Listen to this story: If you’re in the car, or cooking, or just lazy… you can listen to me read this story for you, in the audio file below.
Some Sundays I take my daughter to gymnastics, and it’s all the dads. Maybe you know the types. Most unshaven for days or weeks. Not really beards as such, just scruff. A parental detritus of the face.
Schlubby, overweight dads in team apparel. So much team apparel - often multiple teams on the one dad.
Balding, tired dad, scooping cold crap out of a Tupper with a baby spoon, unselfconsciously shoveling it into his gob.
Laptop dad, bouncing his knee as he clicks through files. He’s busy! Working, or watching YouTube? Who knows? Who cares?
The harried dad who sneaks back to the car before the first cartwheel. Probably another Starbucks dad. They’re countless. The discarded, seasonal cups ubiquitous.
The phone dads, of course. Hunched over like Rodin’s Thinker, doing the absolute opposite. Their brains almost visibly leaving their skulls as they scroll, drifting into the rain-stained rafters of this drafty, repurposed warehouse in a sketchy corner of south LA. Their kids could be snorting blow off the beam bars for all they know. Click. Tap. Scroll.
Most times I shower at least, put on clothes without drawstrings or visible elastic. I try not to look at my phone, I can do that anywhere. Instead I try to follow the lesson, wait for my daughter to wave. Wave back. I’m trying.
Why does dads engaging in this kind of childcare, on a weekend, still look so much like penance to me? I wonder. Like they crawled through broken glass to get here? I picture their partners, at home, with a steaming cup of coffee, in silence. Or bent over in a yoga class somewhere, eyes gently shut so long they forget they’re not sleeping, listening to their own breath for the first time in weeks. A rare moment’s peace.
Anywhere but the low-slung, sporadically furnished loft the management confines us to during gym class, where you can barely spot your kid anyway. No parents on the gym floor, it’s a rule. Have they forgotten who pays for all this glorified playground equipment?
There’s some moms here, too, of course. A little more chatty, animated.
Gussied up moms in full make-up, water bottles worth more than my watch.
Given-up moms, dressed worse than their kid.
Workout moms, head-to-toe in the latest spandex technology known to mall-kind.
Ugg boots, slippers, pajama pants, you name it. Are they comfortable? Are we comfortable, everybody? Are we happy? Because we look like crap, honestly. I know it’s Sunday morning, but we’re out of the house. Can we try?
Is this what church looks like these days? I doubt it. If we turned those phone cameras on ourselves we’d be horrified, or we wouldn’t. Because maybe we don’t really see ourselves anymore. Not as individuals, anyway. We are indentured drivers. Blood concierges. Awaiting the bell. “Yes, dear.”
There I am, no better, really. Leaning in a corner of the loft. I’ve never uttered a single word to one of these other parents. Not once. Why? I’m not antisocial. Why do they repulse me so much? Or do they want no part of me, either. What would I make of me in this context? It’s not like I’m batting them away.
I feel invisible. There, but not there. Merely floating above my child’s experience of childhood (the loft is an apt metaphor), rather than engaging in it. The impermanence of being in a fully supervised space, replete with kid activities, which you were merely required to drive your child to, is unmatched by any quantum physics, I swear. I am between worlds. Thinking about the dull ink of newspaper or a quiet weekend nap, surrounded by full-bleed primary colors and the cacophony of pop music mixed in children’s screams. You could run a hand through me.
(I was at a birthday party recently where a dad seemed to be in complete control of this phantom state. He embraced it. He didn’t speak to anyone, or hide by way of looking at his phone, for the entire hour and a half-plus. It was incredible. He would sit or stand slightly removed from everyone, head gently bowed, and only talked to his kid when summoned. I kept drifting out of conversations with other parents I knew, just to visually check on him, to see if he was real. It was an amazing feat. I almost congratulated him, but didn’t want to break his streak. I hope I see him again.)
Meanwhile, down on the gym floor, god knows what is going on. A surly gaggle of teens, or people who still look like teens, near-silently herd small groups of kids under ten - almost all girls - around the multi-color, spongy floor. Teaching them... falling? Rolling? Balancing, I guess. You can almost see the instructors calculating how much this shit pays per second, as they hold your kid’s ankles in a wobbly handstand.
After class I always ask my daughter her favorite part. The trampoline and the foam pit, she invariably says. Sounds fun. But kind of frivolous for the money, no? Does she at least remember any of her classmates’ (and potential friends) names? Never. Nor the instructor’s. She just hands me the stickers they dole out at the end of class and asks me to place them on my dash, which is by now festooned like a child’s bedroom door.
But she loves going to gymnastics, apparently. So I drive her home feeling like I’ve given her one of those rare gifts she can keep without holding. Another plank in her internal framework. The gym debits our bank account automatically each month and every Sunday morning my wife or I deliver her again. She tumbles and falls, and waves, and I try to wave back, while floating away.
All too true
Had exactly the same experience with ballet lessons. The students were harangued by painfully thin mid European women as they were put through interminable attempts to look delicate, graceful and feminine. All the fathers were out on another planet.