The original date of publication for this essay is Sunday, April 25th. It is the 41st of what’s intended to be a year’s worth of essays, published on Sundays. That intention, like everything, is subject to change.
Last week’s essay: On April, the Cruellest Month
Ryan Leaf’s mom told me to grow up.
It was March of 2013, and I was on a spring break choir tour as a freshman in college. We sang a concert at a parish in Great Falls, and as was our practice, we stayed with families from the church—paired up or grouped up and sent home with generous strangers. Homestays, it’s called. The Leafs had signed up to be a homestay host.
I didn’t realize they were the Leafs. I don’t think I caught their name when they were reading off our names and the names of our hosts. I also didn’t realize they were the Leafs. Not at first. They had a Washington State sticker on their car, among a few others, and when I commented on it they mentioned that their son had gone there, but I didn’t even know Ryan Leaf had gone to Washington State. I was three when he played in the Rose Bowl. I knew him only as an anecdote—the can’t-miss NFL Draft quarterback who missed. It wasn’t until later, in the basement where the guest rooms were, that I saw the Ryan Leaf memorabilia and put it together. And so it was that at breakfast the next morning, I asked Ryan Leaf’s mom whether Ryan Leaf was her son, and when she said yes, I followed that up by asking Ryan Leaf’s mom what Ryan Leaf was up to those days.
I didn’t have a smartphone.
In March of 2012, Ryan Leaf was arrested in Great Falls for breaking into a home and stealing prescription medication. When I asked Ryan Leaf’s mom what her son was up to those days, she had the pleasure of informing the eighteen year-old at her kitchen table that her son was in prison.
Ryan Leaf’s mother was gracious, and kind, and if she begrudged me asking what I’d imagine was the most painful question I could have possibly asked this stranger who’d opened her doors and taken me into her home, she didn’t show it. She didn’t talk about her son’s problems with opioids (I think we were a few years away from those being a national conversation), and she didn’t get into the arrest situation. She just said he was in prison, that he’d gotten into some trouble with drugs, and then we talked about her son. We talked about his career. She gave me a copy of his book. She said she felt terrible for Manti Te’o (the Lennay Kekua revelation had come just two months prior) because she knew how vicious sports media could be. She drove us to the bus. She gave us each a hug. And she told us to grow up.
I’ve long wondered what she meant for that. For eight years, I’ve wondered what she meant by that. I’ve wondered what she meant by, “Grow up.” Said so kindly (everything they did was kind—and in case you’re ever curious, Ryan Leaf’s dad makes great brownies). I still don’t know. I don’t really know what it means to grow up.
There are moments, though, when you feel like you’ve grown up. I remember one, shortly after I started dating Emma. It was winter in South Bend, and it was dastardly cold—cold enough that St. Joseph County had declared a state of emergency to keep people off the roads, which in turn led Notre Dame to cancel classes. I was walking back from Emma’s dorm to mine on the first night of the thing, and my snow boots were tromping on the broad sidewalk beside the Basilica, and I felt grown up. Not all the way. But getting there. I felt like an adult, fully grown and capable, though not yet independent or self-sufficient. It was a distinct feeling—an awareness of my age. I’m guessing it wasn’t unique to me. I’d guess many of us feel that awareness sometimes, both positively and negatively. I’d guess we feel it on a particular look in the mirror, or when doing a particularly necessary-but-unpleasant thing because there is no one there who should do it for us, or when looking up and realizing we are a spouse, or a parent, or a grandparent, and that we are not unusually young to be the thing that we are. I’ve felt it driving across state lines late at night, when the others are asleep. I’ve felt it pitchforking algae from a pond for a buck an hour more than minimum wage. I’ve felt it wearing a suit, carrying a casket. I’ve felt it when I stop to count on my hands the years since a particular day or a particular moment and find the fingers just keep going up.
I felt it again this Thursday night. It was misty here in Austin. It made the street look not itself. Fargo wasn’t feeling well, and we took her out for a walk, and on the way back she passed behind my back to be on the side of me between myself and Emma, and I was struck, in that image of this puppy trotting between the two of us in the dark, by the reminder that we are a family now, and that our family is three beings wide. And I sat on that thought back at the house, after we’d gotten Fargo to relieve herself, after she was in her crate and Emma was in bed and I was done locking the doors but still needed to turn out the lights and get to bed myself, because I needed to sleep fast, because morning and a trip to the vet were coming soon. And I thought of Ryan Leaf’s mom.
I don’t know what Ryan Leaf’s mom meant when she told me to grow up. I said this already. I want to say it again. I don’t know if I’m growing up in the way she would have me grow up. I hope I am. But in the physical sense, and I’d say timeline-wise as well, I am growing up. In those ways, I guess, we all are.
(P.S. Fargo’s fine, we think—vet felt good about her and she’s had two good days in a row now. But knock on wood. Like I do as I type this.)
Next week’s essay: On Ben Folds, and the Things We Aren’t
