Nea Fane – Un Biet Român Pripășit în America / A Hapless Romanian Stuck in The US

My father played sports. My uncle, his brother, played sports. My cousins, my uncle’s boys, also play sports. They all have the opposite of Dad bodies. They’re the standard for their clothing sizes. You know those catalog notes: “The model is 5’9” and wears a size M”? That’s them.

And then there’s me. Pear-shaped, decidedly obese, never able to find anything that actually fits me properly. I could buy a $3,000 suit at Cad & The Dandy in Midtown and still look like I got it free from a sketchy thrift store in Queens.

I guess every parent must dream of their son surpassing them, of raising some kind of super athlete. What my dad got was me, a four-eyed, total anti-talent in almost any sport.

Team sports? Almost never, by choice. If the school decided to field a team, I was always the last kid picked, then politely asked to please keep the bench warm. I do remember one time in high school, though, when I occupied the position of goalkeeper during a soccer game. Now, for me, wearing glasses is non-negotiable. So there I was, bravely guarding the net, when a ball careened into my face with such force that my glasses were so surprised they decided not to break. The final impression was a lovely red imprint around both eyes.

I was, however, good at swimming. In primary school, I took lessons at a local sports club with an Olympic-size pool and a terrifying instructor. Thank you, Gramps, for taking me to those suburbs of the suburbs, those sketchy, foreign neighborhoods, at all hours of the evening.

Back then, in the old country, there was no such thing as “Every Child Gets a Trophy.” Instead, as a compensation, the cheering section screamed ultimatums at full volume, like “Swim your ass off or we’ll break your legs!” and those weren’t empty threats. I remember one evening – I was practicing freestyle with a belt tied around my knees to keep my damned feet together – when the string holding my speedos snapped. I swam the last length and a half with trunks around my knees, crying, swallowing snot, and accompanied by the trainer’s thunderous screams.

When she finally acknowledged the situation, she shrugged and asked, completely deadpan, “Can you continue?”

I must somehow, from somewhere, have summoned the energy to nod Yes.

“OK then. Tie those back up and go ahead.”
No parent or grandparent ever said anything to the trainer. This was the way.

Participation Trophies and Other Miracles

After that long (and kinda sorry) intro, let’s get to the real star of the show: Cosmin.

Honestly, I have own up to the same hopes and vibes for him that my dad once had for me. I wanted him to crush it in every sport, to be a natural with a puck, a ball, a stopwatch, anything. I pictured him full of confidence, super fit, the kind of kid who sprints like the wind and never gets picked last. I imagined him acting like a coach, hitting every net, conquering baselines and foul lines, even flying past yard markers like it was second nature.

With my nephew’s five years old son learning how to swim, this summer, supervised by auntie, and with a one-to-one instructor, the memories came flooding back.

I’ll never forget Cosmin’s first swimming lesson at the YMCA or, as we like to call it, “the Y.” It’s one of those family stories you just can’t leave out. Keep in mind that we were fresh off the boat in America and Cosmin was struggling with the whole language thing. So when the swimming instructor started talking to her ten very young students and mentioned “stepping into the water,” our kiddo just jumped right in. No hesitation. And guess what? He sank straight to the bottom! I’ve never seen anyone dive in so fast, fully clothed, to save my little guy. It all happened in a blink, and nobody really got what just went down. But when we chatted with the instructor afterward, she understood completely. I mean, this was New York, and finding native English speakers was like spotting a unicorn!

At the end of the day, after lessons and instructions, Cosmin was good enough to swim around the pool without drowning.

Let’s dive into American sports, we thought: baseball would be an awesome bonding experience for father and son, right? Who cares if we didn’t know any of the rules? We bought a glove, a bat, and some balls. My first throw? Total flop. I overthought it – distance, wind speed, ball weight – and ended up tossing it half the distance. Just like the ball, expectations plummeted. Cosmin, on the other hand, nailed his throw distance wise, but missed by a couple of yards to the right. We then launched into that classic debate: the ball goes where your eyes do, and he insisted that’s exactly where he was looking. Ouch, we said, and started wondering about his eyesight. We tossed that ball for a little bit longer, playing pretend-baseball. Ah, well. In the end, the baseball glove got donated to charity, together with the bat, barely used. The balls got gnawed on by our boxer puppy.

The excited young parents that we were thought, why not let the kid give a bunch of sports a shot? Who knows, maybe he’ll find one he really likes! We had to be really careful, though: in the meantime, he had started to wear eyeglasses, and wearing them was non-negotiable (like his daddy).

He learned how to ride a bike, but we were never one of those families to take bike trips for hours. In full protection gear, we looked more like warriors than a normal family out for a pleasant excursion.

Later in life, when he was in college and renting an apartment about two miles from school, we got him a bicycle. I think he rode it two or three times and then it just sat silently in a corner, sad, unused, and gathering dust. He said he wasn’t comfortable riding in traffic, maybe only in an emergency.

Going back to the beginning (around the same time as the bike-riding lessons) we also had rollerblading sessions, with me and my wife joining in. The parks in Staten Island were really nice. It was a pleasure to skate through the park, along the marina, or by the seashore.

Like any normal family, we had our share of balls: a cheap football, a basketball, and a soccer ball.

After our short and awkward experience with baseball, we reluctantly embraced football throwing – with no expectations whatever, which, in hindsight, was probably a good thing.

As for basketball, I remember when Cosmin was very, very young, he used to play with my mother in front of the house. Somehow, mom always scored more.

Soccer, though, it was something else. Let’s just say we were in a league of our own and leave it there. It has to be said, though: essentially, football is played with the hands while soccer is played with the feet, and I was always the guy who kicked the ball everywhere except in the direction I was supposed to. My eye-foot-ball-kicking coordination was zero. Cosmin had exactly the same level of talent so, after every passing session, we were exhausted, not from playing with the ball, but from chasing it around endlessly. The happiest one was our boxer, who played better than we did: she was sure we were actually kicking the ball for her to retrieve.

The dog was also better at water volleyball, showcasing her incredible skills and agility! Out of the few photos and videos I lost, the one with her, Cosmin, and Irina having a blast in the pool is the one I totally wish I still had.

But back to basketball. During his teen years, we used to go to one of the parks with regular-size courts. Occasionally, some poor soul would ask to join our game, and they’d always look surprised when we said, “No, thank you.” Usually in pickup basketball, the answer is either a quick “yes” or, at worst, you’d just quietly pass the ball around with the new teammate. But after watching us play for about five minutes, most of these would-be teammates understood completely and were indeed grateful for our considerate rejection.

Around middle school, he took up tennis at a fancy club in our equally fancy neighborhood. We bought each of us some particularly good racquets and, like any self-respecting parents, we started playing too – sometimes dragging the junior along. It didn’t take long to realize he needed actual lessons. So, like responsible parents, we signed him up for a tennis camp.

The running theme of “a lot of movement, not a lot of ball contact” continued. By the end of camp, he was an excellent ball boy, chasing down every loose ball with great enthusiasm, while the actual goal of hitting the ball over the net remained… let’s say, aspirational. But hey, at the end of the camp, he still got a trophy!

Between school, tennis, and three years of ride-alongs with the Scottsdale Police – Teen Education Division (or something like that), there was also a semester of horseback riding. This, he liked! From the early chores of feeding and cleaning the horses to slowly learning how to ride and make those gentle giants listen to him, he felt good, confident. Unfortunately, the City Recreation program suspended the riding classes and private lessons turned out to be financially out of reach.

And that’s when Mr. DePalma entered the scene – the mysterious karate master and owner of a bunch of martial arts schools. It started off awesome, with a young, full-of-energy instructor and a crowd of eager black belt wannabes, both young and not-so-young. It was a fun way for him to burn off some steam and, somehow, he managed to get to an orange belt. I think that’s about as far as he could go without really loving the sport. Being there for all his lessons and tests, I could totally see the difference between the folks who were just there because they had to be and those who were genuinely into it. One day he told me that he wanted to stop, so we stopped.

By that time, we all knew that sports were not his forte, and we didn’t really push him. We had a timid foraging into golf at none other than the renowned golf club that hosts the Waste Management tournament. This wasn’t just a course. This was the course.

After ten days of intensive training, he came home with… a trophy. And a friendly suggestion that he might want to seriously reconsider playing golf ever again.

He later confessed that he spent more time slicing into the grass than actually hitting the ball.
Choosing a club, swinging wildly, and invoking the sacred “the ball follows your eyes” rule brought back childhood memories, a lot of laughter, and perhaps a budding love for turf restoration.

After golf, we decided to try something calmer, quieter. Something with less risk of landscaping bills.

Yoga sounded ideal: how hard could breathing and stretching be? And yet … Yoga classes were actually ONE class, with his mom, because she was more, well, flexible than I was. It too was a resounding failure. He didn’t pay attention to the instructor, and Mommy corrected him loudly and constantly in front of everybody, and with the kind of enthusiasm only a parent can engender. He got nervous, frustrated, and lost his focus completely. It was not, to say the least, a good experience.

So we changed tactics once again. This time, we went for something familiar: ice skating. After all, he’d rollerbladed before. How different could it be?
Big mistake number….well, who’s counting. Not only were lessons needed, he had to take the beginners’ class twice. That was OK, though, as long as, in his later tween years, he went ice skating with friends and had a good time. So, maybe not a Win, but a Place or Show.

Encouraged by that small moral victory (and possibly still chasing the elusive fantasy of raising even a one-sport prodigy) we gave skiing the next try, which says something about our determination and persistence, although just what is not clear.

We went by the old saying that kids sometimes listen better to strangers than to their own parents, so we got him a ski instructor. It was fun: he was learning to ski in “pizza” style while I was skiing on the slopes with that clean and elegant technique taught by the friend who had tied a belt around my knees (another recurring theme in Romanian sports teaching styles). I don’t remember why we stopped. I think the move to Arizona had something to do with it, turning a short break into a long, too-long one.

In the end, we didn’t raise an athlete, but somehow we eventually raised a very polite young man with a decent sense of balance and a strong aversion to yoga corrections. There were no real trophies, no scholarships, but there were also no major injuries, which frankly feels like a win. We may not have discovered any hidden talents, but we bonded, we developed a deep connection by trying things together, failing together, laughing when possible. And recovering together whenever necessary.