Our Father's Day plan was to have brunch together before Jay and Sasha headed to Park City to help Sasha's mother pack up her large mountain house in preparation to sell it and move to California.
Because the kids aren't big breakfast eaters, compounded by the fact that Julie and I have never been out to breakfast in Big Sky, preferring to just make our own breakfasts at home, the kids adapted to my request that we instead go to church.
While Soldier's Chapel which we usually attend hadn't opened for the season, we thought we could attend Big Sky Chapel, a lovely year-round church located near the golf course. That service was shuttered due to Covid-19 concerns, so we instead decided to hike up Cinnamon Creek Trail.
On their horseback riding excursion the previous day, Jay and Sasha had galloped near the Cinnamon Creek Trail and reported back that the wildflowers were blooming.
When we arrived on Sunday morning, there were a couple of huge horse trailers unloading horses for a couple dozen riders, so after snagging parking spaces, we immediately hit the trail to beat them.
The trail is mostly uphill, and as such is not one of Julie's favorites, but I pulled the Father's Day privilege card. About halfway up, the trail was washed out, but we found our way around it to continue up. With this hike coming the next morning after out big day of hiking at Beehive Basin, Julie decided to double back to the car, taking my phone with her so she could contact Jay if she got worried. Having been on the same trail once when a bear was in the area, Julie said she sang all the way down, just in case.
After hiking another twenty minutes or so without reaching the loop at the top, I suggested turning back, so that they could get on the road to Park City and Julie wouldn't be alone too long. As we hiked back down, we met the parade of horses clip-clopping up the mountain, so we stepped to the side of the narrow path to make room.
We found Julie at the car, as expected. Julie and I took Jay up on his offer to have lunch in West Yellowstone. Online as we drove, Sasha found the Buffalo Bar, where there is an outdoor patio where JoJo could stay with us while we dined.
Julie and I split the half-pound Cowboy Burger, which was delicious. The tortilla chips for their Burrito Bowls had been fried with the onion rings --- not gluten-free --- rather than being standard out-of-the-bag tortilla chips, so Julie and I had lots of those too. Jay and I also had some delicious local beers, even if his Red Ale looked suspiciously like my Nitro Scotch Ale. Needless to say, we had more than enough to eat.
While sitting there, more people arrived with their own dogs to enjoy meals on the patio. It almost seemed like a dog party, though JoJo and the other dogs kept their distances.
It was a treat having Jay, Sasha and JoJo come for a visit, but all things must come to an end.
On the drive back to Big Sky, I thought about Jay's childhood compared to my own.
While I loved my Dad and respected his work ethic, I felt like he was distracted from being involved in my life, which seemed to be an opinion shared by many boys in my blue collar neighborhood about their own fathers, who all spent most of their time working hard to support their families the best they could.
 |
| This is the first of several photos Jay shared from their ride and the hike. |
Most of my friends wished our dad's would play baseball with us, like the one outlier in our neighborhood, Mr. Rungo.
My dad worked six days a week, not getting home until my bedtime on most weeknights. On Saturday evenings, he would often bring a stranger home for dinner. Sometimes, that fellow was interesting, like a European artist named Lebeditz who I still remember well, but other times they were poor souls struggling with alcoholism or other problems.
Later on Saturday nights, Dad would play poker in our glassed-in patio with a half dozen friends until the wee hours of the morning. He would sleep late on Sundays as Mom took Darlene and me to Sunday School.
On Sunday afternoons when Darlene and I were in grade school, we would have our family time, often doing something fun like horseback riding at Lakewood Riding Academy or archery inside a warehouse building on Beach Boulevard in Stanton, though I must admit I liked those better than Darlene. Other times we would go to "bird farms," where Dad would talk to some old folks who raised birds.
As kids, we believed we would rather be home playing with our friends, but I have to admit any time I tagged along as he walked through it was interesting, and he'd usually buy me a Coke. After my sister almost died of Encephalitis when she was in seventh grade, we stopped doing the Sunday activities, but we still usually went out for dinner at Arnold's Farmhouse or La Fiesta.
By the time I was in high school, Dad had purchased a Brunswick billiard table, something all my friends and later my children all found very cool. My dad would frequently play pool (usually Cutthroat or "Pill Pool" Rotation) or poker with his old friends Roy and Hubert. While Hubert was a mountain of a man, the short, bespectacled Roy was more of an intellectual, though I only see this in retrospect.
It's odd how I can still remember everything about them so clearly, including how Roy once signed a birthday card they gave Dad as Damon and Pythias, which I didn't realize until years later referred to a Greek legend about a man willing to risk his life to allow his condemned friend to settle his affairs. For what it's worth, they were both married to women, so they weren't a gay couple, if that's how it sounds.
I cherished any time my dad would come to a game to see me play. Dad shot hoops with me a handful of times in our driveway, though his old-fashioned two-hand set shot was no longer used anywhere. I played baseball catch with my Uncle Bob, despite his polio affliction that made his left arm useless, but never with Dad.
I determined that when I had kids, I would make time to appreciate and share their passions. I especially looked forward to teaching my son to play all the sports I had learned despite seemingly little interest from my dad, though in retrospect I realize he hadn't played sports as a boy, so he probably didn't feel qualified to help.
When our son Jay was a toddler, Julie and I moved from our chic hilltop house in Laguna Beach to a family home on a cul-de-sac in Oceanside, despite the fact that it would mean much longer commutes. While my work was well over an hour away, I still was able to spend time being a dad. I brought Jay to work with me at least a couple of days a week from when he was a baby until he was in kindergarten. Because I worked with my dad, Jay developed a close relationship with him too. Dad would welcome us into his Chrysler Fifth Avenue by handing out Necco Wafers. He always ordered Jay chocolate chip pancakes with a whipped cream smile when we went on the road scouting new locations for the tanning business or for a possible trailer park.
I had never been in Boy Scouts myself, but I became a Cub Scout leader in Jay's troop when he started school. My greatest joy of that era, however, was coaching his t-ball team. It was great fun teaching those little guys how to play baseball.
One funny memory was of Jay's good friend Kyle, who pulled his batting helmet down over his eyes and said, "I don't need to see the ball to hit it." Like a ninja master, he swung the bat and hit the ball off the tee....but not very hard. The ball dribbled toward the pitcher's mound, and disoriented because the helmet covered his eyes, Kyle ran a few steps toward third base before lifting the visor to see where to go.
I wished I had started when I was very young rather than waiting until I was ten years-old to learn baseball, basketball and football, but it turned out that while those games were still of interest to me, Jay was far more interested in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Super Mario Brothers when he was little.
After our youngest daughter Amy was born, we moved further south to Carmel Mountain Ranch to be closer to Julie's new job. Jay said he wasn't interested in being a Scout or...and this was very disappointing to me...playing baseball, once we moved.
I hung a basketball goal on the front of our garage, like I had as a child, and when Jay's friend Alex came over, they liked to play two-on-one basketball against me, with the two of them pounding me mercilessly as I held the ball out of their reach to shoot.
I think they liked playing a video game version better, one in which Jay's favorite player was a little guard he called, "Midget Man, the Safety Can" for some unknown reason.
Alex played indoor soccer, so Jay signed up too. Despite not knowing much about the game, I coached the team, which was a lot of fun. After several seasons, the boys decided to play on an outdoor team. With no other father's willing to take on the mantle, I became the manager of that team, though once again I wasn't sure of the rules, which differed from indoor games.
Despite not having been to the draft at all, we somehow took a team that was randomly assigned from players not drafted by experienced managers in attendance at the draft and finished in second place, losing to only one team, which brought an undefeated record into the playoffs.
Our main strategy all season had been a defensive scheme designed by my soccer-expert assistant, whose son Paul was a stellar defender. I think Paul's dad had an anger problem in prior years, one sufficient to keep his excellent son from being drafted. I know Paul said he wasn't allowed to be the manager when I offered him the lead. Rather brilliantly, we would bring all our defenders to mid-field and stop the other team from getting close to the goal for most of the game, trying to force them out of bounds.
We didn't have a full team for the round robin playoffs of 20-minute games, due to a series of unrelated reasons, so we barely fielded a team.
An injury in the third game left us with just ten players. Teams were supposed to field eleven players, but in what we considered a key game, we somehow beat that previously undefeated team, 1-0, on an unexpected breakaway goal during the last minute of a game in which we had decided to just play defense with our whole team, never leaving our side of the fiel while hoping for a tie.
Because he loved Ninja Turtles and later Power Rangers, we signed Jay up for karate classes, after sampling several schools.
I took Jay to Poway Kenpo for lessons three times a week. I knew little about karate, although I had taken a couple of P.E. classes at Golden West College so had the basic knowledge if not the hip flexibility. In any case, parents were kept out of the dojo except for belt-testing. We also could see the progress and tournaments and public demonstrations.
Jay was very good, reaching purple or brown belt in a very tough discipline. Based on what I saw at competitions, he was as good as most children who were black belts in other forms of karate. He won several trophies in various tournaments around the county.
When he was twelve, Jay became interested in baseball, and while he had played t-ball, I'd have to say that was really the first time it was his idea. I was an assistant coach on his teams.
A vivid memory for me is Jay making great plays as third baseman, including when he snagged a line drive that looked destined to be an extra-base hit to win one game. I don't recall why it seemed like a big game, but that manager, ran jubilantly onto the field like it was the World Championship. He gave Jay the game ball. I would guess that was Jay's favorite season. The manager kind of looked like Padres manager Bruce Bochy and had a wonderful teaching attitude that kept the game fun for the boys.
Jay enjoyed getting his swings at the plate that season. The next season, however, he went to Pony League, where the team manager was a win-at-all-costs jerk who took all the joy out of the game. His strategy included having his batters work for walks rather than have fun swinging the bat. Nonetheless, Jay stayed with it, and I think that team was the league champion. Admittedly, that tougher coaching style honed an impressive team that played very efficiently.We became big San Diego Padres fans during those years, watching the games together on TV and occasionally in person. During the dramatic 1998 season, when our interest was also at its peak, the Padres seemed to have a serious chance of going all the way. As a minor market team, the Padres would go years trying to stay out of the cellar building for that one season when the stars would align, and then they would go after free agents. Greg Vaughn was a slugger who was supposed to make the difference, though he lost his mojo when he joined our favorites like third-baseman Ken Caminiti, relief-ace Trevor Hoffman and Mr. Padre, Tony Gwynn. Still, a bunch of players with otherwise forgettable careers seemed like a team of destiny. For our cat Raja, Vaughn remained her favorite player despite his disappointing home run production, as she frequently held up a paw to say, "You go Greg!" Okay, maybe that was me lifting her paw and using my high voice to speak for her, but I'm pretty sure that's what she was thinking.
An umpire made a bad call on what should have been strike three in a championship game against the Yankees. On the very next pitch, Tino Martinez hit a grand slam. That was a road game, but we were in the stands at the old Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego along with 20,000 other fans. For whatever reason, those two pitches seemed to take the heart out of our miracle season.
When we moved to Manhattan Beach to take advantage of a lucrative job offer Julie received, Jay again decided to shed those past activities with the move and start anew, becoming quite dedicated to the marching band. His band teacher Mr. Addams made him feel at home, and then made him a leader. Though Mr. Addams retired, Jay remained a leader. Jay and his friend Nathan started and led a jazz combo that received quite a few accolades under his new teacher.
While I play the guitar, I once again had no experience in the area or marching bands or orchestras. About fifteen years ago, my friend Ron said fathers are destined to butt heads with our sons --- "something about testosterone" --- and perhaps that sometimes translates into pursuing different interests than the best laid plans of fathers.
I also was happy to take my daughters to the sports they found of interest, like ice skating, ballet and tennis, and as they improved or simply enjoyed talking to new friends who happened to sign up for the same activities, it was always a source of pleasure watching them progress.
In the final analysis, we all grow up with our own perspectives of how our worlds should unfold, regardless of the best laid plans of parents. All of our kids turned out great, so I guess our experiments as parents can be deemed successes, and hopefully they will see that while we are imperfect adults, we tried our best to do what was right at the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment