Tough Boys

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in

Robert Frost

When my sons were teenagers, they used to play this ridiculous game they called “Buck, Buck.” By some sort of psychic connection, boys would amble from up and down the street to congregate in groups of two or three on the front lawn. One of my sons, usually Son #1, would bend at the waist and grab onto of the chain link fence which separated our house from the neighbors–his arms and chest at right angles to his lower body. Someone would yell, “buck, buck” and a random boy would separate from the crowd, sprinting full speed across the yard, trying to knock Son #1’s grip off the fence. If the attacker didn’t succeed, he too became part of the “fortress” under assault by attaching himself to the first guy around the waist and holding on for dear life when the next assailant slammed into the chain.

Sometimes the “line” had 20 kids in it before someone managed to knock everybody off. Bruises and torn ligaments were a common occurrence. My daughters and I would occasionally watch this tomfoolery, always expressing to one another our profound gratitude for being born women—who tended to bond by having lunch, instead of participating in physical mayhem. But in my heart, I knew my sons were just victims of their DNA.

My dad lived in a tiny farming town south of St. George as a kid. He had three older brothers, who took it as a point of honor to help their younger brother toughen up. When my dad was five, the Virgin River—normally a disappointing, dried-up stream bed without even enough water for a respectable fish much less a spot for skinny dipping—was the recipient of a deluge from the mountains outside of town. Almost without warning, the roar of flash flooding came down a dozen canyons, dumping a tidal wave of churning, red mud and water into the river and filling it well beyond its banks in minutes.

My dad and his brothers, aged 7, 9, and 11, went racing away from their chores to watch the water rip through their farmland. The two oldest boys hatched a brilliant idea: now would be the perfect time to teach my dad to swim. So, they threw him in the flood. It became immediately obvious that this might be a very bad plan. They stood horrified as my dad flailed and screamed for “help,” rising and sinking with the wild, roiling waves.

Realizing that his little brother was not learning to swim as intended, Gerald, my dad’s next oldest brother, leaped into the foam and grabbed at my dad until he had enough grip to hold my dad’s head above water while they were tossed head-over-heels together downstream. As my dad told the story, seven year-old Gerald held him up an impossibly long way, until at last a farmer working in his own fields saw them and hucked a rope off a small bridge across the flood, pulling them to safety.

Many years later after my dad retired from the Air Force and was going to school to finish his PhD, he was riding his motorcycle to teach early morning seminary when a 15 year-old who’d stolen his mother’s jeep plowed into him, severing his entire right foot except for the Achilles tendon. He’d have had no chance to ever walk again except that the foremost orthopedic surgeon in the country happened to be working with astronauts at the hospital where my dad was taken by ambulance. He was there for several weeks, but eventually he walked out with the help of a cane he used off and on for many years.

My husband and I were married then, so we were away at school when my Uncle Gerald came and spent a week or two with my family while Dad was still in the hospital. After he left, my mom–still raising a couple of kids–found a blank check on the mantle with a note telling her to fill it out for whatever amount she needed until my dad got home.

Now that I think about it, that DNA running through my sons’ veins might be exactly what they need.