his own sons or grandsons achieve some level of athletic prowess and he pours his attention and hope into them, only to be let down all over again when they too let go of those dreams for a practical life.
After he married my mother, and when he took a job as a high-school gym teacher, he brought in extra money by coaching a swim team on which all of his children participated. I thought it was odd that he’d made this transition given the thickness of his body that looked as if it would have a difficult time with buoyancy and speed.
I was not an athletic kid, although I tried to be. I reluctantly joined his swim team but never won that many ribbons. I ran cross-country but stayed at the back of the pack. I even played football and basketball and baseball but my discomfort and disinterest were so apparent to the coaches and teammates and spectators that they allowed me to stay in the background.
As a child, I remember my father pacing on the side of the pool yelling orders to his team. He loomed over them and wore a pair of faded blue trunks and a baseball cap to protect his baldhead. He carried a whistle around his neck. The whistle lay in a heavy mat of white hair on his chest. In these early memories, he hadn’t yet acquired the beer belly he’d spend the rest of his life trying to control at the insistence of my mother. Instead, his body was muscular and lean with strong legs and powerful arms. He was a real presence striding up and down the pool, and we respected the way his physicality mirrored his no-nonsense manner.
By the time he’d warned me about getting too big, his body had loosened and his chest had fallen like a woman’s.
I balked at his suggestion.
“I’m just telling you that it gets to be a burden when you get older.”
Now, I understand what he meant but I’m stubborn and tenacious and unwilling to admit that anything he taught me was for my own good. So, I go to the gym religiously and lift weights. I walk for miles and watch the number of carbs I take in as if I were training for a contest: a marathon or a wrestling match or a TV show. I weigh myself three or four