Never Re-Live Your Youth on Your Kid's Soccer Field

I'm from that generation of women to whom sports was foreign territory while growing up. The only sport we had at my Roman Catholic High school was genteel tennis; our physical education program consisted of tossing medicine balls around and the occasional hesitant basketball game. How I envied my younger brother! He got to play baseball, football, golf...me? I was voted "Miss Gardenville Youth Baseball" at the age of twelve. As a young girl, that was the closest that I got to the sporting life...

And then I grew up, and got married, and married, and married. I had my last child, a girl, at forty. She was, and remains, the literal sunshine of my life, the 'surprise' child I never thought I'd have. She was also 9 lbs., 7 ounces at birth, and as she grew, outpaced her peers way off the height and weight charts. I had given birth to Diana, the huntress. Maybe she was Joan of Arc, reincarnate. Whoever she was, from the time that she could walk, was that kid ever great at sports.

I coached her youth soccer team when she was four. I coached her T ball team when she was five. By the time she was in the first grade, she had 'graduated' to travel sports teams. Coaches loved her. She was really, really tall and really, really ... sturdy. I don't know how else to explain it. She wasn't fat. She wasn't muscular. She was...sturdy. Like a tree, with her size 7 soccer cleats planted firmly in the turf.

While my other kids played sports also, they 'played' them. They played to have fun and hang out with their friends as much as they did learn a new skill or have a competitive game. It was not so much the sport as it was the social thing, and that was just fine with me. One actually grew to be an accomplished horsewoman, a passion she shares to this day.

But oh, that little one. She made me embarrasingly proud ever since the first time she scored a goal in travel soccer - while playing fullback, back by her own team's goal. That size 7 shoe booted the ball all the way up the field and into the other team's net. Everyone - the kids, the parents, the coaches, even my girl - actually paused for a long moment when she did that. I remember her coach going briefly beserk with joy shortly thereafter.

Her coach wasn't her only fan that fateful day. As play continued, my daughter ran by me on the sidelines. I was cheering her name wildly, totally caught up in the moment.

As she ran by, without missing a beat, without losing a step, she said, loudly enough so that all of the other parents and fans could hear: "Stop it, Mom. You're embarrassing me. Just shut up and stop it."

This was the first time a child of mine had ever told me to shut up. It was also, in retrospect, well deserved.

I had embarrassed her in front of her teammates. I had embarrassed her in front of the other people on the sidelines. Most of all, I had made a fool of myself for being loud and for focusing on her.

It was her game. It was her goal. Being the low-key kid that she is, her own reaction didn't really surprise me. After the ball went into the net, a couple of the other players around her hugged her, which made her blush a bright red. And then? That was that. The game went on, play went on. But I should have let go of the moment, just as she did, relishing it for a few minutes, and then on to the next thing - on the field, in life.

I've never cheered wildly for that daughter ever since that day so long ago. I cheer for the team, not individual players. I clap; I applaud. An occasional "Whoo!" will slip through my lips. But I've never embarrassed her again by singling her out, no matter what her accomplishment may be. That's the way she wants it, and I have to overlook my own simmering longing for what could have been for myself if I'd been on that field because...that's the way she wants it.