Record Year

Jesse finished fifth grade this week and was promoted to middle school – even though it seems like we just sent him off to kindergarten. Funny after that very first day on the bus, we always drove him to school ourselves. It may have been that riding the bus would have required us to wake up a half-hour earlier; or maybe we just wanted some extra time at home with our little boy.

Either way, over the span of six 180-day school years, I figure we spent an additional 500 hours or 20 days together just by driving him to school – important for parents of an only child, even if it made our carbon footprint a little larger.

Having just one child in the house offers some unique opportunities. Since he has no siblings, I’ve happily stepped in as his “brother” whenever I could. This of course contributes to my already stunted maturity, and provides his mother the experience of having another kid. But as great as that must be for her, she’s surely longing for the day when at least one of us grows up.

We would have liked more kids, but after five years of the best reproductive science we could afford, Jesse finally came to us and we were so grateful that he did. But even though he was our little miracle, nobody’s perfect. When he was born his right shoulder seemed a little atrophied. I asked his pediatrician about it at one of his earliest medical appointments:

“Oh, he’s missing a pectoral muscle,” she said almost breezily.

“What can you do about it?” I remember asking in horror.

“Well, nothing.” She said cheerfully. “He might not be a body builder when he grows up, but he’s perfectly fine.”

About a year ago, Jesse was standing in front of the mirror and asked me why both sides of his chest didn’t look the same. I knew this day would come and when it did, I was determined to match the enlightened tone of the pediatrician who’d given me the diagnosis ten years earlier.

“Oh, you’re missing a pectoral muscle on that side,” I told him. “It’s no big deal; you were just born that way.”

“I don’t like how it looks.” he said. “What does that muscle do?”

I told him what the doctor said about being a body builder. I told him that the pectoral muscle gives you upper body strength to lift weights or do push-ups. I told him that he might just be a little weaker on that side, but it didn’t really matter and it wouldn’t keep him from doing all the things that he wanted to do. At least in that moment, I wasn’t being his “brother,” I was being his Dad.

But then, as usual, he did me one better. He came home from school one day and told me they were doing the Presidential Physical Fitness program in gym class: “We did push-ups today,” he said.

“Yeah? How’d you do?”

“Pretty good,” he said. “I set a new 4th grade record.” And they put his name up on the wall.

Sometimes our greatest challenges offer us our greatest opportunities for success. I learned that from my son who always seems to inspire me. Oh, and this year? He broke the record again.

Fred Nahhat is DPTV Director, On-Air Fundraising