Three years ago I volunteered to coach my sons' team in the local basketball league, for the usual reason men coach — because none of the other fathers would do it. I begged and snivelled and pleaded, but they all backed away slowly, their mouths filled with creative excuses. One guy told me it was my moral responsibility to coach the boys because not one but two of the boys were my sons, so there.
So I coached that first year, and then again the following year because none of the other fathers would do it and I had a year's experience anyway. I coached again last year because, heck, I have always been the coach for as long as anyone can remember. Partly as a way to try to stay sane I have kept notes about certain adventures and misadventures.
There was the time I started practice by making them run laps and then got into an interesting discussion with a dad about grilling fish and forgot about the boys until one of them threw up after running 30 laps. There was the time my point guard used such foul and reprehensible language to the referee that we had to call two time-outs in a row we were laughing so hard. And the time our centre told me he couldn't play because a girl he had a crush on was in the gym and she was making him all nervous and, could I maybe ask her to leave? And the time we only had four players but won anyway — I thought I was going to have to carry all four boys home after that.
And there was the game we played one time that was as close to perfect as I think I will ever see on this wild sweet holy earth, my boys sprinting and cutting and whipping passes and driving to the hole and not taking wild shots and actually playing defence and hitting the boards in such exuberant fashion that sometime during the second half I leaned back in my rickety folding chair in the echoing elementary-school gym and wanted to cry for reasons that remain murky to me.
There were other reasons to cry. There was a boy with a black eye and bruises who told me he fell down the stairs but when I asked him if his dad was coming to the