Well, the playoffs start tonight. KD (my soon to be 14-year-old) and Captain Mommy (my wife Stephanie) are diehard Giants fans, especially of Buster Posey. I roll hard with the Dodgers. So it’s an interesting time in our house. Tons of good natured ribbing. Tons of family time. Lots of analysis between me and KD. And more… One from the archives.
A few days ago, KD was reading the paper and updating me, rapid-fire, on Buster Posey’s stats. I was also reading the paper and asked him to keep it down a bit. Literally in mid-sentence he hit the brakes and didn’t say another word. Off to his room he went.
I was stunned that he was stunned and left. I felt especially guilty because KD and I have been a bit chippy with each other lately. I know it could be way worse between us, and we still have plenty of good moments, but we’re just a bit off. So when I shut down our sports talk, I felt particularly badly, and I wondered where, when and how we’d connect.
I had a few different options (e.g. taking off and going to the gym) but none seemed better than going into his room, where I found him in his homemade catcher’s gear, pretending to be Buster Posey. I suppose I could have talked through what had happened. Instead, I joined him an exhausting game of “pretend baseball,” which includes pitching, batting, and sliding (by him). Per usual, he won in the bottom of the ninth. From that point on, we were connected like burgers and fries for the rest of the day.
Being a therapist who thinks about stuff way too much, I wondered if I’d somehow manipulated him into getting our relationship back to where I wanted it. Should I have let him work through whatever he needed and come back when he was ready? Then I realized that by going back into his room, he’d gotten from me exactly what he’d needed and felt reconnected. In return, I also felt reconnected.
When I shared this with a therapist friend, he put what happened into a theoretical framework. When I went into KD’s room I’d repaired the pain I’d caused, and KD (and I) felt better. Within reason, it’s not the pain we cause that’s the most important. Instead, it’s the repair that really counts. My guilt lessened and confidence about my parenting skills cobbled back together, off I went into the rest of my day. I hope I remember all this stuff tomorrow, the first day of school.