Letting Leo Live his Life

 

Parenting is hard. 

I could have stopped at two kids. But my warped reasoning was that unless I was outnumbered, I would have nothing to complain about. I already had one of each brand, so any contrasting personality traits would be automatically attributed to gender. I wanted to experience firsthand the differences between two brothers or two sisters. And I really wanted one more maternity leave. Yes, this was truly the thought process behind having that third child. And somehow my illogic trumped my ever-loving spouse’s very founded fear that I was already two children beyond my mothering capacity. 

We both knew before he was conceived that Leo (or Phoebe had he been a girl), was going to be the last of the offspring. So I extended my maternity leave from three months to five and since we had to pay for it anyway, plopped the other two in day care three days a week. I lugged little Leo from lunches with the girls to dental appointments to trips to Target because I had never had an infant who didn’t melt down in public. Or maybe he did, or they didn't, but by number three I just didn’t notice. I was living the life.

 

We lived in a crowded little Cape Cod house in those early days. I had no fear of burglars (or worse) coming in through the ground floor windows nor did I worry about not hearing a wailing child. So the older two had downstairs bedrooms while my spouse and I slept a full flight away. The other upstairs bedroom was a combo guest room / office and because once you have three kids you no longer get a lot of overnight visitors, it became Leo’s room. He would fall asleep to my tap-tap-tapping on the computer after six or seven or ten rounds of Owl Babies, a  book that ended with “I love my mommy!” said Bill.  

 

As the baby of the family Leo fell into place, deferring to his bossy older sister and volatile big brother. But he learned to defend himself, and after being attacked one too many times at daycare, bit that bully right on the fleshy part of his arm. He learned the fine art of stubbornness, climbing on top of the family car refusing to venture in to the annual Memorial Day party at the Schaeffer’s. Parents of well-behaved children simply shook their heads and said, “He does it because you allow it.” 

 

By five years old he was tamed by the no-nonsense, if this is what you want, this is how you get it, Coach Leon. Leo found his focus with the Teaneck Titans and became a devoted and disciplined baseball player with a plan in place that would lead him to the big leagues. And while the other two didn’t lack in their athletic prowess, pursuing cheerleading, wrestling, softball, basketball, soccer, football, gymnastics, and baseball, Leo was the one who devoted his life to the sport, never wavering, never complaining, always moving forward toward his goal. 

 

Despite shoulder surgery and persistent pain, Leo earned a spot on a Division I roster only to give up his dream at the end of the fall season. You can read that story right here.

 

It was a heartbreak to some, a shock to many, and to others an “I never would have let my kid quit baseball after spending that much time and money.”

Our biggest fear was that he would drop out of school all together, but sure enough, four years later, Leo graduated from Rutgers University with an “I can’t believe you let him switch his major” degree in Philosophy. 

 

After so many years of if you want to play on a travel baseball team you have to do this. If you want to be on an elite team you have to give up that. If you want to play in college you have to do this. If you’re serious about playing beyond college you can't do that. We knew we had to let Leo figure out how to live the rest of his life without a prescribed path in place.

 

There was a stint of student teaching, a season of driving for Uber Eats, a couple of freelance movie production gigs, some pretty fascinating but unsubmitted screenplays, summers at horse shows on our friend’s food truck. A little of this, a little of that. But nothing that even vaguely resembled a roadway to a career. And of course there were a lot of, “How can you let him live at home when he doesn’t even try to get a real job?” comments. 

 

I struggled, I really did. I was raised way more conventionally. I moved out of my parents’ house in my mid-twenties and would have been laughed out of any conversation (albeit lovingly) that started with, “But I don’t want to spend my whole life working 40 hours a week just because society tells me I have to.” 

 

Oh honey, how lucky you’d be to land a job that only required 40 hours a week. I’m not sure I ever had one of them until I started freelancing. And even then I was working all but eight hours a day, writing ad copy and battling my time-consuming offspring. 

 

Call it a mother's intuition, or pure lack of a better idea, but for Christmas three years ago I gave Leo a membership to a meditation center here in Teaneck. 

 

“There’s no way I’m doing that,” he said.

 

“Oh, but you have to,” I said for perhaps the first time in his life. 

 

And that was the beginning of the life that Leo has chosen to lead. 

 

He has twice walked the Camino de Santiago, a 600 (give or take) mile jaunt through Spain. He has been to ashrams in the Catskills, lived in a tent two different times for months on end at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat in the Bahamas, been on a silent retreat near Joshua Tree, spent a couple months at a center in Sacramento, and has just finished an intense 500-hour advanced yoga teacher training course. 

 

Once one of the biggest fans of BBQ ribs this side of Memphis, Leo is now a vegetarian. He eats healthy foods, thinks healthy thoughts, and is in better physical shape than he was as a 17 year-old baseball player. He doesn’t ask for money. He doesn’t have a credit card. He never has a Christmas list. He is kind, introspective, and a really fun person to banter with over topics like karma and reincarnation and why the soul and spirit are the most important gifts we possess.  

 

His father still belts out in the most random of moments, “GET A JOB!”

 

And I have to admit, I vacillate between thinking (not saying), “You’re 28 years old. It’s time to DO something,” to “You’re ONLY 28 years old. Do what you love while you can.”

 

But what has set me free as a parent was a real palm to the forehead epiphany. By the time Leo needs to tap into his 401K plan that he’s missed ten years (so far) of paying into – I’ll be long dead and it won’t be my problem. 

 

So today on the 28^th birthday of my free-spirited youngest yogi child, my thoughts go back to the very words I uttered when he hung up his cleats 10 years ago. 

 

Long may you run, Leo. Long may you run.