Kid pitch

I spent the morning at the ball field with D. Only his second game in kid pitch. We had the early game, which meant it was cold and damp. Team picture day.

The picture packages started at $25. D wanted his picture on trading cards. Sure, I said. Then he saw the other options available: his picture on a mug, a t-shirt, refrigerator magnets. These I wouldn’t grant, which made him pout. He only pouted briefly; then he asked plaintively, “Next year, can I get a mug?” That almost worked on me.

Walking toward the field after pictures, he told me he didn’t know whether he could play. His leg hurt. Since when? I asked him. I don’t know, he said. I told him he had to play; his team needed him.

During warm-ups, it was announced that the other team had only seven players and would have to forfeit. The teams would scrimmage anyway.

I chatted amiably with the few other parents present. We were cold just sitting around. The field is beautiful, but completely enclosed and off limits to all but the teams and the umpires; the bleachers are way out beyond the right-field fence. From that distance, it’s hard to tell exactly who is batting. We speculated that our banishment was intentional, to preclude parental overbearance. We blew into our hands, bought coffee from the concession stand, wished the sun would come out.

D was last to take BP. He looked bad, flailing blindly. I cringed inwardly. Batting ninth in the first inning, he struck out. More flailing, more cringing. I began to wish that other boys would strike out too, just so he would have some company, but everyone was hitting, even little Alex. How was it that Alex was hitting?

D’s second time up, I prayed before each pitch that he’d get a hit, or at least hit the ball. He struck out on three pitches, watching a strike then swinging badly at two balls up around his eyes. I remembered a friend's father, growing up, who never came to his son’s games, because, he said, he couldn’t stand all the mistakes.

On defense, D played right field, then left, then center, running to and from his position with a limp that came and went. Not a single ball reached him all game.

The third time up, he walked on four pitches. We'll take it, I thought. He ran down to first excitedly, and made it all the way to third before the inning ended. The next time up, he had his strategy—he didn’t swing at anything. He watched a couple of strikes, but walked again, and scored from second on an outfield hit.

He was happy with that when the game finally ended—that he’d scored a run, and his team had won. That was enough for him.

I was thankful that he had something to hold onto, and a little ashamed of myself for wanting more. Still, I felt frustrated and a little bit embarrassed, too. For him? For me? I don’t know, maybe both. I struck out an awful lot myself back in the day.

I just wished he had managed to hit the ball.

Will running make it worse?

That’s the standard for whether pain justifies skipping a run. My knees hurt a bit, like they’ve done before when I resumed running after a long hiatus. There is dull pain in the meat at the inside of the knee cap on both knees, and in the left there is a screaming pain below the kneecap when I lift the bent leg while sitting to put a shoe on. Sometimes. It’s kind of unpredictable.

The dull pain was a little more noticeable this morning than it has been, and for that reason I considered giving the knees a rest today. But I ran anyway—an easy run, with walk breaks. The pain did not worsen. If anything it grew less as I loosened up. Now it’s back as I sit bent-legged at my desk, but no worse than it was earlier.

I have tended to err on the side of caution. Discretion is the better part of valor, and all that. Now, especially, there’s no good reason to risk injury. But I’m at that stage in my comeback where I’m impatient with excuses. I’ve missed far too many turns with flimsy ones. I’m afraid if I take off one day I’ll fall behind, and worse, I’ll fall away again, break the spell. I know how those misses can snowball.

I have tended to err on the side of self-indulgence, in short, and I don’t want to do that anymore. But I also don’t want to be a fool and get hurt.

Doing the Work

Walking in today, I passed a young woman running hill repeats. She was focused and deliberate. Her form was good. She looked athletic and strong.

Doing the work. That’s what I thought when I saw her. She is doing the work that is necessary. Paying her dues. I was inspired. You start where you are, you rein in your expectations, and you do the work. That’s all. There’s no room for vanity, or self-condemnation, or greed. There’s no rushing it. There’s a comfortable tension, neither slack nor strain. You come to live within that tension, to understand when you can push it and still maintain control, and when you need to back it off. You learn to feel, and to be honest--not to cheat yourself.

At the top of the hill was another young woman, run-walking. She was a bit overweight, no athlete, but she too was focused and deliberate. She too was doing the work.

It begins with a commitment, and that, since the marathon, has been hard for me to muster. It requires a stripping down to what’s important, and immediate. Discipline is remembering what you really want.

Long Road Back

I almost didn’t run today. My knees are tender—from starting up, from carrying too much weight—and the road ahead seems daunting. To get to where I want to be, which is simply in decent shape, able to run up to 10 miles, say, in reasonable comfort, is going to take a considerable and steady effort. For a moment or two, it didn’t seem worth it. More accurately, it didn’t seem possible. The goal was too far off.

The only way forward, of course, is to put on blinders and take it one day at a time. What this requires is, first, humility, facing the truth of where I am, accepting the reality that progress happens in small increments; and second, faith that those small increments will eventually add up to something.

I have the experience of having successfully trained for and completed a marathon to bolster my faith. What may be harder at this stage is to maintain a true humility, that is, the ability to face and accept what is right now without becoming discouraged. I am challenged every time I look in the mirror, by things that I can control (albeit with difficulty) and things that I can’t. Let me accept what I must with grace and equanimity, and let me also be resolute in changing what I can.

Defenders of the Faith

They’re everywhere, and their presence wounds the Spirit. There are bishops among them, and bishops who give them succor, and also bishops who fear them like the secret police. Their cranky, hateful letters in the newspaper were bad enough, but their nasty blog comments are even worse. They are relentless, bullying, eager to pounce and to pull every conversation around to their singular obsessions, which are either homosexuality or free market economics. They boast an invincible certainty, coupled with an utter lack of compassion. And boy do they have time on their hands.

I ran into one of these lamentable creatures today on the America blog. There was an innocuous post titled, “We are all adopted,” the gist of which was that we are all God’s chosen children, and lamenting the fact that the people of Haiti have yet to be adopted by the human family. The word “adoption” set off this jerk’s radar—evidently it says to him gay parents and test tube babies—and he posted in response a gratuitous defense of birth parents that insisted on attacking and demeaning adoption.

I was sorely tempted to hit him with a blistering response—went so far as to draft one, in fact, but thought better of sending it. Then I resented the time and energy he had taken from me, the anger and hatred he had stirred. It does no good to trade punches with these troglodytes, of course. And I could summon no real charity for his sad and stunted soul locked away in its loveless prison.

Growing pains

The kid is upset and it’s hard to take. All of his little third-grade friends are caught up in the latest Youtube video sensation, and we won’t let him watch. It’s crude and it’s rude and it’s meant for teenagers. It’s not appropriate for a nine-year-old, in our judgment, and we’re holding the line.

His frustration with us is keen, colossal from his perspective. These videos are forbidden fruit, the only topic in his class right now, and he feels painfully left out. It’s on his mind all day long, but he can’t do anything about it.

There have been lots of tears, but the worst part is when he screams in his frustration, “Just stop talking about it! Pretend it doesn’t exist!” He doesn’t want to go over it yet again, not when there’s no hope of changing our minds. His inclination is rather to be resigned, to suffer in silence. It hurts more to talk about it.

We second-guess ourselves, of course; we can’t stand to see him suffering. We come almost to the point of giving in. It would be easier on us if he got angry at us and acted out, but he just walks away and cries quietly until we prod him, and that only makes it worse.

We ourselves get frustrated, with the raw power of viral Internet culture, the permissiveness or absence of other parents, the immaturity and meanness of other kids. “Should I say something to the parents?” his mom asks him gently. “No!” he wails. “Then everybody will hate me!”

God knows this is nothing—there will be a whole lot worse than this before all is said and done. At the moment, however, it feels bad enough.

Scandal

The real thing is this: For me, an educated, professional, 52-year-old man working at a large public university in a secular society, to publicly kiss a cross is a scandal. What would my colleagues say? My boss? Neighbors? Fellow parents? Friends?

I didn’t have my kid with me for cover. He was in school, and I didn’t insist on pulling him, which would have been another scandalous move. So it was nakedly me and this public display of affection.

Affection? Reverence? Acknowledgement? No other church requires such a definitive focusing act, not that I know of. And that is a reason to cherish the Church.

We endure it sheepishly, distractedly, glancingly, because to really face what we’re doing is too difficult—at least it is for me. Can others make this gesture wholeheartedly? I envy them. For me it is a mere show of piety, and this makes me deeply uncomfortable. I can’t see Jesus; all I can see is myself.

All I can do then is pray: to see more clearly, to grow in faith. To be freed from the iron shackles of self-regard. To sweat blood.

Maybe that’s all that is required.

Good Friday

I took off work and went to the liturgy, as I always do. Walking from the parking garage, I felt the familiar doubt. Why are you doing this? And the corollary temptations: No one else is doing it—only the young and the gullible. It doesn’t matter if you don’t go—it’s only a ritual. You already know what this is about. You don’t need to do it. God will understand. Then: It’s really kind of silly, isn’t it?

It’s a dramatic ritual: the altar is stripped, the priests blazing in scarlet. They come in without music, prostrate themselves, their prone bodies our confession. The silence is powerful.

That much I like. But from there it drags on, with a long stilted reading of the Passion, repeated from Palm Sunday, and an even longer litany of prayers for all categories of people. The homily seems like overkill.

The center of the liturgy is the veneration of the cross, and this is the part that really triggers my self-consciousness. Everyone files down and kisses, touches, or otherwise reverences the cross held before the altar. Should I kiss it, or just touch it? Should I kneel? Everyone is watching (and, if they're like me, judging). It takes forever. The music is lugubrious. Two attendants are wiping potential germs from the wood after every kiss, a modern touch of fastidiousness that to me is both jarring and lamentable.

It’s an old-fashioned act of piety, and it makes me uncomfortable. But of course that’s the point. The whole overlong service is an enactment of shared discomfort. We are required to make some small sacrifice, of our time, our attention, our foolish pride, to remind us, however inadequately, of the larger sacrifice. To the extent that it annoys me, makes me uncomfortable, tries my patience, and is therefore an opportunity to embrace His suffering, it is important for me to attend.

Turning Point

I have started running again, after a long absence. As I look back at my records, it’s been longer than I thought. I ran not at all between mid-January and mid-April. Before that, I missed all of October and November and most of December. So I’ve run at most four weeks out of the last six and a half months.

There are reasons for this drought, and some of them are even legitimate. I had a month or so of mysterious episodes that first looked like they might be cardiac. That was scary; I even spent one night in the ICU. Before that (and perhaps related) I had my annual mid-winter sinus problem, which seemed to linger even longer than usual. And before that, I succumbed to inertia: settled into a new department, a new office, a new routine, I fell out of the habit of running. The comfort devil took me over.

The most obvious, and painful, result is that I’ve put on weight—at 215 pounds, I’m 15 pounds heavier than I was during my last serious training, and likely as heavy as I’ve ever been. My pants are too tight. My paunch is noticeable. I can’t stand my image in the mirror. And there are other tell-tale signs: I feel old and achy in the morning, and I labor to walk uphill.

Worst of all, it hurts to run, and after running. I huff and puff. My back and hips have stiffened up. Most worrisome are my knees, which hurt and threaten to give out.

Running is not fun right now. It isn’t pleasant. But at 52, I feel like I’ve reached a crossroads. Stick with it, endure the suffering, slowly and painfully climb back, or give in to comfort and begin the downhill slide in earnest. For now I’m committed to hanging tough, but the decision isn’t as easy as I wish it would be.