Hoping for a Broken Bone

On April, 2005September, 2012 By Peter WatkinsIn 2005Leave a comment

Dear Will:

My right thumb is swelled up like an Italian sausage and I have a welt on my arm that makes it appear that I went out and got a budget tattoo of Saskatchewan on my left biceps. There’s also a mustard-yellow bruise on my sternum, and my ears are sore (I didn’t even know that was possible). All of which confirms that I have been doing something inappropriate for my 44-year-old body.

That something is jiu-jitsu.

What in the world would compel an otherwise rational, middle-aged bald guy to take up a glorified form of street fighting? That part’s simple: Luke, my occasionally rational, 14-year-old manchild, has done his research and decided that this would be the coolest of all martial arts to learn. Since it’s a half-hour round-trip to the studio where he trains, it quickly became obvious to me that either I should sign up with him or resign myself to sitting in the parking lot with a good book.

Which of course begs the question: Why in the world would an otherwise rational, middle-aged bald guy not welcome the excuse to read a good book? I look down at Saskatchewan and wonder the same thing myself.

Luke, on the other hand, is thrilled. He’s learning a very manly art and gets the chance three times a week to beat up on his old man. What occasionally rational, 14-year-old manchild wouldn’t welcome that? I’m sure, in fact, that the possibility of pummeling and humiliating his dad will keep Luke attending these classes for many months to come. At least, that’s my fear.

Every session we learn some new moves and then “grapple.” It’s little more than a glorified wrestling match at this point, with lots of sweat and grunting and very little that resembles anything that one might consider “martial arts.” And because I sit at a desk all day, my conditioning might best be classified as “abysmal.” So I can go about two minutes before my grunting turns to gasping and I find myself stretched out on the mat hoping for a broken bone or seizure to end my misery.

When I was 14, I played basketball and ran track and spent long hours visiting the elderly and reading to the blind. (Hey, it’s my story; I’ll tell it the way I want.) Why couldn’t my son take up basketball instead? I could stand under the hoop rebounding for him and not once wonder about the details of my HMO formulary. I could even hold my own in H-O-R-S-E with a distinct competitive advantage in the early going. And while I might still run the risk of bruising from time to time, I guarantee you the welts would look more like Rhode Island than some obscure Canadian province. I would also have the glory of an occasional good shot and even maybe a victory from time to time.

But no—my son wants to be a street fighter, which virtually guarantees that I will return home after each session a beaten man with only the vaguest notion of what to do next time I get jumped in a dark alley. My real fear, of course, is that the guy jumping me in the alley will be Luke, who will already know the only two jiu-jitsu maneuvers I’ve learned and will be able to execute them better besides. (Note to self: no more dark alleys.)

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that I need to find someone else to give my son a ride to class. Interested? Think of it as a way to see Saskatchewan without ever leaving Orange County.

Chucking It All Vacariously

On March, 2005October, 2012 By Peter WatkinsIn 2005Leave a comment

Dear Will:

You know that feeling you get when you have 8,000 things you ought to do but the only thing you want to do is watch the ballgame? When your list is so long that you want to tell it “so long”? I’ve been feeling that way a lot lately.

There was a moment today when I was talking on my desk phone, another call was coming in on the second line, and my cell phone began to ring. At the time, I was staring at my email inbox, at the 60 or 70 unread messages and the 40 others on which I need to follow up. I pondered the clutter that surrounded me. And I thought how nice it would be to simply get up, walk out, and not come back.

Henry David Thoreau followed that same urge when he went off to live in the woods for a couple of years. He said he went there to live “deliberately.” Afterwards he said the following:

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

I fell in love with Walden when I was in high school, for the same reason that he appeals to me now over 20 years hence: Thoreau puts into beautiful prose words of inspiration and aspiration, and if I lack the disposition to chuck it all and head to the woods, at least through Walden I have the option of doing so vicariously. And rereading this passage reminds me that my next rereading is long overdue. Now I don’t presume to foist Henry David upon you—I have learned over the years that he is an acquired taste. But I figure it couldn’t hurt any of us—myself especially—to be reminded of the benefits of a simpler existence.

It’s probably wishful thinking—correction: it is wishful thinking; but even wishful thinking can be constructive if not done to excess. So I’ll end this brief lament with a few more ascendant words from HDT, words which remind us that there is more to life than the mundane details that preoccupy and distract us from day to day: “Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”

One of the Greatest Gifts Ever

On February, 2005April, 2024 By Peter WatkinsIn 2005Leave a comment

Dear Will:

My family is going through some nervousness as my sister and her husband (and their five small children) prepare to move to Turkey, where my brother-in-law has accepted a position working as a civilian contractor on a military base. We hope that it will turn out to be a great adventure for them, but we can’t help but feel anxious about their welfare.

Most anxious of all are my parents. My father will be 82 in a couple of weeks, and his body is really starting to show some wear and tear. Just this last week, in fact, he was in the emergency room with a slight case of pneumonia, a frightening condition for someone his age. It gave me a jolt, and when I saw him in his awkward gown and heard his scratchy voice, I could see clearly what I rarely see in full light: he has become an old man.

My sister’s imminent departure has caused my parents to consider the stark and upsetting possibility that after they kiss my sister and her children good-bye, they quite possibly could be doing so for the last time. Three years—the theoretical minimum length of my brother-in-law’s contract—is a really long time when you’re 82. Thus it was perhaps not surprising—even if it was disconcerting—when my dad called me to his home to “go over some things.”

My wife Dana and I were given a brief list of items my parents thought we might consider valuable: paintings mostly, the chair built by my great-grandfather, the clock that my grandparents used to have on their mantle—stuff like that. They said they wanted each of their children (there are seven of us) to pick the top two things we would most like to have once my parents are gone. Dana and I wandered through their house “shopping.” And it felt . . . really . . . strange.

They do have several pieces of art that I like quite a lot, but to be honest they mean nothing to me. The ones with the greatest apparent value are not valuable to me. And asking for any of them seemed trite and cold. I didn’t really want to play along. Nevertheless, I dutifully filled out my “order form,” but I felt like I didn’t really care whether I got the bronze or it went to one of my sisters.

When we were finished, my father showed me the location of his important papers: the will, the trust, the durable power of attorney. We stood in his office and discussed insurance policies and safe deposit boxes and burial arrangements. There was no sense of sadness as he did this, no woe-is-me, I’m-about-to-die melancholy. It was just matter-of-fact and business-like—something that had to be done.

That’s when I spied it: a tiny, 4-inch replica of a red Radio Flyer wagon. My father has had it on his desk my entire life. I can remember visiting his business when I was maybe five and playing with it in his office. He always used to keep a navy blue Superball in it. Just looking at it filled me with tenderness—and that’s when I knew. I reclaimed my form, crossed out my original choices and indicated instead that I wanted only that wagon. To have that symbol of my father on my own desk, for my own children to play with when they come to my office, would be a lot more valuable to me than any work of art ever could be.

Of course, I’m hoping that wagon remains on my father’s desk for many years to come, and that my parents stick around long after we hold a big Welcome Home Party for my sister. Until then, I’m determined to spend a little more time in my parents’ home, looking at the paintings, listening to the chime of that old clock, and enjoying my mom and dad, one of the greatest gifts God has ever given me.