Fathers & Sons & Sports Read Online Free Page B
Author: Mike Lupica
wits’ end and his young son “lost, a different person.” At the beach one day Isaiah was throwing a fit when Izzy had a bold idea. Grabbing his board in one hand and his four-year-old in the other, he jumped in the water and paddled out. Riding his first swell straight into shore, Isaiah grew calm, then exultant. Over days and months of riding point on Izzy’s board, a different boy emerged from his cell of symptoms. He began to talk again, his mood improved, and his frustration lessened; clearly there was something tonic about sluicing through water on a shim of fiberglass and foam.
Surfers Healing, born from that eureka moment, has grown into a bona-fide movement. This year, its sixth, it’s staging twelve free events in surf towns across America. For some kids it’s a one-shot day at the beach; for others, the beginning of a long-term connection to the ocean and its liberating charms.
My first thought, after I blot tears with my sleeve, is to track down Paskowitz’s private number and take Luke to San Diego for a week of lessons. But Elaine quite rightly will hear none of it, having flown Luke cross-country before. “It was non-stop hell,” she says on the phone. “He slipped out of the seat, screamed, and threw up. It lasted the whole flight back. Either fly the guy here to New York or have him meet you in Florida, but two hours on a plane is Luke’s limit.”
Alas, it is April, and the Atlantic is the temperature of rigor mortis. As far south as Virginia it is penguin cold, and there are no waves in Miami. I put in some phone calls: I was looking for someone local, an experienced surfer who has worked with special kids and will have the fortitude to handle Luke’s freak-outs. He abhors being touched by people he doesn’t know and is acutely fearful of new experiences, which is commonplace among autistics. Add to this the fact that Luke is frightened by waves, and whoever comes along will be sorely tested trying to manage this young boy’s terror. To say nothing, of course, of mine.
I grew up a kid whose father left and who experienced his leaving as a death. In a household whose climate was for the most part governed by my manic-depressive mother, my fatherwas the mast that my brother and I clung to, an anchor of sanity and poise. It was he who awoke at two in the morning to nurse me through asthma attacks, chatting while the steam in the bathroom did its work. It was, he explained, to the extent that anyone could then, the logic of my mother’s moods. We were intensely bonded, he and I, and then suddenly the Christmas I was nine, he was gone, driven across town by her ultimatums and endless grievances. I saw him on Wednesdays and alternate weekends, but for years I was hollow, a walking cipher. Some holes you fill, and some you don’t—not, at least, until you’re a father yourself.
Like a lot of men lugging around painful pasts, I had big plans for my son. From birth, if not conception, his brain would be steeped in the amniotic fluid of sports and books. He’d grow up that rarity who could hit a curve and describe it afterward in compound clauses. But the boy I sired proved unable to speak his own name. The despair was like a dead weight on my chest. To lift it, I tried the only thing I knew, which was to get him moving again. I brought him to public pools in Brooklyn, where he flapped and thrashed and clung on tight, refusing to learn to swim. I took him sledding, but our first spill freaked him out and he wouldn’t get back on the sled. We drove to the country to hike through the woods and visit a working farm; the smell of cow dung made him sick and he tugged at my arm to go. Everywhere I turned, doors were slamming shut, locking us both in a dingy room, the blinds drawn and Elmo on the TV.
It is impossible to convey what this has meant to me psychically. I have the requisite words, but they will ring hollow if you haven’t yourself met great sadness. On the worst days I look into
Surfers Healing, born from that eureka moment, has grown into a bona-fide movement. This year, its sixth, it’s staging twelve free events in surf towns across America. For some kids it’s a one-shot day at the beach; for others, the beginning of a long-term connection to the ocean and its liberating charms.
My first thought, after I blot tears with my sleeve, is to track down Paskowitz’s private number and take Luke to San Diego for a week of lessons. But Elaine quite rightly will hear none of it, having flown Luke cross-country before. “It was non-stop hell,” she says on the phone. “He slipped out of the seat, screamed, and threw up. It lasted the whole flight back. Either fly the guy here to New York or have him meet you in Florida, but two hours on a plane is Luke’s limit.”
Alas, it is April, and the Atlantic is the temperature of rigor mortis. As far south as Virginia it is penguin cold, and there are no waves in Miami. I put in some phone calls: I was looking for someone local, an experienced surfer who has worked with special kids and will have the fortitude to handle Luke’s freak-outs. He abhors being touched by people he doesn’t know and is acutely fearful of new experiences, which is commonplace among autistics. Add to this the fact that Luke is frightened by waves, and whoever comes along will be sorely tested trying to manage this young boy’s terror. To say nothing, of course, of mine.
I grew up a kid whose father left and who experienced his leaving as a death. In a household whose climate was for the most part governed by my manic-depressive mother, my fatherwas the mast that my brother and I clung to, an anchor of sanity and poise. It was he who awoke at two in the morning to nurse me through asthma attacks, chatting while the steam in the bathroom did its work. It was, he explained, to the extent that anyone could then, the logic of my mother’s moods. We were intensely bonded, he and I, and then suddenly the Christmas I was nine, he was gone, driven across town by her ultimatums and endless grievances. I saw him on Wednesdays and alternate weekends, but for years I was hollow, a walking cipher. Some holes you fill, and some you don’t—not, at least, until you’re a father yourself.
Like a lot of men lugging around painful pasts, I had big plans for my son. From birth, if not conception, his brain would be steeped in the amniotic fluid of sports and books. He’d grow up that rarity who could hit a curve and describe it afterward in compound clauses. But the boy I sired proved unable to speak his own name. The despair was like a dead weight on my chest. To lift it, I tried the only thing I knew, which was to get him moving again. I brought him to public pools in Brooklyn, where he flapped and thrashed and clung on tight, refusing to learn to swim. I took him sledding, but our first spill freaked him out and he wouldn’t get back on the sled. We drove to the country to hike through the woods and visit a working farm; the smell of cow dung made him sick and he tugged at my arm to go. Everywhere I turned, doors were slamming shut, locking us both in a dingy room, the blinds drawn and Elmo on the TV.
It is impossible to convey what this has meant to me psychically. I have the requisite words, but they will ring hollow if you haven’t yourself met great sadness. On the worst days I look into