Breaking the Hold : A Feminist Mother Grapples With Her Son’s Power

MY SON RYAN STANDS BEFORE THE BATHROOM mirror, carefully knotting his tie. At age 18 a strictly jeans and T-shirt guy, he follows the high school athlete’s tradition of wearing ties to notify classmates: “I have a game today.” Friends will wish him luck in the halls, but few will attend the afternoon meet. Unlike the football and basketball teams, the wrestling team attracts about the same size audience as, say, the chess club. It does not matter. His teammates and coaches--the close fraternity he aims to please most--will observe every move. A sparse population of parents will make up in volume what we lack in numbers.

I notice that the button at his neck falls a half-inch short of closing, though his eyes withhold any pleasure at the measurable results of all the iron he’s pumped. Nor do his eyes concede any regret when he combs his hair around the swollen, tender tip of his “cauliflower” ear, in full bloom again this season. Admitting neither vanity nor chagrin to the mirror, a young wrestler strives to become utterly unconscious of his body--its muscle, its pain, its hunger and sweat. It is the wrestler’s mom, approaching the end of an 18-year intimacy with this body and this boy, who openly admires and winces through mornings such as these.

“How do I look?” he asks, more out of habit than any need for my approval. He pats his black tie familiarly.

“Like a pallbearer with a tic,” I reply. He laughs.

In fact, I think he looks splendid, but saying so would be meaningless today. We have come to the outer edge of unconditional love, and wrestling has taught both of us what some of the future conditions might be. Will I love his strength outside the safe arena of the high school gymnasium. Will he resent a childhood strong on peace but soft on discipline? Will we be able to navigate the differences in power as he takes his place in a world still divided by gender?

I suspect that this boy, who’s always known how to charm parents and teachers out of ultimatums, for whom friendships and fun come easily but deadlines and due dates are hard, loves his sport precisely because it is so merciless. Give in to temptation, skip a practice, allow a distraction, underestimate an opponent--you lose. In a six-minute match, there is no room for excuses. Preparing for a test that will take him to the limits of his strength and his will, he has no use for easy praise today.

Before he leaves the bathroom he weighs himself one last time, apparently to see if combing his hair has worked off another ounce. Wrestlers are relentless dieters--if you’re good at 152 pounds, wrestling philosophy maintains, you should be dynamite at 145. Despite the saunas and workouts in layers of polyurethane, there will be high anxiety when, stripped down to mere ounces of clothing, he steps on the scale to qualify for the meet. “Enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner,” head coach Steve Rogowski advises in November. “It will be your last full meal for three months.” Not making weight is the worst kind of defeat, providing opponents the free points of a forfeit and disappointing teammates with a failure of will.

All family dinners become testy events during wrestling season. His scorn for calories interrupts my longtime habits of the heart, which equate food with love. Rejection is inevitable. “What’s in this?” he asks suspiciously before applying his fork to his plate. “How many grams of fat?” For someone who once thought there was no greater heaven than helping himself to a full bag of Chips Ahoy, a stick of celery holds little bliss. This morning, he has a glass of water for breakfast. He will probably skip lunch.

“Are you coming today?” he asks before heading out the door, aware of my conflicts with work. Four years ago, I didn’t comprehend the urgency of his repeated invitations to the meets. As a single mom, I preferred other ways of spending our limited “quality time” together to losing circulation in the bleachers twice a week. Initially, duty rather than enthusiasm brought me to the gym. It’s now hard for my family and friends to believe I’ve become a sweaty-palm fan of high school wrestling. “I’ll be there,” I say. He smiles and leaves.

THE TEAM HAS ALREADY BEGUN its stretching exercises when I take my seat in the bleachers that afternoon. Ryan sits in the center of the circle with the two other captains, Enrique and Will, surrounded by their black, white, Asian and Latino teammates--all dressed in red. Like a military drill team, they move in unison to the captains’ calls: “Down . . . up . . . again . . . up . . . left . . . up . . . down.” The goofball antics that regularly erupt during practice are not indulged here--under the scrutiny of opponents with names like the Rams, Bears, Wreckers, Vikings or Warriors, the Greenwich, Conn., Cardinals give nothing away.

Though their movements are graceful and disciplined, adolescence lends a distinctly amateur quality to their performance, always a leg flailing here or there with a too-large foot. My throat swells with involuntary emotion, like the buried patriotism I cannot own until a parade marches by. An almost primal longing surfaces as I watch this diverse team moving in a single, unified direction.

The youngest wrestlers approach the mat first. The lightweights, usually in their first varsity season, are all limbs--in any position, their entangled appendages resemble a thicket of pick-up sticks. During Ryan’s first season I could never tell exactly what he was supposed to be doing. My cheers were feeble, limited to “Go, Ry!” But where? To what end? The inept maneuvers four years ago are now precise, calculated, purposeful. The rapid development in a boy between 14 and 18 can give a mother the bends, however prepared she may think she is for the coming man.

I had of course observed the results of his bodybuilding, but until I attended a wrestling match, I’d never watched him use his power on another person. At 5 feet, 7 inches and 152 solid pounds, he has the capacity to level most of the people in the gymnasium. There is a part of him that loves this power. A part of me regrets it. I cannot witness this obvious strength in my son, his joy in using it, without thinking about the ways it changes his relationships with women. His friendliness with strangers on the sidewalk, with clerks in stores and cafes, is not returned as readily anymore. Some women--not because of anything he has done, but what has been done to them--automatically fear him. The “collateral” damage of violence against women costs all men smiles on the street.

When the weight class below him is called to the mat, Ryan sheds his sweats and secures the straps of his singlet. One of the reasons he kept inviting me to his meets, I now understand, is that he wanted to announce: “This is who I am now. See me.” And see I do. Confronted by all that Lycra and muscle, the mothers in the bleachers hardly know where to rest their gaze. When I look away from my own son, I realize that I am admiring the son of another mother, perhaps the one sitting next to me.

I look down at my feet, and think about human sexuality. I wonder if it’s the same for fathers who observe their daughters in bikinis for the first time. No longer comfortable with the uninhibited embrace of parent and child, we are now woman and man, suddenly awkward in our physical touch. I recognize that his body now belongs entirely to him. It’s hard to know the appropriate way to acknowledge the stunning physical changes in a child of the opposite sex, yet not to acknowledge those changes is to ignore the most important developmental issues of the moment.

He puts on his headgear and then begins the sideline dance that wrestlers do, the loose-limbed hop from foot to foot that simultaneously pumps them up and calms them down. His thoughts are focused utterly inward. If he knew I was watching, if he knew how much I studied and enjoyed this unself-conscious, rhythmic, juice-up dance, he would cease instantly, as if caught exploring his face for morning stubble. I think if he keeps up this freedom of expression, he’ll be spared the urge to beat drums twenty-some years from now.

For all the mockery Robert Bly’s tribal rituals in suburban America have inspired, he has hit a cultural nerve in his argument for exclusively male companionship and ritual. In a lecture four years ago, Bly implied that a single mother’s close relationships with sons--especially firstborns--often made it difficult for the boys to own the aggressive and competitive parts of themselves. He suggested that there are some truths men must learn that mothers cannot teach them. Ryan has learned things about competition, about the use of aggression, in the company of his coaches and teammates that I could never have taught him. This recognition brings an element of pain, as separation invariably does.

Last week, still pumped up after a victory, a phrase commonly used in the locker room slipped out in the car; it was too bad his best friend had to lose to that “fuckin’ fairy” from Darien. Ryan was sorry the minute he’d said the F-word--not the first one, which has so saturated the culture. No, it was second F-word that prompted the apology. Only in the car did he remember that our family of friends includes several “fairies.” The word meant nothing, he assured me. It was army lingo.

“It’s only language,” I reminded him, “Only the stuff we think with.” I know crudeness is a prerequisite in the world of the locker room; he knows sexism and homophobia are enemies in mine. His defection didn’t seem so innocent, so temporary, to me because this phrase was acquired during his first real experience with power. How that power is defined, for and against whom, has everything to do with how it will eventually be used. Still largely unconscious of the bigotry that begins with a word, he didn’t want it to matter. “Trust me,” I said. “Words matter.”

MY THOUGHTS ARE SUDDENly interrupted by loud hollering below. The two coaches have leaped up from their seats and are leaning over the edge of the mat as the referee crouches low, eyeball-to-eyeball with the wrestlers on the floor. Before I can join the rallying shouts, a hand slaps the mat, a whistle blows. The wrestler in blue jumps up ecstatically. A defeated Cardinal sits on the mat in limp disbelief. The head coach shrugs and raises a pair of helpless hands. Slipping out of his wet singlet, the defeated wrestler puts on the T-shirt bearing this month’s slogan: “PAIN--It is better to give than to receive.”

Whenever a Cardinal leaves the mat in despair, a grim and wordless exchange ripples through the bleachers. It’s a humbling moment to witness a son in defeat. When one of Ryan’s relatives witnessed his enraged frustration on the golf course last summer, I was advised to teach him that it’s just as honorable to be a good loser as it is to be a gracious winner. “I can’t teach him that,” I said, empathizing with his suffering. “It isn’t true.”

The two wrestling team alumni who come to every meet are whispering some private, last-minute advice to Ryan before he steps onto the mat. Pete and Pat--whom the Cardinals refer to as “Pete and Repeat”--still arrange their business and social lives around the high school team, not yet having a fraternity as satisfying as this in the world outside. I’m grateful for the straightforward affection they spend on my son. Whatever the content of their conversations, it has introduced me to what complete comprehension looks like on his face. It’s an expression I’ve never seen at home.

The coaches meet him at the edge of the mat. They have the credibility and authority--all but expired for most of the parents in the bleachers--to demand discipline and give orders. I can’t help wishing this authority were directing him, “Do your homework! Think about your future!” But instead I hear, “I know you can kill this guy! I want to see it in the first period!”

As Ryan crouches into his stance, my heartbeat accelerates, my skin dampens, my own muscles become taut. Sitting in the bleachers is an aerobic experience for me. As usual, I have situated myself next to the Puebla women, Enrique’s mother and two sisters, who have taught the tweedier New England residents here how to behave at a wrestling meet. The team loves them: “You can really hear them,” the coach says.

Enrique’s mother, Marcia, one of my fund-raising teammates at the refreshment stand this year, speaks only Spanish while I speak only English. We understand each other’s sign language and facial expressions adequately enough to conduct our fund-raising chili-dog business, but our communication in the bleachers is seamless. She screams, I scream, we all scream.

An aggressive takedown in the first period results in a reversal--alarm flashes onto Ryan’s face and stays there. As he fights with everything he has, the Cardinal fans try to out-shout the deafening cheers from our opponents. The buzzer sounds in the nick of time.

Unless someone gets a bloody nose--a painless and welcome timeout--it is usually necessary for one of the wrestlers to tie his shoe between periods. It’s a lengthy process, tightening laces and wrapping the ankles, then taking a drink for revival. It is usually the losing wrestler who discovers he needs to relace a shoe, who needs to break the momentum of his opponent and rally his own. Perilously close to defeat, Ryan painstakingly attends to his shoe. My thoughts drift back to the first time he dressed himself, the gorgeous look of satisfaction on his 3-year-old face . . . until he got to those damn shoes. Defeated by a shoelace, he cried in frustration. The lone figure bent in concentration on the mat raises an identical lump in my throat. If he loses today, he will not cry.

After a second punishing round, his total exhaustion is evident: Spent muscles, sweaty limbs, airless lungs, a worried face. With time running out, the third period is always the most reckless. Mat burns color his cheeks, blood trickles from his mouth--his ear, I think, must be swelling under his headgear. He says he never feels these injuries when they’re happening. I do. I see his face pressed into the mat and feel his braces cut my mouth. His body is slammed down and my breath catches. For the last four years, emergency rooms have been a regular feature of my existence. In these stark, tiled rooms of reverberating tensions, there are no crowds, no cheers, no coaches. Emergency rooms are where mothers wrestle alone against monstrous fears.

Last December, Will, one of the other co-captains, grabbed my elbow before a tournament and reported that Ryan had just been taken out on a stretcher. My heart squeezed fiercely as images of broken necks, brain damage and comas flooded my brain. “It’s only his arm,” Will assured me. Only an arm, only an ear . . . only the young can be so cavalier about their bodies. Armies are made up of youth for a reason. Ryan was a casualty of friendly fire that day: The injury happened during warm-ups. When he lost consciousness after severely dislocating his right elbow, the trainer called an ambulance.

Fifteen minutes later, I reached the hospital. Despite my wish to remain unhysterical, I had trouble with simple interrogatory sentences at the information desk: “My son, Greenwich High School, about 15 minutes ago--his arm (a spastic gesture to my right elbow) . . . is here?” The nurse looked quizzically, then brightened.

“Oh, you mean Ryan.” She smiled and pointed down a long corridor. A burly paramedic noted my hesitation in the hallway. I repeated my garbled question. “Oh,” he said, grinning, “you want Ryan.” He accompanied me to his room.

My son was propped up in his bed, a very pale Cardinal in a nest of white sheets. The doctor, still smiling from some joke that preceded my arrival, picked up a pair of scissors to free the wounded arm from Ryan’s jacket. Their amiable chatter concluded abruptly.

“No way!” Ryan said, the color returning to his face. He sat bolt upright and insisted on pulling the jacket, intact, over his head. When the doctor rejected that suggestion as too painful and risky, the paramedic, a former high school wrestler, came to the defense of his fellow jock.

“Doc, you can’t cut his jacket--read this,” he said, pointing to the word embroidered on the right shoulder: Captain. The doctor looked at me, the only non-member of this religion.

“Knock him out,” I said. “Cut the jacket.”

The patient prevailed. It took three of us to slip the jacket, undamaged, over his head and arm. It seemed a foolish kind of bravery, risking enormous pain to salvage a symbol. But in the whiplash emotions of this final wrestling season, nothing stays the same. As the fear of permanent physical injury receded into the background, I recognized the enduring psychological benefits he’s earned from this sport. If wrestling gave him one oddball ear and six weeks in a sling, it also produced a confident, witty, capable young man, the Ryan instantly recognized by the hospital staff. He was willing to endure pain for the “Captain” because, he reminded me, words matter.

NOW, GOING INTO THAT third reckless period two months later, he knows he needs a pin. Handicapped by the limited flexibility of his still-bandaged arm and a longer limbed opponent, he has trouble securing the leg he needs for a takedown. With 30 seconds to go, he lunges for a knee in a sudden rush of adrenaline. Now he’s in a cradle, now he’s out, now he’s freed his arm, now he’s on top pressing down . . . three inches to go, two inches, oh my God, one inch! My laryngitis will inform me later that much of the thunderous noise in the bleachers came from me. He gets his pin, seven seconds to spare.

Tradition requires each wrestler, after the referee has raised the winner’s arm, to shake the hand of the opponent’s coach. Though Ryan may not be a good loser, he has mastered the role of gracious winner. On the way back to his own bench he always stops, win or lose, to hug his opponent. This hug is no formality, but full of emotion. After four years of rising up in the same weight classes together, witnessing each other’s most glorious and humiliating moments, his mortal enemies from other schools have become his friends. The hug says, “Congratulations” or “Sorry I had to pin you,” and this year, it has the bittersweet tinge of “So long.”

Like a congregation offering each other the handshake of peace at the end of a church service, each team lines up after the final match and walks in a single file across the gym, shaking or slapping each hand from the opposite direction. Only once, when a racial slur from their opponents tipped the defeated Cardinals beyond a strained control, did the handshakes erupt in a brawl. Wrestling on a multiracial team requires coming to terms with every myth about racial superiority. On the mat, you could hardly know a man better, be closer, understand more thoroughly that his immediate goals are exactly the same as your own.

Maybe it is this quality that wrestling has given my son--the camaraderie and experience of navigating the high tensions of a multicultural world--which causes my palms to sweat so. The civil wars among our children are so heartbreaking. Watching this handshake of peace, it becomes excruciatingly clear that if all of us would do the same--if we would mobilize our wills not to give in to temptation, underestimate an opponent or be careless with language--we would not have to keep losing the next generation.

As the team rolls up the mats, the moms in the bleachers confer on final plans for the annual awards banquet. We pack our gear--the video cameras, the coolers of Gatorade, the Ace bandages and aspirin and ice packs we are never without. If we were entirely sane, we would not need these semi-barbaric rituals to break our hearts and thrill our souls. But we are not entirely sane. We will be back next week.