Fathers Dream While Sons Live

There are so many compromises necessary if you are to be a good parent in modern American society. I have no idea if anything resembling our dilemma exists elsewhere, but I suspect it does.

Because the common element is time -- there never is enough of it. There also are the laws of physics -- you can't be in two places at the same time.

But what about this? What if your heart is split, and wants you to be in two places at once? What if you are willing, with all of your energy, to fight time, and try to force it to allow you to be both a good parent and a good friend, or lover, or worker?

As to the last question, you will get a speeding ticket, so forget it.

Time and physics.

As for time, it's not how much of it you have; it's how you use it. But as for physics there is no hope. Nobody ever defeated the laws of physics.

I've been told by girlfriends that being a good parent was "sexy." I've been told by girlfriends unless I reduced my time with my kids to be with them more, it was "over." * I've been told so many things that my head literally spins, like only a cartoon character's head can.

Then again, maybe I am a cartoon. Who in modern America has six kids? What writer, always living on the edge, supports his family through the good (moneyed) times and the bad (normal).

I've always hoped to be able to consider myself "normal," as probably most of us do. But there is nothing normal about my life, my choices, or my outcomes.

Let's just say, hypothetically, that my girlfriend leaves me. Happens every day, right, all over the land.

So get over it, right?

Guess what? The first week after she leaves me one of my kids has a school crisis -- bad grade in a tough subject that requires Dad's involvement.

The second week, another kid has a social crisis, left out of a love triangle too painful to admit, but which you sense, and which you eventually draw out of her.

The third week, another kid is injured in a soccer game. Luckily, after X-rays, it is determined to be "only" a bad sprain, which will require weeks of treatment.

Think about it. How the hell am I supposed to get over the loss of love in the midst of all of this drama?

The answer is I can't.

But a far deeper question is whether someone like me, in a place like this, can even afford to fall in love. Maybe it is out of the question, and maybe that is the biggest mistake I ever could have made.

Cliche: "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

You decide. The lonely hell that love lost has consigned me to endure allows for no answers whatsoever.

***

Lovely, warm day. Soccer scrimmage. Son, as always, excited. Early on, makes an error, which on defense is almost always fatal. This one was. You can see he is burning with hurt pride, looking for revenge -- not against any person but against the God of Errors. The God that stalks us all.

But he's an athlete, a young man who uses his body to defeat whatever Gods choose to stand in his way.

I'm a mere sideliner, but I know my son. I know there will be another play.

And here it comes. Here is one of the fastest players on the other squad with the ball on a breakaway, closing in on goal.

And here he comes, the defender. Streaking at what seems the speed of light, he smashes the striker off the ball, assumes control and turns it upfield, far out of danger.

Later, I ask him, "How exactly did you do that?"

"I don't know.It was instinctual."

Sports allow you to make mistakes and then atone for them by brilliance.

But a mistake in love -- there is no remedy for that. No second chance; no replay. No happy ending; no bright new day. No beating time; no beating physics; no solving dilemmas; no second chances.

You can win and lose in both realms, but only in one does the loss actually matter. As an athlete, you'll "live to play another day."

With love lost, there never will be another day at all.

So you stand on the sideline, cheering for your son, hoping his dreams turn out better than yours. It may be a poor substitute for living your own life, some would say, but you wouldn't be anywhere else.

And that's a law of physics, and the heart, as well.

* You know what I have never had? A girlfriend who truly wanted to be part of my family. I have never had that.

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