Hockey Mom Mania

I stepped into the arena in my freshly washed team jersey.  Adrenaline was pumping through me.  My palms were sweaty and I could hardly wait for the puck to drop. I wasn’t at an NHL game or an Olympic final.  No, I was at my eight year old’s championship hockey game. 

There we were, shoulder to shoulder, a sea of white - our noisemakers in hand. We were cheering (screaming) and chanting and hugging each other.  And we were a part of the game as if our lives depended on it.  We are hockey moms and I can’t believe I’m saying that out loud.  It wasn’t just us moms cheering. There were grandparents and siblings, friends and relatives and of course, the dads.  But it is the hockey moms who have a notorious reputation among the masses.   The term ‘hockey mom’ conjures images of women screaming at the refs and fighting with the opposing team’s moms – maybe even amongst themselves.

The fathers have somehow managed to escape this crazed image being attached to them.   For some reason it is acceptable for men to yell at people in public.  Women are thought to be held to higher standards of composure I suppose so public unravelling is somewhat frowned upon.

There really are only a handful of over-the-top hockey moms out there. The rest of us, as I have seen in my first year of travel hockey (I know, I’m still a newbie), are harmless and only want the best for our kids and our teams.  Now, I will admit that if I were to see myself on some sort of secret footage during one of my son’s play- off games I may be slightly (totally) embarrassed. I would probably look somewhat hysterical and there would be pasta and pennies flying out of my homemade noisemaker. 

And if my son had been wearing a wire-tap before the big game, there would be evidence of me bribing him that if he were to score and their team won I would buy him a new video game.  And I have been known to bribe with lesser things like cokes and chocolate bars.  I am very tempted to delete this last paragraph as you may be starting to question my stability.  And it does kind of sound bad.  But for an eight year old - my eight year old - some junk food or a new video game are more tangible than a win. I’m speaking his language.  Ok, now it sounds like it’s all about winning but if you know me, it is!

   

Maybe I am not the best example of the hockey mom that I want to tell you about.  The hockey moms (and dads and grandparents) I have come to know are supportive of their kids and of each other.  We cheer for everyone and we don’t yell at the referees.  We love the sport of it all and we love our kids. I have a new perspective on being a hockey mom. I have a new perspective of being any parent who has a child competing in any sport or any art.

We shouldn’t feel embarrassed about being emotionally invested in our kid’s competitions.  It doesn’t mean we think they are going to be the next big star. It doesn’t mean we are trying to live vicariously through them.  It means we are human and we like to feel something.  Aren’t feelings and emotions all we really have? Competition brings it all out – pride, agony, anticipation, joy and disappointment. It’s all so natural really.

I am a hockey mom. Hear me roar (with the occasional primal scream).

Hungry for The Hunger Games

When the Twilight series first gained popularity, I resisted reading it for a long time. I am not sure why I did that.  I seem to recall thinking it couldn’t possibly be as good as everyone was saying it was and I didn’t want to be disappointed.  Eric even bought me the hardcover box set for Christmas that year but it just sat for months, still in its wrapping, on the bookshelf. At some point I put my back out and I was out of commission for at least a week.  I decided to pick up the first book and give it a try. Well, I spent the next two weeks completely ignoring everyone in my family and having some sort of creepy relationship with Edward (he didn’t return my affections). I loved it. I couldn’t get enough of it. And when it was over, I was devastated.

I didn’t wait so long this time around. Every student in my class has had their nose buried in The Hunger Games for the last few months.  They are going crazy for it. Even the ones that hate to read. I just inhaled the first book and I can’t wait to see the movie and read the rest of the series.

I read other books too.  Books intended for adults about adult situations. But why are so many of us (especially women) going crazy for books written about kids at least half our age?  I think (I’m just thinking about this now for the first time) there is just something so appealing about a book that reminds us of what it feels like to be young.  A book that takes us back to a time when we didn’t know (or care) about adult situations.  A book that reminds of us of what ‘young’ love feels like.

Indeed there is nothing quite as delightful as getting lost in my youth, be it with vampires who want to marry me (or kill me) or tributes (who want to marry me or kill me).  I am not ashamed to love the same books as the twelve and thirteen year olds I teach. It bridges the gap between their lives and a life I once had that wasn’t so different from theirs.  When I am done with The Hunger Games series, I’ll pick up a complicated and sophisticated adult novel just to make sure I haven’t completely lost my ability to read mature writing or have my mind wander among the world of adults. 

Henry James, a nineteenth century writer (Portrait of a Lady), was disgusted, even then, of the idea of adults reading literature intended for children. He believed literature should be complicated and push our cognitive limits. Sometimes, after a long day at work and a busy night at home with the kids, I don’t want to have to think too much when I read.  James would be ashamed of us all but I don’t really care. 

All literature can be celebrated in its own right. It doesn’t have to be hard to read to be good to read. On this dark and rainy night, I can’t wait to crawl into bed with Peeta – I mean Catching Fire - and get lost in the world of Panem. I’ll catch up with Portrait of a Lady some other time.

Ahhhh, Spring

And just like that, spring is here (for the time being anyway). It seems like only yesterday I was writing about how much I love a good snow storm and now, even the sight of one lonely snowflake, would make me curse all things winter. But there was not a snow flake in sight all week. Just sunshine, a warm breeze and kids playing in the street.

I say, bring on the longer days. Bring on sneakers. Bring on birds singing and seeing my first robin. Bring on drinks on patios. Bring on the first, tiny, lovely flowers.  Bring on feeling just a little bit happier. Bring on walks after dinner. Bring on gravel and dust and dirt all over the sidewalks. Bring on gravel and dust and dirt all over my floors and carpets. Bring on all of the dog poop that has been (mostly) hidden under mounds of snow. And bring on my students asking me every day if we can have class outside.

Bring it all on because I am a Canadian and I love all of my seasons. Just as I was tiring of old man winter, spring has blown in and everything seems new again.  Spring has a charm like no other.  It is as if the earth has been dusted of its wintery blanket and reveals, once again, all of its magnificence. 

And just as the earth has dusted itself clean, I too will dust this house of mine and make it reveal its...well, magnificence is maybe too strong an adjective…its potential. Potential is actually a good word to associate with spring.  Potential to clean your house. Potential to shed those hateful winter pounds.  And the potential to live life with just a little more spring in your step.

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In my class, I often will have my students find a picture for inspiration for their writing.  Here is my poem about spring and the picture I used for inspiration.

I thought I saw you close to death

Cold, alone and grasping for breath

Gray sky and water surrounding your being

Bare limbs and dark tangles stopped me from seeing

While pondering your sure demise

It all became clear and I opened my eyes

Beyond the dark and obvious strife

There was a spirit reaching for life

I see you now not close to death

But on the verge of your first breath

Help! My Computer is Holding me Hostage!

Wow. I need to let my eyes adjust for a minute. I get headaches from staring at a computer screen for too long. Yet somehow, an hour has passed me by while I have been glued to my screen.  I have been on houzz.com. Between Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Hotmail and now this new site, I hardly have time to write.  It used to be that I would only have to check my email on my computer. And since I am not that important beyond my inner group of friends, that task would only take up a meager five minutes. Now, before I can do anything else, I become trapped in a web of reading what my ‘friends’ are up to, seeing what awesome new quote or recipe has been added to my online bulletin board, checking out the latest tweets and now viewing thousands of images of beautiful rooms, none of which are likely to come to fruition in my home.

I can’t even explain how this happened to me. There are parts of me that really resist technology…hence my four year old pink flip phone. It’s a conversation piece at this point.  I don’t want to always be connected to people. Well, I like to be connected, but on my terms.  I love to get emails from people but I am terrible at responding back. It is an acknowledged flaw of mine. But, like a junkie, I can barely walk by my computer without sneaking a peak on one of the above mentioned sites.

I thought I knew better than this. I thought I knew better than to waste away the precious and rare moments in my life when I actually have time to do something for myself.  I am always telling my students to stop wasting their time texting each other all hours of the day. Is this really any better? 

Then I remember the time that I found out on facebook that my university friend’s father had passed away and how I was able to send her out a message instantly.  And I remember when so many sent me messages about my father on the 10^th anniversary of his death and how comforted I felt.  And I think of how inspiring some of the things I have seen on Pinterest are.  I think also of my eighteen followers on Twitter and how inspiring my tweets about what bakery I have been to today must be to them. Ok. So not all of the things I am doing online are life affirming or life changing, sometimes they just feel good.

Obviously, this must be how I want to be spending my free time or I would be doing something else, right? It’s just that sometimes I feel more like I have to do it.  It is the feeling that I am going to miss out on something crazy good if I don’t check in. For instance, that my friend is about to start watching Breaking Dawn: Part One.  I am not sure that my life would be any worse off without knowing what everyone is thinking about or coveting but there is something so appealing about it.

Yes, I have gotten into a bad habit with this computer of mine.  Actually getting down to work has become a complicated routine of first checking out at least five websites before opening any kind of blank page for writing.  And as I have already mentioned, this routine can be quite time consuming. Maybe this online craze will pass and I will get some of my precious time back. But, I don’t think so. This is probably just the tip of the ice burg and we really haven’t seen anything yet. If this is the case, things for me will need to change. I don’t want to experience my life online in single line posts to friends or through a thousand shared images on a bulletin board that I may never look at again. 

What I want is a life filled with actually visiting with my friends and family. I want to leaf through magazines while I sit under a blanket on my couch with a tea in my hand. And instead of ‘pinning’ beautiful pictures of the seasons, I want to be outside enjoying them.  Real life is too short and too beautiful to get ‘lost’ in an online world.  And I am going to get to living that life as soon as I check my facebook account just one more time before I go to bed.

Saturday Mornings

It is a typical Saturday morning at our house. It begins, for me, as it always does.  I open my eyes at a respectable 8am-ish, and thoughts of getting to my favourite bakery immediately start racing through my mind. If I don’t get there early enough, I miss out on getting some of our family favourites – namely sugar buns that are only baked on Saturday mornings.  The list for what I need from the butcher and at the market then creeps in. It is an inner battle I face every Saturday morning – get up and get going or just lie here until the last possible moment. The get up and get going always wins. Sundays are really my morning to lounge.

I leave Eric in bed; some of our children are up by now playing video games and/or watching TV.  It is technically Eric’s day to sleep in and by leaving I am sort of (totally) sabotaging his day but I figure any time after eight is fair game when you have three kids. He doesn’t really agree with me as sleeping in to him could mean mid-morning if left unchecked.  Secretly, I think that he likes that he doesn’t get to waste his morning away in bed. You know, get up and enjoy the day. That’s what I tell myself anyway.

When I arrive home after my Saturday morning errands, the kids meet me at the door to grab the loot.  Within ten minutes they have eaten sugar buns, cinnamon buns and at least a couple of ginger snaps each. I love that on Saturday morning I don’t care that they have just consumed a week’s worth of sugar in one sitting. I love that I don’t care that they have eaten these treats everywhere between the front door and the TV room with a loop around the dining room and a trail of granulated sugar and crumbs to prove it. 

I then make up a pan of scrambled eggs (that is our egg of choice right now) and put on the kettle.  Eric gets his muffin and I devour my croissant. We leave the dishes on the table (this is unheard of any other day) and retreat to the dining room with our tea to pour over our Saturday subscription to The Globe and Mail. I read interesting parts of articles from the section I am reading to Eric, even though he hates when I do this. 

The children that have been left unattended have wreaked havoc on the house. Forts have been made on potentially all three levels of our home.  The TV in the basement and in our bedroom (yes, we have a TV in our room) is on even though no one is watching either of them. Crafts have been pulled out, stepped on and walked away from.  Exhausted by a morning of unstructured time, this morning the kids settled into watching Never Say Never which lured Eric away from our paper reading.

By Saturday afternoon the house will be pulled back together and we will anticipate our evening plans which could be as exciting as trying to watch a movie without falling asleep.  I love Saturday mornings because they are the perfect combination of routine and recklessness.  The best part is, I still have Sunday to look forward to when I get my turn to sleep in.