a surprising balance

During my high school and college years, I never once attended a football game. Or any other kind of ball game. So, it's weird and kind of unsettling to be now going weekly to watch my son play for his Catholic high school. This equinox weekend will find me in the stands, rooting for his team and mulling the irony of balance in the universe.


As it turns out, he's as much a raging individual as I am, and just as rebellious a teenager. What better way to rebel when you have a anarchist, queer mother who also happens to be a witch than to go to Catholic school and play football? I thought it might be a phase, but now that he's a starting quarter back, I'm realizing that there's a level of devotion to this that I probably won't see wane for quite awhile. I'm realizing too that my rebellion stuck. The values and interests that my parents found so confounding turned out to suit me, and they have shaped who I have become. Maybe, just maybe, this love of sports will continue to suit my son and his life too is being shaped by what his mother finds so challenging. His long time dream of being a professional ball player still shimmers, but now he's added that he wants to go to a university with a program on sports management. This equinox I'm working with acceptance and trying to smile about it.

He and his best friend since preschool are on the same team together. They are the "Fighting Irish". How bizarre is that? Funny how I'd be more comfortable if he was covered with woad
with his hair spiked with lime. Or would I? I continue to puzzle over the way they are devoted to "toughening up", and how transformed they are in their pads and helmets. I faced it when he was about three that my young feminist beliefs that the difference between the sexes were a result of socialization were dead wrong. Boys actually for the most part are different from girls. And boy, did I get a boy.

It's downright disturbing watching my son and his friend get tackled, and I find myself unsettled by the roars of delight from the crowd when one of them trounces or runs over someone else. The San Francisco Chronicle just ran a story about the concerns of parents over the possibility of their kids getting hurt playing football. No shit. It worries me.

My son says he knows the risks, but playing is important to him. I've seen him become more confident and his ease on the field is noticeable, even to me, who doesn't understand much of anything that is going on out there. I've brought him up to trust his intuition, and to follow it. I had no idea it would take him to Catholic school, but damn, it actually appears to be the right place for him. And the football field does too. Grudgingly, I am learning to respect his choices.

I'm trying to embrace the experience of the sitting in the bleachers in the autumn air amidst other parents and a multitude of teenagers, many wearing the school colors. The girls paint the numbers of boys they like on their face. My son and his best friend seem to be well represented. I'm considering buying a windbreaker myself with the words - "The Fighting Irish" scrolled across the back.

This weekend there will be an equinox ritual in Golden Gate Park. I will be in the stands at the rival school, Saint Ignatius, cheering my son on. There is balance to everything, and many times that balance can come as a complete surprise. I'm choosing this equinox to embrace the mystery of this.