March 19th, 2004

This past week marks the unfortunate end of my extended family vacation/paternity leave, and my return to the work force. The first few days were a little disjointed, my work email held 96 unread messages, by mailbox was full of phone messages, some of them over three weeks old (those are fun calls to return), and my desk, strangely enough, was just as cluttered as I had left it. I felt like I was wading in a fast moving river, where every step is contemplated and deliberate, and slow like molasses, and every time you pick your head up the water goes rushing by so fast your eyes can hardly catch up. But I have readjusted more or less; the biggest difference that I notice now is that I am out of the office when the clock hits 4:30pm, and not a minute later, off to the freeway, racing home to see my little boy. The ride home seems twice as long.

This week also saw the return of college basketball’s year end tournament. “March Madness” has officially settled in on the television set at home, and the radio speakers in my car. Landon and I have already taken in several of the games together, although he rarely makes it to the final buzzer without dozing off.

Watching the games with Landon sitting shotgun next to me on the couch has set my mind wandering about what it might feel like to be a parent at a sporting event, watching their child compete. Last weekend we went to watch our next door neighbor Brooke compete in the championship game in her youth basketball league. The parents in attendance were so excited, and most of them cheered loudly for all of the young girls on the court. I could commiserate completely with the desire to have their child succeed; I could only imagine how gratifying it must feel to watch the look of accomplishment that spreads rapidly across after a young child’s face after they make a play contributing to the game. I doubt if anyone there even noticed the scoreboard, which was good because Brooke’s team, the Vaqueros, got annihilated. At one point in the game the Vaqueros had yet to score, and were already down by 15 points, a huge margin in a game of eight year old girls. One of Brookes teammates stole the ball, drove the court, and scored – the whole place erupted. The whole place that is, except for the opposing team’s coach, who was busy storming onto the court, blasting the referees, insisting they reverse their call, because of some defensive press violation. I guess when I said that nobody was watching the scoreboard I was wrong, because it appeared that’s all this coach cared about. After a several minute long tirade he bullied the refs into reversing the call, the points came off the board, and the little girl who scored, looked completely baffled as to why her great play, had suddenly been negated. The gymnasium erupted with jeers, but the coach looked on smugly, content that he had increased his team’s already insurmountable lead. It’s an incredibly frustrating part of youth sports, the coach who loses sight of why the kids are there in the first place, I hope to coach Landon some day, and I hope to never be that kind of poor example.

I don’t have any delusions of grandeur about Landon playing in the NCAA, his father, all stretched out barely hits the 5’10” mark, and weighs in at a soaking wet 145 lbs, but in the case that he does play in collegiate athletics, I can only imagine what a thrill it would be to watch him compete. Then again, it is probably a thrill to watch your kid do anything that they enjoy. Right now I get a kick out of watching him struggle to hold his head up and look me in the eye, while he sits on my lap. It would be great though if Landon does enjoy spending some time on a trout stream with his pops some day….a father can only hope.