advice – since it’s all working off of a broken premise: That development is linear and the progression is chartable. It’s absurd in three ways. 1) Every kid is different, 2) nothing – aside from our adorably narrow perception of time – fits the human construct of anything being truly linear (especially human development), and 3) that development is largely, ultimately unquantifiable, which effs with the image put forth that populist science is on the cusp of having this whole business covered.

So what we’re left with is gutting it out blindly. Which has worked, and not, for millennia.   

***

Graham had a possible epiphany a few weekends ago. It was a local tournament. Emotions have been a tough nut for him to crack. That being said, how many of us can realistically call that nut cracked at whatever age?

He’s always had a low tolerance for imperfection. Golf is a game of mistakes. Add those two together and you have a recipe for plutonium. An ingredient that doesn’t help is that his memory bank doesn’t include the thousands of hours he cheerfully put into it before his 5th birthday. Then came tournaments and it got competitive. His emotional template has been so inextricably tied to the game thus far that I had no idea what might trip him out of it, much less what, if anything, my wife and I could do. So we’ve weathered it, because we don’t want to quit, and we want to serve his abilities, even if he doesn’t see them yet. Through steadiness and collapse, we’ve been trying to find the pattern and solution, even as we know it’s his obstacle to overcome. 

Anyway. 

The beginning was familiar. First hole. 133 yard par-3. He puts a crisp hybrid about 20 feet from the pin and proceeds to 3-putt. For the non-golfers, this is a thing that kills bits of the soul: To start a hole well with an excellent shot or two, then botch it and walk away with a bogey or worse. You know. Expectations. Unfulfilled. Disappointment. It’s common. So, understandably, he turns sour, but to the extreme and begins to cave. “I don’t want to play tournaments anymore,” he says through moist eyes, gripping to hold it together as we walked off the green. I feel some fatigue in his answer, or maybe it’s my fatigue. “That’s cool,” I say, “I understand.” Part of me truly understands, and part of me understands it’s likely another cloud passing. Turned out I was right about the passing cloud, and not. He climbs in the cart with mom to shuttle to the 2nd tee. I walk.  

I find out later they had a talk on that quick shuttle ride. Mom had said something that triggered some positive direction in him. A gift was offered if he kept himself steady. We freaking hate false incentives, but it was small and much less a bribe than triage. He reaches the 2nd tee where I’m surveying the layout and the tee shot. He’s over what happened on the 1st. He comes to the tee with a lightness and focus. Later on the 5th tee, he talks about feeling different, how he’s ‘not afraid’ and ‘okay with bad shots’ even as he continues to focus well on each one. The usual emotional roller coaster becomes a cruise in a limo with a moon roof. He finishes the round shooting an okay score above his average. But we’re both happy about this new equilibrium. What was different in him this time was the awareness of it. And although unfortunate, as bang for the buck goes, perhaps the best bribe ever.

It’s a shift. Maybe. Subterranean. Deep. A momentary shiver. Not big, but indicates movement. Minuscule movements can have huge impact, within ourselves or within our planet. If I was in my car, or distracted, or in any of my many preoccupied moments, I would’ve missed the tiny trembler. But who know what it means, if anything.

I’ve seen a bump in his maturity to balance emotions of the game. Yet the scope of any progress is more than just the creation of happier rounds of golf. For instance, this same realization about the nature of emotions was in the top-3 important epiphanies I’ve had in my life. 

The news that we have choice and jurisdiction over our emotions showed up. I was 38 years-old. I’d read it in some gateway spiritual literature. We can decide to latch on to emotions or not. We have a choice in our emotions and our reactions to outside stimuli, whether it’s intended to ignite us or not. Insulted? That’s up to you to choose to accept it or discard. Flattered? Your choice on that also.

It hit square, snagged, and landed. All things shifted. Sweet holy mother, I thought, an inner equilibrium isn’t a false flatline of an emotional void that frightens some away, afraid to lose ‘themselves’. It’s rather the ability to see emotions and what ruffles them for what they are and aren’t. Something apart from us. I felt like I’d finally opened a box, The Box. Inside was a space suit necessary for this planet. Almost immediately, I could relax, breathe, and appreciate everything for what it is and isn’t and might be and might not be more than before. 

With this came two wonders. One, my wonder as a different world opened up. The other was the wonder of how I could not have known about this fawking box. Why did nobody tell me? Why is this not drilled into us soon after our first solid stool? And make no mistake – I was well aware that, like many people, I need to hear something an average of 253 times before it penetrates my skull. With the blessing and curse of a decent memory, I often remember where, when, and who had attempted to instill a lesson after that lesson lands. However, in this case, the word of this Box and its suit had not come across my desk. It wasn’t that I had missed it. I’d flat out not heard it. It was only reaffirmed by the multitudes of people around me through the years, both intimately and not, displaying their own ignorance of The Box by their actions.  

That’s why it’s a big deal to me. I felt something happened for him. Whether he knows it or not. He’s 9 years-old. I’m hopeful that he gets it before he’s 38. It’s a long road. My parental disclaimer and motto for the year is that I hold it all loosely, or, at least, do my best to. 

To test my motto, in a follow up two weeks ago he had a round that returned to the emotional fling fest. Then last week, another that was better. Yet another this weekend was rugged. All proving this may be nothing, or just a step forward to be followed by two backward, or just the first of his own 253 brushes with it before it grows roots, the path looking like the flight chart of a gnat on a bender. Whatever it may turn out to be, it’ll be a crushing mockery to the DPP brochure, child experts, and airbrushed narratives of older parents’ accounts of steady and predictable timelines.

This endeavor reminds me of a few bike rides I’ve had up mountain trails through a forest switchback I’m grinding out the climb wondering how far the ridge is with quads and lungs aflame seeing sky through the trees that might be the ridge to top out when everything is downhill but I’m fooled again and again the road shrugs into another graded hairpin I don’t know how much I’ve got in me but stopping or quitting would erase the miles covered and I don’t know if I could mount the bike on this steepness so I hope and grind and wonder and marvel and keep going on this long road that’s over too soon enough that I see a picture of a mountain glade in a dentist’s office to think of that gone ride and fake a yawn to hide the reason I tear up.