At a physical, my Grim-Reaper doctor taught me a phrase I’d never heard before (and at the time I thought he invented): “Father Time is undefeated.” (Turns out it’s a sports phrase with no clear origin, the earliest use I could find was Charles Barkley in 2012.). The sports origin is appropriate this week as I face the end of the parenting tunnel, not that it ever really ends. This week my oldest daughter turned 30 and youngest, son Bobby (18) attends prom as well as “Senior Night” for baseball.
Senior Night (since I turn 55 in a few weeks) makes me think of pancake discounts and heated Bridge games at the “active adults” community center. It’s been weird during this last baseball season to essentially be the “senior mom” of the senior moms. Some of these women are in their 30s, this is their oldest kid playing and meanwhile I gave birth to this shortstop at what the OB/GYN unfortunately referred to as the “advanced age” of 36.
There’s an enthusiastic senior mom group chat, and as one who’s achieved the video game level of “30 years never joined a PTA,” I’m struggling to navigate the Pinterest-laden cupcake signup sheets. The only thing I’ve ever truly been successful at in life is not fitting in, so I guess this last season of baseball momdom isn’t different. I’m making free candles for the banquet, so I feel like I could get away with signing up for plates and napkins at Senior Night, especially with the status of being the only actual senior mom.
Over the years I’ve written about life as a baseball mom from inside the dugout as I kept score of Bobby’s teams for more than 10 years. A mediocre softball player, I kept score at my brother’s games, then landed as manager of my high school baseball team, where I enjoyed wearing the uniform and waving to the players’ girlfriends as I got on the bus. My son only has one parent who earned a varsity letter in baseball in high school, and it wasn’t his dad (who played football). I’m still the only woman from my alma mater with that distinction.
It was tough for me to sit and watch his high school games without keeping score. A few times in particular I had a little beef about some hard hit line drives called errors on Bobby at short, or on other players. The scorekeeper was stingy with base hits at times if you ask me. But all that aside, the team is 12-4 so it’s been a good last season for him, he’s done well in the field and hit his first home run last week, a moment I know he’ll always remember.
It’s a lot of tearjerker moments over a month: his sister’s graduation with her masters’, his prom, the end of the last season, his graduation— how much can a mom’s heart take? I’m going on a bus trip that leaves from a senior center next month and I’m not sure how I got here. It was yesterday I was fighting the quicksand of raising four young kids, and suddenly they’re adults.