The HEA Cafe

My son has decided he wants to play hockey.  Now, any good Canadian mother would have had him in skates before his first pair of shoes, but I’ve never claimed to be a good mother.    He’s taken a few skating lessons over the years, but nothing serious, and has never shown any interest in hockey until this past spring.

Suddenly, he’s Ron MacLean and Don Cherry rolled into one.  He knows all the teams, and all the players’ stats, and, at the ripe old age of 9, has decided he’s going to play in the NHL.  Not only that, but he’s going to play with Jason Spezza on the Ottawa Sentators.  (I’m trying to convince him that the Canucks would be a better choice, but he won’t be swayed.)

Let me back up a second so you get the full picture.  This particular son isn’t exactly the most patient person in the world (a fault I must take full blame for).  If he’s going to do something, he wants to be the best at it right now.  It takes about 2.1 seconds for him to get frustrated and angry with himself if things don’t go just how he wants them to, and when that happens, there’s anger, tears, etc.  He’s played other sports before, but has never ever shown as much interest in anything as he has these past months in hockey.

Are you beginning to feel my angst?

So, wanting to encourage that interest, we registered him in hockey (ka-ching!), suited him up in all the gear (KA-CHING!) and then decided he really should go to hockey school over the summer because every other kid on his team will have had a couple years of hockey under his belt by the time the season starts.  So we signed him up for hockey school (KA-KA-CHING!!).  I assure him that he can’t possibly be the only kid in hockey school who’s never played before.  I explain, over and over, that it’s going to be hard, that he’s going to be frustrated, and that he needs to understand it will take time, patience and practice for him to learn to play and skate.  He’s good with that, while I’m still a little hesitant, but off we go to the first day of hockey school.

There had to be about 40 other kids on the ice with him, and he was the only one who’d never played before.  He was the only one who couldn’t skate.  He’d fall down and get back up.  He’d skate the wrong way.  He couldn’t stop, no matter how hard he tried to learn, so instead, he turned in circles.  Wi–i-i-de circles.  He chased that puck up and down the ice for hours every day, while I held my breath, waiting for him to have the melt-down I knew was coming.  I waited and waited and waited. 

Nothing.

He kept going. 

The other kids were literally skating rings around him, and he kept going.

And there I sat, up in the stands, crying my eyes out. 

I wanted to pull him off the ice and tell him to pick something else; something that wasn’t so hard, something that wouldn’t frustrate him so much or cause him such self-doubt.  As a writer, I know what it means to want something that much.  I know how frustrating it is to work so hard, yet still feel as though I’m not getting anywhere, and that I’ll never be as good as the others.  Rejection is not something anyone wants to see their child go through, and it was a physical pain I could feel in every cell of my body.

But, as my DH likes to remind me on occasion, it’s not always about me.  This was about my son, who, somehow, has found something he wants more than anything else.  The boy who would rather give up than be ‘bad’ at it, has decided to get past that and do whatever it takes to become a hockey player. 

As his mother, I ache with wanting to protect him from anything that will hurt him or break his heart, and from anything that is so hard.

As a writer, however, I know that pain, heart break and hard work will all pay off in the end.  Will he make it to the NHL?  Who knows?  He believes he will and that’s all that matters.   The mother in me has decided to work with the writer in me and encourage him to keep going, to keep pushing, and to fight through the times when he’ll want to quit.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to watch from the stands, fighting back tears, and hugging his guts out after every practice. 

Parenting and writing - neither ‘job’ is for the weak of heart.