My father was 30 years old when I
was born. The fact meant nothing to me for most of my young life, but took on a
special meaning one day when I was fourteen. It was the day he decided to teach
me to box.
You might think that transmitting
this skill was evidence my father and I had a close relationship, but our bond
was distant, ephemeral, and joined together by a single if resilient thread. My
parents had divorced when I was a kid, and my father had “visitation rights.”
He’d show up at our front door every other Sunday and take me out with him. Our
destination might be the zoo, a park, a baseball game or, more usually, his
house in Far Rockaway, a half-hour drive from my mother’s place in Brooklyn.
But it wasn’t where we ended up that elated me. It was getting there that made
it a thrill.
