nixtress's Diaryland Diary

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My boys learning how to be

I spent the first half of my day in the emergency room, company for someone who's back seemed to have gone into a permanent spasm. After a shot of Toradol and a shot of Valium, I managed to get them home and tucked into bed, in order to start my day.
Didn't happen. I was beat. I slept like hell last night, another night where I couldn't get to sleep before 3 a.m. and when I finally did, I tossed and turned and then woke up just a few hours later to get the boys off to school. I laid down and took a nap that lasted until about half an hour before the boys got home from school. Needless to say, not much got accomplished tonight. Everyone got their homework done and dinner was made, then it was off to wrestling.
There's something so... male about that place. The locker room is the first room you enter when you come inside the door and it's Rule Number One that you remove all outer wear before entering The Wrestling Room. Once that's accomplished, we head inside. I expected, the first time going in, this wave of stale sweat to just flow but that's actually pretty minor. It's more like this odor of..determination. I don't know how else to put it. Mixed in with the sweat smell is rubber and padded mats and testosterone and ...determination. I swear if you listen to the silence inside, it's packed with grunts and groans and the laughter of countless teenaged boys, rough housing and wrangling one another, the sounds of bodies smacking the mats and the thump of frustration.
The room is almost completely padded with red and orange mats, covering 3/4 of the way up the walls. Even the columns in the middle of the room are padded. There's a stereo perched high in one corner and dry erase boards covering the space above the mats at one end. Everything else is open space.
I get a real kick out of watching the boys there, forming not only their bodies but their minds as well. It's teaching them, physically, things I can only voice. Fair play, determination, losing gracefully. And they're learning, hands on, how much it pays to follow instruction and give complete attention.
I have to say it's been a positive experience, so far, as a mom and I can see how much they're growing from it. Being my sons' mother is a gift that saves me from myself sometimes.
***
Happy Monday night.
N.

7:58 p.m. - 2005-01-24

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

previous - next