As per usual, I’m late with this whole Mother’s Day thing. I mean, I was the first to call my mom on Sunday morning (one point for Sierra), but I have yet to even order a Mother’s Day gift (although I have thought about it.) But, maybe if I make my mom cry by talking about her, she might forgive me for always being late on these types of things. So in honor of a belated Mother’s Day, here are some of the things my mom has taught me over the years (because the whole “she’s made me into the woman I am today” line is way too sappy for us.)
How to keep score at a baseball game
Since I was able to coherently I write, I could accurately score a baseball game. I have a vivid memory of sitting at one of my dad’s fast pitch softball games, drawing a scorebook on a pad of paper to keep score with my mom, while she had her official scorebook. We sat under a big shade tree, and my mom taught me pitch by pitch how to keep score, what she scored as a hit, what she scored as an error and what constituted a fielder’s choice. And for the record, my mom and I are probably the harshest scorers out there, regarding what’s an error and what’s a hit. But this is something that I’ve carried with me since I was six, keeping score at my brother’s games through middle school and high school. And I don’t think I could ever thank my mom enough, because I still get so much satisfaction in the look coaches give me now when I pull out my scorebook.
How to “prepare” for a day of games (whatever games those may be)
If there was going to be a day of games, whether that was triple-header baseball, a football passing tournament or a Taekwondo tournament, my mom taught me how to prepare, which basically means she taught me how to clean out a gas station convenience store. We each needed a drink, along with one for my dad. We needed some snacks, of course, something salty, but also something sweet, because you never know what you’re going to want three hours from now. We needed sunflower seeds, but everyone liked a different flavor, so add four bags of seeds to the tally. And for a long time my younger brother thought that it messed with his “baseball mojo” if he didn’t chew three packs of Bubbalicious gum a day. So, needless to say, I can pretty much spend a life savings at a convenience store in about four minutes, thanks to my mom. (This also applies to when we would be heading up to the lake, whether for one day or four.)
How to waterski
In my family, learning to waterski was like a form of initiation. Unfortunately, the summer I was supposed to learn how to waterski, I broke my arm. That didn’t stop my mom from wrapping the bright pink cast in plastic bags so I could still ride on the jet skis and in the boat, but there wasn’t really a solution for learning how to waterski. However, I got my cast off on the first day of kindergarten, and that weekend my mom was in the water behind the boat with me, teaching me how to ski. After falling a few times, and swallowing what seemed like 12 gallons of lake water, I finally made it standing (on red double skis that had little dinosaurs on them, I remember) and skied around the lake for what seemed like hours. However, this meant that my mom was still treading water in the cove where we had taken off, just waiting (and hoping someone didn’t run her over). Do you know how selfless of a person you have to be to just float in the water in a cove, waiting for someone to come back to get you? But that’s what my mom did for each of the three of us learning how to ski, but to be honest, she was probably wishing we would just fall already.
How to write a very convincing doctor’s note
I’m pretty sure that my high school thought I was dying of some incurable disease throughout my entire junior year of high school because of how many times I had to “go to a doctor’s appointment.” Really, my mom would just call me out of class an hour before my brother’s baseball game started so that I had time to grab him food (he didn’t yet drive) and then to make it to the game myself. So every Tuesday and Friday from March through May, I was called out at 1 p.m. to “go to the doctor.” After a while, I just called myself out of class to save my mom the trouble, then I’d drive home to get her and we’d make our rounds (convenience store and gas station for us, McDonald’s for Mark and his friends) before heading to whatever field the game was at. This may have been concerning, missing the same classes, twice a week, for three months straight, but I think my straight As and AP test scores gave my mom some reassurance for calling me out everyday. And to this day, no school or employer can tell the difference between a real or fake doctor’s note (not that I need to fake it, anymore).
Well, I hope my mom is crying by now, or at least laughing. Happy belated Mother’s Day!