Tough Glove

No longer his son’s hero, one father found the way to reinvigorate the pair’s bond came through an unexpected connection over the “sweet science”

- Benjamin Toledano

IT SEEMED like my son turned away from me overnight. One day I was his hero, his protector, his guide; the next, I was an aggravating, ineffectual buffoon. He stopped rolling into my side of the bed for a cuddle in the morning. He could barely even sit next to me at the dinner table. When only weeks before he would throw his arm around me as we walked up the road, making me stoop to catch his hand on my shoulder, now he shrunk back when I tried to hug him and growled whenever I spoke.

The boy whose face used to light up like Luna Park when I came into a room told me, "You suck at life." Over and again.

He was only 12 years old. It seemed so soon to lose him.

I tried not take it personally. I knew that sons have to separate themselves from their fathers to become strong, independent adults. But still I'd hoped it might not happen to my boy and me: not because he was different, but because I was. I mean, who wouldn't want a dad like me, right?

I'm tough, I'm clever, I'm funny, I'm cool. I write for TV. I'm down with the little homies on the block, for God's sake. But my son didn't see it that way anymore. Like mealtimes and showers, I was just another unwelcome distraction from the latest video game.

If I asked him what he had been doing at school, he said, "Nothing."

Then one afternoon he came home with tears standing in his eyes. He had been talking to his mates in the street when a boy had come over and asked him for money. My son had walked away, the boy had grabbed his bag, my son had shrugged him off, and the boy had hit him in the mouth.

The punch had split my son's top lip – the flesh of my flesh. It felt as if the boy had hit me, only much, much worse.