First Published it the Tri Town Transcript Feb 13, 2017
By Esther Baird
February. Well, it’s a month in the calendar … I guess. It’s ski season, and that’s fun. Of course there’s my riveting attempt to grow Paperwhites, which has our family on the edge of their seats. But otherwise, February doesn’t have much to say for itself. Until, that is, middle school basketball hit our lives.
Ah, middle school girls’ basketball. It’s an animal like no other. It’s certainly nothing like our soccer experience of leisure and fun that regular readers may recall from this past fall. No, last year we realized that our older daughter wasn’t just exceptionally tall, she was also fiercely competitive when it came to basketball. Playing “just for the fun of it” wasn’t really in her box of crayons. She had crayon colors like, “Win!” or, “We lost and I wanted to win!”
So, as Cheerleader in Chief, I embraced this competitive edge. But, I mean, I had to strike that proper balance of support and reality. I yelled cheery things like, “Great work!” and, “You’ve got this!” and, “You have to actually SHOOT the ball to make a basket!‘” (That last one falls under the “reality” heading.)
The thing is, you don’t watch middle school girls’ basketball for the graceful execution of the game. I’m not a sports expert, but even I know the difference between wrestling and basketball. Middle school girls? Not sure they get that. There are lots of elbows and knees banging into floors and heaps of sweaty girls collapsed on top of the ball.
Sure, there are moments of beauty when you realize that they are young, beautiful creatures. They have no bulging discs or arthritic knees or rotator cuff tears yet, and when they are in the zone, it’s a thing to behold.
But mostly, it’s messy.
My husband, who played high school basketball, tells me this is normal. As they get better, they’ll have less pig piles, but the intensity will ramp up. For example, his mom tells of a time when his team lost, and he refused to speak for the rest of the day? The week? The duration is lost to memory, but the fact is not.
I mean, obviously that’s silly.
Anyway, yesterday our girls played a competitive game but came up short. It had all of the usual floor writhing and near decapitations, with a few baskets made for good measure, but in the end, the other team was better.
I hugged my daughter afterward and proudly exclaimed that she’d tried her best.
“I packed you a cheese and salami sandwich because I knew you’d be hungry!” I said as she sat folded up like a giraffe in the front passenger seat.
She took it listlessly.
“It was a good game — tough team. You guys really dug in, though!” I continued.
My younger daughter nodded from the back. “Great game!“
The eldest stared out the window.
“And, wow, you must be so tired, but even at the end, you got that foul shot!“
She sighed and turned her body away.
Then she said, in the monotone voice of one who has walked up to the edge of the abyss and stared into it, “I can’t talk right now.“
And there it was. She was her father’s daughter. Crayon color: Game Loss Despair.
She ate the sandwich as if it was made out of dust and dry grass. I was starving, and the idea of all that salami and cheese not being enjoyed was making me feel my own sort of despair. Plus, I knew that parenting truth — food that is not enjoyed is food that doesn’t count.
So I made a radical decision and pulled into the Cumberland Farms that was just ahead of us.
“OK, in we go! Let’s get some real dinner! Something hot and good!“
There are soooo many questionable parenting points in that sentence: dinner at a gas station, “hot and good” as adjectives to describe such a dinner and the rather obvious bribery technique employed.
But guess who bounded out of the car like a springbok antelope, her long legs taking the parking curb in a single leap.
Inside, they got burn-your-fingers-hot, yummy food, and suddenly, everyone was happy.
There are many years to go with this middle school team thing, many crayon colors yet to be discovered and many ways that I will not always be the best cheerleader. But as long as it’s February, we can be pretty sure … it’ll be basketball season. It’s either that or staring at my Paperwhites.