Giant Steps
Written By Jeff Wagenheim
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The stadium is going crazy. I can feel the concrete-shaking jubilation even way out here. And when the public address guy's voice wafts up to us — the only two riders on the Gate C escalators — with a muted "TOUCHDOWN ... GIANTS!" I grip the hand of my 18-month-old son a little tighter. Man, do I wish we were in our seats so Aaron could experience all the hullabaloo of his first pro football game. So I could.
We're not arriving late. We were in the stands for kickoff. But almost as promptly as the Giants' defense, leakier than a loose diaper, surrendered the game's first score, my contented little sports fan turned cantankerous. He squirmed, he whined, and when I pretended not to notice, he stepped up the melodrama, tearfully turning his body away from the field, scrambling onto his knees on the fold-up seat, and making a shaky attempt to stand. I instinctively reached out for him, envisioning a welt under the eye where my gentle wife would slug me when I brought home her little treasure with a welt under his eye.
I pulled Aaron onto my lap, but he wasn't buying that. He summoned that superhero power that toddlers have to transform their bone structures into 1,000 pounds of jellyfish. With him squirming for freedom and me holding on like the last tackler between him and the goal line, he let out a screech that caused a cluster of ruddy-cheeked, roundish men in two-sizes-too-small Tiki Barber jerseys to turn toward us like synchronized swimmers. The meanest ones in the Olympic pool.
Maybe Sarah was right, I thought. Maybe the boy is too young.
My wife and I have been struggling with scenarios like this practically from the day Aaron was born. I'm always the one wanting to introduce the kid to something I'm excited about; Sarah is always the one wanting to wait "till he's ready." This is a woman who has spent half her life as an orchestral musician, yet she's never taken our son to Symphony Hall. "Not till he can sit still," she says. "It wouldn't be fair to me, to the audience members around us, to the performers, or to Aaron." My wife mixes her passions with patience. I'm one part passion, one part impulsiveness. Oh, and there's pride too.
Which is why I could not bring myself to leave this football game, even though it was turning into a wrestling match. If I arrived home too early, Sarah would know the outing had been the disaster she'd predicted it would be. She's not the kind to say, "I told you so," but having her know she had, uh, told me so and had been proven right (once again!) was something I didn't mind sidestepping. So what was I supposed to do with this crabby kid till the game was over?
Aaron had an idea. In the middle of a flailing spinal-twist yoga move, he sniveled, "Essolayer ... Dada ... want ... essolayer." It took me a moment, but then I recognized that he was repeating the word (sort of) I'd taught him as we rode up to our seats. I liked that. What I didn't like was his timing. I tried to negotiate — Can't this wait till the end of the game, big guy? How about halftime, pal? — but I had to give in when he made his counteroffer: He arched his back and let out a small but there's-more-shrillness-where-that-came-from shriek, a warning shot across the bargaining table. "Okay, okay," I said. "Now." As I made for the aisle, Aaron triumphantly perched on my shoulders, the collective sigh of relief from Section 128, Rows 20 to 30, was palpable.
So far, we've ridden down to ground level, back up, down again, up to the upper deck, back down. Then repeat, three times. We've missed two touchdowns, one by each team, or so I figure from the crowd's roller-coaster reactions. This is killing me. It isn't just that I'm missing the game, or even that this day I've always dreamt about — me, my son, and football — is turning into a nightmare. What's worse is that Aaron just doesn't get how intertwined Giants football is with his family history. It's our religion.
I've been devoting Sundays to these games since I was a toddler myself, sprawled on the living room rug in our house in New Jersey, my grandfather slouching in his Archie Bunker lounger, my mother letting out an "oooh!" from the straight-backed chair near the dining room whenever Y. A. Tittle would get us a first down.Football evolved into the one thing that kept Mom and me tethered, especially once I went off to college and a life of doing things my way. We always had the Giants to talk about. And when I found a way to circumvent a 20-year waiting list and presented my mother with season tickets for her 60th birthday, she got all teary and proclaimed it "the best gift I have ever received." Mom didn't live long enough to meet her grandson, but seeing the boy sitting in her old seat today got me a little teary too. Maybe they'll share a connection after all.
Biding time on the escalator, holding Aaron's hand, I'm deep in a reverie of grandma and grandson and a bunch of big guys in blue helmets when my cell phone rings. I know who it is, without looking. "Hey, babe," I say as I'm still flipping the thing open.
"Hi, honey," says the unconvincingly nonchalant voice on the other end. "How's it going?"
"Not so good. The Giants are down, 14-7."
There's a pause on the line while my wife gathers the strength to not say, "I don't care about the stupid game. I'm calling to make sure that my son, the bundle of love that I carried inside me for nine freaking months, isn't being disfigured by some Neanderthal in blue face paint." Instead, she says in a tone that sounds remarkably empathetic, "Sorry to hear about your Giants. How's Aaron?"
I look down at my son. He's stuffing way too much hot dog and roll into a formerly vegetarian mouth caked mustard yellow. His left shoelace is soggy and soiled from dragging, untied, along the floor of the beer-soaked concourse and the something-else-soaked men's room. His pants are drooping under the weight of the diaper I forgot to change during our bathroom run. His nose is a little runny. "He's great," I say. "He's loving this."
A slight departure from the truth at a moment like this — with my wife sitting at home, alone and anxious — could be considered not just reasonable but even an act of gallantry. But the truth is I am not lying. The kid is loving this escalator ride. And even though the day is not turning out the way it always played out in my dreams, a remarkable thing happens as Sarah and I finish our call: I start to love this escalator ride too. It begins with me noticing how magnificent the Manhattan skyline looks from 10 stories above the Meadowlands. I pick up Aaron and point to the east, and his smile tells me he's seeing what I see. Then I put him back down and start to see what he sees. I watch how he studies the huge concrete pillars as we glide past them. How he places his palm against the shiny stainless-steel escalator side panel that, at his height, must seem like a skyscraper. How he cautiously steps off the grated step just before it recedes into the ground at the end of our ride. Aaron is fascinated by every single thing we pass — things I've passed a million times but never really seen — and I'm fascinated by his fascination.
Midway through the second quarter we're back inside the stadium, but not in our prime lower-tier sideline seats. We've exited the escalator at the upper deck, and Aaron darts ahead of me and starts climbing the steps. I follow. It's slow going, a toddler leading the way, but what's the rush? We eventually settle into some seats three rows from the top. The game below appears to pit the blue ants versus the white ants on a big green lawn. Again, no problem: My focus isn't really on the field anymore. I've surrendered to Aaron's lead, and it's no longer a matter of resigning myself to enduring an ill-fated outing. Genuine interest has kicked in. Experiencing this scene through a toddler's sensibility, I'm noticing sights, sounds, and even smells that weren't here for me before today. "How many men do you see with their faces painted blue?" I whisper in my boy's ear. He looks all around us and finds more blue faces than he can count, and we both crack up.
I'll be back here at Giants Stadium next Sunday, quaffing adult beverages and grilling beefy burgers in the parking lot with my buddies, and when the game kicks off we'll be on our feet along with 77,000 other crazies, bellowing "Dee-FENSE!" like overgrown kids. But let's not confuse childish with childlike. Today, thanks to Aaron's wild mind, a football stadium has morphed into an amusement park — one of those along the Jersey Shore, where a father and son can scream through a roller-coaster ride or quietly watch the world go by from a bench on the boardwalk.
Aaron and I continue to soak in our eye-opening surroundings until, to my surprise, he climbs into my lap, rests his head heavily against my chest, and drifts off. Now I'm free to watch the game. Yet I can't help but notice the airplanes crisscrossing overhead, the cigar-and-beer breath of the guy sitting behind us. I'm ready for some football, but I'm also inclined to simply close my eyes and take in the crowd's anticipatory murmurs and reactionary roars and groans, play after play, like a rolling tide.
