One And Done

As we rode this Sunday afternoon to the last basketball practice we would have this winter, my sons asked me: "What is your favorite time of day?"

***

We weren't supposed to be going to "practice." We lost on Saturday, upset in the playoffs as a #1 seed. The expectations of how these things work said we should have another game this week, then perhaps a rematch between the two best teams this weekend. A trophy to put in the case.

Christ Church won the regular season in our 6th grade division, the youngest of four divisions in the middle school boys league.

We were a small bunch - younger than most, too. We were truly the most entertaining team in our division, and that's really about all I ever set as a goal for them: "Put on a show and let everyone know we're not afraid of anybody."

We were fast, relentlessly conditioned, full-court pressure from the tip until it was over - and sometimes that was at halftime.

No one child was greater than the whole.

And no child ever dreamed that they could disappoint me.

We ended the regular season defeating an undefeated team of giants. We finished with the same 7-1 record, but won the regular season in a tie-break.

They moved us up in age division for the post-season. The boys were simply too big that day, though that was decided only after overtime.

Such a disappointing end.

The idol worship started to consume me. No trophy for the case.

I began to feel the emptiness that comes along with believing in things that don't matter.

***


This didn't start four months ago as ours to lose.

It was ours to take. And we did.

Each game, we made no assumptions. And each game we surprised ourselves at what we were able to accomplish as each giant fell harder and cried in the post-game handshake.

It was liberating to feel as if winning was little more than a convenient accompaniment to believing in your children regardless of the outcome.

I learned that disposition by necessity in six years of coaching my son. We had never been any good.

This winter, we put on a show.

We didn't get together on this Sunday afternoon, at our regular practice time, to dwell on failure or exorcise our frustration. We weren't desperately holding on.

We did it because we didn't want what we had said all year didn't define us - losing - to keep us from what we were supposed to be doing.

The coach put his North Face jacket in the closet and brought his basketball gear instead (I don't go on adventures anyway).

The assistant who suited up all year to prove to the kids that he - by God - can play basketball even though he can't, did the same.

A parent, who normally sits on the sideline stroking his fingers across a tablet, showed up in full body gear.

And, on this unseasonably warm winter day, we joined our kids and we all put on another show.

There was nothing to win except what we came to reclaim: Our purpose.

And then it was over.

***

There's something to be said for feeling blue.

Depression is something else. Hopelessness.

Melancholy over loss of something helps you define how good it was.

This is a "real" feeling, unmistakably not going to simply just pass through you. It demands acknowledgement.

It's a gift. Introspection. Take what you lose and somehow keep it with you.

***

My oldest son plays AAU baseball.

Pay to play.

Parents don't just parent - they coach. And they expect.

They say it's for fun, but it feels like trying to fill some empty hole.

"Play ball." It's been a slogan of vacant emotion.

Last December, at the close of the baseball season and the beginning of our basketball season, I had to take my son to his first funeral.

His coach had shot himself in the head.

He was dressed in his coaching gear in an open casket.

Along the line for people to pay their respects was a collection of trophies and plaques.

The boys were expected to wear their jerseys and do their pre-game cheer as they prepared the coach for burial.

A couple weeks before, I had told the coach that I didn't care about the plaques - the Oakley Sunglasses Invitational or Fall Brawl Open trophies - and that in fact I thought it was a joke, a transparent manipulation by people who run tournaments to make money on things that don't matter.

He disagreed. He lived in a small town where he put the high school mascot's name across his AAU baseball team's jersey. There was no purpose if it wasn't to bring home tangible sign of victory.

The phone went silent. He said he lost his battery. I felt like I had challenged all he believed in.

Southern Gothic.

We left the team.

The other day, I found one of the plaques inside my truck as I carried the trash to the landfill.

I looked at it. "Halloween Havoc 2.0. Runner Ups."

I thought about that guy. How important that was to him.

I threw it in the garbage.

It disgusted me.

Two of the boys on my basketball team played on that baseball team.

They missed this special Sunday of culminating and bringing full circle four months spent of their lives together.

They had baseball practice. In the first week of February.

Neither wanted to go. They wanted to be with me - and I wish they had been.

As my sons and I turn from the respite of warm gyms in the winter to the soon-emerging spring grass of the baseball fields - and find ourselves with a new team - I take something with me from this.

I know that my sons will only take with them what I didn't stand in the way of them having.

If anybody ever tells me or my sons to be ashamed of being a loser, I'll tell them I've done both.

And I didn't do anything different either time.

***

I heard one of my favorite musicians recently telling a crowd that he wrote a song based on imagining what would flash before his eyes as he lay dying.

And he realized that every warm vision had some person it.

"What is your favorite time of day, Daddy?" I like afternoon. I like night. I like morning."

I tell them, "If there were only three hours that I could see you in a day, that time of day would be my favorite time of day."

"In the morning, I take you to school, and we talk about our defensive strategy."

"At night, I lay you down, say your prayers, give you a kiss on the forehead and we talk about the shot you made.

"And in the afternoon ... we all go to practice when we've got nothing to practice for."