romance

Waiting for the Next Brick

I have struggled to string together a series of events that have a solid thread. I think the thread is there, but as I’ve been bombarded with updates and nuances to my original telling, I’ve found it difficult to hold the passion and focus until the end. It’s not a slump in writing ideas. It’s a slump in knowing what to do with them once I have them. So today’s tale will start with no particular destination—unless you consider completion a worthy target.

My daughter’s twins are nearly fully cooked. Thursday was another weekly ultrasound in the parade of ultrasounds she has endured over the past few weeks. I get to play Grandpa for a little while and spoil her as she waits to hear the words she really wants to hear: “Today is the day.” She knows Monday is the day for sure, but she wouldn’t complain if the twins decided to move the schedule up a little.

If I were pregnant with twins and had endured 45 days and counting of 100-plus-degree temperatures, I’m not sure I’d be displaying the same level of calm she has. She has endured the support socks, the poor nights of sleep, the extra parenting duties while her husband starts the second year of his doctorate, and the minor inconvenience of carrying around two additional human beings in a space that was clearly designed for one.

I’m glad she didn’t watch me too closely when she was growing up. If she had, she probably wouldn’t be able to summon a fraction of this calmness. Yes, another great trait she got from her mother.

Meanwhile, my son and his wife have been planning a trip to India for nearly a year. They sincerely want to go, but immigration issues have complicated things. Now that they’re married and my son is considering a job change, they have an opportunity to carve out a month and check a pretty significant box that has been sitting on their list for a while.

There’s just one little problem.

The immigration issue is still haunting them.

Their trip is supposed to begin next week, and as I write this, they’re waiting for an appointment with an immigration officer. They need to make their case that they can travel and feel confident there won’t be problems when they return. Could they have done a better job crossing all their T’s and dotting all their I’s? Yes. Probably. My son is good at figuring things out, but he admitted he didn’t realize how complicated marriage could be when your wife isn’t a U.S. citizen.

Apparently, marriage comes with more paperwork than the greeting card industry lets on.

I’m still hopeful they can pull the trip together. But once again, I’m in the wonderful position of watching something important unfold without having much ability to do anything about it.

Then there’s hockey.

The guillotine blade came down on one of our billet boys again this week. The blade cut deep. We thought this kid was going to stick. Selfishly, he was a really good fit with our family, too. But it wasn’t to be.

Within a few hours, I was being offered the opportunity to take in some boys from the lower-skilled team. That would have meant having boys from two teams, which would have meant we would almost never have a weekend off. So that wasn’t particularly appealing.

The next day, before our chopped hockey boy even had his flight information, the billet coordinator called about another player. This one had already committed to a college to play hockey and has considerably more hockey experience than our other boy.

With the coach bringing in so many players and teasing the limit of the import rule, we’re hopeful it will be a good season. The new boy will take some adjusting, but we’re hopeful we won’t have another player cut for a few months.

Which, in hockey terms, apparently qualifies as stability.

So here I am, watching my daughter wait for two babies to decide when they’re ready, my son wait for a government official to decide whether he can leave the country, and our hockey players wait to see whether they get to stay in ours.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, I watched two guys laying bricks in our neighborhood.

The guy on top was standing on scaffolding, laying bricks on the front of a house. The guy below was stacking three bricks and tossing them up to him. The top guy’s feet were about level with the other guy’s head, and the bricks came up at just the right angle for him to grab them. The three bricks stayed together, making the whole process look almost ridiculously simple.

Toss. Catch. Lay.

Repeat.

I thought, “That has to be a pretty nice balance between speed and efficiency.”

And then I stood there watching them for a while and wondered why the rest of life couldn’t work that way.

Someone knows what needs to happen. Someone else puts exactly what they need in their hands. Nobody has to guess what the other person wants. Nobody needs an immigration appointment. Nobody needs an ultrasound. Nobody gets cut from the hockey team.

Toss. Catch. Lay.

Of course, life doesn’t work that way.

There are emotions. Guilt. Dread. Uncertainty. There are conversations where everyone knows what needs to happen, but nobody wants to be the first person to say it. There are situations where the most direct path would probably be the easiest, yet we somehow choose the scenic route through a forest of hints, assumptions, second-guessing, and paperwork.

I suppose that’s why I’ve struggled with this post. I’ve been trying to find the cleanest way to connect several stories that don’t have clean endings yet.

Maybe there isn’t one.

The twins will arrive when they arrive. My son and his wife will either make their trip or they won’t. Our new hockey boy will eventually become either another member of the family or another name in the long list of boys who passed through our house.

For now, I’m just standing around watching.

Waiting for the next brick.

The “Same Dress” Dilemma: A Hockey Jersey Saga

In the high-stakes world of hockey, your social standing isn’t determined by your bank account or your personality – it’s determined by what you wear on your back. As a billet parent with my largely non-hockey brain, I’ve learned that jerseys (or “sweaters,” if you want to sound like you know where the locker room is) are the ultimate status symbol.

If you’re wearing the jersey of a legend, you’re a god. If you’re wearing a “so-so” player from a “so-so” team, you’re a poser. These are the rules. I didn’t make them; I just live in a house full of sweaty equipment and try to keep up.

The Seasonal Rainbow of Fabric

In junior hockey, there are two normal ways to acquire these holy grails of nylon:

  • The Auction Gauntlet: The team releases specialty jerseys for every possible occasion – Halloween, Military Appreciation, St. Patrick’s Day. If there’s a holiday, there’s a jersey. This weekend, it’s St. Paddy’s. The team colors are orange and black, so naturally, they’ll be playing in bright green. After the Saturday game, the “Popular Kids” see their jerseys go for a mint, while the newbies’ jerseys hit the minimum bid and hope for a pity-purchase.
  • The Billet Buy-In: At the end of the season, for a cool $250, we get first dibs on our player’s jersey. It’s like buying a graduation gown, but with more Gatorade stains.

The Top Prospect Jackpot

Then there’s the rare third way: The Gift. Our resident “Age-Out” player recently went to a Top Prospects tournament – a speed-dating event for scouts. Except nobody’s getting a rose, just a handshake and a business card. After the tournament, he told me he’d give me his jersey from the bottom of his locker. Frankly, I didn’t think I’d ever see it.

The other day, he came home, looked at me, and said, “I have a surprise for you.” He produced a jersey that can only be described as a sentient yellow traffic pylon.

I was thrilled. I asked the important question: “Does anyone else have this?” He told me only one other existed, and it had been auctioned off to a Super-Fan who owns 35+ jerseys and supposedly writes them off as a business expense. (He’s a recently graduated teenager; I didn’t grill him on the intricacies of the tax code, though I’m curious which IRS category covers “Luminous Athletic Wear.”)

The “Who Wore It Better?” Showdown

I washed my new prize and headed to our seats in the top row. (Pro tip: The top row is where the heat rises and the beer-spilling traffic can’t block your view.)

I scanned the crowd, like I had won something, until I looked to my left. There he was. The Tax-Write-Off Titan. He was wearing The Dress. We were identical. Two bright yellow beacons in a sea of orange and black. I looked at him; he looked at me. It was the classic “Same Dress at the Prom” nightmare, only with more ice and fewer corsages.

The Vanishing Act

Suddenly, he was gone. End of the first period? Vanished. Start of the second? Still missing. I had one theory, and it was solidifying fast: he couldn’t handle the competition. He’d seen me – the amateur billet dad – rocking his exclusive investment, and he’d retreated to the concessions to lick his wounds.

As it turns out, I’m not that intimidating. My player later told me the guy actually tracked him down to get a photo together. Apparently, he wasn’t offended; he just didn’t want us standing too close and accidentally directing traffic toward the goal.

So I’ve kept my status. I’m not a poser anymore. We’re not rivals. We’re not even a coincidence.

We’re a construction zone.