Literary Mama Rewind: Sports

Welcome to Literary Mama Rewind! Every few weeks we’ll round up some of our favorite essays, stories, poems, columns, and reviews from the Literary Mama archives relating to a particular theme. Hockey, soccer, football- whatever your sport, parenting an athlete brings its own special set of inspirations and challenges. This week we are rereading Literary Mama stories of sport.

~~~~~

• And I Am The Baseball by Marsha McGregor in Creative Nonfiction

Our team started out in the lead, but the pitchers are getting exhausted from the heat. Walks are piling up the opposing team’s score. Still, my son seems focused. Even as a five year-old, while other little boys were picking dandelions in the outfield or distracted by a plane flying overhead, he had his game face on from the first pitch: knees bent, glove poised, eyes on the ball.

• Eleven by Tova Hassler in Creative Nonfiction

I ask the salesman, “Is it better to have the cleats in the middle, like this one, or just around the edge?” My daughter is embarrassed. She doesn’t roll her eyes or let out a sharp breath, but I can feel it, as if the air suddenly became five degrees cooler. It’s a change in the wind.

• Mother and Son at Hockey Practice by Jennifer Saunders in Poetry

I love you best when you are falling behind the other boys but never stopping.

• Belle of the Ball by Joanne Catz Hartman from the Column Mother Angst

Because there is no lanyard-making team or origami league, I sign my seven-year-old daughter up for soccer.

• Mother of a Jock by Peggy Hong from the Column Far From Cool

For high school football — every mother’s nightmare. I did not want to see him battered and bruised, yet I could not hold him back any longer. Since 8th grade it was clear he would be an asset to the team, and his friends were recruiting him hard.

• Good Sports by Ona Gritz from the Column Doing It Differently

Having married an athlete, I assumed our son would be born in love with sports. I imagined that, soon after he could walk, Ethan would be mountain biking and leaping off ski slopes on a snowboard like his father…

• The Soccer Banner by Victoria Patterson in Fiction

I was trying to detach from the spectacle, but be present for my only son, the six-year-old standing idly next to the goalie, pushing his bangs from his face and swatting at gnats.

• The Season of Tiny Yellow Leaves by Susan Wickstrom in Fiction

Youth Football. He had to watch the parents as closely as the game — a rumble could erupt and they’d all be on the Today show the next morning.