For the Love of the Game

My oldest son is playing tackle football this season. A sport I love to watch professionally (GO STEELERS!), but to watch one of my children play? Gulp. I see the tackles, the injuries, the blood, the pulled muscles, the torn ACLs all the time on TV. Trying to imagine my son ever enduring something of that sort sends me into a ball of tears, mumbling for my mother in a corner.

He’s always been a soccer player, playing for as long as he could walk, dribbling the ball around the house, outside, anywhere he could. He’s going to be eleven in December, and is 85-pounds of pure muscle. The kid is fast and has soccer moves that I’m hoping could get him a full ride to college some day. When he announced his intention to play tackle football this season instead of soccer, I whimpered, “No! He can’t give up something that could send him to college, just to try something else!?”

And then I immediately shut up. Sure, a full ride to college would be nice. He loves playing soccer and scoring goals, but what if he turns out loving football more? What is it that I care about more—my son getting a free college education, or going to college (including mom and dad’s savings) playing a sport he lives for?

I want his happiness. I want his head to hit the pillow every night knowing he lived each day doing something he loved to do, living a full life. Soccer or football, whichever he chooses, I cannot be the one to pick for him. It’s his life. His love.

Turns out, he loves both.

And, even better? He’s great at both.

He’s a wide receiver, and the kid shakes tackles and runs so fast, I scream and jump and cry big, fat happy tears watching him and his team march ahead to 4-0. Undefeated.

That’s my son. Undefeated—by his passion for sports, his mother’s (overbearing) love, and his will to play hard.

(Now, if only I get him to apply the same passion towards making his bed, putting his clothes in the laundry, remembering his trumpet for band every day…)