All Parents Are Cowards

I have broken my wrists( 1), fingers, a tibia, a fibula, chipped( 2) some teeth, cracked( 3) a vertebra and snapped( 4) a collarbone. I have concussed myself in Tallahassee, Florida, and Portland, Oregon.

For many years I was a professional skateboarder. I first stepped on a skateboard at 11. Its nomenclature was the language of my first friendships, with wild boys who were as ill suited( 5) for school and team sports as I was. They were from broken homes. Poor homes. Group homes. We were like little cement mixers( 6), keeping ourselves in constant motion, our skateboard’s movement the only thing preventing us from hardening into blocks of pure rage.

It was through those friends that I first realized( 7) the oddity( 8) of my own home. My mother was agoraphobic, which means she was often housebound( 9), terrified of stores, cars and crowds. Vacations were impossible. As were jobs, and simple errands( 10). She cut our hair and made us clothes. Together we painted and drew. She taught me to build a bookshelf, reattach a button and make a quilt( 11). She worried that school stifled( 12) my creativity. So she encouraged me to stay home whenever I wanted. Which was often. School couldn’t compare with her attention, and in any case, I knew she needed me close by.

I felt uneasy( 13) around other kids until that day when I was 11, and I saw a boy outside my house perform an ollie (that magical, jump by which skateboarders temporarily fix their board to their feet and fly into the air). To my mother’s horror, I ran outside and begged( 14) him to let me try. From then on, I realized I needed to be skateboarding in the streets as much as she needed to be safe in the house. I stopped coming home except to shower and sleep.

At 17, I left forever and spent a decade and a half on the other edge of the continent. I rarely called her. When we talked it felt as if she was trying to siphon something vital from my cells, so I answered her inquiries with monosyllabic replies. It was a time of great resentment, a time I’m not proud of.

But in 2008, when I was 32, my mother got sick with Stage 4 lung cancer. I went home to care for her during a last-ditch( 15) chemotherapy regime, and found her in the process of throwing away everything she owned. I presented her with boxes and three options: keep, donate or trash( 16). There was plenty of clutter( 17) - liquor boxes of paperbacks, her artwork - the accumulation of a life lived predominantly inside the house. Eventually I found a box stuffed with skateboard magazines. I looked through one and discovered a picture of myself, five years younger, on a skateboard, my mouth open and my eyes fixed wide with both terror and joy.

“I didn’t think you could look at these,” I said.

“I took out subscriptions,” she said. “You never sent any photos over the years. These were the only ones of you I could get.” Then she sighed( 18), “Keep.”

A few weeks after her chemotherapy ended and I returned home to Vancouver, I woke late one night to a call from my father. My mother had died. I wept( 19), then had to get outside. I skateboarded for hours. Fresh-faced people were power-walking to work by the time I got home.

Five months later, my first son was born. I had trouble taking my eyes off him. We went on long walks. Out with his stroller( 20) in the midday traffic, I found that I had suddenly become attuned to the world’s menace, to our vulnerability in the face of it. The city throbbed( 21) with dangers that I’d long been insensate to: veering( 22) cars, potential kidnappers, carelessly discarded needles. I developed a Border collie-like attentiveness when it came to my son’s safety. When he stood at the coffee table like a cute( 23) little drunk at a bar, I hovered. After my long acquaintance with the physics of crashing, I knew exactly which noise his forehead( 25) would make if it hit the lamp and the thud his cerebellum would make on the hardwood if he fell back.

Or perhaps, I worried, it was because of my mother. My inherited brain chemistry, my angst-ridden( 26) genes taking over.

Things got worse. I kicked a dog that looked as if it was going to bite him. If he choked( 27) on something momentarily at the table, it would take me an hour and a few drinks to smooth out( 28) my nerves. Sleep became impossible.

I never imagined that parenthood meant learning to live with this constant fear. With the question of when to catch your child and when to let him fall. I’ve watched my son’s precious body bounce off concrete and brick. We had another son last year, more fearless than his brother. Someday I may be forced to hear their bones snap. And then, after all that growing and falling, they might move away, beyond my protective reach( 29). My mother was ill, but she was also right: It is terrifying to be a parent.

My sons are teaching me to calm down. I’ve seen pain shape them for the better. I’ve watched a trip( 30) to the ground leave them incrementally stronger. I even recently bought them both skateboards, which have yet to interest them.

I’m learning to forgive my mother, for her life lived inside, for her inability to cope( 31). She was afraid of everything, yet she was brave. I used to fear nothing, but parenthood has made me a coward. I wish I could tell her that now.

But when I picture her looking through those skateboard magazines, searching for her reckless( 32), angry son, only to find me falling from the sky in some place she couldn’t follow, I’m certain she understood how I felt then, how I’d feel now.

A skateboard is the most basic ambulatory machine. It has no gears( 33), offers no assistance. It will protect you from nothing. It is a tool for falling. For failure. But also for freedom. For living. On a skateboard you must stay balanced in a tempest of forces beyond your control. The key is to be brave, get low, stay up and keep rolling.

GLOSSARY

1. wrist: canell

2. to chip: esberlar

3. to crack: esquerdar

4. to snap: trencar d’un cop

5. ill-suited: inadaptat

6. cement mixer: formigonera

7. to realize: adonar-se

8. oddity: raresa

9. housebound: confinat a casa

10. errand: encàrrec

11. quilt: edredó

12. to stifle: sufocar

13. uneasy: intranquil

14. to beg: suplicar

15. last-ditch: desesperat/últim

16. to trash: llençar

17. clutter: desordre

18. to sigh: sospirar

19. to weep: plorar

20. stroller: cotxet

21. to throb: vibrar

22. to veer: canviar bruscament de direcció

23. cute: bufó

24. to hover: rondar

25. forehead: front

26. angst-ridden: ple d’angoixa

27. to choke: ennuegar

28. to smooth out: calmar 29. reach: abast

30. trip: ensopegada

31. to cope: afrontar

32. reckless: temerari

33. gear: marxa