Division of Labor

Holy cannoli, T can sure wail when she feels like it.

Trying to draw a tee-shirt was she this afternoon, frustrated by her inability at first to draw its outline without crossing over inside those lines - that is to say, making a single perimeter with no transections anywhere. She threw her marker and opened her mouth wide and waaaaaaailed, eyes wide. It was such volume, such from-the-diaphragm power - Janneke and I basically just left the room. There was no reasoning with her, no talking to her - we tried. She wailed louder. Not wanting to reward her for such behavior, but knowing, as we do, that trying to impose consequences on her for continuing to act out-of-control once she's already lost control is a zero-sum game, we simply retreated, Janneke to the treadmill downstairs, I outside to put a rain gutter back on the house. (A small section had fallen away from the roof.)

I was up on the roof ten minutes later, finishing up, when I heard T's wailing sudenly get louder. I walked to the front of the house, on the roof, wondering why I could hear her now, and sure enough she had come outside from the front and was making her way to the back. I walked along the edge of the roof, silently, watching this bird's-eye-view of the top of her little head as she made her way around toward the back, where surely she would find me. She could see the end of the ladder, after all - I had to be close! So she got louder and louder.

Then she had to stop and open the gate, which was a little tricky, because it had a stone leaning against it. you have to kind of push the gate forward in order to let the latch swing, but not so much that you push the stone (which keeps Skittles in the back yard) and make it fall. Then you have to open the gate toward you (again, so as not to make the stone fall), and re-close it behind you. This whole process takes a good thirty seconds if you're five and not very big for your age. And during that whole time, the wailing ceased completely.

Only to resume once she was on the other side. Her head looked left and right, and left and right, but never up - ladders, it seems, don't quite compute totally yet. And now it became words: "Daaaaaaddy!"

I called out to her and asked what was wrong, and she explained. I told her I would be down in a moment, and I came down the ladder to total silence. Saving it up, it seems.

I turned to face her, and was hit full-force again. But I managed to fend it off this time - "T, no me podés hablar así. No es hablar, es gritarme. Cuando me puedas hablar, te ayudo. Hasta entonces, no."

Amazingly, she calmed down, allowed me to put the ladder away, and accompanied me inside for some lessons on how to draw a T-shirt outline with long sleeves and one arm bent jauntily back toward the waist. She practiced, got good at it, and then happily churned out twenty of them while I snoozed on the couch. For maybe five minutes, before we all headed out to Q's soccer game.

Q had a day-long 3 on 3 tournament yesterday. Janneke and T stayed home, and I sat and waited and watched from 8:15 to 5:15 in Great Barrington, an hour away. Q had a blast, goofing around with his friends between games and playing during them. And in the end they did very well - there were three groups of U-10 teams, and they came through group play unscathed, 3-0. Putting them into the semifinals against eventual champions Lenox, where they lost, 4-2. Q scored both goals; he had also had a game where he scored 4 of the team's 7, and another where they stopped trying to score at halftime and still wound up invoking the mercy rule at 10-0. A very respectable showing.

But Q is back to his zombie ways much of the time, and I absolutely do not understand it. In the semis, he sleepwalked through the entire first half, and most of the second. Intimidated by Lenox because he knew they had tied the other Williamstown team 5-5 in group play. And of course the other Williamstown team is better than Q's team, or so he believed. So naturally they would lose to Lenox.

Partway through the second half, Q woke up and started playing aggressively, weaving through for two lovely goals. To hear him tell it, it was because his coach told him during a break, "Stop trying to pass. Just dribble past people and score." He was charging toward his third when he was tripped from behind, resulting in a PK, which he missed (off the post!). Time expired, and their day ended.

I was guilty of some loudly-delivered encouragement on the day, and feel terrible about it. BUT! Today I redeemed myself a bit. They had another game against that same Williamstown team, made up of his friends, which Q is convinced is better in every way. And so for the first half he stood and watched everything happen, made token efforts at resistance, saw who he was up again and basically gave up on trying to dribble past them, etc. It was excruciating to watch. The other team went up 2-0 almost immediately, and I am here to tell you, both goals went right past the somnolent Q. He was always behind the play, always lagging, always half-speed and late. By halftime it was out of hand, 5-0.

And then, curiously, in the second half, when the pressure was off and the other team was basically not trying to score anymore, Q woke up. Many long, beautiful runs, several shots, one goal (on another PK after his shot was stopped in the box with a handball) - again, about 25% of the game, we saw what Q can do.

Tragic, then, when the final whistle blew, to see Q's hands go to his head, and cover his eyes, then his face, and see him wracked by sobs. And to see him wordless when greeting our hugs and questions, to see him walk dejectedly ahead to sit on a lonely park bench halfway to the car and stare, slump-shouldered, at the light rain / heavy mist, beaten. To finally coax out of him, an hour later, with a chin wiggle, "I'm sad that we lost."

Because I tell you truly, this did not have to be. That other team has a stronger overall roster, but not a man-jack of them is better than Q, and none is faster. When he's relaxed and wants to play, there is not a kid around to stop him. The best 3-on-3 team in Berkshire County had no one to stop him - he pounded through two, nearly three unanswered, in about four minutes, once he woke up. The team that came in second in his division could do nothing but fall over and flail as he fired through goal after goal - with the left, with the right, from near, from far. When Q is The One, with the fire in the belly, he is as good as absolutely any 9- or 10-year-old in this league. But he often isn't that.

And it is not my job to make him that. It is my job to hug and squeeze him, take him home and comb his hair, tickle him after supper in one of his favorite games (I give him something ALMOST impossible to guess ("I'm thinking of a mammal"), and every time he guesses wrong or needs a clue, I tickle him), smile at him over his dessert and talk about anything at all. Except his own personal performance in the game. That, now, is off limits.

I did all those things tonight. I have a wonderfully beautiful little boy asleep upstairs after a hard athletic day, where he suffered through his bouts of doubts much more painfully than any of us did, wondering why he does this more fervently and more frustratedly than anyone. But now he's dry and warm and loved, and the last three hours of his night, he spent laughing and safe. That's my job.

Anybody can coach him. Only I can be Papi.