Shut Up Already

By the title of this post you might think I'm being rather insensitive to my children. But that's not so. I'm talking to myself.

I just got back from watching my first soccer game for my daughter's team. And that sentiment is what I was telling myself the entire time. Just shut up already Jessica. But I couldn't. From the second that whistle blew, there was a force that swept over my brain and wrapped around my vocal chords. It took complete control over my thoughts until I was screaming things I never thought I even cared about.

It has finally come.

I'm a soccer mom.

Now you might be looking at the calendar and thinking to yourself "isn't soccer season almost over?". And you'd be correct. Because of my new career venture, my weekends have been pretty busy and I've managed to miss every other game up until this point, with the exception of the first half of one game a few weeks ago. So here we are three games from the end of the season and I'm finally getting to watch. It's really been heart-breaking to get the text message updates throughout the games as my husband keeps me up to date while he has watched the entire season up to this point. Especially last week when my daughter scored her first goal. Man did I wish I was there when I got that text. Tears even came to my eyes. In fact I'm getting a bit choked up just writing about it.

Now I was so excited that I finally get to go to the last 3 games of the season, and I couldn't wait to watch her play. Except that last night when she went to bed she wasn't feeling well. I think she had a very slight fever, which was probably from a long day of Halloween festivities and being run down, but nonetheless, I had a feeling she might not be playing today. Sure enough, she woke up with a big headache, although no fever, and a bit of a tummy ache. She ate her breakfast, but she just wasn't herself.

Of course this would also be the one day that we were in charge of snacks for the team. So I was up this morning baking Halloween cookies and cutting up watermelon. Before you know it I had to leave, and she was a trooper and put on her team shirt with her sweats and said she wanted to come with me.

So there we are on a wet field, watching the girls run up and down playing their game. I'm keeping my daughter warm and feeling a bit guilty that she's there. Either way you think about it I wasn't on the right side of the equation. I was either dragging my sick child out to a soccer game in the wet and cold morning (who makes those schedules and thinks that 9am is a good time for a Saturday morning soccer game, anyway?) or I was bringing out my somewhat healthy almost perfectly fine child to her team game without any equipment and letting her just sit and watch her teammates work hard for a win. But that's neither here nor there I guess.

As we watched her team fight hard on the defense through most of the first half, I was overcome from the first kick. "Get up there in front of the goal girls!" "Forwards get open!" "Kick it out of there!" "Pass it to the middle!!"

You name it, I was yelling about it. I seriously didn't know I had it in me. Since I've never been to a game and I am part of a carpool for practice, I don't know all the girls on the team. So I'm asking my daughter "who's the one with the ribbon in her hair?" and "what's the name of the girl with the pink shirt on underneath?". Then I'm yelling their names telling them where to go to get the ball and what to do with it.

Seriously. I started laughing at myself. At one point I told myself to just shut up for a while. I'd be quiet for about a minute and then it would just start coming out again.

As I was being possessed, I realized why it might be happening. I'm so used to knowing what to do myself, and watching games where players know what they are doing, that I couldn't help but feel a bit frustrated watching half the team just stand there and wait for the ball to come right to them before they even moved. And even then they sometimes didn't move. To the credit of all the girls, they all did the best they could. It's just that some of them get it and some of them don't. Or they don't care.

Which is totally fine. And I wasn't at all mad about it. I just wanted them all to do better and work hard for their team. So I couldn't help myself from yelling at them. For the record, mostly I just screamed out the obvious and I never pointed anyone out specifically unless they did something great and I told them so.

At the half time, the coach said he would try something new and he told everyone to just go play whatever they wanted and he wasn't going to assign any positions. My inner voice said "WHAT!?" and I panicked and started to tell the girls "someone needs to be on defense!" and shouting other instructions. Seriously, who did I think I was, the coach? I had to shut myself up again.

My daughter toughed it out through the whole game (we had a couple moments where we thought we'd leave) and by the end she was feeling better. And she was right there with me on the sideline yelling for her teammates to get a goal.

It was really rather fun. A bit of an adrenaline rush. Or perhaps that was just the coffee that I was sipping throughout the game.

Before today I had told myself that I would work with my daughter to see if she could play at least 2 or 3 years of soccer so she can get the feel of what it means to be on a team. Between that and softball, she should get some great life lessons. There's responsibility, teamwork, discipline, just to name a few. All wonderful qualities that most athletes possess, and ones that I'm glad she will be exposed to during these few years.

Just over the past week or two I was wondering if I should stick to that philosophy. I certainly don't want to force her to play something she doesn't like. I think I just really want her to like it.

And now after today, I want her to like it even more. I want to be her biggest fan on the sideline screaming like crazy when she gets a goal.

I want to be her soccer mom.