by Tim O'Brien
Some nights, after lights out, I go to his bedroom door. I don’t open it. I don’t knock. I just stand and listen.
He wanted something so much.
He tried so hard.
He cared—and still cares—about putting large orange balls inside baskets. How sad. How preposterously human.
* * *
There is not a Hoosiers conclusion to this, but now, after the passage of two more months, Timmy is playing AAU basketball. His tryouts went well—well enough that he was selected by a good team. He is an improved player, especially his three-point shot, but speed, physical strength, and general aggressiveness remain problems. On defense, he too often reaches for the ball instead of swiftly shuffling his feet; on offense, he sometimes lets his teammates take charge, waiting in a corner near the baseline instead of cutting to the basket or toward the action. He dislikes contact. He gets outmuscled under the basket. Still, he has begun to fight for rebounds now and then; he passes better, shares the ball, looks for the open man, and is a committed team player.
All in all, his relentless practice has paid off, and in six months, if he keeps at it, he may have a reasonable shot at making his school’s junior varsity team. Will he be a starter? Probably not. Will he someday move up to the varsity squad? Hard to tell. Maybe—only maybe—by his senior year. But I fear it will be a terrible and continuing struggle. He will need to overcome—or somehow compensate for—his essential gentleness, his essential decency, and what appears to be a low dosage of natural, spontaneous, genetic ferocity. Timmy is competitive, yes, but not ferociously competitive. He wants the ball, but not ferociously so. He likes to score, but not ferociously so. He likes to win, but not ferociously so.
For me, as a father who desires happiness for his son, there will be some tough times ahead. More failure is coming. And I’m helpless to prevent it. In a way, I guess, this funnels down to a pathetic and paralyzing recognition of the limits of fatherhood. I cannot be my son. As much as my muscles twitch when I watch Timmy on the court, I cannot jump for him or run for him or attack the basket for him. I cannot will ferocity into a gentle soul.
In this regard, Timmy reminds me of me. I am not naturally gifted at much of anything, including the making of these sentences, but, like my son, I do keep trying and trying, mostly failing, and although the result may be infelicitous or plain abysmal in the end, I will not quit until this maybe book says what I need it to say. In any endeavor, I tell Timmy, trying and triumph are different things. Triumph without trying is sterile; trying without triumph is enriching. Not that I wish bad fortune for my son. Despite his struggles, I cannot stop yearning for a day—or even a moment—when Timmy’s dreams come true. If not the basketball dream, then perhaps a science dream or an art dream or a falling-in-love dream. Kids change. Kids grow up. And even if the odds are stacked against a career in the NBA, my son’s stubborn persistence will surely serve him well as he dribbles his way into adulthood.
* * *
Only an hour ago, Timmy came into my study. “Back when I was a little kid,” he said, “we used to play golf together. Do you remember that?”
“Of course,” I told him. “You didn’t like it much.”
“No, not very much,” said Timmy, “but I think we should start doing it again. You and me and Tad. Maybe I’ll get good at it.”
“Okay,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean I’m giving up basketball. I love basketball.”
“Fair enough.”
My heart bubbled with delight. We have a tee time tomorrow.
51
Home School
Your assignment, boys, is to read a short novel called Billy Budd, Sailor, and then to talk to me about moral choice.
We will discuss these questions:
— If you were the captain of a British naval vessel in the mid-1800s, would you hang Billy Budd until he is dead for his purported crime?
— What exactly was Billy’s crime? First-degree murder? Second-degree murder? Involuntary manslaughter? None of these?
— What does the word “crime” mean? Does it have different meanings in different contexts?
— When, if ever, should mercy intersect with military, civil, or divine law?
— What do the words “extenuating circumstances” mean? (Look this up online or in a dictionary.) In general, what kinds of things might constitute extenuating circumstances if you were to ignite a stink bomb in your teacher’s wastebasket? Would the school principal be likely to find those circumstances extenuating?
— In your own lives, have you ever been in the position of having to make a choice like that of Captain Vere—a choice among competing possibilities, each of which has its own moral merits and moral deficiencies? For instance, have you had to choose between telling a kind lie and an unkind truth?
— Following our discussion, you will write a story organized around the dramatic principle of moral choice. Make the choice complicated, Timmy. Make it difficult, Tad. The most agonizing choices, both in stories and in the real world, are not always between right and wrong; some choices are between one cherished value and another cherished value. (Jack values his life of steadfast honesty, but he also values his two young children, and so one day his younger son steals a friend’s . . . A Roman Catholic nun values her vow of chastity, but she also values her newfound love for Jack, a widower with two young children, and so one day she says to Jack . . . A warship captain named “Starry” Vere values order and discipline aboard his ship, but he also values fairness and justice and ordinary rectitude, and so one day a handsome young sailor named Billy Budd is falsely accused of inciting mutiny . . .) You get the idea, right? But I want each of you to invent your own story. If you get stuck, think back on the fairy tales of your childhood. Think about Huck Finn and Romeo and Juliet. Ask yourself: What would I do in those situations? And then ask: What should I do in those situations? My hope, of course, is that this exercise may help prepare you for what will eventually drop on your doorstep as you approach adulthood. You will have to choose. And your choices will sometimes involve what Reinhold Niebuhr calls “proximate solutions to insoluble problems.” In these inevitably fuzzy circumstances, I may not always be available to offer advice, so I’ll offer it now: Pretend your life is a story. Then write a good one.
52
Home School
I’ve looked at the first drafts of your stories, and a few problems need to be addressed.
Review the difference between “lie” and “lay.” A good number of TV personalities, politicians, poets, recording artists, newspaper columnists, pediatricians, and crime writers should do the same.
Do not be terrified of emotion. Be terrified of fraudulence.
Stories are not puzzles. Puzzles are puzzles.
Information is not story. Information is information.
Pay close attention to the issue of simultaneity. In life, as in a good story, numerous things occur at the same time, even when your attention might be riveted on a rattlesnake coiled to strike. In other words, when you’re writing stories, do not juggle only a single ball. (Single-ball jugglers rarely get hired twice to entertain at birthday parties.) Fill your stories with “nice contradiction between fact and fact.” Fill your stories with food and drink, the weather, tired feet, dental appointments, phone calls from out of the blue, upset stomachs, flat tires, pens that run out of ink, undelivered letters of apology, traffic jams, malfunctioning answering machines, forgotten birthdays, swollen bladders, and spilled coffee. These and other intrusions must be endlessly juggled as we make our way along the story line of our lives. Therefore, don’t insulate your characters from the random clutter that distracts and infuriates and entertains all of us.
Similarly, do not let excessive plotting ruin your story any more than you would allow it to ruin your life.
Bear in mind that stories appeal not only to the head, but also to the stomach, the back of the throat, the tear glands, the adrenal glands, the funny bone, the nape of the neck
, the lungs, the blood, and the heart—the whole human being.
You are writing not only for your contemporaries. You are writing also for a seventeen-year-old student who might encounter your story two hundred years from now, or for an old man in Denmark in the year 2420, or for a lonely widow sitting at a futuristic slot machine in the year 4620.
Also, believe it or not, you are writing for those who have preceded you—for Thomas Jefferson, for the children of Auschwitz, and for a father who may no longer be present to read your story.
Surprise yourself. You might then surprise your reader.
Do not fear (or deny) your own ignorance. It makes for curiosity.
Do not fear (or deny) ambiguity. Though the prose itself may be crystalline, good stories almost always involve people snagged up in confusing moral circumstances. Think of Raskolnikov. Think of Charles and Emma Bovary. Think of your dad.
Pay attention to every word. There are twenty-six letters in the English alphabet, plus a few punctuation marks. Those twenty-six letters, if poorly arranged, will result in mediocrity, infelicity, or plain gibberish. But from those same twenty-six letters, well arranged, come the sonnets of Shakespeare. The letters of the alphabet can be likened to the four chemical bases—adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine—that constitute the building blocks of all plant and animal DNA. The precise sequence, or order, of the bases determines whether an organism becomes a polar bear or a dachshund or William Shakespeare. Therefore, along the same lines, I suggest you do all you can to arrange the letters of the alphabet in exacting sequences.
Read your writing aloud. Does it make sense? Does it make music?
Timmy—I think you meant to write “décor” and not “decorum.”
Tad—I think you meant to write “hunk” and not “honk.”
Otherwise, great first drafts! Your second drafts are due on Thursday.
53
The Debating Society
Over the past week, I’ve had two irritating conversations with Timmy and Tad, each of which I will report here without comment, except to say I am not exaggerating. And except to wonder if other fathers have been able to deal with similar conversations without resorting to prescription drugs.
* * *
“So,” I said to Tad two nights ago, “you haven’t brushed your teeth. I asked you to do that, didn’t I?”
“I guess so.”
“You guess so?”
“Yes, but you didn’t say when.”
“When did you think I meant?”
“Well, I didn’t know you meant right away. I thought you meant pretty soon.”
“Tad, I asked you at nine o’clock. It’s ten-thirty.”
“That sounds pretty soon to me.”
“Did you forget?”
“Not exactly. I got distracted.”
“By what?”
“By everything else. There’s a lot to remember when you’re a kid.”
“But just now, when I walked in here, you were playing Minecraft.”
“It’s not Minecraft, it’s Clash Royale.”
“Okay, but you were playing a game, right?”
“Not really.”
“What does ‘not really’ mean?”
“I was watching other people play—these experts—they’re amazingly good at it.”
“And what about your teeth?”
“Teeth?”
“Isn’t that what we’re talking about? I asked you to brush your teeth and you didn’t do it.”
“But I was on my way when you came in here.”
“On your way?”
“Pretty much.”
“You were staring at your computer.”
“Was I?”
“Go brush your teeth.”
“Now?”
* * *
Two days earlier, on a school night, Timmy asked if he could watch the last quarter of an NBA playoff game.
“What about your Fahrenheit 451 essay?” I said. “Is it finished?”
“Almost,” he said.
“How close to finished is ‘almost’?”
“I just have to write the conclusion. A few more sentences.”
“Okay,” I said, “go write six sentences—good ones. If you do that, I’ll watch the last quarter with you.”
An hour or so later, Timmy returned to the living room, turned on the TV set, and sat down beside me.
“Just to be sure,” I said, “you did write six sentences, right?”
“Almost,” he said.
“How many exactly?”
“Two and a half.”
“Two and a half sentences in the last hour?”
“Well, that’s really close to six,” Timmy said.
“It’s not even half.”
“It’s almost half.”
“Yes, you’re right. And so now you can almost watch the basketball game.”
“What?”
“You can almost watch the game.”
“That’s not fair. You told me that on some days you can’t write even one good sentence. Kids get writer’s block, too.”
“Turn off the TV.”
“Maybe the game will inspire me.”
“Turn off the TV.”
“But what if my conclusion is already good?”
“How good can it be? Does a good essay stop with half a sentence?”
“Okay, but it’ll get good.”
“Turn off the TV.”
54
Sushi, Sushi, Sushi
This one is Meredith’s bite of sushi. I have no recollection of the incident, but my wife brought out an old notebook and pointed to a page dated October 2008:
“Last night I was putting Timmy down. We had read stories and turned off the light. Timmy asked if I would go get Daddy.
“I said, ‘Why?’
“He said, ‘Daddy’s warmer.’
“I said, ‘What?’
“He said, ‘You’re softer but Daddy’s warmer.’
“So I went to get Tim, who climbed into bed with Timmy and said, ‘What’s this about Daddy being warmer?’
“Timmy said, ‘You’re warmer and Mommy’s softer.’
“Tim said, ‘Really?’
“Timmy said, ‘Dad, it’s like this. You’re the blanket and Mom’s the pillow.’ ”
* * *
Another tasty morsel from Meredith’s notebook, also dated October 2008:
“Today Tad saw a plane flying overhead.
“He said, ‘Mommy! A plane! A plane!’
“I said, ‘Where do you think it’s going?’
“Tad said, ‘Umm . . . Africa.’
“So I said, ‘What do you think they’ll do when they get there?’
“Tad said, ‘Land.’ ”
* * *
A block from our house is a small park where, for many, many hours, Meredith and I pushed the boys on a pair of adjacent swings. On an afternoon in 2009, when Tad was four, he watched his brother leap from his swing as it reached its highest point.
“Parachute!” Timmy cried.
Tad was transfixed.
Again and again, Timmy jumped and splashed down in a mix of sand and pebbles. “Parachute!” he kept yelling, mostly at Tad, who was plainly working up his nerve.
Eventually, Tad told me to stop pushing him.
He sat on his swing for ten minutes, motionless, two feet from the ground, then he released his grip and very carefully toppled into the sand and pebbles.
“No parachute!” he yelled at Timmy.
* * *
One morning, Timmy looked up at me while we were playing checkers. He was five years old. He said, “You know, I’ve been thinking. Why do bears live in the clouds?”
I blinked.
“I don’t know why,” I said.
“You should find out.”
* * *
An entry from our babysitter’s journal, July 3, 2007: “Tad went to the doctor and is supposed to work his way up to 20 words. Tad’s words so far: Momma, Da-
da, juice, Elmo, please, dog, mine, awake, Nemo, bye-bye, roar, blue, high, catch, uh-oh, shhh, yes, no, choo-choo, and au revoir.” (Out in the dark, a man in a straw boater is hissing, “Au revoir, my ass.”)
* * *
From the time they were three or four, Timmy and Tad received swimming lessons in our backyard pool. Meredith presided. I sometimes watched. For the most part, Tad took to the water like a guppy, but Timmy had serious trouble at first. (Even as a baby, he’d hated water.) One afternoon I watched him stand at the edge of the pool. He dipped a foot in. He yanked it out. “This water,” he said, “is way too wet.”
* * *
The boys used to build bedroom forts out of blankets, chairs, pillows, books, boxes, brooms, wastebaskets, curtain rods, cardboard, tennis rackets, window shades, and pieces of rope. One morning Timmy came to me and said, “Uh-oh. The fort fell down.”
“What is it now?” I asked.
“A mess,” he said.
* * *
And then an instant later Timmy is fourteen, deep-voiced, and he says, “Dad, I’m scared.”
“About what?”
“About growing up.”
* * *
Tad, Meredith, and five-foot-eleven Timmy on my lap, July 2018
