But Coach Powell had been able to take the seniors on the trip last summer to Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park. They hiked for two days in Bryce Canyon National Park. One photo from the trip shows all the boys with their shirts off on a mesa—plus a shirtless Coach Powell beaming alongside Coach Collins and Coach Boyd. Colin has the framed photo in his room on the nightstand next to his bed; all the seniors had the same framed photo. Coach Powell gave it to each senior on senior night at the high school.
The rest of the night there were plenty of wins for our team. Nine of the boys held out hopes for state; they would be the state qualifiers Colin planned to be.
The next morning was a chance for wrestle-backs, the consolation round; Colin could still make it to state if he won three matches today.
I got to the gym with Caryn about 9:30 AM. Wrestling started at 10 AM and my brother Paul showed up shortly after that, asking where the coffee was. With four matches concurrently, it all moved pretty quickly. Colin’s youth football coach, Tim O’Dell, showed up to watch Colin. He had come to the high school a handful of times this season with his son Tommy to cheer Colin on.
Colin was up against a wrestler from a school outside our conference who had a 27–12 record. He had never wrestled him before so I didn’t know what to expect. From the first whistle, Colin dominated, and he won 8–5. Coach Powell was pleased, handed him his shorts and sweatshirt after the match, and went to the side with him to go over some moves. Colin was still in it. He could still go to state.
Between matches, I went over to Colin in the stands and kissed him on the top of his head. He let me.
“Thanks, Mom,” he said.
The next match would be easy for Colin, up against a wrestler with a 19–3 record, someone who Colin seemed to dominate early on. Paul and I were crouched on the sidelines, cheering.
“You got this, Colin,” Paul screamed.
It looked in the first period like Colin would win, and then all of a sudden it was over. He was pinned. And Colin lost his chance for individual state.
I didn’t see Colin for at least an hour; I am not sure where he went. I waited in the stands and knew he would come back when he was ready. Paul said he went to look for him and found him sitting by himself, silent, distraught. Paul hugged him and told him he had a great season and that winning did not matter as much as giving it your all. He had a good season. He could be proud.
Later in the afternoon, before the break in sessions, I saw Coach Powell approach Colin and hug him, another long embrace. From where I sat in the stands across the gym, it was a sight that I pray will stay with me for years.
You don’t have to win to be loved.
Monday shortly after noon, following a two-hour undergraduate Magazine Storytelling class, I was in my office on a conference call, listening to about a dozen people speak back and forth, occasionally inserting a question or responding. My cell phone vibrated on my desk and I could see it was Coach Powell. I hung up on the conference call. I needed to take this.
“How is Colin?” Coach Powell’s voice was raspy, deeper than usual.
“Devastated, but OK. He’ll be OK.”
“Colin could have won, he beat one of those kids twice already,” he said. “But what’s important is that he got the lessons from wrestling that he needed. In the end it doesn’t matter how you did in high school wrestling, nobody cares. It matters what kind of man you are, and Colin is a good man.”
I started to cry. Noon on a Monday morning in my office overlooking south campus.
“I’ll talk to him,” he said.
I started to babble about how much I appreciated Coach Powell and what he has done for my boys, how much I wanted Colin to have that feeling of winning, having his hand raised in the air in an assembly hall of screaming fans. I said I could not have raised these boys without his influence, that I was grateful for all his efforts.
“He can have that feeling later in life,” Powell said. And, he reminded me, although Colin had lost his shot at individual state, he would still be able to wrestle at team state if the Huskies qualified. He paused. “Part of this is about you. You let all your boys go into this sport and you let them be who they are.”
Maybe it is because I am a writer, but sometimes I see my life played out in scenes. I could write this that way, I think as someone is laughing or walking away. This was a scene with the music swelling up, the teary ending. The not-so-happy ending, but the one where you know in your bones it will all be OK. It’s the ending where the hero reveals himself, the villain recedes, and you know the lessons have been learned. But then I knew it wasn’t really an ending at all.
We had to beat the Hinsdale Central team to qualify for team state. It was set for Tuesday, February 21, at 6 PM, barely enough time for me to drive there after my graduate editing class ended at 5 PM. So I let my students work on their captions assignments and e-mail them to me. I was in the car by 4:40 PM.
Once at the field house, the atmosphere was loud and anxious. Parents of wrestlers who graduated four or even five years ago showed up and took their places in the stands. Peter Lovaas, who wrestled with Weldon and graduated in 2007, climbed up to a seat next to his father. The grandfather from Wisconsin who drives to see more than half of our matches, whose own son wrestled in the 1960s, was there in the stands taking notes and wearing his HUSKIES WRESTLING FAMILY T-shirt.
I took out my camera. The boys from the team came running down from the wrestling room, and after they were introduced by weight—along with the opposing team—the captains went to the center of the mat to shake hands. I started taking pictures. I caught Coach Powell’s eye as he looked at me in the stands.
“This is the last one,” he mouthed.
“I know,” I said and laughed.
The dual began at 182 pounds and the team won the first three matches handily—182, 195, 220. Colin would wrestle at 145 pounds; Powell had worked out the lineup to maximize effectiveness. He had talked to the boys before the match—as he always did—and they each looked pumped, charged, and electrified, ready to take on the world for six minutes. Before he went out, Coach Powell hugged Colin for what looked like a long time but was probably only a minute or so.
Colin burst onto the mat and then dominated the entire match. He won 12–3. I screamed so loud I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t. Colin had come back, believed in himself again, pushed himself as hard as he could.
He would prepare to wrestle at team state in Bloomington, Illinois, his last year, Powell’s last year. And though they came home from Bloomington after a hard-fought day—winning first against Harlem and later against Barrington—they lost in the final round to the Sandburg team and took the second-place trophy.
It didn’t seem like it that night to Colin or to any of the wrestlers on the team, not even the coaches, but it was good enough. For me, it was enough.
When Weldon was born, I told the nurses at Medical City in Dallas that he would be a senator or author as the owner of such a regal name. This was not the moniker of someone to be taken lightly; this was someone destined for greatness, someone I wanted the world to know. Before he spoke coherent words, I listened intently to his babbling, waiting for the first sign that he understood me and that I understood him. I couldn’t wait for him to talk. So many millions of words exchanged since then—some harsh, some tender, many only I would hear—and now that he is twenty-six, I can’t wait to hear what he has to say when he calls. When he was earning his master’s degree in Madrid and traveling on weekends, he would call from Portugal, Italy, Morocco, or wherever he was on an adventure. And it was thrilling.
I was the kind of mother who pictured my children as adults—even as infants when I was struggling to maneuver them into their down-softened, pale-blue snowsuits, their arms and legs flailing, helpless until I lifted them up like pliable gingerbread men. I was never the kind of parent who wanted them to stay small, not because it was so hard, but because I thought it would be so glorious to know t
hem, well, as people. Full-grown adults.
Yes, I have the scary movies playing in my head when something goes wrong and I imagine the worst. But most of the time, when I saw them in the future I saw their greatness years ahead as if looking into a snow globe—a scene hazy and distorted. I saw them for who they could be—grown men with broad shoulders and wide smiles—and I saw myself in the audience at their graduations, their speeches, their award acceptances, their medal ceremonies, their grand public gestures. This is the good side of mother vision.
You teach your children to walk, knowing they will eventually walk away.
You hope that your children know you never will.
27
Stars
* * *
May 2012
“Mom, it’s my last day of high school,” Colin shouted, in his boxers dashing from his room into the bathroom—the one he shares with his brothers when they are at home. It’s the bathroom I dare not use, with splashed minty toothpaste all over the mirror, the towels he uses once and drops, the razor and shaving cream he can never manage to put away in the cabinet.
“I’m almost not in high school anymore.”
I was aware of the milestone, the way you are aware of a due date when you are pregnant or an anniversary date that ends in 0, a court date on the books for months, or a keynote speech on the calendar months away. I designed an invitation for his graduation party with a photo of Colin and his brothers taken more than ten years ago. In the photo Colin is sandwiched by Brendan and Weldon, who are squeezing him playfully. He looks exasperated, pleading.
The invite went to family members, coaches, wrestling families, and everyone else I knew who adored Colin, a total of more than one hundred people. The moms who knew him since his blond hair stood straight up—earning him the nickname Woodstock, as in Snoopy’s bird friend—the teachers who told him they would like a son just like him, the other dads who loved him as if he was their own. The party would be the week after his graduation, and I had already ordered the tent. I love the crisp white tent with the metal frame and the teapot dome—it costs more than it should, but I only have these parties every four years or so. I would make pork tenderloin sandwiches and fresh mozzarella pizzas on naan bread, order the chicken. Colin wanted mashed potatoes, though I steered him to potato salad. Coleslaw doesn’t ever move as fast as you would hope; I would make a tossed salad with cherry tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, maybe croutons.
“Let me take a picture before you go.”
I had already been up for an hour, made coffee, oatmeal for me, peanut butter on toast with fresh blackberries for Colin, and lunch for both of us. I put the lunches in separate plastic bags with an apple and orange in each, plus a granola bar for him. I had made my bed, thrown in a load of laundry—we can’t expect to have enough hot water to take hot showers and do laundry at night—and read the front section of the paper, plus the horoscopes in the back. Bad habit, I admit. Mine read: “concern about finances, social gatherings with friends, stay calm when considering the future.” Anybody could write those. Anything could happen.
I was dressed for work, just putting my contacts in and watching a few minutes of Good Morning America before deciding whether I wanted to wear the great-looking shoes that hurt or the ones I could walk and stand in all day.
I’ll be standing up teaching most of the day. Not-so-cute shoes.
Colin wore his orange polo shirt, dress pants, and shoes. He stood about six feet, posing in the kitchen by the microwave as I snapped his picture; I took photos of the boys on first and last days of school from kindergarten through high school, a practice they mostly did not appreciate. Sometimes they stood by the front door with fresh backpacks, for years and years all of them inches to a foot shorter than me, pushing each other, wrangling for the front row. New shoes, new shirts, new haircuts. Now, all of them over six feet tall.
He kissed me good-bye, “Love you, Mom,” and forgot to take out the garbage bag or the recycling.
I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell Brendan or Weldon either. I didn’t say that the previous day I had been in court and had seen their father—for the first time in years, the first time since his own father’s funeral. There was no point in telling the boys; it only made them furious. Weldon would only say that I should move to put him in jail for delinquency on child support. Seven years of delinquency, going on eight. No, I said nothing, it could only be hurtful. Who needs to know his father is still fighting to erase his obligations to him? It had been many years since their father saw the boys or communicated to them. Silence. He had missed so much. He had denied them so long.
Fifth grade—Colin was in fifth grade the last time their father had paid any support. There had been a lot of turkey sandwiches since then, a lot of wrestling matches, a bin of wrestling medals.
I once again donned a medal of my own the previous day when I prepared to see my former husband. My father’s gold medal hangs on a heavy gold chain that falls to the middle of my chest. On one side of the cracker-sized disc is an image of Mary holding Jesus as an infant. She has a halo, a crown really, and the medal is framed in elaborate filigree. On the flipside of the medal in capital letters is engraved: WM G WELDON, and underneath his name is his social security number. It is the medal he wore every day as a solider in World War II. He told me once it is what kept him alive; he believed the talisman saved him. When he died my sisters gave it to me.
When my father died in January 1988, none of my boys were born; Weldon arrived in October of that year. None of the boys knew their grandfather, Papa Bill, though many remark that Brendan resembles him—his oval, handsome face and dimpled chin. Each one of the boys has his kindness.
My brother Paul lent Colin Papa Bill’s cufflinks to wear to his graduation later in June.
“This is the first thing I ever had of his,” Colin said and gave Paul a bear hug.
I don’t wear my father’s medal often; I only wear it when I need his strength—important speeches, meetings, and a court date like today. I hadn’t gone to the half dozen other appearances in the past six months, of him presenting motions and interrogatories about my finances, claiming that although he owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid child support and college expenses, I do not need financial help. I imagine he expected child support to be dismissed as quickly as his law loans were after he filed bankruptcy.
“He can’t do that,” friends would say to me.
Yes, he can.
It was time to go to court and at least be the face of the respondent. I dreaded the idea of reliving it all again, of having to face the person who hurt my sons. I did not have a class on Thursday morning at Northwestern; I could go to court. I needed to go, in spite of the stress-induced nausea, in spite of the trembling I could not control in my hands. Benign familial tremor: a doctor diagnosed it years ago when I was married to him. Your body remembers.
A plain black skirt, plain black jacket, simple white blouse. Pumps with low heels, we would walk to the courthouse from my sister Madeleine’s new law office near the federal building. Drew, an attorney in her firm, was now handling the case since I couldn’t afford an attorney. Madeleine was allowing Drew to do this for free. It cost my former husband nothing to keep filing motions because he is an attorney. So he kept filing.
I wanted my mother with me. She would know what to say. She would hold her head high—even from a wheelchair. But she has been gone a decade; I wore her gold bracelet, the one that has three rows of beads and clasps with a click. There. I am safe now. My father’s medal, my mother’s bracelet, both my parents are with me.
I talk to my late parents often; I am not sure it is praying really, although sometimes I cry at night, “Please, Mom, help me,” and I pause and wait for some kind of response, relief, respite. And I search my heart and memory for what she would do. I squint my lids shut tighter and try to see if I can see her in my mind’s eye, but I can’t. I try to channel her bravado and her wit, think of how she would respond, think of h
ow she would end a conversation with a remark so insightful it was stunning. Think of how she would soothe me when bullies chased me home in fourth grade. “It’s just a dog barking, Mich. Makes no more sense than a dog barking, and no need to cry over a barking dog.” If she knew that my former husband had nothing to do with her grandsons, she would be furious. She would call up his mother and she would give her a piece of her mind. Oh yes, she would.
“Behave with the good sense your parents gave you,” she said to my former husband once after our divorce when he came to pick up the boys for a visitation. He looked at the floor. But it never changed.
My sisters and I have this thing; I don’t know if it really is anthropomorphism, but I’ll just say it: My mother is a butterfly, and lately my father is a cardinal. Every spring and summer butterflies flock to my back porch; one usually lands on the glass table when the boys and I eat dinner outside. One will land on a book I am reading in the sun. They will flit in stops and starts on the lilac bushes, the verbena, the hibiscus, the scented geraniums my friend Katherine told me to buy. Many spring and summer mornings a bright red cardinal sits alone on the telephone wire stretched across my backyard or on the basketball rim, of all places. Just sits. For several minutes. Most every day.
“Hi, Dad,” I say. And I don’t care who hears me.
The benches in Judge Naomi Schuster’s courtroom are filling up; we are there only a few minutes before 10 AM. I glance around the room; he is not here. A thirty-ish woman in a red sweater has a lip ring, nose ring, and a diamond piercing in the area between her mouth and nose. I think that would hurt. A woman to my right is chewing gum loudly and holding a stack of papers. Drew motions me to sit down in the front row and she sits to my right. Six rows are filling with men and women—all with blank faces, staring ahead.
A woman is standing before the judge with an attorney to her left. She is dressed in a postal uniform.
Escape Points Page 22