Backseat Driving

I am a lousy passenger. Riding in the passenger seat, I gasp, hold onto the dashboard, and liberally apply the imaginary passenger side brake. I’m a pain in the ass, basically, for whoever is driving.

The year Dan played goalie for his hockey team, I had to sit far away from all the other parents in the stands. I acted out Dan’s blocks from my seat, dodging and darting as if I was the one in goal. Even now that Dan and Lucy both play center, I sit by myself more than with the other parents. I can’t seem to help myself. I’m playing the game with my kids from the stands. It’s not that I’m mean or swear or engage in other bad-parent behaviors. No, it’s more that someone is likely to get whacked by a flailing arm as I fire off a shot with Dan or take one of those eleven year olds out on the boards with Lucy. And I’m sure I look like Severus Snape up there in the stands offering counter-curses; I keep up a running muttering monologue instructing my kids all the way through every game. I turn into a mother bear, suddenly separated from a cub she perceives to be in danger. The truth is that I am a lousy passenger.

Now, you might think, figure skating being a judged sport rather than a team and contact sport, that my lack of self-control as a skater-mom wouldn’t be an issue. At Grace’s last competition in St. Joe’s, MO, however, I skated Grace’s programs with her from start to finish from behind a glass barrier that, in better times, would protect hockey fans from flying pucks, but in this instance served to protect Grace from her crazy mother. At the end of the day, Jason informed me, in no uncertain terms, that at the next competition Grace and I would separate well before her skate and that I would be watching from the stands with all the other parents. Ouch. Now all those other moms and dads will bear witness to my lack of control, my inner insanity, my mama-bear soul.

As the day of Winterfest draws nearer, Grace is practicing her compulsory and freeskate programs and I’m practicing the fine art of letting go, trying to prepare myself mentally for turning my little one over to her coach, trusting that she’ll be cared for and care for herself in the manner to which I am accustomed.

I know Jason is right. And if I didn’t trust him, he wouldn’t be coaching Grace. I also know, whatever my own weaknesses, Grace has come hardwired with a spirit of steel when it comes to competition. She may feel nervous, but she has never suffered from the kind of stage fright that helped to implode my acting career. She seems absolutely convinced that she’s good enough to take that ice and win. Grace’s response to not winning is typically, “Huh. I don’t know why I didn’t get a medal. I thought I was great.” So, one thing I know for sure is that my emotional state during competitions is not about Grace and her needs, but about me. It’s not something Grace needs to work through, but something I need to take care of for her, so that she can accomplish what she needs and wants without me getting in her way.

Now what’s a mama-bear to do with that realization?

It’s a truism that babies don’t come with instruction manuals. With regard to kids in competitive sports, what pass for parenting instruction manuals, I find, simply do not serve. Typically these texts come in the form of lists of Do’s and Don’ts, but give absolutely no sense of how profoundly nuanced and complex the work of parenting young, competitive athletes can be. In part, parenting work for child-athletes is complex because, even within single families, the physical and psychological needs of child-athletes can be vastly different. And in part this work is complex because parents are not automatons. We come with histories that shape our conceptions of our selves as individuals, as mothers and fathers, and as members of communities, large and small. It’s easy for leagues and clubs and national athletic organizations to tell parents what to do in lists of marching orders. But so far as I can tell no one makes any kind of an effort to help us figure out how to obey those orders, particularly when the rules don’t seem to account for the particular circumstances in which we find ourselves. So far as I can tell those organizations make absolutely no effort to move beyond articulations of the obvious to speak or write with the recognition that the parents of child-athletes might be smart, loving folks who find themselves in unfamiliar territory and/or might need something more and better than lists of do’s and don’ts so broadly generalized as to be largely meaningless.

One thing I’m absolutely sure about is that I’m not paying Grace’s coaches to help me figure this out. Oddly, I was thrilled when Jason barked at me about staying too close to Grace at the St. Joe’s competition. The source of that somewhat testily delivered edict had everything to do with what’s best for Grace as a skater; and that is exactly what I pay Jason to know and do. If I’m doing something that impedes the success of one of my children, I want to be told clearly and directly. But now I need to figure out the how for myself, I guess. So, here's my list of things to learn by the last weekend in February (snort):

a) how to manage my own nervousness before her competition so that what I communicate to Grace is not fear, but love and pride and faith
b) how to let go of her with joy and trust when Jason says it’s time for her to prepare for her programs
c) how to watch her skate without projecting myself out onto the ice; how to stay present in the stands even as she practices presence on the ice

I’ve pretty much given up on any possibility of progressing along this learning curve for my hockey playing kids. There’s something about watching other children bashing my Dan and Lucy into the boards that defeats even my best intentions to stay calm and centered. But there’s still hope for me as a figure skating mom, I figure. At least I hope so.