Saturday, we celebrated the end of the Little League season with a party at Bear Creek Park. When the party was over, Daniel put his cleats and glove away, and said goodbye to his first season in Minors. It was a good one. He’s a decent pitcher, a good catcher, and he can hit homers. But that’s all behind him now. He’s off to his second day at football camp. He and his best friend have been trying to decide who gets to be Quarter Back and who gets to be Wide Receiver since they were in the first grade. The grooming begins.
The night before the Little League party, I was stripping white butcher paper off folding tables after preschool graduation, when a breathless kid appeared at my elbow.
“Hey,” the little guy says, “James is a pretty good football player.”
“James can’t play football,” I say, picturing my lumbering five-year old melting into the curb after walking a block.
“Yes, he can. You should see him catch. And he can really throw.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” teacher Rebecca says as she swoops by with a basket full of stray crayons, “he plays every day.”
“Wow.” My couch potato has been playing possum as well as football.
I step outside to see James chugging up a grass hill with a water bottle tucked under his arm. He passes it to another boy, who starts to run for the imaginary goal posts. James takes off, elbows flying, dives at the boy’s ankles and sacks him! Boom. Let the scales fall from my eyes. The sackee, it turns out is an athletic fourth grader. Double boom.
Men--complete strangers, guys at the Deli, even my brothers have drooled over my children from as soon as they could toddle.
“Gonna be football players, Mom.” They say pulling the brim of their ball caps.
“Whoa, you gotta linebacker on your hands lady.”
“Go Ducks.”
“Look at those shoulders! They gonna play for North or South?”
Even the twenty-year-old girl who scans my gym card says, “Wow! Do they play football?” She eyeballs James and says, “Nose Tackle.”
I don’t even know what this means. I have spent every day of my life from about five years on, trying to screen out football.
I grew up in one of those loud male-dominated families where all the men screamed at the TV and asked mom/wife to get them more bean dip and beer. It seemed like every beautiful sunny moment I could’ve spent with my dad, he was lying on the couch shouting at the television or hooting over the Dallas Cheerleaders. I think this was considered male-modeling for my big-ape brothers.
I screened boyfriends, including my husband, on how much football they watched. I did not want to spend my weekends inside, glued to a television. I always declared that I had no problem with live sports. If they wanted to go to a football, basketball, or baseball game, golf, bowling, or pinochle tournament I was all for that. Get your keys, let’s go.
I want to have fun, not watch someone else have it. Sitting around watching dust motes while a bunch of guys behind a glass screen scramble around doing things I cannot fathom is my idea of hell.
When I was not working “real” jobs, I was a true bohemian living on the cheap in Paris, New York, and San Francisco. I fancied myself an unclassified artiste in my flowing skirts and long-long hair. I wrote stories and songs, played guitar, did the occasional collage and acted a little. I was always recovering from some tragic love and having a grand time in my recovery with my fabulous friends.
I did everything I could to run away from a suburban American life, full of football- lovin, steak-eatin’, nut-scratchin, fart-lovin, burp-makin, boob-watchin boys.
The universe is a joker. Because, of course, I wound up right in the middle of a suburban American life full of nut-scratchin, fart-lovin, burp-makin, not-yet boob-watchin boys who are crazy for football.
Nose Tackle, Wide Reciever, Running Back—It looks like I will be learning a lexicon my father taught my brothers a long time ago. I am hoping my sons can teach me now, cause I am crazy for them.
.
The night before the Little League party, I was stripping white butcher paper off folding tables after preschool graduation, when a breathless kid appeared at my elbow.
“Hey,” the little guy says, “James is a pretty good football player.”
“James can’t play football,” I say, picturing my lumbering five-year old melting into the curb after walking a block.
“Yes, he can. You should see him catch. And he can really throw.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” teacher Rebecca says as she swoops by with a basket full of stray crayons, “he plays every day.”
“Wow.” My couch potato has been playing possum as well as football.
I step outside to see James chugging up a grass hill with a water bottle tucked under his arm. He passes it to another boy, who starts to run for the imaginary goal posts. James takes off, elbows flying, dives at the boy’s ankles and sacks him! Boom. Let the scales fall from my eyes. The sackee, it turns out is an athletic fourth grader. Double boom.
Men--complete strangers, guys at the Deli, even my brothers have drooled over my children from as soon as they could toddle.
“Gonna be football players, Mom.” They say pulling the brim of their ball caps.
“Whoa, you gotta linebacker on your hands lady.”
“Go Ducks.”
“Look at those shoulders! They gonna play for North or South?”
Even the twenty-year-old girl who scans my gym card says, “Wow! Do they play football?” She eyeballs James and says, “Nose Tackle.”
I don’t even know what this means. I have spent every day of my life from about five years on, trying to screen out football.
I grew up in one of those loud male-dominated families where all the men screamed at the TV and asked mom/wife to get them more bean dip and beer. It seemed like every beautiful sunny moment I could’ve spent with my dad, he was lying on the couch shouting at the television or hooting over the Dallas Cheerleaders. I think this was considered male-modeling for my big-ape brothers.
I screened boyfriends, including my husband, on how much football they watched. I did not want to spend my weekends inside, glued to a television. I always declared that I had no problem with live sports. If they wanted to go to a football, basketball, or baseball game, golf, bowling, or pinochle tournament I was all for that. Get your keys, let’s go.
I want to have fun, not watch someone else have it. Sitting around watching dust motes while a bunch of guys behind a glass screen scramble around doing things I cannot fathom is my idea of hell.
When I was not working “real” jobs, I was a true bohemian living on the cheap in Paris, New York, and San Francisco. I fancied myself an unclassified artiste in my flowing skirts and long-long hair. I wrote stories and songs, played guitar, did the occasional collage and acted a little. I was always recovering from some tragic love and having a grand time in my recovery with my fabulous friends.
I did everything I could to run away from a suburban American life, full of football- lovin, steak-eatin’, nut-scratchin, fart-lovin, burp-makin, boob-watchin boys.
The universe is a joker. Because, of course, I wound up right in the middle of a suburban American life full of nut-scratchin, fart-lovin, burp-makin, not-yet boob-watchin boys who are crazy for football.
Nose Tackle, Wide Reciever, Running Back—It looks like I will be learning a lexicon my father taught my brothers a long time ago. I am hoping my sons can teach me now, cause I am crazy for them.
.
4 comments:
Ah, but these boys - football players that they might be - will also know about how to make good coffee and use language precisely and sketch well. Your bohemianism cannot help but ooze onto them...
zoThanks for the laugh, one can always hope!
Marcia
Just a wonderful portrait of motherhood. Surprises around every corner.
Boys are the mysterious country.
My doctor, a very reserved Canadian woman, has two soccer-playing sons. One day she told me (and, mind you, she never speaks unless it's absolutely necessary," You know, I tried to get my boys to call their parts by the proper names, but somehow they settled on wiener. And when you live with three males, someone's wiener is always hanging out."
Missing you all,
Kelly
And, of course you know my biggest fear? Dare I speak it? That Anna will become a blond texas cheerleading girl. That's the real reason she's not in gymnastics...it's a preemptive strike.
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