Kids & Skates
(Rz has not been sleeping well at night, so forgive the lack of posts.. I am…. tired …..a lot)
My wife and I, early in our relationship, used to joke about the “projector”. We discovered that when you really LOVE someone, it’s very hard to stop yourself from “projecting” what you want or enjoy onto them, no matter what they themselves want or need.
Part of what I needed learned between 20’s to my 30’s, was how to recognize when my “projector” was running, and to turn it off.
It’s hard to do. Still hard.
Add your own flesh & blood child into the mix, and the projector becomes so difficult to recognize. People ask me frequently if RZ will be a speedskater. Honestly, I don’t care. It’s up to her.
I do care that she has a physical life, and if she has a competitive personality like her parents, it’s great to find a focus. It’s important for competitive types to learn the lessons of losing, of failure, and occasional winning through hard work, that sports can teach.
But what sport? That is more about her than me.
What lessons? Things like what Ashley’s shirt talks about (Ashley has the best race shirts, this is from the John Rose classic in Minnesota)
Right now my inlines are just fascinating toys for RZ because they have spinny things (ice blades are off limits, for obvious reasons).
However it’s still hard for a driven person to not dream of passing on their hard earned knowledge & experience onward to their kids.
How many things do my own Mother & Father know, and deeply care about, that I have never truly asked about
However, it’s not just me, not just my projector. As my very active daughter grows, and begins to show her own physical gifts & determination (and she is VERY detail & determination oriented) the world will react to her partially because of the life her parents have lived.
I can’t tell you the number of times people have looked at her, grabbed her pudgy thighs, and said “Look! Speedskater legs!”
Even though legs of all sizes and shapes have the capacity to go scary fast, and true Tyrannosaurus Rex legs are rare, this makes me smile, and at the same time, hyper-aware of my own projector.
A tiny comment by my father one day, spiraled me off into 20 happy years of joyously painful bicycle racing. But even though he was an accomplished rider, he is not temperamentally a racer.
But he knew I was that kind of hyper-competitive person. He made the comment out of love & recognition of ME, not from his own projector.
That is why my dad rocks, and gave me the kind of thoughtful guidance and love I will try to provide for my little RZ.
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