Building a Bridge to My Boy

ParentsÕ Lightning Round

B O O K I R E A D T O R I L E Y I’ve Loved You Since Forever, by Hoda Kotb.

S O N G I S I N G T O H I M “You Are My Sunshine.”

B E S T B A B Y A D V I C E I ’ V E R E C E I V E D When my pediatrician tells me all Riley’s weird things are normal.

B E S T P A R T O F S H A R I N G T H E B A B Y L O V E O N I N S TA It becomes a digital photo album. I always go back and look!

R I L E Y ’ S L AT E S T T R I C K Squeezing his hand as he says bye-bye and kissing!

W O R K O U T M O T I V AT I O N I look at Riley and think, “I’m going to do anything I can to live forever.”

run my schedule with me. He’s too good to be true,” Trainor says.

Trainor went back to work when Riley was 3 months old, cohosting Peacock’s Top Chef Family Style, in which young chefs compete, with parents as cooking partners. Going to work so soon after the birth was “scary at first,” she says, “but it really helped that the team included so many other moms.” The crew gathered around her during breaks, asking if she needed to pump, to rest, to see the baby—since Riley was spending his days in the trailer. As transitions go, it was a good one. “I think about moms who don’t get to bring their kids to work, which is pretty much everybody, and it’s crazy to me,” Trainor says.

After Top Chef wrapped, Trainor judged Clash of the Cover Bands, a singing competition that streams on Hulu Live TV. By the time it was over, she felt run-down and guilty about missing time with Riley. Her therapist gave her a pep talk. “‘No, you’re not a bad mom, you’re a working mom, and you’re working to support your family and to love your family,” Trainor recalls her saying. “I think when you have a kid you just realize, ‘Wow, life is beautiful and precious. I want to be the best for my kid.’ I’ve never been more motivated.”

Trainor is currently developing a sitcom for NBC based on her life, which she will star in. But the goal of growing her family is never far from her mind. “I’m gonna try to get to four,” she says, speaking of kids. “ I’m gonna try to create four. We’ll see what happens after three. I’m not doing less than that. I need three.” Then she recalls her reaction to seeing Riley for the first time. “When I saw Riley in the NICU, all hooked up to these wires, I just saw the most adorable baby redhead I’ve ever seen,” she says. “And I thought, ‘Oh! We have to make more.’ ”

Trainor says that Riley has inherited Sabara’s sense of zen and her own good sleeping habits. As he grows, Trainor says they will teach Riley to “ ‘treat people with kindness,’ as Harry Styles says,” referencing Styles’s 2019 hit. Ultimately, her dream is simply to sit down on her couch, watch TV, and cuddle with her fam. “That’s my true happy place,” she says. “I don’t want to be on a beach somewhere. I want to be indoors with air-conditioning and blankets, food, and happiness. That ’s my joy.”

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Party of three—for now. When Trainor first saw her newborn son, she says, “I thought, ‘Oh! We have to make more!’ ”

Bu i ld ing a Bridge t o My B oy

I always tried to pull my son into my world. After I lost him, I wished I’d spent more time in his.

by I VA N M A I S E L / illustration by A N N E B E N T L E Y

W H E N O U R second child and only boy, Max, was born, I had all the expectations that every young, naive father holds for a son. Max would walk in my footsteps, would grow up as sports-crazed as I did. He would collect baseball cards—and football cards and basketball cards—and long after his children were grown, he would keep those cards in his closet.

My son’s lack of interest in sports is proof that God has a sense of humor. It turns out mothers have genes, too—which, in truth, is unfair to my wife. She had more interest in sports than Max did.

I use the past tense because Max died seven years ago, at age 21, when he ended his life. He struggled with depression, which we knew, until it spiraled out of control, which we didn’t. As you may imagine, I’ve examined our relationship from every vantage. I see where I succeeded and where I didn’t, the latter looming larger because his death doesn’t allow me to correct my mistakes.

My wife described Max the toddler as “on his own planet and happy to be there.” But what we originally deemed cute—such as the ability to recite entire Dr. Seuss books—turned out, after litanies of tests, to be evidence that he resided “somewhere on the spectrum.” What do you do with that? There is no X-ray that identifies autism, no shadow on an MRI that announces itself as Asperger’s.

Max struggled with social cues, but we bonded over humor. I trained Max to love the Marx Brothers, the arid nonsense of Bob and Ray. He and his sisters introduced me to the zaniness of How I Met Your Mother. Max collected cards—Pokémon, not baseball. My efforts to introduce him to sports ran aground. He played one year of T-ball. He made one trip to the driving range. And then, one night at age 9, Max came downstairs and asked me about Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant. Actually, he asked about Kevin GAR-nett and KOHB Bryant, mispronouncing both.

He had been reading a LEGO catalog, which included the new NBA LEGO set. Instantly, we were in the car, headed to Toys “R” Us. Jason Kidd, another LEGO character, played nearby. I asked Max if he wanted to see him play. And off we went to see the New Jersey Nets. I thought I had established a beachhead.

Max and I went to several games a year for a few seasons. I’m haunted by how desperately I cling to the memory of one NBA playoff game we attended in 2007. Max, 13, and I sat 20 rows behind a basket. When the Nets clinched the victory at the free-throw line, Max and I embraced, jumping up and down. What I love about that memory does not put me in the most f lattering light: It’s the most vivid moment I have of Max fulfilling the assumptions I made when he was born. It underlines the difficulty I had in reaching him on his terms, his turf.

It devastates me to acknowledge that I built those bridges for him to walk to my interests but rarely crossed over to his. I know I’m not the first parent who’s failed to grasp the saliency of a Pokémon deck, or the only one who couldn’t take three steps in Minecraft without being cut down by a fellow player. But it pains me to have decided that I didn’t have to be interested in the things that most interested him, and yet wanted him to be interested in what interested me.

I’m smart enough to know that had I dived into either Pokémon or Minecraft, rather than pretend to have only a passing interest, it would have had no bearing on Max’s mental state. And I know that some of the gap was generational. One shock of parenting adolescents is that a child who once fit snugly in one arm is now a living embodiment of how you are no longer cool.

I believe the trick with any child is to meet them where they are. You teach them where they must be in terms of how they treat people. You introduce them to the topics that you think are important. And you don’t dismiss the ones that are important to them. You don’t have to immerse yourself in their passions. But if I had it to do over again, I would wade in at least up to my waist.

Ivan Maisel is a sportswriter and the author of the memoir I Keep Trying to Catch His Eye.