Become like children

I reached 60 years of age last year and retired from a 40-year working career in broadcast sports journalism. The transition has allowed me to rediscover the blessed innocence of childhood, in my home and in my heart.

Away from the demands of corporate media, I’ve found joy in what I call “kids world,” where I’m a daily witness to the wide-eyed wonderment, thoughts and discoveries of my sons Michael (9 years old), Christian (6 years old), and their peers.

Michael is a ball of energy who darts about like a water bug at frenetic speeds. Thankfully, he downshifts when he gets a book in his hands. He’ll sit quietly and read for prolonged periods, poring through the latest stack of stories from the library. Michael looks like a calm, mature man when he reads. I’m told he looks like me in those moments.

Christian moves at a drastically different speed than his older brother. He is molasses to Michael’s mercury. Christian is deeply imaginative, a profound thinker who offers weighty observations and poses probing questions. When tucking Christian into bed one night, he asked: “Daddy, does Jesus know when the world will end? Will he tell us when that will be?” From the mouths of babes.

These family snapshots are samples of what I experience more regularly in my new life. I chose early retirement to have more time with my wife and our boys. What stood out in the first months of retirement was my firsthand understanding of the daily level of work Megan did on her own while I was working.

Men, our wives are saints.

With a new schedule, I’m now available for chauffeuring, cooking and cleaning duties, and able to serve as a coach, teacher and school volunteer. I was head coach of Michael’s fall baseball team, something I could not have done on my TV reporting schedule. I have a passion for baseball, passed on to me by my father. Teaching the game to young people is beautifully fulfilling. We had one player who had never played baseball at any level. He came in shy and unsure, but his confidence and ability grew with each practice and game.  By the end of the season, the “rookie of the year” was having the time of his life. A lasting image is that young player in position in left field with the game on the line in the last inning. Nervous, he made the Sign of the Cross. I didn’t teach him that. That was all his doing.

I do teach the Sign of the Cross while serving as first-grade faith formation leader in Sunday school classes at St. John the Evangelist in Severna Park. For decades, my Sundays were committed to Ravens reports for WJZ-TV, but I’ve gladly left football behind to counsel our youths on Catholic life. Every session reveals their curiosity and eagerness to learn, understand and apply the ways of Jesus. It’s an honor to mentor them, even when one of my well-educated students regularly interrupts a lesson with the declaration, “I already know that.” God bless our children.

Sunday school and coaching have given me a new appreciation for full-time school teachers. They, too, are saints. I’m a classroom volunteer and recess monitor at my sons’ elementary school, where I see the patience, care and expertise that teachers deliver every day. The adventures of recess monitoring have included refereeing playground disagreements, summoning the school nurse for skinned knees and accepting an invitation to chase an imaginary horse (yes, we caught it).

Another reward of volunteering is the greeting from students who say, “Hi, Michael’s dad!” or “Hi, Christian’s dad!” It’s an identity I happily embrace, now that I’ve transitioned to life in “kids world.”

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