A Note from Back-ish

So, I’m back… I guess.

I’m home. In body at least.

To be honest, I can’t say I really feel ‘back’ per se. I feel like my body made the trip, but my mind missed a couple flights and is still partially off in three other places.

Suffice it to say, I’m a little scattered. That condition may persist for a few days, I’m afraid.

The short version: My son hurt his knee a few days ago. I was away in Upstate New York at the time for an annual trip with friends. Rushed home yesterday morn to get him to a doctor. My son is alright… ish. The injury is a bit complicated. It may require a significant surgery which would be un-small and would come with a long recovery and rehab. However, there is some chance it can be managed down to avoid surgery or at least not require it in the short-term.

My son has soccer tryouts in two weeks. He was worked for an entire year to prepare for them. Now, it is unclear whether he’ll be able to make them – or get through a season if he makes the team.

So, suffice it to say, this has not been a great few days for the two Hoarsemen facing what my son would consider the soccer apocalypse.

He’ll be okay. Life will go on either way. I know that. Emotionally… as his father… when he hurts, I hurt. When he is unsettled, I am unsettled.

When my son is sick or injured, I want him with me not on the other end of a phone. Him being sick or hurt is bad enough without the introduction of distance. I don’t do well with that. So, yesterday, I was relieved to cut my trip short and leave first thing in the morning. I was relieved to be the one taking him to the doctor and then taking him home afterwards.

When there is something wrong, I feel better when my son is with me, and I had never really thought about why that is until writing this…

This morning, I ran out to try to get in a couple hours of writing. I drove off someplace, got to the parking lot, and then turned the car around, went home, picked my son up, and took him to breakfast.

When a kid has an injury that comes with emotional consequences beyond just the wound, there is the ‘injury’ and there is the ‘upset’. With boys, I think the ‘upset’ is often the deeper of the two. They can handle the physical pain. The physical pain fades faster. The emotional pain is harder.

Because of how society conditions boys – especially ones who are youth athletes - the emotional impact of injury doesn’t come out as easily. They’re conditioned to see the injury as the only wound and to just get on with it. So, the emotional hurt and upset don’t come out as easily and then doesn’t get soothed. All of that emotion just roils and bubbles and they’re left to their own devices to endure it – mostly by burying it or ignoring it.

I think injured boys – even ones who are almost 16 years old and are tough and resilient – sometimes need to just feel that injury care is also emotional care. Sometimes, they need to just absorb that unsaid from the experience of their parent being present in the spaces between the X-rays and appointments. Sometimes, a kid with an injury needs to feel that care in a way that is specifically separate and distinct from concern about the wound itself. I could be projecting all of this and contriving it in my own head, but I think sometimes a teenage boy who knows fully well how much you love him still could use you dropping everything to take him out for pancakes.

I think kids are the world’s most acute detectors of where people are coming from. Why they’re there. What matters to them. I think attending to the middle spaces between injury and treatments telegraphs that the parent sees injury as physical and emotional. I think that validates them having feelings and those feelings needing care and attendance too.

All of the medical stuff is care for the ‘injury’. Being present… pulling them close… that’s attending to the ‘upset’.

I think boys need that.

And I think it wouldn’t be all that terrible for dads to learn how to be softer in the places where the world coaches boys to hide their pain as if they didn’t have any.

Anyway, the original point of this post was to say that I’m back… but a bit scattered… which I suppose I just demonstrated fairly well. LOL.

I’m back though – and glad to be back at my station here. I apologize for the lag over the past week.

We have lots to catch up on. I still have the remainder of my California trip with my son to tell ya about. How about we talk about that next…