And this is why what we have right now isn’t enough.
After drills, the kids get the chance to have a Q&A. I stand near the edge of the stage, tapping my fingernails against the back of my iPad.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Lucas turns his head toward me, watching my fingers on the back of the iPad. I stop the tapping.
He blinks, holds my eye, and then flicks his eyes back to the crowd.
Logan is mid-answer to a question about what to do when you mess up in a big game.
“You mess up again tomorrow,” Logan’s saying, but it feels like he’s trying to convince himself as much as he is the kid. “If your teacher doesn’t win teacher of the year every year, does that mean they failed?” He shakes his head. “Of course not. It’s easy to try to reduce sports to win or lose, but there’s so much more to it than that. Every time you get back up, you win. Every time you try when you want to quit, you win. It’s only messing up if yougiveup.”
The students all applaud, but another kid calls out a question before the teacher can give the mic to someone else. “But what if something bad happens and you can’t stand playing anymore?”
Logan’s head snaps back, and Lucas is right there, before anyone can see how hard Logan took that.
“If you don’t love it, that’s one thing. But if you do, well …” Lucas inhales slowly. “Our mom got sick when we were around a lot of your ages. She loved baseball even more than we did. When she was sick, there were days I didn’t want to get out of bed, let alone play sports.”
The back of my nose stings listening to him.
“Our dad would let us stay home with her if we wanted to,” he continues, “and one day when she was feeling really bad, Dad was out of town, and I asked her if I could stay home from a tournament. I thought for sure she’d say yes.”
Logan looks at Lucas like he doesn’t want to remember this story.
“But she said no. She said she loved watching me play too much to let me stay home. I told her that didn’t make sense, because shewouldn’tbe watching me play. I told her I wanted to be with her.” He sniffs and rubs his nose, and for a minute, he’s too overcome with emotion to get the words out. “But she wasn’t hearing that,” he says, half laughing in a way that makes me think she gave him a talking to. “She said she’dalwaysbe there when I was playing. No matter what.”
He dashes a tear from his cheek and clears his throat. He can’t go on.
Seeing him struggle with emotion, I want to rush across the stage and throw my arms around him.
But Logan’s recovered, and he steps in. “What Lucas isn’t telling you is that our dad had hidden an entire package of Oreos under Mom’s bed, and Lucas was waiting for her to fall asleep so he could eat them.”
The crowd roars with laughter.
Lucas coughs a laugh. “You promised you’d never mention that!”
“You promised to split the Oreos with me.”
More laughter.
They’re so good together, it hurts to think that Lucas is having to keep such a big secret from him.
“Okay, there may or may not have been Oreos,” Lucas says. “But there was also a mom who wouldn’t let us quit. And I’m grateful for it. It was a reminder that there’s more to life than sports, but there’s more to life than grief, too. You can have fun and mourn at the same time.”
Logan nods. “You can workandplay.”
The two end the question with so much grace and humor, I doubt anyone even remembers Cooper Kellogg is in the room with them. But soon the next question comes, followed by another and another until we’re at time.
After the session, the guys take pictures and sign autographs. The whole time I’m walking between the tables, I notice a middle schooler hanging back, arms crossed tight like he’s holding himself together. It’s the kid who asked the question about how to keep playing when something bad happens.
I finally walk over to him. “Would you like a picture? An autograph?”
He shakes his head, his eyes fixed on Lucas and Logan.
