Highs and Lows

Tonight my youngest son had a baseball game. Fall ball in our little league is supposed to be an instructional league -- in other words, not all about winning. Tonight's game was a devastating loss: 15-2. Son3 emerged from the dugout with downcast eyes and an expression I'd never seen on his face before. Son1 is all about competition and winning, and if this had been him, I would have known just what to do (which is listen with restraint, wait for the storm to pass, then wield a bit of humor). But Son3 is a bit different, not competitive in the same way. I couldn't quite figure it out, although losing by 13 doesn't make anyone happy.

When we got home, I got down on my knees and hugged Son3 and he melted into my arms and laid his head on my shoulder. It's really so sad that this time passes from childhood -- the time when a hug will do it. Our time for that is ticking away -- when a physical connection can make the emotional one. What a loss that will be.

He was pretty reticent about the real problem. I finally resorted to a wee bit of manipulation to weedle it out of him. I let him skip his shower and simply wash his oniony armpits with a soapy cloth, so I said, "Hey, since I let you skip your shower, I think you should let me know what the trouble is." As it turned out, there were two problems. First, he felt he'd made a bad play when he threw the ball from second base (acting as the cut-off man) to home to get the runner out. It was a good throw, but too late, and then the runner on first advanced. It wasn't the worst mistake and certainly plenty of teammates had urged him to make the throw. But he hates to blow it; his competition is all with himself. Poor buddy, it's tough to have such a demanding taskmaster. The second problem was something his coach said. It was, as Son3 said, "The D word." Is it sick that I love that the use of a bad word makes him so sad?

So, these are his baseball lows, but two weeks ago after his first practice when he blew all his coaches away with his mad skills at second base, and then the coach took them all out for ice cream at a nearby dairy farm (delicious), he said to me, "I feel like a million bucks."

And my highs and lows? On the rare ocassion when all of us actually sit down and eat dinner together, we play high low (a concept we stole from the movie The Story of Us). What was your high today? What was your low? So today, my low is my continuing battle with fleas, a battle that started two weeks ago and wore thin on the first day. My high? Writing my first blog entry.