I have always been a baseball mom.
Baseball makes sense to me.
There are innings. There are bases. There is a pitcher. There is a batter. People take turns doing things. There are moments of excitement, but there are also long stretches where everyone appears to be standing around thinking about life.
Comfortable, predictable, safe-ish.
Football, on the other hand, appears to be a group of teenage boys launching themselves at one another while the adults on the sidelines yell things I do not understand.
And apparently, I am a football mom now.
This is new territory for me.
C decided he wanted to play football this year, and like everything else he decides to throw himself into, he committed.
And because I am his mom, I committed too.
Emotionally. Logistically and apparently cardio vascularly, because watching your child get absolutely rocked by another human being from the sidelines feels like a new and innovative form of torture.
I was not prepared for that part.
There is something deeply unnatural about watching your child run directly toward danger and having to remain seated like this is a perfectly reasonable activity.
Every instinct in my body says:
Absolutely not.
That is my baby.
Why is that other child running at him like that?
Why are we allowing this?
Meanwhile, everyone around me is cheering.
So I cheer too.
Sometimes I know why, sometimes I absolutely do not.
I have learned that one of the great secrets of being a new football parent is simply taking your cues from the crowd.
Everyone stands? I stand.
Everyone cheers? I cheer.
Everyone groans? I also groan, while quietly trying to determine what exactly just happened.
It’s a system.
I understand very little, but I am enthusiastic.
Baseball Was My Safe Place
Baseball has always felt comfortable.
I’ve spent years on baseball fields. I understand the rhythm of the game. I know when to clap. I know when something went well.
Football has none of that familiarity for me yet.
It is louder, faster and more physical.
And significantly more alarming when your own child is somewhere in the middle of it.
There are moments where I genuinely have no idea where the ball went.
There are moments where everyone around me starts celebrating and I think, Fantastic. We did something.
And then there are moments where C gets hit and every molecule in my body wants to sprint onto the field.
I don’t, obviously.
I sit there like a responsible adult and pretend my nervous system isn’t currently filing a formal complaint.
Showing Up Looks Different Now
One of the harder parts of school football is that I can’t make every game.
A lot of them happen in the middle of the day.
Work exists.
Life exists.
Unfortunately, society has not yet implemented my proposed policy where mothers are automatically released from all professional responsibilities whenever their child has a sporting event.
So I alter my days when I can.
I move things around.
I show up when it’s possible.
I sit outside in the rain.
I freeze.
I squint across a field trying to figure out which helmet contains my child.
I watch.
I worry.
I cheer.
Because that part I understand completely.
He Wears the Jersey Well
There is something about seeing your kid in a uniform that gets you.
Maybe it’s because they suddenly look older.
Maybe it’s because you can see how proud they are to be part of something.
Maybe it’s because, for a second, you get a glimpse of the person they are becoming outside of being your child.
C wears the jersey well.
And I don’t just mean that he looks good in it, although he does.
I mean I love watching him choose something new and go after it.
I am proud of every single thing he decides to set his mind to.
It doesn’t have to be something I understand, it doesn’t even have to be something I would have chosen.
That’s one of the strange things about raising kids as they get older.
When they’re little, you build so much of their world for them.
You decide where they go, you choose what they try, you create the routines. Then, slowly, they start building worlds of their own.
They find their interests, their people, their teams, their things.
And your job changes.
You aren’t constructing their world anymore.
You’re standing on the sidelines watching them construct it themselves.
And Apparently This Is Motherhood Too
I think that might be what I love most about this new football chapter.
Not the tackling.
To be very clear, I could live without the tackling.
It is watching C discover another part of himself.
It is watching him try something unfamiliar and seeing him work at it.
It is watching him walk onto a field where I cannot follow him and knowing that this experience belongs to him.
I can support it, I can rearrange my schedule for it, I can sit in the rain. I can worry myself half to death through it.
But ultimately, it is his.
And maybe that’s a little bit of what parenting teenagers becomes.
Less holding their hands while you lead them somewhere. More standing nearby while they choose where they want to go.
So here I am, a football mom.
Still confused.
Still taking most of my cues from strangers in the crowd.
Still significantly more comfortable at a baseball diamond.
Still trying not to panic every time someone hits my child.
But proud.
Always proud.
Because C is out there building his world.
And whatever world he chooses to build, I am Team C every single time.
Go sports!