The next day, I miss catching Timothy’s thrown football, and its plop in the inferno red leaves evokes a chuckle from me. Athletics, never my forte. A look my son’s way shows him beckoning for the ball back. In no hurry to show my poor passing technique, I cling to it. “So, what sports are you going to enter in high school, Timothy?”
“All of them.” A broad grin.
“Especially curling?”
“Curl what?”
My smile back. “I never needed you to be a doctor, you know. Let that be noted.”
A cocked head. “What?”
I swallow. “Nothing.” I lift the ball up for a pass, then tuck it in again. “I just love you, son. Will champion whatever you do.”
His shrug. “Well.” He claps his hands. “Come on. I’m the wide receiver for the Seahawks. Call a shotgun.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. Despite following the sport regularly, I nonetheless remain a casual observer. Maybe he learns all this from video games. The quandary of any parent, after all, of when their offspring’s knowledge exceeds their own. He’ll hear of sex well before we have “the talk.” Hear about affairs. Will he turn on his mother? I have no desire for that. Perhaps I frame him too naïve, freezing him at age seven forever in my mind.
Annoyed with my introspection, I fling the ball.
Plop. A terribly short arc.
His laugh. “Live ball! I can’t believe it, but the refs are saying it’s live!” A sprint, a scoop, a shuffle right to left in front of me. “He’s juking the defender! Breaking out all the moves!” Burst of speed, and he passes by me. A howl of, “Touchdown!”
I look at his upraised arms, his gleeful gasps, and one thought occurs, that he didn’t need me to win. But another, a warmth of happiness, our shared victory. And chasing both, the glacial fear that we only have so many shared moments left. That somehow, the lover will steal Timothy away from me. Or worse, Timothy absconds in search of his true father. His true home. Far from me.