My son Kenny is 13-years-old the night I sneak into his room to examine his testicle.
This is not part of our nightly ritual. But his pediatrician, our much loved Dr. Agnes Gomes, is concerned that Kenny's left testicle is not properly descending. "It's probably nothing," she calms me at his seventh grade physical, "but check it while he's bathing or better yet while he's sleeping."
Kenny adamantly informs me I will not be checking any of his adolescent private parts. Not in the bathtub, not in his sleep, not ever. He is perfectly capable of performing his own examination, he says, and I will be enlightened on a need-to-know basis.
Like hell I will.
The shock he expresses the night he discovers me peering under his sheets with a high beam flashlight is all out of proportion to the task at hand. Bolting up in bed, he flails as if waking from a nightmare then orders me from his room sputtering furiously that he hopes to God I'm finally satisfied to have ruined the rest of his life.
So sue me. I'm his mother.
Everything, thankfully, falls into place. I only tell this story to explain that our sons have caused me great worry. My husband John says I like to worry, but he's wrong. It's exhausting work. Instinctively, though, I know worrying pays off. My sons are alive today because of it.
Once John and I feared we'd never have children. Only after years of fertility drugs, roller coaster hormones, and a good share of agony was I able to conceive. The day Kenny was born was the happiest day of my life. Then Tommy was born nearly four years later, and it was the other happiest day of my life. Their father was pretty much over the moon himself. So even the excessive worry has been worth it.
From the first year of life, Kenny was consumed with great passions. An obsession with a blue rubber ball grew into another obsession for dinosaurs. Then it was rare coins, skyscrapers, roller coasters, guitars and the highest mountains in the world. Not long ago he was waxing poetic to his brother Tommy about the tallest mountain ranges in Colorado.
"Kenny," Tommy fumed, "if you give me one more fun fact about mountain ranges, I'll kill you, I swear I will."
Shocked into submission, Kenny relented. His good humor, fortunately, prevailed. "You know, Tommy," he said, "some people find me fascinating."
Incredibly, the two of them rarely fight. When they're teenagers, John and I hear from one of their friends about a furious, tumbling brawl in the mud that erupts between the two of them in the detasseling corn field. They never mention the incident to us, however, and John and I don't mention it to them. Whatever provokes the fight is sorted out in the hot summer mud.
Usually, even as little boys, they are completely in sync. Tommy retreats to the basement to spend hours dribbling a small basketball on the tile floor, and Kenny disappears to devour Harry Potter or to examine his coin collection. Later, lonely for each other, they play catch in the front yard or stroll down to Buechler Park to hit golf balls with an ancient club rescued from the closet.
Tommy, from the moment he's born, is pure delight. Perpetually joyous and affectionate, he possesses an uncanny sense of humor and thoughtful curiosity. In pre-school, he savors words, numbers and sequential patterns.
"Mom," he abruptly bursts into the bathroom one afternoon as I am seated and completing business. He takes my face between his hands to indicate the gravity of the moment. "A, B, A, B!" he announces carefully with four-year-old importance. "That's what you call a padron."
He turns on his heel to depart as abruptly as he enters.
John and I are not young parents, but we have never been so happy. Watching our boys grow and thrive is a miracle, plain and simple.
Because they are exceptionally tall, athletics becomes a crucial part of their school years. Tommy, sturdy and strong, loves football. Kenny, on the other hand, prefers tennis and basketball. In the ninth grade after an excessive growth spurt, he reaches 6 ft. 9 inches and is coming off the bench to play a few minutes for the Grand Island Central Catholic varsity basketball squad under Coach Bill Gavers.
Janie Hoch, a friend and parent of students John and I teach, tells me she enjoys watching Kenny play and has nominated him for a Got Milk ad campaign contest. The winner of the contest, she tells me excitedly, will fly to Florida to meet NBA basketball star Shane Battier and be featured in ESPN Magazine.
"Oh Janie," I thank her warmly, "what a nice thing."
Then I promptly forget all about it until the phone rings in June. The voice on the other end asks for Kenny and informs me he has been selected to fly with his family to Orlando, Florida, to meet Shane Battier.
A month later John and I sit side by side in Orlando's Milk House Sports Arena as Kenny, behind us, is photographed for ESPN, and in front of us 11-year-old Tommy enjoys a game of Horse with Shane Battier. It is a surreal moment. John and I stare at each other in a sort of bewildered daze. Things like this don't happen to people like us.
That is, in fact, exactly what I tell Kenny the next summer when, with new-found confidence, he enters yet another contest - this time for Nestle's Crunch. Ten kids from across the country will be selected to fly to Los Angeles with their families to play one on one with Shaquille O'Neal. Now 6 feet 11, Kenny hopes he has a shot at winning. With speedy efficiency he sends a video of his dunking abilities to contest officials.
His exuberance to win these contests in order to travel from coast to coast is our fault. When he and Tommy are young, we rarely travel. Owing to our Catholic school teaching salaries, our vacations generally include a few days in Colorado to visit Kenny and Tommy's grandmother and one overnight trip to Lincoln every summer.
"Can we please, please eat at Chuck e Cheese?" our boys beg us. "Just once?"
Not on your life, we say. Our one day in Lincoln will most certainly not include a sub-par meal at a wall-to-wall, kid-screaming manic fest. Consequently, Kenny is determined to make it to Los Angeles this summer any way he can get there. There may even be a Chuck e Cheese.
"Kenny," I reason with him, "you were lucky it happened once." I shake my head. "It won't happen again."
Except it does.
Our boy plays basketball with Shaquille O'Neal. I am completely starstruck to shake the hand of the bigger than life Shaq who takes Kenny under his wing.
"How can this be?" I ask my husband the next afternoon as we gaze in fascination at waves crashing in from the ocean, the first ocean any of us has ever seen.
After those two eventful summers, nothing seems impossible to our boys. Kenny wraps up a successful sports career at Central Catholic to accept a Division 1 basketball scholarship at Denver University. Four years later, Tommy earns a football scholarship to the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
John and I dare to believe the sky's the limit for our boys. Perhaps they will be famous and rich and buy us a grand house.
"And give us the life we so richly deserve," John cracks.
Those things don't happen. In spite of countless protein shakes and diligent weight lifting, Kenny never carries more than 170 pounds on his 6 ft. 11 in. frame. He has difficulty physically matching up against 235 pound opponents.
Tommy, who lives and breathes college football, is devastated that, at the end of his sophomore year, UNO discontinues its football and wrestling programs.
Kenny graduates with a business degree from Regis University, and Tommy leaves school altogether. It seems a bitter disappointment at first and so unlike all that John and I had planned for our boys. Nevertheless, life goes on.
Today, they both live in Denver - Kenny loves his college town and eventually persuades Tommy to join him there. Kenny marries Vannie, the funniest, most wonderful and perfect girl we could ever dream of for our son, and at their wedding, Tommy as best man delivers the toast.
"Ken, you've finally found your Barbie," he jabs Kenny, "and she's a lot cuter than the one you played with in high school."
Kenny now works for the University of Colorado Foundation, and Tommy is a meat cutter by day and a bouncer by night. Vannie is a grant writer for the Denver Boys and Girls' Club. The three of them share a condo in Denver with Kenny and Vannie's dogs, Sarge and Luna. Vannie, loving and easy-going, seems not to mind living with a couple of hulking giants and two shedding creatures - the dogs, not the boys. Tommy takes over the basement, they grill outdoors on fine evenings, and there's a great park not far away. Kenny and Tommy still love to play catch and hit baseballs. Devoted Broncos, Nuggets and Rockies' fans, they manage to see as many events possible in the cheapest seats possible.
They're happy.
Still, I worry about them. I think Tommy should go back to school, Kenny and Vannie should have a baby, and that they should all go to church. Nevertheless, with a surprising sigh of relief, I understand they are grown people leading their own lives. They make their own decisions, and in a strange way, it's a relief not to be responsible for them. Like many Catholic mothers, I entrust them every day to the arms of the Blessed Mother and pray fervently that God will protect Kenny and Vannie on the Denver freeway. I pray equally hard that Tommy will not be stabbed or shot bouncing a trouble maker out of the bar.
But how could John and I ask for better children? They are kind, our boys, and tenderhearted. I remember the way Tommy, as a college student home from school, accompanies me to the vet to put my ailing cat Willy down. As I hold my dying feline and weep, Tommy chokes back his own tears and gently pats my back with his big paw of a hand. The year before that, he washes my hair in the kitchen sink after my double mastectomy.
Kenny, who always nurses a soft spot for his younger cousin Laura, a sweet little girl with special needs, eventually helps coach a Special Olympics' tennis team in Denver. Even as nearly seven foot teenage boys, he and Tommy coo in gentle falsetto voices to our cats and sling them over their shoulders to cart around the house.
They have always entertained us. Donning a skin tight red turtleneck, the two of them cut their own magical Christmas album. They create masterpieces on canvas following the instructions of television artist Bob Ross. They tease Vannie, mock their dad's irritability with Denver's I-25, and make me laugh til I cry.
Now with the perspective of my 64 years, I am never quite sure why I ever felt the need to be hard on them - to make them feel shame or guilt or the feeling that we were disappointed in them. Like all kids, they made their share of mistakes. Tommy, having made a few of them in his early 20's, reminds me of my own irresponsible youth. He's become a very good man because of those mistakes, and he's taught me to learn from my own and to let the past go.
Kenny is always ready for the next adventure. When he comes back to Nebraska, he paces the house like a caged animal. He's still the boy who believes anything is possible - even a game of one-on-one with Shaq - despite having a mother who reigned him in with hard, cold practicalities.
Thank God he never listened to her.
In truth, more and more our roles become reversed. John and I ask for their advice - especially with anything technological.
"Now Mom," Kenny explains to me over the phone as if I am a small child. "Snap Chat's not hard. Look for the little bar on the bottom that says 'Send a chat.' "
If I could do it all over again, I'd forget about being so hard on them. I'd tell them every day they're the best, kindest, funniest human beings - besides their good dad - that I've ever known. I'd tell them that I love them, even when they make mistakes. And I'd tell them to never be afraid to try anything new.
And by God, I'd even throw them in the car and take them to Lincoln to eat at Chuck e Cheese.
 |
| Tommy and Kenny |
Kenny adamantly informs me I will not be checking any of his adolescent private parts. Not in the bathtub, not in his sleep, not ever. He is perfectly capable of performing his own examination, he says, and I will be enlightened on a need-to-know basis.
Like hell I will.
The shock he expresses the night he discovers me peering under his sheets with a high beam flashlight is all out of proportion to the task at hand. Bolting up in bed, he flails as if waking from a nightmare then orders me from his room sputtering furiously that he hopes to God I'm finally satisfied to have ruined the rest of his life.
So sue me. I'm his mother.
Everything, thankfully, falls into place. I only tell this story to explain that our sons have caused me great worry. My husband John says I like to worry, but he's wrong. It's exhausting work. Instinctively, though, I know worrying pays off. My sons are alive today because of it.
Once John and I feared we'd never have children. Only after years of fertility drugs, roller coaster hormones, and a good share of agony was I able to conceive. The day Kenny was born was the happiest day of my life. Then Tommy was born nearly four years later, and it was the other happiest day of my life. Their father was pretty much over the moon himself. So even the excessive worry has been worth it.
From the first year of life, Kenny was consumed with great passions. An obsession with a blue rubber ball grew into another obsession for dinosaurs. Then it was rare coins, skyscrapers, roller coasters, guitars and the highest mountains in the world. Not long ago he was waxing poetic to his brother Tommy about the tallest mountain ranges in Colorado.
 |
| Tommy and Kenny, 1994 and 20 years later. |
Shocked into submission, Kenny relented. His good humor, fortunately, prevailed. "You know, Tommy," he said, "some people find me fascinating."
Incredibly, the two of them rarely fight. When they're teenagers, John and I hear from one of their friends about a furious, tumbling brawl in the mud that erupts between the two of them in the detasseling corn field. They never mention the incident to us, however, and John and I don't mention it to them. Whatever provokes the fight is sorted out in the hot summer mud.
Usually, even as little boys, they are completely in sync. Tommy retreats to the basement to spend hours dribbling a small basketball on the tile floor, and Kenny disappears to devour Harry Potter or to examine his coin collection. Later, lonely for each other, they play catch in the front yard or stroll down to Buechler Park to hit golf balls with an ancient club rescued from the closet.
Tommy, from the moment he's born, is pure delight. Perpetually joyous and affectionate, he possesses an uncanny sense of humor and thoughtful curiosity. In pre-school, he savors words, numbers and sequential patterns.
"Mom," he abruptly bursts into the bathroom one afternoon as I am seated and completing business. He takes my face between his hands to indicate the gravity of the moment. "A, B, A, B!" he announces carefully with four-year-old importance. "That's what you call a padron."
He turns on his heel to depart as abruptly as he enters.
John and I are not young parents, but we have never been so happy. Watching our boys grow and thrive is a miracle, plain and simple.
Because they are exceptionally tall, athletics becomes a crucial part of their school years. Tommy, sturdy and strong, loves football. Kenny, on the other hand, prefers tennis and basketball. In the ninth grade after an excessive growth spurt, he reaches 6 ft. 9 inches and is coming off the bench to play a few minutes for the Grand Island Central Catholic varsity basketball squad under Coach Bill Gavers.
Janie Hoch, a friend and parent of students John and I teach, tells me she enjoys watching Kenny play and has nominated him for a Got Milk ad campaign contest. The winner of the contest, she tells me excitedly, will fly to Florida to meet NBA basketball star Shane Battier and be featured in ESPN Magazine.
"Oh Janie," I thank her warmly, "what a nice thing."
 |
Kenny, 2002, in ESPN Magazine. |
A month later John and I sit side by side in Orlando's Milk House Sports Arena as Kenny, behind us, is photographed for ESPN, and in front of us 11-year-old Tommy enjoys a game of Horse with Shane Battier. It is a surreal moment. John and I stare at each other in a sort of bewildered daze. Things like this don't happen to people like us.
That is, in fact, exactly what I tell Kenny the next summer when, with new-found confidence, he enters yet another contest - this time for Nestle's Crunch. Ten kids from across the country will be selected to fly to Los Angeles with their families to play one on one with Shaquille O'Neal. Now 6 feet 11, Kenny hopes he has a shot at winning. With speedy efficiency he sends a video of his dunking abilities to contest officials.
 |
Kenny and Shaq, 2003 |
"Can we please, please eat at Chuck e Cheese?" our boys beg us. "Just once?"
Not on your life, we say. Our one day in Lincoln will most certainly not include a sub-par meal at a wall-to-wall, kid-screaming manic fest. Consequently, Kenny is determined to make it to Los Angeles this summer any way he can get there. There may even be a Chuck e Cheese.
"Kenny," I reason with him, "you were lucky it happened once." I shake my head. "It won't happen again."
Except it does.
Our boy plays basketball with Shaquille O'Neal. I am completely starstruck to shake the hand of the bigger than life Shaq who takes Kenny under his wing.
"How can this be?" I ask my husband the next afternoon as we gaze in fascination at waves crashing in from the ocean, the first ocean any of us has ever seen.
 |
Tommy, 2010. |
John and I dare to believe the sky's the limit for our boys. Perhaps they will be famous and rich and buy us a grand house.
"And give us the life we so richly deserve," John cracks.
Those things don't happen. In spite of countless protein shakes and diligent weight lifting, Kenny never carries more than 170 pounds on his 6 ft. 11 in. frame. He has difficulty physically matching up against 235 pound opponents.
 |
Vannie and Kenny |
Kenny graduates with a business degree from Regis University, and Tommy leaves school altogether. It seems a bitter disappointment at first and so unlike all that John and I had planned for our boys. Nevertheless, life goes on.
Today, they both live in Denver - Kenny loves his college town and eventually persuades Tommy to join him there. Kenny marries Vannie, the funniest, most wonderful and perfect girl we could ever dream of for our son, and at their wedding, Tommy as best man delivers the toast.
"Ken, you've finally found your Barbie," he jabs Kenny, "and she's a lot cuter than the one you played with in high school."
Kenny now works for the University of Colorado Foundation, and Tommy is a meat cutter by day and a bouncer by night. Vannie is a grant writer for the Denver Boys and Girls' Club. The three of them share a condo in Denver with Kenny and Vannie's dogs, Sarge and Luna. Vannie, loving and easy-going, seems not to mind living with a couple of hulking giants and two shedding creatures - the dogs, not the boys. Tommy takes over the basement, they grill outdoors on fine evenings, and there's a great park not far away. Kenny and Tommy still love to play catch and hit baseballs. Devoted Broncos, Nuggets and Rockies' fans, they manage to see as many events possible in the cheapest seats possible.
They're happy.
 |
Tommy's artistic masterpiece inspiredby TV legend Bob Ross. |
 |
Tommy with our Blackie. |
Kenny, who always nurses a soft spot for his younger cousin Laura, a sweet little girl with special needs, eventually helps coach a Special Olympics' tennis team in Denver. Even as nearly seven foot teenage boys, he and Tommy coo in gentle falsetto voices to our cats and sling them over their shoulders to cart around the house.
They have always entertained us. Donning a skin tight red turtleneck, the two of them cut their own magical Christmas album. They create masterpieces on canvas following the instructions of television artist Bob Ross. They tease Vannie, mock their dad's irritability with Denver's I-25, and make me laugh til I cry.
Now with the perspective of my 64 years, I am never quite sure why I ever felt the need to be hard on them - to make them feel shame or guilt or the feeling that we were disappointed in them. Like all kids, they made their share of mistakes. Tommy, having made a few of them in his early 20's, reminds me of my own irresponsible youth. He's become a very good man because of those mistakes, and he's taught me to learn from my own and to let the past go.
 |
Tommy and Kenny. Our boys. |
Thank God he never listened to her.
In truth, more and more our roles become reversed. John and I ask for their advice - especially with anything technological.
"Now Mom," Kenny explains to me over the phone as if I am a small child. "Snap Chat's not hard. Look for the little bar on the bottom that says 'Send a chat.' "
If I could do it all over again, I'd forget about being so hard on them. I'd tell them every day they're the best, kindest, funniest human beings - besides their good dad - that I've ever known. I'd tell them that I love them, even when they make mistakes. And I'd tell them to never be afraid to try anything new.
And by God, I'd even throw them in the car and take them to Lincoln to eat at Chuck e Cheese.
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