"The Teenager"

On August 2nd, 2017, my nephew, Tomás Del Pino Coffey, came to live with me and my husband in Huntsville, Alabama, for the 2017-2018 school year. He was 13 at the time; his 14th birthday was October 2nd, 2017. (That was a “cheat day,” when he allowed himself to go off his strict-but-plentiful diet). As a CrossFit devotee, he was into protein and carbohydrates, but not fat or sugar. On “cheat day,” however, he and Russell had breakfast at IHOP (International House of Pancakes), we all had burgers and fries for lunch, followed by donuts.

That evening we went out to a pizza restaurant, where Tomás consumed an entire large pizza and glimpsed his first American football being played on the television there.

He found it boring compared with soccer (which he’d played at school in Spain).

By his birthday, then, we had adjusted to his being here. His bedroom was my former office space. I was attuned to his needs, fixing his breakfast (three eggs, two waffles, fresh fruit, ice water) every weekday morning at 7 am. He was picked up for school (freshman class at New Century Technology High) at about 8:00 am by a friend whose daughter went to the same school. I was responsible for picking both of them up three days a week in the late afternoon. At first I would get to the school very early to get a parking spot and wait in the car, listening to the news. As the year went on, I pushed my arrival at the school later and later, but I was always there before “the bell rang.” Tomás was bored with school, for the most part. He turned out to be slightly rebellious in his approach to his “studies.

Having access to YouTube to learn anything he wished to learn, he didn’t appreciate having to listen to things that weren’t interesting to him. It turned out that English literature and history were two of those things.

This was shocking to me at first; as a high-schooler, I had initially respected the “authority” of my teachers, and even admired some of them. I wasn’t sure if I should scold or push him or leave him alone about it. It took me a while to remember that I, too, had rebelled, in a worse fashion. I had skipped classes, wandered off, and finally dropped out. Tomás wound up with A’s and B’s anyway, for final grades. He’s a smart kid, math-oriented, but not a reader. This meant that the enthusiasms and recommendations I had to offer were not needed. Instead, Tomás introduced us to newer, contemporary amusements via his cell phone.

Most evenings, I’d drive Tomás to the CrossFit “box,” a ten-minute drive. The class was an hour long, which meant I had to drive back to pick him up an hour later. Sometimes I’d grocery shop during this time; sometimes I’d take the dog to the dog park. My life became a series of car trips. Grocery shopping had to be done at least every two days. The kid ate a lot. I was making meals on the 1950s plan: a meat, a vegetable, a “starch.” My sister had given me access to some money in an account, which paid for his food. He’d eat twice as much meat as I did, or even Russell did, and would often follow dinner with a huge bowl of cereal and milk. Gallons of milk per week were also mixed with the protein powder he needed before and after workouts. He started indulging in a self-created workout at 6 am in addition to his evening WOD (CrossFit-approved Workout of the Day), doing “double-unders” (jumping rope) on the deck, swinging a 50-pound kettlebell, pumping 50-pound dumbbells. Of course, we’d hear his thumping as we lay in bed, not quite ready to get up ourselves. Tomás’s body shape was spectacularly muscular, and he was enamored of this aspect of himself. I (the contrarian) tried to ignore that aspect and pay more attention to his mind.

He was a funny guy. He and Russell had a rapport, part of which involved speaking in Maggie the dog’s voice, a rough, gangster-style persona that Russell invented before Tomás came, but to which Tomás added an incredible backstory that kept growing and growing. Maggie was more than a hundred years old, it seems, and had been everywhere and done everything, and been responsible for almost every important technological development of the last fifty years. She was a braggart and sometimes a liar; not to mention a narcissist, violent enforcer of her likes and dislikes, and a cattle baron (because she liked steak). Maggie, through Tomás, would berate me for not giving her enough steak.

In March came the workouts for the CrossFit Open. Five consecutive weekends of brief, but strenuous workouts that were scored by his coach, Nathaniel. Tomás wanted to do each workout twice, once on Friday and again on Sunday, to see if he could improve his score. He always did improve his score, and ended up 70-something in his age group in the world, out of nearly 2,000 contestants. A few weeks later he was officially invited to do the Online Qualifier workouts, which were to be filmed. I think he had hopes of jumping up to the top 20 with these four workouts. This was unlikely, but he was very angry with me for messing up one of the films (I was not used to using my phone for filming, and ended up switching to my video camera). With these workouts, he rose to 62nd in the world in his age group, a fantastic achievement, but only the top 20 would go to the annual games in August.

Before I witnessed Tomás doing this competition, I had no idea of his capacities. I was blown away, watching him. He was a real athlete, possibly even “gifted.” The first hug he ever gave me was after completing the very first competitive workout in March.
I was as supportive as it was possible to be, and would become as nervous as he was before one of these competitive workouts, the first series of which were done in groups, with a judge for each contestant, and a big digital clock ticking away on one end of the gym. The more “reps” and rounds of activities that were completed within the allotted time, the better the score. Usually the weight to be lifted was prescribed, but there were two workouts that involved increasing the weight. The kid dead-lifted 235 pounds, if I remember correctly. Some of the other activities were pull-ups, ring-muscle-ups, “burpees,” and handstand pushups. He was impressive at all of these. I was his CrossFit mom.

I don’t think Tomás and I started to become “close” until later in the spring, after the competition was over and he had resigned himself to not being in the top 20 this year. His achievement was amazing, but he had had an unrealistic, ideal goal. It took him a while to accept that, and to move his hopes toward next year’s games (2019). We would talk (or argue/discuss) while I drove him here and there. We would talk at breakfast and at the dinner table. For a while he was learning the guitar at school, and I shared some musical knowledge with him; I feel I could have done more of that, but I didn’t. It was difficult to get him to watch an entire movie unless it was an action picture. We did manage to expose him to “2001” and “The Wizard of Oz.” I took him to a shooting range because he wanted to try that. And, while he was here he found a girlfriend, Karla. She was 15, a bit older. They saw each other at school, but would occasionally meet other friends at the movies (more driving for me). After school ended, Tomás had ten days before his scheduled return to Spain. During this time he wanted to get together with Karla frequently (even more driving for me). By the time it came to say goodbye, the scene was a bit heartbreaking. Tomás had attended Karla’s sister’s wedding all afternoon at a house in Decatur. I went to pick him up at 6 pm, and waited for more than half an hour while they said goodbye, trying to give them privacy in the carport (I don't think they saw me take that picture). Karla cried. Tomás wanted to cry, but didn’t until later. The next morning, we all got up at 5 am to leave for the Nashville airport at 6:15 am.

So, this was my year to attempt to be a mother, since I don’t have kids myself. What I discovered was that it’s mostly a lot of hard work, none of which I minded, because it kept me busy and kept me from thinking about things I hadn’t done for myself, or in my own life. I felt a vicarious thrill when Tomás did so well in the competition; I was very proud of him. I adjusted to his not being an “intellectual” in the style of his mother and my father. He has a very healthy ego. He is not “troubled,” as I was at his age. I am sure he will endure some more disappointments in the next few years that may be even worse than not making the top 20 CrossFit kids’ list (in the damn world). He will grow and learn. He may or may not keep in touch with Karla, although at this point, he wants to come back to visit at Christmas. We don’t know yet if that will happen; flights are expensive.

What else I discovered was that it’s not possible to see into a teenager’s mind or soul; I could only surmise, suspect, project, and express caring, and laugh at his jokes (not difficult). When here, he did not have a problem with confidence; he indulged in over-confidence (it seemed to me) a lot of the time, but that is part of being a 14-year-old, good-looking male with physical energy and a future ahead.

As many young men do, Tomás fantasizes about being an “entrepreneur,” and not having to go to college or pay workplace dues or be under the thumb of a boss. He thinks he will invent, implement a thing or a process, and become rich and powerful. Some other ideas that he toyed with were becoming a CrossFit trainer, a policeman, or joining the U.S. Army (he has dual citizenship).

But now Tomás is back home with his mother, my beloved sister Felicia, who has lived in Spain for almost 30 years. She’s recently divorced from Tomás’s (and his older brother Gabriel’s) father, so it’s a bit tough for her to do all that chauffeuring and cooking, since she’s also working, teaching English at the University of Seville. Gabriel (18) now works as a steward for Ryanair, based in Frankfurt, Germany.

He comes home to Seville once a month. Tomás is having a summer of leisure at the moment, except for CrossFit. I saw him on Skype the other day, wearing the gray hairband I gave him to hold back his fashionable top-of-the-head long dark hair. We miss him, but it’s not that yearning kind of missing a person. It’s more like, “Wow! A teenager lived with us for a year, and it was pretty cool!” Should it be a yearning? Did I grow to love Tomás? I already loved him by default; he is family. I acquired more intimate knowledge of him, and that is part of love, I think. I care about Gabriel, too. We chat sometimes on WhatsApp, during which short moments I try to persuade Gabriel to give up being a fan of Donald Trump. Tomás does not share Gabriel’s political taste, fortunately, and I think Gabriel adopted his attitude partly to counter his mother’s very liberal influence; to be different, to have his own identity. They are so young, these nephews.

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