When my mother’s water broke, that night in October, Dad was watching the Wisconsin Badgers hockey game on television, and he had a cast on his leg from a broken ankle that he got while playing basketball. I can’t imagine my dad, all 6 feet and 4 inches of his goliath body, trying to drive that station wagon to the hospital, through the north woods snow (snow in October?), freaking out that his wife was about to have their second baby, a son, and all the while trying to maneuver his giant-club-foot cast on the gas pedal. Somehow he made it though—I’m here. And when I took that fumbling plunge into this world, my father held me in his arms and he always said, “Bobby, I’ll never forget it, from the minute you were born, you looked like a fighter, bruised and bloody; you looked like you had gone twelve rounds, and had won.” And those words would radiate throughout the rest of our lives, as I fell in love with a game so many years ago, and made a promise that I would try to take it as far as I possibly could.
Since then, my dad has seen his son’s many bloody faces, countless stitches and scars, chipped teeth here and there, broken bones, slings, surgeries, and tears—but most importantly, he has seen the look in my eye, a look that I have had since the first day I stepped on the ice; a fire that burns deep, and says in all truth that I love this game, and that it is where I am supposed to be.
When I was three, and we lived in Madison, he brought me to an open skate for fans of the Wisconsin Badgers—all those players, so huge and mythic, wearing their jerseys—and he told me one of the best memories that he has of me is when I got on that ice, I skated around as fast as I could, basically running on the ice, with legs flailing and reckless, while crowds of families, children and fans jostled to skate next to the college players and get their autographs, I just whirled around that rink, without a care in the world, just content that I was going fast.
Dad was pivotal in my youth hockey days. He set everything up, paid the fees, somehow got me the best hand-me-down equipment that he could find, and always made sure I was alright. My bright yellow helmet was too big for my head, so he always pulled a green stocking cap to my eye brows before helping me put the helmet on, and then gave it a loving tap, and I was off—skating, skating, my brain wanting my legs to go faster than they could, resulting in me falling all over the ice. Way too often, I would skate too fast into the boards to pick up a puck, with my stick pointed in front of me, I would jam my stick into the boards, and my body would follow fast, having the butt end of the stick jam into my stomach and knock the wind out of me. Lying in a puddle of frozen tears, Dad would run onto the ice and pick me up, wipe those salty drops, and wait until I was done crying. He would ask if I was alright and if I wanted to keep skating; before he could get an answer out of me, I would be back out on the ice skating as fast as I could, swatting at the puck awkwardly as ever. Other parents in the stands often told my Dad that “maybe he shouldn’t be playing hockey” because of how much I fell, and how hard I would go into the boards and cry, but my dad always knew that hockey was my passion, and every year a pair of skates would be there, matching the size of my newly sized feet, and every weekend morning, before games, waking me up at 5 am, he would have pancakes, perfect pancakes, already cooked to a golden crisp, and he was ready to drive me anywhere with a black coffee in his hand, and a content smile on his face.
It was around the double digit years and early teen years that things got competitive around the hockey world in Northern Wisconsin. I ended up in Green Bay, in the city, playing very competitive hockey, and saw many different types of parents. Some were loud, some overbearing, and some plain crazy. I played on a line with a kid once, and he told me that if he didn’t play well, his Dad would whip him with the belt. This always made me sad, and he ended up quitting the game a few years later. Fights among parents would sometimes break out in the stands, between opposing team’s bull headed fathers. Some parents, especially the large mothers, were loud and rambunctious in the stands, yelling and screaming from the depths of their hellish lungs. But my dad never said anything up there in the stands, he just watched me grow and develop, make plays and have fun. I only remember one time when he ever yelled anything. I was playing defense and an opposing player had snuck behind me without me knowing it. In the deepest and most intense bellow, I heard, “BOBBY!! BEHIND YOU!!!!” I turned and saw that player, and swiftly went to cover him. Dad and I still laugh about this incident, and all I can picture is this enormous man, sometimes confused in Sasquatch sightings, a man who makes me look miniature, a man who could grab me with two fingers and dunk me in sweet and sour sauce, and gobble me up like a chicken nugget, bellowing in the stands and striking fear in the countless minivan driving mamas, bickering and gossiping about their son’s lack of playing time.
Dad had his heart broken a few times while he watched me play over the years. When I was 13, and an underdeveloped little boy, he watched me playing open hockey with some older kids from De Pere, our rivals, and he saw them picking on me, singling me out, making racial comments to me. He watched, keeping his hands buried deep in his khaki pockets, as I stood up for myself and tried to fight these bullies, some already sprouting facial hair, and holding my own against them, and fighting back as hard as I could, but in the end getting beat up, and taught a lesson—and that lesson being, to always go hard and never be afraid of losing, or getting beat up, or getting hurt. Watching this must have just killed him, but he has since told me that he always respected me so much for standing up to them, even if I didn’t have a chance in hell of ever winning the fight. Hockey is a cut-throat sport, and you have to be a certain breed to survive through the years; and as he watched those two bullies take liberties on me and land thumping punches in my face, he saw that the fire was still there, and even though I was scared, I was confronting that fear, proving myself, growing, and learning. Since then he has seen many fights on the ice, and since then I have grown into a large body. And when I was 18 and I went out to Montana to play in the America West Hockey League, a Junior league for development and scouting. I had to fight a lot out there, and whenever my dad saw me fight, he didn’t say much about it; he just understood that it was something that I had to do, and I knew that he was proud of me—even when I would go to church with him the next day with black eyes, and stitches and cuts. He has seen the look in my eyes after being cut from teams, tryouts where I laid everything on the line, poured my heart and soul, and my name scratched off the sheet with the easy swipe of a pen. He kept driving me to the tryouts, “Bobby, are you sure you want to do this?”, that summer after high school, and saw the look on my face each time, but he never saw me give up on my dreams, and he nurtured it, knowing that he was just helping me strive for what I wanted, and not forcing his own dreams on me—he never wanted to be one of those parents—until I finally made a team, and everything worked out for me, I got better, I worked hard out there in Montana and Nebraska, the sweet Midwest, and finally got a scholarship, and an opportunity to come out East, as a college hockey player.
Now I’m in my last year of college, living my dream I’ve had since I was five years old, “Dad, I want to play college hockey someday.” “You will Son, you just keep working hard.” He flies out as much as he can to see me play, and watches me on the satellite dish way up there in Northern Wisconsin whenever we are on television, and listening to every single game on Internet Radio. And the next day when I talk to him and Mom on the phone, I can hear in his voice how proud he is, and he wants to know every detail of the game. And before every game, when I put on my jersey, a jersey that I used to dream about when I was a little kid, with embroidered numbers and professional material, not the cheap silk screening of youth hockey days, I still look at the crisp embroidered name on the back of it, and remember that I’m representing not only my team, but also my family name, and all the sacrifices they made to let me get to where I am today—I never forget that. And these days, it’s easy to get swept away with all the distractions revolving around the game—the fact that this is a business now, and we are playing for scholarship money, and that the team is there to make money for the university, and that this is our job, and we are at the rink for five hours a day, practicing and getting tortured right to our knees, and not worrying about girl problems or a big test you have tomorrow, but to punch in and go to work right when you step into the rink, performing at a peak level, or you won’t play because there are a thousand kids out there with as much talent as you willing to do anything to take your spot, and television interviews and radio interviews, and newspaper write-ups critiquing your every mistake, and professional contracts and big time money waiting in the coming years, all dependent on how well you do here and now, shooting for that high risk, high pay, short term career, hoping for five, maybe ten years, to set yourself right for the rest of your life, and all the while knowing that it can be over in a second with one big hit that rattles your brain the wrong way, or a 100 mph puck that snaps your bones—with all these distractions, it will always be just a game to me, and a game that I fell in love with so many years ago. A game that I play, with passion and fury, and to know that whenever that passion leaves, I will walk away from it, that’s what my Dad taught me, to play for the sake of playing, and to love to play. Who would have thought that a scrawny kid in a bright yellow too-big helmet, skating as fast as he could around a frozen outdoor rink in Northern Wisconsin would be here, playing in front of thousands of fans, with his parents back home, watching on television. The most important thing is to keep it all in perspective, and remember those times when I would put on all my equipment in the back of the green minivan, skates and all, driving late to practice because Dad got out of work late, and he would scoop me up into his arms, and throw me over his shoulder, in the biting cold of winter, and carry me into the rink, and set me down, and say, “Go get em, Bobby.”
(This was written in 2006 for my Personal Reflective Writing class at Umass Lowell, which was taught by Dr. Roberts, who helped me find my voice.)
When I was three, and we lived in Madison, he brought me to an open skate for fans of the Wisconsin Badgers—all those players, so huge and mythic, wearing their jerseys—and he told me one of the best memories that he has of me is when I got on that ice, I skated around as fast as I could, basically running on the ice, with legs flailing and reckless, while crowds of families, children and fans jostled to skate next to the college players and get their autographs, I just whirled around that rink, without a care in the world, just content that I was going fast.
Dad was pivotal in my youth hockey days. He set everything up, paid the fees, somehow got me the best hand-me-down equipment that he could find, and always made sure I was alright. My bright yellow helmet was too big for my head, so he always pulled a green stocking cap to my eye brows before helping me put the helmet on, and then gave it a loving tap, and I was off—skating, skating, my brain wanting my legs to go faster than they could, resulting in me falling all over the ice. Way too often, I would skate too fast into the boards to pick up a puck, with my stick pointed in front of me, I would jam my stick into the boards, and my body would follow fast, having the butt end of the stick jam into my stomach and knock the wind out of me. Lying in a puddle of frozen tears, Dad would run onto the ice and pick me up, wipe those salty drops, and wait until I was done crying. He would ask if I was alright and if I wanted to keep skating; before he could get an answer out of me, I would be back out on the ice skating as fast as I could, swatting at the puck awkwardly as ever. Other parents in the stands often told my Dad that “maybe he shouldn’t be playing hockey” because of how much I fell, and how hard I would go into the boards and cry, but my dad always knew that hockey was my passion, and every year a pair of skates would be there, matching the size of my newly sized feet, and every weekend morning, before games, waking me up at 5 am, he would have pancakes, perfect pancakes, already cooked to a golden crisp, and he was ready to drive me anywhere with a black coffee in his hand, and a content smile on his face.
It was around the double digit years and early teen years that things got competitive around the hockey world in Northern Wisconsin. I ended up in Green Bay, in the city, playing very competitive hockey, and saw many different types of parents. Some were loud, some overbearing, and some plain crazy. I played on a line with a kid once, and he told me that if he didn’t play well, his Dad would whip him with the belt. This always made me sad, and he ended up quitting the game a few years later. Fights among parents would sometimes break out in the stands, between opposing team’s bull headed fathers. Some parents, especially the large mothers, were loud and rambunctious in the stands, yelling and screaming from the depths of their hellish lungs. But my dad never said anything up there in the stands, he just watched me grow and develop, make plays and have fun. I only remember one time when he ever yelled anything. I was playing defense and an opposing player had snuck behind me without me knowing it. In the deepest and most intense bellow, I heard, “BOBBY!! BEHIND YOU!!!!” I turned and saw that player, and swiftly went to cover him. Dad and I still laugh about this incident, and all I can picture is this enormous man, sometimes confused in Sasquatch sightings, a man who makes me look miniature, a man who could grab me with two fingers and dunk me in sweet and sour sauce, and gobble me up like a chicken nugget, bellowing in the stands and striking fear in the countless minivan driving mamas, bickering and gossiping about their son’s lack of playing time.
Dad had his heart broken a few times while he watched me play over the years. When I was 13, and an underdeveloped little boy, he watched me playing open hockey with some older kids from De Pere, our rivals, and he saw them picking on me, singling me out, making racial comments to me. He watched, keeping his hands buried deep in his khaki pockets, as I stood up for myself and tried to fight these bullies, some already sprouting facial hair, and holding my own against them, and fighting back as hard as I could, but in the end getting beat up, and taught a lesson—and that lesson being, to always go hard and never be afraid of losing, or getting beat up, or getting hurt. Watching this must have just killed him, but he has since told me that he always respected me so much for standing up to them, even if I didn’t have a chance in hell of ever winning the fight. Hockey is a cut-throat sport, and you have to be a certain breed to survive through the years; and as he watched those two bullies take liberties on me and land thumping punches in my face, he saw that the fire was still there, and even though I was scared, I was confronting that fear, proving myself, growing, and learning. Since then he has seen many fights on the ice, and since then I have grown into a large body. And when I was 18 and I went out to Montana to play in the America West Hockey League, a Junior league for development and scouting. I had to fight a lot out there, and whenever my dad saw me fight, he didn’t say much about it; he just understood that it was something that I had to do, and I knew that he was proud of me—even when I would go to church with him the next day with black eyes, and stitches and cuts. He has seen the look in my eyes after being cut from teams, tryouts where I laid everything on the line, poured my heart and soul, and my name scratched off the sheet with the easy swipe of a pen. He kept driving me to the tryouts, “Bobby, are you sure you want to do this?”, that summer after high school, and saw the look on my face each time, but he never saw me give up on my dreams, and he nurtured it, knowing that he was just helping me strive for what I wanted, and not forcing his own dreams on me—he never wanted to be one of those parents—until I finally made a team, and everything worked out for me, I got better, I worked hard out there in Montana and Nebraska, the sweet Midwest, and finally got a scholarship, and an opportunity to come out East, as a college hockey player.
Now I’m in my last year of college, living my dream I’ve had since I was five years old, “Dad, I want to play college hockey someday.” “You will Son, you just keep working hard.” He flies out as much as he can to see me play, and watches me on the satellite dish way up there in Northern Wisconsin whenever we are on television, and listening to every single game on Internet Radio. And the next day when I talk to him and Mom on the phone, I can hear in his voice how proud he is, and he wants to know every detail of the game. And before every game, when I put on my jersey, a jersey that I used to dream about when I was a little kid, with embroidered numbers and professional material, not the cheap silk screening of youth hockey days, I still look at the crisp embroidered name on the back of it, and remember that I’m representing not only my team, but also my family name, and all the sacrifices they made to let me get to where I am today—I never forget that. And these days, it’s easy to get swept away with all the distractions revolving around the game—the fact that this is a business now, and we are playing for scholarship money, and that the team is there to make money for the university, and that this is our job, and we are at the rink for five hours a day, practicing and getting tortured right to our knees, and not worrying about girl problems or a big test you have tomorrow, but to punch in and go to work right when you step into the rink, performing at a peak level, or you won’t play because there are a thousand kids out there with as much talent as you willing to do anything to take your spot, and television interviews and radio interviews, and newspaper write-ups critiquing your every mistake, and professional contracts and big time money waiting in the coming years, all dependent on how well you do here and now, shooting for that high risk, high pay, short term career, hoping for five, maybe ten years, to set yourself right for the rest of your life, and all the while knowing that it can be over in a second with one big hit that rattles your brain the wrong way, or a 100 mph puck that snaps your bones—with all these distractions, it will always be just a game to me, and a game that I fell in love with so many years ago. A game that I play, with passion and fury, and to know that whenever that passion leaves, I will walk away from it, that’s what my Dad taught me, to play for the sake of playing, and to love to play. Who would have thought that a scrawny kid in a bright yellow too-big helmet, skating as fast as he could around a frozen outdoor rink in Northern Wisconsin would be here, playing in front of thousands of fans, with his parents back home, watching on television. The most important thing is to keep it all in perspective, and remember those times when I would put on all my equipment in the back of the green minivan, skates and all, driving late to practice because Dad got out of work late, and he would scoop me up into his arms, and throw me over his shoulder, in the biting cold of winter, and carry me into the rink, and set me down, and say, “Go get em, Bobby.”
(This was written in 2006 for my Personal Reflective Writing class at Umass Lowell, which was taught by Dr. Roberts, who helped me find my voice.)
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