Wednesday, September 8, 2010

The Zen of Football


Okay, so I've now gone to two of Bar Mitzvahzilla's Freshman high school football games. This hasn't been without some great effort. Being a bit football challenged, just showing up took a lot of resolve. I knew that good moms go to their kid's games. So I had to go. That was that. No matter that each of the games have been away games, and I mean away - like the first one thirty miles north and the second one thirty miles south. And no matter that I soon learned a cruel fact of being the visiting team: our stands invariably face west into the setting sun in the 100 degree Arizona heat. But it's football, right? Suffering's part of the game.

So far our team lost one game and won another. Yesterday I found myself actually enjoying myself, sitting next to Husband and jumping up and down with all the other lunatic parents. The only thing I can't stand is Husband's preachy philosophizing about the game: what plays the coach should have played, what plays he might play, all the possibilities in the world, apparently, that have to be muttered into anyone's ear nearby. Considering that and the guy yelling "'Go Birds" intermittently, I think ear plugs could make this really good.

By the end of the two games Husband was muttering about something else: Bar Mitzvahzilla hadn't played. Today after practice he told me he doesn't expect to. Husband hit the roof but I chose to look at it in a more Zen-like manner.

When I was watching the game yesterday I forgot that my son hadn't actually been on the field because it seemed to me that just being a part of a team was something too - that his team playing was him playing. There were about four injuries during the overall game, moments during which both sides got down wordlessly on one knee and they and the spectators all showed respect for the injured player by clapping as he was taken off the field. Where would Bar Mitzvahzilla have gotten that experience, exactly, if not for football? That kind of reverence, of control, of understanding that sometimes you're a part of something bigger than just yourself. These are lessons I didn't learn till I was forty - that sometimes you just have to do a whole bunch of work and never know if there will be a payoff. That the work itself has meaning.

Also, football's brought some unexpected benefits. There's the fact that he got to start high school knowing a lot of kids, and coming from private school that was a big deal. There's the fourteen pounds of pure muscle he's packed on his frame. There's the fact that on game day he gets to strut around campus in his jersey. And, not least of all, he gets to look up from his position - yes, right now his position seems to be standing and not playing - and see two parents and a sister who love him enough to schlep all over the planet to show support for his team and his endeavor. And sweat.

He can also see his mother who's learning, after nearly eighteen years of marriage to a football fanatic, to enjoy the game.

Do you ever feel like you should keep a list of all the things you did to show love to your kids that they don't appreciate? Giving out any sage advice to children lately? Football anyone? 

16 comments:

  1. Oh heavens! Football, soccer, tennis, diving (at a school where we had no diving board). Need I say more.

    Good job not freaking out about Bar Mitzvahzilla not playing! Parents seem to dislike this more than the kids do. They just want to be down on the field with their friends.

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  2. My youngest played freshman football too (after a few years in middle school). It was about the only time I enjoyed watching. Except the thump when the bodies hit was horrible. I was glad when he switched to running the next year. Safer and a much more individual sport; they all run, no on sits on the bench. I hope someday my boys both realize how their parents were there for every event, ever milestone, every activity. But the probably won't.

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  3. We're having the same experience with baseball! While Nate is a Freshman and won't likely see much off the bench time this year, he got to play with and meet a lot of the team during the summer practices and games. He started school with friends in all grade levels which has been great since he transferred to go to his dad's school where he would have known nobody.

    I definitely think there is value in team sports. All my kids have enjoyed some kind of benefit - winning team or not.

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  4. Good for you for going to the games (and for seeing the bigger picture). I think almost ALL men "armchair coach." My father was a pro.

    Team sports teach a lot of life lessons, I think. It also teaches you how to accept loss, and that it happens a lot...but you pick yourself up and do it all over again.

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  5. Wow. Great post. I have mostly dreaded the idea of my kids participating in organized sports, having to taxi them around from practice to game, and sit there and try and act interested. I know that I too will go, and you give me hope that it won't be so bad.

    Happy New Year!

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  6. OH wow - don't get me started on that first question of yours. With my fourteen year old now - and the attitude that comes with that age (as you well know), I find myself constantly having to bite my tongue and avoid recounting the list of things I have done "behind the scenes" - in sacrifice to my own happiness / sanity, etc. to make something happen for her or to make sure that she was unhurt, in the know, having a happy this or that.... All good - wouldn't do anything differently, but... sometimes....

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  7. I think that your husband's philophizing is his way of being in the game. That is just my humble opinion and may be dead wrong.

    I find it intriguing what people take away from experiences. A person could say it is just a football game. But, rarely is an experience just ONE THING. In this case, it is so many things that the list gets pretty long. Respect, being a part of a whole, supporting your family, the dignity of winning and losing, and the list goes on.

    I am not going to answer your actual question just because I don't want to go there....

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  8. We are going through the beginning stages of this. I put both kids in soccer this year and I am not sure what I was thinking. Great post and I miss high school football. It is huge in Texas, but not so much in NJ.

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  9. Yes, Linda, I too am married to the world's best (but quite unknown) football coach...It makes me want to scream!

    But, football is a lot like life. Sometimes, no matter what you do, you get your a** handed to you. And you know what, you get back out there and finish the game.

    I am sure my list of things I do solely because I love me children will be quite long as they get older. But right now, home work is the one things I would definitely do without.

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  10. **thing** Sheesh, I need some sleep!

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  11. I'm a huge football fan. I don't understand the game that well, so I'm no armchair quarterback like your husband. But I can scream and jump and down with the best of them. Since I had girls they played high school volleyball...another game I love. I went to every game and supported the heck out of them. When they wanted to quit because they weren't being played and/or their coach were jerks, I put on my smiley mom face and cheered them on anyway. I felt it important they committed to the team and that meant sticking with it. Plus the idea of them just hanging out without a sport was NOT going to happen. So there I was in the bleachers, smiling and cheering, while thinking of ways to hurt their coaches for hurting my girls. That's motherly love.

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  12. Go Firebirds! Before my empty nest, I was at every game, surrounded by the other crazy parents, loved every minute of it (it was better than therapy!) and got TONS of credit for it from my daughter. Keep it up, it's a great investment!

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  13. One day, my kids will appreciate all the games of Candy Land I played with them. One day.

    As for football, I don't think I could handle my kid being the one down on the field, the coaches clustered around him, trying to assess his injury. So call me Wimp Mom, but I'd be more than happy for my son never to set foot on the actual playing field! =>

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  14. Nicki, I love that. It sounds like my world - diving at a school where the pool has no diving board. We've been going to these games where I've been critiquing the teams bleachers, facilities, snack bars, right? Then I finally took a good look at ours this week and ours in worse than all the others! Funny when all the equipment you expect, or facilities, or bleachers, just aren't there!

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  15. You do make me smile...

    It would be impossible to make a list of all the stuff done for the kids. And they would hate it besides, and so would we I think. We want them to appreciate us, but not to shove the "everything" we do in front of them. It's goes with the job we take on, right?

    By the way, I count my blessings that my boys weren't interested in football. They went for cycling or tennis instead. (Phew.) But they do go to football and soccer games as teens. It's a social thing. And also, there are lots of girls...

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  16. I would be nervous about the sheer amount of contact in football, so I was relieved to hear your son is enjoying the benefits without the big bumps. My brother was a dedicated baseball player for years and years (and years), and as the sister, I had no say in being shlepped along. Although I still maintain that I resented it, there is a distinct fondness I feel for the sport, and the lessons my brother learned are so valuable.

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