Chapter Text
Yuna knows Shane is going to hate this. Hell, she hates it and she's the one suggesting it. But she squares her shoulders, ties her hair back, turns off the television, and turns to her son on the couch. She tells him, "We're trying hockey today."
Shane, as she expected, explodes.
He's 4 years old. He explodes about everything.
A big part of that is just how much energy and need for routine he has—who ever heard of a 4-year-old wanting routines?—which is why they're trying hockey today.
Yuna loves hockey. She has loved hockey her entire life. She met the love of her life because of hockey, she had her son because of hockey—or more specifically because Montreal scored one incredible winning goal, she and David both had a couple beers, and a celebratory mood acted upon apparently has biological consequences—and she gets particular satisfaction from knowing more about hockey than most of the boring, dumb white men at her job.
But because she loves hockey, Yuna knows statistics.
She knows the injuries, the concussions, the lifelong costs. She knows science will probably find more reasons to be afraid, in years to come, of letting her only child play a sport she loves and fears could hurt him in equal measure.
So yes, Yuna hates this idea. She knows Shane needs activity, and a sport will satisfy his tiny but growing intensity and physicality and strange need for structure. But she had hoped, and tried, to find a sport with far fewer potentially life-changing collisions.
Unfortunately, Shane has not enjoyed any of them. Shane has protested every attempt and, worse, has fled them. Yuna has discovered her son, at four years old, can run as well as some teenagers. Yes, he's definitely going to be an athlete. If it weren't for the fact that getting him to stop running away is the goal, she would simply put him in whatever tiny child version there is of track.
The problem is that he runs though.
Yuna has chased Shane across sports fields, parks, courts, and lots. She has retrieved him from climbing fences, escaping into parking lots, and tracked him through labyrinths of gymnasiums and arenas. He runs, and he screams in fury and frustration when caught, and he struggles, and Yuna is tired.
She's been promised more hours and responsibility at work soon, a potential promotion she's had to fight for twice as hard as white male peers. David is already working more than either of them like. They need something to tire Shane out, and something to occupy him.
Hockey has something the other sports don't, which David has quietly pointed out: no escape route.
They can put their tiny terror of a runaway son in heavy awkward hockey gear to hinder his nimble limbs, fence him into a rink with walls too tall to quickly climb and no readily discernible doorway, and it's like a fishbowl easy to track him inside.
Yuna is trying to trap her son in hockey so she can stop chasing him across half of Canada. Oh, god, is she a bad mother for this?
Shane throws a hard toy at her, aim true, that hits her deflecting arm. "Shane!" she huffs. "We do not throw things at people!"
He throws another toy, and it breaks a picture frame. He starts screaming, and he runs for the door. She barely beats him to it.
Yuna is not a bad mother. She's just a desperate one. Hockey is happening. Shane can hate her for it later.
Only, later, watching her son swirl around an ice rink with a dozen other small children in oversized jerseys, Yuna feels like she may never have to worry about her son hating her for hockey. Because, despite the war that was getting him into the rink, and despite the initial ten minutes of him circling in search of an exit, Shane looks...happy.
Over the next half hour, she watches Shane learn to follow routes painted on the ice. She watches him handle his first stick, fumbling along in pursuit of his first puck. And she feels as if she's witnessing something rare and magical, a genesis of some kind. She wonders if anyone else can see it too. A glance at the faces of coaches and a few lingering adult players hanging out tells her they can, and they are realizing something special is happening too.
When it's over, she spends another thirty minutes chasing her son again, but this time because he doesn’t want to leave. He cries about it. He wants to keep skating, keep trying to get the stick and puck under his control.
He's tired himself out by the time they arrive home. Yuna puts him to bed for a nap and gets herself a glass of wine.
She sits down at the computer she and David share, gets out a phonebook and a notepad, and begins searching the internet and making phone calls.
When David arrives home, he is greeted with a happily tired and quiet son, a yellow legal pad of information on hockey for kids and the costs, and Yuna wearing her grim decision face.
"Hollzy," she says, his old hockey nickname warning in itself. "I think we're raising the next Wayne Gretzky. Shane is going to play hockey. He's going to be the greatest of all time."
Shane Hollander is four years old.
But Yuna Hollander watched him play a game today, saw the surprise on the faces of grown men, felt magic being born in an ice rink, and felt him fall in love for the first time.
Yuna knows Shane is going to love this, and she loves him.
So. Hockey it is then. Injuries, concussions, and fear be damned.
"Okay," David replies. He sits at the table and reaches for her hand with a reassuring smile. "Tell me the plan. How do we raise a star?"
Yuna lays the path.