Free Yok by Tim Davys Page A

appreciative
terms.
    â€œAdam has tremendous explosiveness in his right
arm,” Dad might say, and somehow I felt proud then.
    When we turned fourteen we got to go up in the ring
and start boxing for real. We had various sorts of protection on, and if someone
got angry and blew up, training was immediately stopped. It was hard to explain.
The idea of the sport was to hit each other, and at the club everyone bragged
about their knockouts, but at the same time they were afraid of conflict and
extremely careful about the cubs and future prospects. I would go up with Adam
because we knew each other so well. Usually I could only do one or two rounds
before I was through. Dad said that was due to my footwork. I danced in the
ring, while Adam was so agile he didn’t need to jump around as much.
    I never thought about what I am sure Dad had
already seen. I was living in a dream world, absorbed by my training and my
friendship with Adam. I was doing well in school, I was happy at Fresco, but the
bubble burst one month after my fifteenth birthday when Adam unexpectedly
reported that he was quitting boxing. It was his badminton coach who forced him
to choose. He was promising in both sports, but to advance to the elite level he
had to focus. And then, under his mom’s influence, I contended, he chose the
racket and shuttlecock.
    I was devastated of course, and in Adam’s absence I
finally realized what everyone, including my father, already knew: I had fallen
far behind the others in my age group; I was a mediocre athlete.
    J ust
as in my young years I had been Dad’s biggest supporter, he now proved to be
mine. The insight about my limitations came as a shock, and I, who to this point
had been spared the anxiety of puberty, had my first existential crisis. I lost
the desire to train, I was truant from school, and I closed myself in and didn’t
help with cooking. It sounds a little ridiculous, but keep in mind that Dad and
I had cooked together basically my whole life.
    Dad left me alone. Afterward he said he understood
that it was a grief process, and that each and every one of us has to do that
sort of thing our own way. When I opened the door and came out of my room a week
later, he was as wise as you might expect. He said that training was not about
results, not at my age, it was about laying a foundation for the future. That
boxing was not a sport but a way of life. At Fresco we had our family, and a
healthy life had nothing to do with how many squats you could do.
    Slowly he lured me back to the gym. Once again it
was him and me, now that Adam was out of the picture. But I had changed forever
and couldn’t turn back time. From having listened to Dad, I now paid attention
to myself in relation to all the others. And the comparison was not flattering.
When I practiced footwork, stumbled, and lost my focus, Dad smiled in a way I
had always perceived as encouraging. Now I saw that there was something else in
his smile. When I practiced with the punching bag and wasn’t able to hold my
arms up after a couple of minutes, I felt something different in the consoling
paw he placed on my back.
    Disappointment.
    â€œYou’re still developing, Gary,” he might say when
we had dinner together. “No one knows what your reflexes, your muscles, your
coordination are going to look like in a few years. The important thing is not
to be the best. The important thing is to exercise in a way that means you feel
well.”
    I looked down at my plate. Why hadn’t I heard the
sorrow in his voice before?
    D uring
all of ninth grade I got up an hour earlier than I had to and did strength
training. Stomach, back, and shoulders. I still hoped I could live up to his
expectations. I would have done anything to avoid seeing the sorrow in his eyes
when again and again I ran too slow, hit too slackly, or didn’t move as fast as
he hoped. I also started concealing my other interests from him, because I
realized