Nature versus Nurture

Oh, how many things to describe to you! How MANY!

Nature: Fishers were charging through our neighborhood the other night. Thursday night, to be precise. Yowling, yipping, screeching, moaning in the treetops, there were at least three, possibly four, and they were blood-curdling. I heard them as I returned with Hobie from his walk, and quickly stored him inside, grabbed a flashlight, and came back out our open garage door to see if I could get a glimpse of one.

And one was skittering down the trunk of the easternmost linden tree in our front yard. I ran towards it and flashed the flashlight, and saw its silhouette bounding toward the back yard, but the light wasn't powerful enough to illuminate it very well; it remained a shadow, and it ran too fast to focus very clearly on. But I rounded the corner of the house in high hopes of a better look. I heard it clamber over the neighbor's chain-link fence and then silence as it crossed her yard; more clanging as it scaled her back chainlink fence, so I stopped against the gate, and caught it in the beam of my light as it hung at the other end of the yard, splayed out on the fence, eyes glittering at me. It was dark brown, about the size of a large fox, and seemed absolutely demonic. I was thrilled. Two more, at least, were skittering and scratching about in two other trees; I searched for them long and hard with the flashlight, but its beam really was pretty weak, and I never got much of a look at them. Came back in and called them up on Wikipedia, where I learned that they give birth in early spring and the pups leave the den in early to mid summer. So that was what I was looking at, no doubt: a mother and the pups, in the midst of teaching them to maraud.

Add this to the bear prints still visible on the side of the house and the foxes we see slinking through the lamplight on our nightly walk, and we have yet another reason to keep the cat in at night. Fishers are famous for devouring them, or so I read. (But, again, it's Wikipedia. So in truth, cats may actually eat them. It's hit and miss.)

The reason I charged out our open garage door (as opposed to through it, closed, I guess) is that the robins are back, as you may have heard, and have now got four vigorous pichones devourin' worms all day long. And as I lay in bed Thursday night, listening to the fishers (which resumed their clamor a few moments after I came in), I thought how frightened the mother robin must have been. The fisher, after all, had been about twenty feet away, climbing the linden tree, unaware of the tasty babies in the nest in our eaves. Darkness and death all around, and she the only thing standing between her little ones and the toothy night. But I shouldn't get too sentimental about it - had the fishers come close, she'd have simply flown away and left the tots to their fate. Probably already cooking up the next batch of eggs anyway.

Soccer: Q is on a tear. I'll start with the latest game: they played against the Cosmos, the other half of Williamstown's U-10 squad, consisting of ten players or so, with a preponderance of fourth-graders. Colton, Q's buddy, a very graceful and tenacious athlete, is on the Cosmos, and I sat next to his dad, Colin. As he watched the Strikers (Q's team) warm up, he noticed that they only had one fourth grader. It's Crow, who's phenomenal, but still, he's the only one. Everyone there expected the Strikers to lose handily - the Cosmos, in addition to Colton, who's second to none among the third-graders, have the Kleiner twins, Cole D., and Naka, who's just unbelievable - all 4th-graders.

And in the first half, it looked that way - they built up a 3-0 lead. A couple of those goals came, honestly, with Q defending - he was going through one of his stand-and-look bouts, letting people get past him, getting out of position, fascinated darkly by the scary game around him. He got some words on the subject from the coach (always positive, always constructive - we have FANTASTIC coaches here), and before you knew it it was halftime.

And then Q came alive. Hard, long, scrambling runs, poking the ball away from Naka, running right with him, refusing to yield, foiling any number of chances. And when he was playing forward, which was most of the time, he was a blue streak. ("Man," parents of Cosmos were heard to remark, "I knew Q had wheels, but jeepers...!") At one point early in the second half, he was attacking and took a poke at the goal, and it was deflected out the back end by a defender. Corner.

Crow took it - Q stood at the near post, and, to hear him tell it later, felt the man marking him drop away and gesticulated with his eyes and his hands, wildly but quietly, to Crow. "NOW!", he tried to say, pointing to himself. Crow fired, a beautiful, curving, chest-high laser; Q turned to take it in the ribs and it bounced perfectly into the side of the net.

Q raised his arms and sprinted downfield, cheering...then slowed...then bent over...and then went to one knee, then two, grimacing, holding his ribs. That had hurt. He left the game for a while, but as far as I could see, there were no tears. Just a lot of grimacing. (His coach, Hugh, told me later that when the game was over, he'd asked Q, "Was it worth it?" And Q had said, "Oh yeah. You bet.")

Meanwhile, the Strikers had made a change in goal, putting in Q's buddy Henry, and that kid was an absolute wall. Every fourth-grader on the Cosmos took a point-blank shot at him at some point in the second half, and nothing - block after block, save, after save. The crowd was in awe. And Henry had also begun to find the open man with his goal kicks, which meant that it was only a matter of time: Crow pounded one into the upper corner of the goal, over the outstretched hands of the Cosmos' keeper (a kid I don't know), and also lobbed a direct kick from near midfield in front of the goalie, who let it bounce...which was a mistake. Over his head and in. 3-3.

Naka was not to be denied, and at one point he got taken down just outside the box for a direct kick. The Strikers formed a valiant wall, Henry behind, but Naka was pinpoint accurate and put it into the back corner. 4-3.

One more from the Cosmos, I forget who, and it was 5-3.

And finally, for what I honestly think was the first time all game, Naka and Colton took a breather.

The Strikers smelled blood, and Q started making fantastic runs and passes. One shot went wide; another was saved - and then Q found himself relatively alone on the left side. Men closing in from behind, keeper coming out to cut off his angle, Q calmly pulled up and lobbed a long arc, easily 20 yards, over the keeper's head. It bounced behind him and rolled lazily across the goal line, spiked home by a charging Brady. Assist? Goal? Brady, apparently, wasn't sure. And neither cared - the important thing was the score: 5-4.

And these guys weren't done. They swarmed against the Cosmos, running them ragged, and after what could honestly not have been more than three minutes, Colton and Naka came back in, as if to shut down this final threat.

Which was when my favorite sequence happened, because really, nothing changed. Q ran with Naka stride for stride as Naka tried to penetrate and put the game away, stole the ball from him, and then led Naka all the way to the other end of the field and fired off a shot. Wide, but still - Q gave up nothing in this battle. It was the two of them, back and forth, running each other into oblivion, neither giving any quarter. It was a beautiful duel. Others were involved, of course, but Q and Naka stand out in my mind. I mean, Naka is spooky-good, and a fourth grader, but in this, essentially an intramural game, Q couldn't have cared less. It was just Naka, the kid he hangs out with at the youth center and practices with all the time. Pushing, tugging, shouleering each other off the ball, neither able to turn the corner on the other...Beautiful to watch.

Time. 5-4, Cosmos win.

So that was Sunday. Saturday's game had been postponed until the end of the season, and the week before THAT, you already know about, I think. He's been doing great lately, practicing on his own out back whenever he can, with me or Mami when possible, though we just serve as backstops, catching his misses (which are rare) and serving the ball back to him, fishing it out of the back of the net. Big, big fun. And no pressure - during Q's lethargic stretches, I smile and muse on what the glory of Q's development is, as it's laid out in front of me in comical, vivid, exciting colors. The same kid who can go toe-to-toe with the legendary Naka one minute will stand there and watch as the man he's meant to be marking knocks one in the next minute, and that is not maddening or frustrating or bad to me any more. It is simply wonderful. Watching him grow up, I am growing up myself.

Tonight, though I am tired, and it is late. Our firend Brad's project "Roomful of Teeth" is kicking off in W-town today, and I attended a wine-and-cheese this evening, representing our family as Janneke made dinner. Listened to a yodeler, a Tuvan throat singer, and then the yodeler and the Tuvan throat singer together. Freaky, that was, and chilling and hyper-cool.

But now it's very late, and I must yet walk the dog and hygienate. The rest of the week's adventures will just have to wait for another day.

Huzzah!