Jaded

I had a conversation with my mother yesterday. She told me that my nephew was heartbroken the other day from our first go round of tossing the football around. He signed up for football in August and he’s excited about it. He told my mother that he needs to practice throwing the ball with me every day to get ready.

Now, I can relate to that. When I was eight, all I wanted to do was play football. My parents wouldn’t let me because they were a little nervous. Whenever I could, I wanted to play it in the streets with the kidso or at recess. That summer of 1994 I watched Little Giants so many times I still know all the words to it (Side note: Timile got me the DVD one year for Christmas. That was the kind of thing that made her awesome).

When we went outside to throw the ball around I showed him how to hold his hands so he doesn’t get hit and how to catch properly. He wasn’t getting it and the ball kept hitting him in the chest, and stung his fingers a few times and he was crying. I was operating under the mantra of he’s gonna hate this feeling so he’ll figure out how to hold his hands up. No matter how much he cried, he got up and was determined to keep going and I was impressed by his will.

When my mother told me about how he felt I understood. She told me that I have to remember what its like to be his age. I remember that excitement he had and the encouragement my father gave me in those times. The hard thing for me is that I’ve become a little jaded. While deep down I am still a big kid I have become so bogged down with being an adult and all that has come along with my last three years its been difficult for me. Recognizing that is a start to doing something about it.

Yes, I’m hard on him because everyone else is kinda soft. My mother is grandma to him all the while doing mom things on a day to dat basis. Grandmas are supposed to let you get away with murder and spoil you. Maybe its that you’ve already raised your kids so you’ve seen the being tough route doesn’t work and much more. She said to me to look at his circumstances and that neither she nor I know what that’s like or how it will effect him later. His father has never been around and his mother his doing what she needs to do to take care of him, but that isn’t in New York with him.

She said she looks at Cydney and feels sad as well because she doesn’t have her mother. I know that not having a parent effects both my nephew and Cydney. I just don’t think about those things often. Once again, I’m in the routine of trying to make things happen I don’t sit back and think about the circumstances that effect them. When I make assessments I figure those things out, but then I go right to trying to fix the problem. Maybe doing both at the same time is that parenting thing that grandparents have figured out new ones haven’t just yet.