Welcome to another installment of “Dad, Interrupted.”
“Dad, Interrupted” is a weekly newsletter where I describe, in lighthearted, modestly embroidered stories, my family-man misadventures with my wife, my kids, my friends, my in-laws and the assorted chuckleheads I bump into.
This week, I will indulge myself by telling two stories where I did a good job as a dad. Like probably every dad and mom out there, I have my share of regrets as a parent, of things I did that I shouldn’t have done and things I didn’t do that I should have. But sometimes you hit the ball on the sweet spot and that’s what happened here:
Clara and I are building a sand castle, dripping a watery sandy mixture to make the towers smooth and bulbous. The blueprint in our heads calls for four towers, and on top of the tallest will be a fence made of shells, and behind that fence will be the princess.
As we work, Patrick races up from the shore. Inspired by the sea, he has been deep in pirate mode, slashing the relentless waves with his shiny scimitar. But no longer.
“Dad, my sword.”
“What happened?”
“It’s gone.”
“Is some other kid playing with it?”
“No.”
“Where’d you leave it?”
“In the water. It’s gone.”
“How long ago?”
“A while.”
“Show me where.”
My chances of finding a sword in the sea are tiny, especially because Patrick loses track of time when he’s concocting stories and by now the ebbing tide could have pulled the scimitar far, far away.
We find his battle site, marked by the sword slashes in the sand that have not yet been erased by the Atlantic. I ask more locational questions. Patrick’s answers are vague.
Not hopeful, I wade into the water, peering down and also squidging around with my feet. I try to search systematically, but with few markers to go by and with everything — including probably the sword — in motion, it’s hard to know where I’ve already looked.
Still, I comb back and forth, eyes down, looking for telltale glints. Once in a while, I scan the busy beach; with all the kids around, someone may well find it.
Patrick is trying to hunt along with me, but he is getting overwrought as time passes and the sword still stays lost. It has been his trusty sidearm his whole pirate life.
Finally, I see a brightness underwater. It’s probably a shell, but I reach down anyway. It’s the sword. Just a small chunk of it had not yet been buried in the shifting sands; another minute or two and it would have been fully invisible.
Patrick sees me bend and sees me smile as my fingers make out the buried, telltale curve of the scimitar. He knows I found it before he sees it. I fish the sword up and then I skewer the waves, slash, slash, hero to my children and vanquisher of the relentless, boundless sea.
That was an easy win made doubly sweet since the odds were long. But sometimes a father’s victory takes a little more sweat. That’s what happened one spring day during the years that Clara played for a soccer team called Big Green. At this time, she was probably about 10.
Big Green fought well that day. They left it all on the field. But when the ref’s whistle blew on Brooklyn’s fabled Parade Grounds, Clara and her teammates came up short, 2-1. Yes, they generally won more than they lost, but on this Saturday they lost.
Oh, well. We’ll get them next time.
We head home and flop down in the living room to unwind.
“Dad, my legs,” Clara says as she stretches out on the couch. This was late in the soccer season, when the weather is often hot and humid, and when that happens a player’s shin guards and soccer socks conspire to create itchy little saunas on their lower legs. In those situations, Clara and I have a ritual.
Her role is to lie full length, pop cashews into her mouth, and take occasional swigs of orange juice.
“That red-haired girl plays dirty,” she says as she takes her position. Unlike her temperamental father, Clara treats injustice with equanimity, even when she is its victim. She sees bad behavior as an interesting anthropological fact.
I am sitting at the other end of the couch, Clara’s lower legs on my lap. In the ritual, my job is to loosen the shin guards and peel off the socks, and then to scratch her red, sweaty, polyester-itchy legs until they itch no more.
Clara comes from a long line of scratchers.
My father and older sister used to line up for my mother’s back-scratching services as we watched “Bonanza” on Sunday nights. And in our family we continue the practice. We have a nice sharp bamboo backscratcher that we bought in Chinatown that resides in the living room, and we also have a collapsible metal one for traveling.
But in this post-game ritual, fingernails are the optimal tool. I know I’m done when my nails have left long red tracks all over Clara’s shins, no white in sight.
Part II of the ritual is the massage. My job is to knead the muscles in her now-fully-scratched legs. The muscles demand it because soccer is a workout.
But, although I’ve got strong peasant hands from my forebears’ centuries of potato farming, there’s a problem: What my doctor calls thumb arthritis.
My mother had thumb arthritis, and she gave it to me and to both of my sisters, and if you know anything about massaging then you know that thumbs are critical. Your thumb is called an opposing thumb for a reason — it is opposite all those other digits, and if your thumbs are janky, then so is your massaging. Try massaging something with your feet. That’s what it’s like to massage someone with janky thumbs.
But there are workarounds. One is an Ibuprofen on game mornings, followed by another upon arrival home post-game. When the arthritis is dulled, the thumbs can go to work.
Of course the meds will wear off, but there are other arrows in the fatherly quiver. You can do an acceptable sort of muscle kneading with your knuckles, for example. There’s also a kind of karate chop massage, and for short periods, that isn’t too bad, either. I tried one of those wooden roller massagers and it didn’t work too well on calves — too narrow a space — but a squash ball rolled under your palm can be effective, although it can tickle if your soccer player is in that sort of mood.
As with soccer, endurance is the key for post-game massage. I had to keep the massaging going until the orange juice had been drunk, the game had been fully dissected, and the cashew bowl had been pushed away, no longer needed. Often the pills and the make-do massage techniques are enough. But sometimes they aren’t, and then you have to goad those janky thumbs on until the job is done.
The important thing is to leave nothing on the field. Just like Big Green.
Yesss Times Two