Finding confidence

I was certain I didn't have the mechanical skills, the spatial relations, or the brute strength to install the bike rack on the car.

That's a Rick-job, I told myself. He's good at these endeavors. He's good at making things and fixing things. He's capable with mechanical systems and manual labor. If I do it, the bike rack will tumble off as soon as I start driving. Not only that, but the bikes we attach to it will fall into the street. I'll lose my bike rack and our bikes, and I'll humiliate myself in front of other drivers, but worst of all, I could cause a serious accident to someone behind me.

Nope, not my kind of thing. We all know what we're good at. I can write and cook and interview people. But attach a bike rack to a car and feel confident it will stay there? No way. That's the kind of thing I turn to Rick for.

Except that Rick was at work for the day, and Tim and I were home for the Monday holiday, and both of us thought it would really be great if we could get our bikes in for maintenance on this first warm sunny spring day so that the next time we have weather this beautiful and a day off, we can go for a ride.

And Tim had none of my qualms. Like most teenage boys, he's pretty confident in his ability to master the physical world, rightly or wrongly. In just the past few weeks, he has proven himself able to throw a change-up pitch and execute a three-point turn in the driveway. On Easter, shortly before dinner was served, he nonchalantly picked me up and carried me across the kitchen.

So he didn't really see why we couldn't go ahead and install the bike rack ourselves. "Because it won't stay on," I told him. "Because it's complicated. Because we won't be able to tell if we attached it correctly or not."

But Tim disagreed. "Let's just do it," he grumbled. "It will be fine."

He lifted it onto the car; I connected the belts. He tightened the cinches; I fastened the clips.

Together, we lifted the two bikes onto the rack.

Nothing fell. I tugged and shifted its various parts to see what would happen. It held fast.

"See, Mom," Tim sighed. "It wasn't that hard."

I wasn't convinced, but Tim suggested we drive down the driveway and see. Our driveway is long and somewhat pothole-ridden; it seemed like a reasonable test. At the end of the driveway, rack and bikes were still intact.

So we drove to the bike repair shop. I somehow expected more credit. "How did you get these bikes here?" I expected the bike technician to ask. "You know how to install a bike rack yourself?"

Needless to say, no marveling at our aptitude was forthcoming on his part. His job is to help people with their bikes, not to wonder how they got there. If he was happy to see me, it was because we represented new business, not because it meant I'd overcome years of assumptions that I wasn't capable of a task like this without Rick's oversight.

When I got home, I registered for my first half-marathon, something I've been vacillating on for months. I want to do it, but some days I think I can and other days I think I can't, and I didn't want to register until I was sure.

But Tim set a good example yesterday. Although there are few apparent similarities between installing a bike rack and running a half-marathon, it was Tim's confidence that stayed with me once we'd dropped off the bikes and been assured that the leaky tires would be replaced within a day or two. "We can do it ourselves, Mom," he had said. Tim wasn't amazed to think we could do this without Rick; he was slightly dismayed by my belief we couldn't. I'm not sure I can run a half-marathon. But I might as well tell myself I can, just as Tim did with the bike rack. I'll try it and find out.

Learning from one's children is always an interesting experience. In most ways, I don't particularly want to act like a 15-year-old boy. But this time it served me well. "Sure, I can probably do this," I told myself as I clicked the “pay now” button on the registration site for the half-marathon. It's still three months away, but I think I can do it. And if I'm right, I'll have Tim to credit for my confidence.

Baseball chatter

It may well be the case that “In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” as Tennyson so famously put it, but you wouldn’t know it from the conversation in the back of my car as I drive my 15-year-old and his friends home, late on a spring afternoon.

All that these young men’s thoughts seem to be turning to right now is baseball. Whether they have a chance at making the starting line-up. Which of their freshmen teammates under- or overestimates their own abilities. Who is likely to be called up to junior varsity before the season ends. Which drills were most difficult at today’s practice, and which ones most rewarding. Whether it makes sense that pitchers and catchers are required to run approximately five times more laps than their teammates representing other positions.

I know many parents believe the one upside of drawing carpool duty is getting to eavesdrop; in the commute from school to home (or from school to home to home to home, depending on the number of kids in the carpool), they furtively fill up on adolescent gossip and rumination on topics social, academic, and societal.

But not in our carpool. In our carpool it’s all baseball, all the time. At least this week. Last week too, come to think of it. Pretty much every week since baseball tryouts took place in mid-March.

And I have to admit, I think it’s adorable.

These aren’t little kids, after all. I’ve known not only my own son the pitcher but also his friend the catcher and his other friend the first baseman since T-ball days, although back then there was no need for carpooling since every parent attended every game and every practice. 

Now that they’re in high school, we’re a little more detached when it comes to sports; we’ll go to their home games when work schedules allow, and maybe the occasional away game if the distance is convenient, but certainly not practices. Instead, we make up complicated schedules for whose turn it is to drive them home on which days. (For a short time we tried leaving the carpool scheduling up to the boys, but we quickly discovered each boy was certain that his own mother was happy to drive every single day if needed. It turns out 15-year-old boys are not actually the best judges of their mothers’ time or availability.)

And now that they’re in high school, I’d understand if other interests preoccupied their thoughts once practice ended. I expected the conversation floating forward from the backseat to involve friends. Cafeteria pranks. School dances. The latest STD film screened in health class.

But all they talk about is baseball. To my surprise, once spring arrives, even now at fifteen with the baritone voices of young men and the promise of driver’s licenses less than a year away, these boys’ thoughts turn lightly not to love but to double plays and the infield fly rule.

Perhaps what makes this so endearing is the irrefutable fact of how fleeting it is. In just a year or two, even if they continue to play on the spring team, other thoughts will preoccupy their drive time: SAT scores, college applications, finding a summer job, paying for the prom. I find myself envying their absolute lack of distraction. Adulthood, it seems to me, is one big tangled forest of distractions. I want to be able to focus on anything at all with as much unadulterated concentration as these boys give to baseball.

But I also just want to appreciate the fact that they can do this, knowing in reality I can’t. Driving this carpool may get boring after a while; I don’t really know all that much about baseball myself, and the time might come when I’d welcome talk of cafeteria pranks rather than pitching signals.

Right now, though, I’m just happy to let their sports jargon fill my ears. At the moment, it’s all they care about. Soon enough, like Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s young men, their thoughts will lightly turn to love, and to all manner of other things. In reality, their thoughts already have, most of the time.

But not on weekday afternoons during baseball season. So while it lasts, I’ll cherish this.