I am a Football Mom, by Kaye Willis
I will not be one of those football moms! That's what I tell myself as I stare into my newborn son's face. Someone else's son can be the one who dives on loose footballs on cold hard frozen ground. Other boys will be the ones who smear black stuff under their eyes and spit and cuss and stink. OK, so maybe he has a cute little blanket with a teddy bear running back, a little squeaky football, a hat that looks like a helmet, but that says NOTHING about me! My son will never have bruises on his shins from being kicked, cleat marks on his back and broken thumbs. My son will never know what it's like to have a concussion and order a Mountain Dew even though he hates Mountain Dew because he's all scrambled. And yes it's true that we've taken him to Blackcat football games since he was 3 months old, but that was just to show him off, because he will never play football!
I am not a football mom! That's what I still tell myself when I am working a roadblock in the middle of the road during a rainstorm. After all, flag football isn't real football, it's just my son and his friends playing, spending quality time with their dads on fall afternoons, right?. It doesn't mean a thing that he and my dad walk to the grocery every afternoon with a handful of quarters to get little plastic football helmets from the vending machine. It also is meaningless that we have to drag him home on Monday nights from his Pop's house during Monday Night Football. I will admit that I secretly keep score at his little flag games, but I'm sure everyone does it. And yes, sometimes I find that I'm sitting alone because I get a little loud now and then, but I can't be distracted by others anyway. But it will be fine, I'm sure this will all be over after this fall, because I am not a football mom!
I guess I'm a little bit of a football mom. I have to admit that when we took him to get measured for a helmet, I teared up a bit. He's so little to be putting on the armor of war. Helmet, pads, cleats, Good Lord, it's scary, but he loves it. I clean his room and see his little 3rd grade writing, drawing x's and o's on paper notebooks. I listen to him and his dad talk and he knows more about the game than I do! I find myself scouring grass and mud out of white football pants and loving it. Slowly the focus of the week is becoming those Saturday morning games at Archer Park, the fall leaves brilliantly falling like rain on bright green grass. The park filling with players and parents, cheerleaders and children, food and the festivities of football! I listen to their little voices, "Good game Joey!" And suddenly it hits me... I am a football mom!
I am a football mom. I wake up on Saturday mornings with bodies laying everywhere. Smelly, snoring bodies, sore from the previous week's battle. Soon those bodies will be waking up, ready for pounds of bacon and eggs and loaves of bread. Laughter will fill my kitchen as they begin to wake up and reminisce about funny things that the coaches did or said, the smell of farts in the middle of huddles. After a hearty breakfast they will hit my backyard for a quick game of touch/tackle before my friends, their moms arrive to pick them up. I've learned how to insert pads into football pants in a split second and how to squirt air into helmets with expertise. I've watched these little fellers grow and change. Soon these guys will be in high school, the big league, but for now it's so fun! Good times with great kids, time spent together because of a little oblong ball, a club that I feel so fortunate to belong to. I feel like these days will last forever!
I am a football mom and it's playoff time! This little town is a powder keg. The store windows are painted black and red. My son's number appears on many windows in town. I know he feels the stress, we do too! We have so much to do, money to raise, food to cook, fields to paint. Every week might be his last week. It could be the last time this year that we will know the high of seeing him lead the team out of that tunnel and into the fireworks. It might be the last time I have to worry that I'm going to see him laying injured in a trough of mud. Agony and elation go hand in hand when you're a football mom. Our school song has always been "Loyal and True" and that song embodies my spirit, I am loyal and true. I've drank the Kool Aid, I'm all in. So that's me, hiding behind the bleachers because I'm so nauseated with nerves. That's also me screaming at that ref because he's an idiot and deserves it. I know it's normal for a woman to own 46 sweat shirts and not a single dress. It's also normal to remember numbers by thinking of football jersey numbers. If a phone number is 1721, why that's Joey and John, I'll never forget that! A normal dinner is a great selection of gas station roller food and M&M's. It's totally fine to spend more money on film and processing each week than dinner. Isn't white shoe polish and air horns on everyone's shopping list? Don't all women count as their only friends other women with whom the only common denominator is football? Isn't it normal to worry about getting trampled when you make a tunnel? Don't all women talk about streamers and concession stands and hot dog sauce recipes?
I used to be a football mom. I listen to the fireworks each Friday night with a mixture of sadness and longing. My thoughts wander back to those days that we stood together in a field of battle; players, coaches, parents. We laughed and we cried, we worked and carried and sweated and froze. We faced Friday Night Lights with fear and excitement. And trembling hearts. We've watched our sons be transformed from babies to warriors, we've become warriors too! I know that other football moms are around me, in different stages of being that football mom. So as the second season begins, and your sons will be heroes, please know that you - a football mom - is a hero too!
