I don’t go in for that “selfless mothers” trope any more than I go for the “teachers are heroes” routine. Pay the teachers and don’t make the mothers hide their light under a bushel, I say.
Yet, I just spent two years writing and one year promoting a book about how Scout’s teacher mom I raised her. And naturally, I called it Soccer Dad.
Yes, I dedicated the book to her, writing an opening note
about my wife, Cristie Bosch, who appears in this book far less frequently than she would if it were titled Soccer Parents. It’s called Soccer Dad because I write best when I speak for myself, and my own experience. My wife, of course, was my full partner in this soccer parenting effort, from getting Scout signed up to her first tyke’s soccer program to counseling Scout throughout her college soccer experience. Ask the bartender at the Ohio University Inn the evening after we dropped Scout off at college: Cristie and I shared the joys and the sorrows equally. We also sometimes differed in our emotional reactions to games and their consequences. But most of that tension was creative, and all of it helped the two of us see this strangely shaped project from another point of view. And another point of view—sometimes any other point of view—is often exactly what a soccer parent needs to maintain perspective in an often-warped world.
Ultimately, how we performed as soccer parents is probably just a measure of how we performed as parents. However well or poorly we did at both, Scout’s mom and I did this together, and I dedicate this book to her.
… and of course I was very happy she got some love by Chicago Tribune columnist Rick Kogan (and Trib photographer John Kim) in a piece on the book launch last month.
But still, it must be said: Cristie Bosch is a hero teacher, and also is a mother who gives more than she gets—as all mother birds do—and as Scout well knows.
Scout, who has flown off with her old teammates on a post-graduation tour of Europe, leaving Dadbird to hold down the Mother’s Day action around here. As usual, I’m scrounging for a last-minute gift.
I was touched by this moment a couple years ago, and I’m touched by it again, as we go into this weekend.
We’ll watch this together Sunday, and there won’t be a dry eye in our house.
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