Mother is a verb, not a noun. ~Proverb
here we are. on the first day of josh's senior year. technically school hasnt even started yet, but of course fall sports have. and his first EVER high school football game is tonight. which of course has made me super reflective. it is going to be one of those years, im afraid.
what i realized while driving around today is that i am not now, nor have i ever really been, a football mom. which is probably very obvious to the actual football moms out there. and i hope, at least for josh, that its a good thing.
what do i mean by that? well, i dont really like football. i never really have. which is funny for as much as i love sports. i find football to be kind of boring to watch AND super violent. and i am just not a fan of violent sports. not a huge hockey person either. and i HATE all things boxing/mma related. so maybe it makes a weird kind of sense. ANYWAY, because i dont really like it, i never "got into it". i never learned the ticky-tack rules. or defensive schemes. i was never the mom that wanted to be on the sideline. or move the chains or whatever. i mostly spent all of my time at football fields waiting for the game to be over and for my kids not to be hurt. which is RIDICULOUS. but true.
We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance. ~Japanese Proverb
so how did i end up here, today? i did not let (yet, that's right, LET) josh play football in high school until this year. its really the only thing i've ever put my foot down about sports-wise. all 3 of my boys played different versions of football, flag football, soccer, basketball, baseball and lacrosse growing up. and they all got hurt (when they did) playing different things. so it isnt like FOOTBALL was the culprit. altho the whole concussion thing could send me down a completely different path. suffice it to say, i felt like football was not a good fit for josh his freshman year. my boys tend to be skinny (some might say scrawny) at 14, and after watching Jake wreck his knee freshman year, i just was not interested in watching josh get beat up week after week. call me selfish (which i totally was), but it just was not something i was ok with. same story sophomore year. he still weighed about 12 pounds and TO ME it wasnt worth the possibility of him getting hurt.
fast forward one more year, and his junior year was THE YEAR. you know, the important one for lacrosse. but a funny thing happened that year. while josh was putting in real time in the gym. and maturing. he finally gained some weight. and put on some muscle. AND followed through on his lacrosse dream of finding the right college to play for. basically, i feel like we made the right decisions to get him to where he is right now. headed to UDEL to play lax next year. go JB.
To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another. ~Katherine Paterson
but. he still really wants to play football. and so here we were, this summer. finished with our last HS summer lax tournament ever, and josh says "i really want to play football this year". so i had to decide. am i going to be that overprotective mom AGAIN that stays inside of my comfort zone? if i said no, clearly josh would have respected that decision. he would have been mad. and frustrated. but he would have eventually gotten over it. just like the past 3 years. BUT. when i asked him WHY he wanted to play, it just resonated with me. this is HIS life. not mine. he is going to be 18 in a few short months. and ultimately, all of these decisions will be his anyway. and this is what he said:
i dont want to regret not doing something that i always wanted to. i feel like the signs are pointing me towards playing this year. and i dont want to leave high school wishing i had played. and not playing because i was afraid to get hurt. fear is just not a good reason for me to not try.
what do you say to that? because he is totally right. fear is NEVER a good reason to not try something. and so i said yes. because that is really all i could do. for him. and probably for me. it will be good for both of us. i hope :)
Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think. ~Chinese Proverb
i think the irony is that, at heart, im a baseball mom. THATS the game i know. that is the one where i would be the crazy person in the stands. where i could analyze the plays and break it all down. and none of my boys stuck with it. which is probably both a clue that it wasnt healthy for us as a family. and that im a better mom when all i can do is say "did you have fun?".
so that's my job as far as sports go. isnt that crazy? can i help you get in shape? sure. am i going to make sure you are giving 100%? absolutely. but at the end of the day, my job is take pictures and make sure that what the boys get out of sports is a positive. you GET to play with your friends. you understand what it means to be on a TEAM. you understand that hard work is important, but that when it stops being FUN its no longer worth it. and that at the end of the road, you are going to look back on all the time you spent of those fields, with your friends, and have no regrets.
here's to one more new adventure.
In life, as in football, you won't go far unless you know where the goalposts are. ~Arnold H. Glasow
