Living Up–or Down–to Expectations

It was the closest I’d come to beating Dad at chess in the six or so months after he’d taught the game to me (and to himself). “You’re getting better,” he said with a chortle as we put the pieces away. “But so am I. You’ll never beat me.”

I was sixteen. It was the last game of chess I would play for nearly forty years.

Maybe he meant to instill a burning desire to excel. Maybe that was also what he intended when eight or so years earlier when he was playing shortstop and I was at bat for the first time in my life during a pickup game of softball at a relative’s house, and he yelled, over and over again, “Easy out.” Maybe that was also what he intended when in high school I had to memorize a large swath of Bryant’s Thanatopsis and as I would practice, he would show me that he already could recite the entire passage and then some.

And I never played softball again, nor did I ever try to memorize a long work again.

What I did learn to do–and do well–was to let sarcastic, denigrating, “clever” remarks fly. If I thought it, I said it. In that way, I was just like Dad. It was what I thought was expected. I also learned to take teasing very, very personally.

It’s taken me decades to consider that maybe that he was raised with the same pressure, or with no pressure at all and so he overcompensated. Maybe his challenges were intended with the same protective love his hands show in this photo. Or maybe he was a narcissist who shouldn’t have had children.

But none of that matters today. What matters is what I do with it. And the longer I tamp down that inclination to verbalize those incisive, acerbic remarks, the more I find they don’t come as quickly as they once did. I also find I don’t as easily rise to the bait when someone gets “clever” with me.

I’ve grown to realize that whatever my father or others expected of me isn’t what’s important. What’s important is what I expect of myself in terms of kindness, compassion, and understanding.