Sports of All Sorts

When the girls were small, my days were spent trying to survive from their (very early) mornings until their (also very early) bedtime. Meals for me were Luna bars, mostly gobbled standing up in between shoving spoonfuls of baby food into someone’s reluctant mouth. I lost 50 pounds that way – I don’t recommend it. Want to bring me to tears in those days? Announce that we were out of milk. A trip to UDF (half a mile away) looked something like this: pick up the baby. Take the toddler by the hand. Wrestle them both into rear-facing, five-point harness carseats. Remember the diaper bag, because forgetting it ensured a blowout of epic proportions. Drive to UDF (hopefully I remembered my wallet). Park as close as possible. Wrestle both babies OUT of their carseats. Perch Sarah on my hip and drag Shelby by the hand for two-minute trip inside, because God forbid I leave them strapped in the car where I never lost sight of them through the store window – I tried that last year and came out to an enraged old woman circling my car ready to call CPS. The girls were 11 and 13, both with cell phones and working limbs, perfectly able to manage should they get hot or otherwise concerned – and terrified of this crazy lady who wouldn’t leave them alone. Anyway. Carry the milk and the baby to the counter, checking behind me to make sure Shelby wasn’t helping herself to handfuls of candy. Pay for the milk, and then repeat the carseat process. Lug everything back into the house. Any parent with two children close in age can feel me on this. We’re talking a shit-ton of effort for a gallon of milk – I never got much more than that because I couldn’t carry it and them all at once.

That’s life with very small children. There are lots of good times, sweet moments, days when you wish time would freeze. But there’s a reason Glennon Doyle is now a very famous woman thanks to her blog “Don’t Carpe Diem” – it’s because a whole lot of mind-numbing exhaustion is also involved, and everyone needed someone to say it out loud. Glennon had the balls, and now she’s on the New York Times bestseller list.

BUT. Relief was coming. I just knew that in a few years life would ease up. Everyone would feed themselves. They would wipe their own tushes. They would become mostly self-sufficient, and my time would become mostly my own again. By middle school, I would have this parenting gig down, and I would get my own life back on track.

Pardon me. I had to pull myself back out of the floor just now. Can’t help it – I fell over laughing at my sweet, young, hopeful, naïve little self. The idea that parenting gets less time-consuming as kids get older? Just might be the biggest parenting myth ever, right behind “proper breathing controls labor pains.”

Those days I so looked forward to are here. My girls are 12 and 14 – seventh grade and a freshman. They cook. They clean (some). They make their own beds. They’re handier around the house than I am. But folks, I’ll just admit it right here: I sure do talk shit about them, considering I am 100 percent, balls to the walls their bitch.

 When I was a kid, my Saturday night plans depended on my parents’ plans. If they weren’t doing anything, sure, they could give me a ride. If they were, sucked to be me – my parents’ plans won. Now, we’ve somehow done a 180. If I want to do something, I have to consult my daughters’ calendars. Not just on Saturday – we’re talking seven days a week. It wasn’t that long ago that parents were the sun and their children orbited around them. Now it’s the opposite – everything is kid-centered, and the older the kid, the more they have going on. So soccer’s your kid’s sport? Great. Between varsity, club, and select, you’re running them to practice, games, and tournaments 4-6 days a week. All. Year. Long. Cheer? Same deal – just trade tournaments for competitions. Your life is spent in the driver’s seat – but not in a good way. We’re glorified, unpaid taxi drivers. Actually, we’re not even glorified – our kids remember to thank a cab driver. Their parents? Not likely.

My girls participate in one activity apiece, mostly because I need a clone just to manage that. Shelby is on the varsity dance team and Sarah cheers. Technically I guess Sarah has two activities – because she’s changing from a middle school that was competitive in cheer to a brand-new school with a first-year team, I agreed to let her cheer for the school and try out for an All-Star team. Somehow, their teams translate to approximately 367 hours a week of practice, spread out over six days, essentially year-round. We’re not even counting actual games and competitions. And we’re on the low end of the comparative family schedule – I have plenty of friends with more than two children, or whose kids compete in more than one high-level sport, so they’re running from three hours of cheer practice straight to three hours of soccer, with a quick stop at McDonald’s in between. Or tossing their kids a bottled smoothie to down while they change from one practice uniform to another in the backseat. Just shove calories at them – any kind of calories that they hopefully won’t puke up in the heat – because they’re burning thousands a day. American parents and coaches take this very seriously – once you hit middle school, there are demerits for missing a single practice, let alone a game. Select sports? Financial penalties. There are D1 scholarships in play here, people. For every last one of us. Snort. Did I mention that oceanfront property in Utah I have for sale? Your kid might be up for athletic scholarship money, but I’m under no such illusions about mine.

Once school starts, my family will go nonstop from 6 am until 9pm or later Monday-Friday, with four hours of practice on Saturdays and two more smack in the middle of every Sunday. Then competition season starts, and we travel two weekends a month. Somewhere in there the kids have to do homework, participate in school clubs, complete volunteer hours, and maybe – MAYBE – sleep. I need to work, manage my household, and occasionally escape my children in favor of the company of other adults. I’m currently wracking my brain for transforming that time in the car into some sort of bonding activity, or all we will have in common are the circles under our eyes.

I heard this crazy rumor. Lean in, because it’s so freaking wackadoodle, I seriously have to whisper it. Here it is: I heard there’s this whole population of people our age WHO DON’T HAVE KIDS. They are NO ONE’S BITCH, except maybe their boss’s. NOT ONE PENNY OF THEIR MONEY IS SPENT ON $500 DANCE UNIFORMS. They are NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYONE BUT THEMSELVES, except employees, plants, and maybe a dog or a cat. Weekend in Mexico? They don’t have to check anybody’s planner. They don’t have to say no because the weekend must be spent at a tournament in Akron. They talk about things other than schedules, and they manage to form sentences besides “Sweet Jesus, I am so tired!” I told you it was crazy, but I swear they exist. Don’t get me wrong – I love my kids completely, but how did I miss that this could’ve been an option? Are they the lucky ones? Are we? Or is it a draw? This is the stuff I lie awake and think about. Really.

So why do we do it? Why do we sign up and spend thousands of dollars and hours on all this stuff that’s making us sneak vodka into the gym, concealed in our Yetis? Because we feel like we have to. Because everyone else does. Because our kids love it, and we love them. Because we love watching them achieve, achieve, achieve. Because it’s become the backbone of the entire family’s social life, and if we pull out, we will be on our own. No one to hang with after school – all the other kids are at practice. No one to do anything with on the weekends – everyone’s at competitions or tournaments. We can’t win, so we go with the flow.

How did we get here in a span of less than 30 years? When did we get to the point where three kids can easily have to be in three different places, hours apart, at the exact same time? How do we turn it around?

I’m not sure. I’m still on the floor, except now I’m in the corner with my thumb in my mouth. But I’ll see you at the cheer gym. Or in the stadium bleachers. I’ll be the one shoving a Luna bar in my mouth, washing it down with a Monster Maxx mixed with vodka, and trying to find the best concealer for the bags under my eyes.