MotherMorphosis

“ ‘Winners never quit’ – can you identify with that, honey?” I had just finished reading a book written by Mia Hamm, one of the greatest female soccer players of all time, to my youngest while he was in the bathtub. At one point in her life, Mia didn’t want to play soccer if she couldn’t win. But if she had given up, she would never have been the youngest woman to ever play for the U.S. Women’s National Team (at age 15), or break an all-time international goal record, or lead her team to victory in the Olympics. I had borrowed the book from my son’s kindergarten teacher just that morning. “Whaddaya mean, mom?” “You know, can you relate? Can you see how that applies to you?” “Oh, yeah. Uhmmm. Yeah, well, sometimes when things get hard I want to quit.” “Yes, honey, that’s exactly it. Sometimes you do. Sometimes I do. Sometimes other people do. But you can’t just quit every time something gets hard.” My son had quit his t-ball team after Opening Day with a dramatic flourish that included...

“I quit!” My son shouted. “This is so stupid!” he threw this baseball glove and it landed on the ground in a cloud of dust. We were sitting in the dugout during the top of the third inning of his very first t-ball game; the same dugout that my oldest uses when he plays in the “majors.” The rest of his team was out on the field. "Shhh! Honey, you can’t just quit. We’re in the middle of a game. I’m a coach. What’s stupid, anyway?” “I’m never gonna get a home run!” “You will when it’s your turn to bat cleanup.” In t-ball, each batter only takes one base, regardless of how well they’ve hit or what “errors” might occur on the field, except the last batter who clears the bases before the teams switch who’s batting. My son had been protesting this by walking from base to base. “When’s that gonna be?” “Actually, it will be your next at bat. You’ll be the last batter of the game.” But after that, it would only be once every 11 innings. The kids bat in numerical order, and after they bat ...