to my daughter
September 6, 2014 § 8 Comments
This morning was your first soccer game. Until today your frame of reference for the sport was limited to Kindergarten drills and gym class scrimmages. Your enthusiasm for this new experience was based more in an excuse to spend time with a friend than a newly recognized passion for the game. Still, I was proud of your willingness to be uncomfortable and unknowledgeable, to risk failing in an attempt to succeed, to be a part of something larger than yourself.
I anticipated you might play poorly and I secretly wished you a natural inclination that could compensate for the absence of experience. What I didn’t expect was to find my shortcomings centerfield from the sidelines. You were lost and still, overwhelmed and hiding in plain sight. Each gesture of confusion was both genuine and dismissive, I could feel you attempting to shed the experience even as it unfolded around you.
Your teammates were struggling against other children, but you were struggling against yourself.
You may never play soccer again after this season, but you will undoubtably find yourself in new experiences confronted with familiar fears. I understand the temptation to hide behind excuses, to avoid discomfort; these are my ghosts.
No one is perfect. Each of us possess unique strengths and inopportune insecurities that inform our choices. My greatest regrets rest in moments of paralysis when I allowed my path to be shaped by the actions of those around me, bending to my doubts. Even my most colorful, public errors of assertion are rights of passage; proof that I have not forfeited my right to grow and learn in the face of uncertainty. It is a far greater loss to fail at trying; a hollow victory to succeed without effort.
Win or lose, you have to play the game.
Love, Mom
scribblechic 
This is just beautiful – You have a wonderful style in sharing a story!!
Thank you. With every telling there is that space of uncertain certainty between my perspective and my children’s. I hope in gathering these memories for my children I have also captured an honest snapshot of self; the photograph of a moment that once developed allows you to see the reflection of the photographer within the frame of the subject.
Marie – what a genuis answer – I shared your post with my cousin, she had 4 children and was amazed!
I’ll settle for ingenious, clever feels more attainable than exceptional. Please pass along my thanks to your cousin!
You did everything just right with this post but my big take away will be paragraph #3; something to beat in mind always.
I agree. The challenge, for me, is to step outside a point of stationary conviction and model the lesson with my actions; moving through fear and insecurity, imperfectly but intentionally.
Your daughter’s soccer experience is mirroring my daughter’s almost exactly. Thank you for putting into words something that I had yet to fully process.
Wishing your daughter the same fearlessness and fun that I hope for my own.