Free Agent

It was the moment for which he had been waiting: his first day of soccer.

Truthfully, he hadn’t been waiting very long for this moment. In fact, Peach had never shown any interest in playing any sport. Until…

Until his new best friend, who lives two doors down from us, mentioned that he was signing up for soccer. And then Peach developed a sudden interest in the sport.

Our kids had never participated in any type of organized sports until we moved here to the corn field. Poppyseed was the first to introduce the torture excitement of being a sport parent to us with her newly-found love [note: I did not say talent] for field hockey. At age eight. Which is rather late to join the athletic party.

My ambivalence is multi-faceted.

• Never wanted sports to interfere with Shabbat
• Never willing for sports to interfere with Religious School attendance
• Not willing to relegate my time/life to a practice/game schedule
• With the exception of some genetic abnormality (aka JockBro), athletic propensity is lacking in the gene pool. On both sides.

Peach is five. Meaning, the time commitment is minimal. And it’s on Sundays. And it’s after Religious School. So, why not?

Except the first “game” came and went. With a very unhappy player. Because he and Cue were not on the same team. And Cue was his entire reason for existing playing.

{{Parenting dilemma}}

Do we force teach him to accept that we don’t always get what we want?
Do we ruin his very first athletic experience?

I don’t want to be “that parent.” You know the one. Who steps in anytime Junior is unhappy, bored, thwarted, etc. I am NOT that parent.

And we intervened anyway.

We are still new here. Peach has become much shyer since we plucked him out of his SoCal milieu. And we were thrilled that he was interested in trying something completely new.

So he got traded. The green team, Green Candy, snapped him right up.

And all is right in the world once again.

However, this is where parenting gets really tricky. It’s just so easy to obsess over question every decision. There are thousands of books, blogs, experts and while much can be gleaned from the experience of others, parenting is a spontaneous activity. As BubbeGiraffe cautioned early in my motherhood, and I am paraphrasing, you can’t ask your kid to hang on while you go and consult “the book.” Life just doesn’t work that way. At some point, it’s a leap of faith. Faith in your child. Faith in self. And faith in…faith.

There is little time to waste second-guessing the myriad of choices, decisions, etc. that we make as parents. I want to enjoy the fleeting moments of their childhoods. And it’s pretty hard to do that if I’m always looking back and, with the clarity of hindsight, wishing I could choose differently.

So I chalk each one up to experience and pray that I am able to attain some modicum of wisdom from all of that experience.

And then I leap…