At Einstein’s eating breakfast. I just dropped Aiden off at Brandon High School; he has a preseason wrestling tournament there today. He is excited and probably a little anxious. I am excited and… nervous.

He has not been wrestling that long. Last year was his first season. He has been working really hard over the offseason and I am hoping that hard work pays off today.

What a time to pick up a new sport… right before a global pandemic shuts down basically all the training and camps scheduled. It is really hard to practice wrestling by yourself. I played baseball when I was younger. I am of little to no technical help to him. That is hard for me as a parent.

We went to a tournament about an hour away this summer and it had kids from all over the southeast. He didn’t have a coach because he wasn’t part of a club team. I am there, in his corner, where a coach should be but I have a camera and no wrestling knowledge.

The other coach is yelling queues to his wrestler. I don’t know what to yell because I don’t know what he is supposed to do. I am there but I can’t help outside of documenting the event, encouraging him and offering my advice on how to think about the sport.

The hardest thing to do as a parent is to let your child struggle. To watch your child struggle. You have to be able to let them feel discomfort; it is the only way they will learn how truly talented and capable they are. Dad can’t save you every time. You don’t need me to.

Wrestling is a perfect example of this. Nothing rips your heart out like watching your son literally fight another kid. If he wins, when he wins, it will because of how hard he worked not because of my help. I hope he wins.
I am proud of him.

Beckett and I spent the night in the tent. He just loves that thing. He gets so excited about it. In my last post I talked about how I wanted to create a video about the tent and how unexpected his enjoyment of it was. We recorded some of that last night.

I gave him the camera while I got some things together and I can see his little face peaking out over the ladder. He is pointing the camera at me and I can see the light that I fixed to the hot shoe mount pointing right at me. That is my dad he says to the camera… (I am not tearing up, you are tearing up).

That is my dad.

– Beckett

Those are the moments that find a different place in my mind. Maybe that is because they don’t stay there. They get stamped inside me somewhere.
We had a few snacks and watched Avengers. He fell asleep during the movie around 9:30. He is much more comfortable up there than he was the first time. I can tell by how quickly he let himself relax and fall asleep.

I stayed up a bit and read The War of Art and probably fell asleep around 11. He woke up once and had to go to the bathroom and he crawled his sleepy self down that ladder and then back up. He didn’t believe me when I told him about it this morning

I woke up around 430 this morning to the sounds of rain. There are two skylights (clear plastic openings) in the roof of the tent. You can see the rain drops explode into them and then run down the sides of the tent. It was surprisingly water proof. I am not sure why that is a surprise but it was. I fell back asleep and we got up around 7am.

Can we finish the movie?

– Beckett

I went to the gym. Came home, showered and got my camera gear together and Aiden and I took off. Now I am here, writing this post before I head back over for the tournament.

I can’t wait to watch him compete. It is the hardest thing. I wish I could help him wrestle but I can’t and he doesn’t need me to. He just needs me to be there and I can do that. I want to do that.

Let the battle begin…

-Nate