SOC Sunday: Missing a Giant

Yup, it's Sunday. Time to take a short tour of my brain. You're welcome.

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If you're in the United States of America and not in a coma, you probably realize today was Superbowl Sunday. I live in New York. Our team was in the damn thing (yeah, they won - whoot!) and yet most of the day I kept forgetting. Because this is New York City and full of artsy-fartsy people and folk who hail from distant lands and all sorts of others that couldn't care less about the whole football thing. (Also sports bars and Times Square full of rabid crazed fans. We co-exist.)

I spent much of the afternoon and evening with my dear Australian friend and her kids. Her son is quite enamored of the British sport that THEY call football & we call soccer. Ethan had wanted to watch the game, not because he cares all that much about the sport but because "all the kids are going to be talking about it at school tomorrow." 

But you know? In that case, he shouldn't have been so obnoxious today and especially not made fun of his brother and the way he cries. Because that? Got him banned from screens for the rest of the day by about noon. (By bedtime that loss-of-screens-privilege had been extended through Tuesday. Yeah, it was one of THOSE Sundays.)

But moments after I declared "That was really unacceptable behavior! You just lost screens for the rest of the day, sir" I wanted to kick myself. Because I had forgotten about the damn Superbowl. I wanted to watch. Not the whole thing, but bits here and there, and certainly the halftime show and the 4th quarter.

And of course I had to be a "good, consistent parent" so couldn't backpedal on the ban. Damn! 

My husband is so not into sports (despite his childhood love of baseball and all things Yankee) was happily off to a work-related dinner tonight. And i am certainly not a big sports fan either. But the Superbowl is special.

And I used to watch it all the time. 

With my Dad. 

Everything I know about sports is because of him. He was an artist and intellectual, but also a true sports fanatic, and of all the sports he loved, it was football he loved the most, and his New York teams: The Jets and The Giants.

He raised me to know the difference between a halfback and a fullback, to quickly eyeball the yards left to a first down at the end of a play, to hold my breath waiting to see if both feet landed inbounds, inside that all-important white line when a catch was made at the field's edge.

Like tonight. He would have loved to see that masterful catch.

I missed the game tonight. And then, hearing triumphant shouts and screams erupting from my neighbors' apartments all around, turning on the TV just as the confetti cannons were going off and everyone was streaming onto the field, I watched a bit of the postgame, saw the highlights replayed, the gatorade upended, the players stroking and kissing that football shaped trophy with all the reverence of my tribe during services, touching tallis fringe to the passing torah, and then to lips.

I heard the gracious, wooden speeches with one ear, but my heart was tuned in to another voice.

"Daddy" I said, quietly, to the empty room. 

"Daddy, we won." And the cat in my lap, oblivious, kept purring as the tears slid down my face. 

I miss him now in a not-every-day way, the commonness of his absence settled in, these nearly two years passed since his passing.  And that last winter, he had slipped so far from the earth by the time he finally departed, I couldn't even rouse him for a game, not even the Superbowl.

I remember so clearly the great Jets of my childhood, the name "Joe Namath" spoken by my Dad with reverence, watching that legendary game, the '69 Superbowl, with him on our old black and white TV.

I wish you had been here with me tonight, Dad. And not the frail, faded old man of your final years (though I love, loved him none the less), but the passionate-about-art, full-of-life middle aged Dad of my childhood. Or the feisty 80 year-old in Sarasota, who was playing tennis and swimming and photographing and dancing with friends and enjoying the hell out of his retirement.

We would have raised a glass of Shiraz together and toasted our Giants. And I probably would have let Ethan watch with us, ban be damned, because your joy at a game well played could not be missed. He should have seen that, shared that.

I wish Ethan and Jake could have known you then, Dad, the full you. At six foot, a giant for your generation. A giant of a man in my heart, always. 

Dad in Florida, 1999

Dad & Me, 1969

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OK, sorry this wasn't quite a "real" SOC post. It started as one, but when I saw where it was going, I had to turn off the clock, let it spin out to its conclusion. 

And also? Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! We WON! OK, I'll stop gloating now. Sorry Boston, Vermont, & New Hampshire friends.
 
New to SOCS?  It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump.  Want to try it?  Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spell-checking. This is writing in the raw.

You can do it, too!  Click on the picture link and let's hear your 5 minutes of brilliance...

Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.

Stream of Consciousness Sunday: Newsflash: Jacob is Still Autistic

Still Sunday. Barely. No intro. Here it is:

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Jacob is clearly still on my mind these days (see last week's SOCS). And I am really bumping up hard against the wall of sadness right now.

Today he went to a birthday party for one of his classmates, and it was way the hell out in the middle of no where in Staten Island and we got thoroughly lost on the way there, but eventually did arrive. and it was just Jake & me because Ethan wouldn't be caught dead with his brother today.

And he was a little disoriented because it was and wasn't like the  Chuck E. Cheese in our neighborhood that we go to regularly.  And even though we were at a party of Special Ed, kids Jake was still way more out of it than the others, less connected, less THERE.

And it hit me in the chest today, that at almost 9, my son is looking more, rather than less autistic.  And his development veers further off form Ethan's. And the shit that you can wave off because he's little and little kids do goofy stuff, well... Not so much anymore.

Now wherever we go, if he is in his "quiet mode" (which despite my complaining that he talks all the time does happen)  when people hear me talk to my son, they look at me like "why are you talking to that big kid as if he's still a little kid" but then when he starts to talk and is clearly too loud, too repetitive, too sing-song-y, too simple in his speech for a kid his age they get it.

And then there's "the look". which I just can't take anymore. Sometimes its sympathy and sometimes its pity and sometimes its "Oh, no this is one of those kids, I hope they get off the damn bus soon"

I really am thinking of getting him a t-shirt... maybe one of those "I am autistic. What's YOUR excuse." or "Please be nice to my mom, I have autism" ones?

Because I was getting way too much of "the look" in the women's room at CEC today. And I almost said out loud into the room where nobody said anything to me but I could feel the ice daggers coming out of people's brains "Because he's too autistic to send into the men's room by himself, OK?"

And because I am just so tired of being grim here... here's a bit of levity form my other son:

Ethan tonight was being giddy in the bathroom at bedtime, getting silly and I just didn’t have the energy for it.

Me: ”Ethan, I really hope you’re not going to be a pain in the butt to put to bed tonight.” Ethan: “Well, Mom you know we can’t get everything we wish for, right?”

Smart ass.

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Yeah, that was probably a little over 5 minutes again today. So sue me.

New to SOCS?  It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump.  Want to try it?  Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spell-checking. This is writing in the raw.

You can do it, too!  Click on the link and let's hear your 5 minutes of brilliance...

Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.