Aug 02 2008
The dreaded day has arrived and I wasn’t able to hide from it.
The day that I’ve spent my whole summer dreading began this morning at 8am as I watched my eleven year old son walk out the door to his first day of his second year playing football. I don’t like football, it’s not that I don’t like the sport it’s that I don’t like the sport for my son. The same son that I carried for nine months, walked the floors with, cried with, and to this day still have to remind to change his underwear is now starting his “manly” sport.
A sport in which I am reminded constantly is a physical sport, that he will have to get hurt and I am not allowed to punch the kid in the face that just ran over my sons hand with his cleets just because he felt the need to do so no matter how much I really want to make him cry! Now I’m not a violent person but this is my baby out there, I’m the one that knows he isn’t this mean kid that loves to knock everyone down just to get a ball. I am his mother I know that he loves to read books with his sisters, he still loves getting mommy hugs and kisses and still understands that Santa comes every year because he’s been a good boy.
However I am reminded at this time by the way the coach has asked us at least twenty times if we are sure Brandon is playing this year and the way his coach’s eyes shine when we reassure him that Brandon will definitely be there. I am reminded at this point that my eleven year old is the biggest kid on the team, that at eleven he is 149 pounds and stands almost my height which is 5′8. My baby… my young man puts on this football uniform and becomes the toughest football player making way for his team to score points. The child that I still find myself holding until he falls asleep watching cartoons becomes the strength of his team and with every bruise he gets and every tear I cry he also becomes my hero.
I know there are other moms out there that hate this time of the year just as I do, I know that with every game we will all be holding our breath and with every touchdown we will be the loudest and proudest moms in the world. I sure know I will.
