You know, August 10 really wasn't that long ago, but it feels like forever since that last blog post.
Summer is way over. The kids are in school. Josh has not only started his fall soccer, he's almost done with it. The travel mayhem has started again.
Oh, and basketball has come again. My fourth season as a coach.
Last season was difficult. And this season started with deep, overwhelming fear. Last year, the head coach and I had some significantly different approaches to motivation. I felt mine was positive while his was negative. The Bobby Knight approach to coaching just doesn't work on 12-14 year old boys. Coaching through fear, intimidation, humiliation, and the occasional physical altercation did some things to me that brought my own childhood back with frightening clarity.
I might have been a 34-year old man standing there during last year's practices with a whistle around my neck, but every discourtesy done during those practices opened up the mind of a terrified 10-year-old boy facing a father with a very long fuse, but no control when the fuse burned out. I was transported back to those incidents that left such deep scars when my father yelled at me and told me how worthless I was and left me broken, physically and psychologically, on the floor of my room. And my mother stayed silent and out of the way. And here again I was, standing in the gym, watching my father wearing another man's face do the things my father did. And, like my mother, I stood there silent.
Over the last year, I have thought about those basketball practices over and over. Like every man terrified of conflict, I played the conflict fantasies through in my mind - what I wish I had done, confronting the other coach with my anger and my courage. But it all stays in my head. Because while I have the anger, I don't have the courage. I never have. Even now, as a grown man, personal conflict makes me start to cry. Really cry. And the shame is unbearable.
So, this past Monday morning, I woke at 4am and my mind was on the first day of practice. And the stress was unbelievable. Can I do this again? Can I stand by and watch these young men be ripped apart and left to die?
Do I have a choice since I don't have the courage to stop it? Where do I draw the line between protecting my players and respecting the authority of the head coach? Do I have the guts to step in front of him and tell him to stop in the middle of practice in front of the players knowing that the chances are my chin will start to quiver and my breathing will become ragged?
No. I can't do that. I can't take that much shame.
So I have to do something now. Before it happens again. Before the visions of a broken boy become so overwhelming again that I find myself once again huddled in a corner seeing the shade of my father and his belt looming over me.
And I did. And, what a relief, he listened and admitted that he wants to be different this year. And I even told him that he can't manhandle them that way. He looked at me in clear disbelief that this was an issue, but he must not know. He must not know how dirty and guilty and worthless being touched like that makes people feel. He must not know the despair of not having a safe place. But he said OK.
And I didn't cry. I didn't even come close.
But I still need help. I've spent the last 25 years like this and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of being terrorized by intimidating people. I'm tired of only expressing my opinion in the safety of my own mind. I'm tired of the fear that overwhelms me every time I see injustice. And I'm really really tired of staring into the eyes of a coward every morning in the mirror.
But worst of all, I see the same cowardice in the small eyes of my children when they look at me. I have taken my lack of control and imposed it upon them. I have taken away their opportunity for healthy conflict and replaced it with authoritarian discipline. And now the guilt of who I've become wars with the shame of who I've always been.
I can't be alone, can I? Am I the only man out there afraid of his own shadow? Am I the only man living passive-aggressive fantasies? The women support each other, but we men can't face the shame. But shame or not, I refuse to turn my kids into this. Let them shell out the cash for therapy when they are 25, but not because their father turned them into cowards.
Not that. Never that.
