Features: Training Sam

“Just put them in the car,” Mountain told her. “They are not sick, they do not have a headache or a bad stomach. Just put them in the car.”

I felt like I was crossing some threshold with Sam. I forced him to keep going to Summit, and he was surprised: “When I don’t like things, you always let me quit!” I stared at him. That easier Dad must have been someone else.

After that fight in the car, back in January on the way there, he actually worked out with a decent attitude. Then heading home, a sea change: I couldn’t shut him up. I wanted to listen to the Sixers, he wanted to talk Phillies. I turned off the radio, he rattled happily on about our starting pitching. His metabolism up, his endorphins kicking in, Mountain confirmed knowingly when I shared the before-and-after Sam.

I realize that Mountain has done something important for Sam, and for me. Now I’ve got my purchase, my angle to him. He is 15, and the coddling is over; like many things we learn as parents, it is both simple and profound. As Mountain pointed out, shaking his head at our collective softness: “At 18 or 20 you’re going to start working hard if you haven’t learned how?”

Sam and I keep battling over going to Summit. He goes.

Then, one morning after a big snow, I look out the kitchen window to watch him struggling to free a trash can from ice. He squats, puts his arms around it, tries to lift it. Good form, but nothing. Tries again. Nothing. I stop watching, and fully expect him to burst in with, “I can’t take the trash out!” I’m all ready to casually tell him, “I suggest you figure out a way.” Then I hear the can being scraped along the driveway, out to the street. When he comes in, it’s with this: “That pass I knocked out of bounds, Dad — you remember? I really could have kept it in bounds, don’t you think?”

We are on our way, Sam and me.