Moms, too, feel agony of defeat
Are We There Yet? • LORI CLINCH
Contrary to popular belief, being a mother of four boys doesn't automatically make one a sports fan.

No, sir. Sports are simply forced upon some of us and they rank right up there with immunization shots and the cutting of sixyear molars.

I've come a long way in my 15 years of sitting in the stands. Yet, despite the fact that we've sacrificed both time and money, I've come to realize that some parents are not always rooting for the win.

Slap me if you will, but it's true. Oh sure, there's the occasional fanatic who doesn't care that she's behind on laundry, that her pot roast could be boiling over or that an extra game on Thursday night means she won't get to sit at home under a blanket and watch "Grey's Anatomy."

But by and large, your average and runof the-mill parent will tire out eventually. Four wins in a row on a Saturday afternoon is enough of one sport. Three nights is enough to call it a good week. You show me someone who doesn't think that it's true, and I'll show you a woman who never sat in the bleachers as her Saturday night ticked away, when she left home that morning thinking she'd be back before the whites finished spinning out in the rinse cycle.

It leads to a parent who cheers loudly, "Catch that ball!," as they mutter under their breath, "Or not."

Yet, when you have a child who has given up after-school events, late-night movies and a social life, you can't help wanting to cheer them on, no matter how much you want to just pack up your fanny cushion and head home.

As parents, we sit in gymnasiums when the temperature has peaked at a 100 stinking degrees. We doubt our sanity as we sit in the football stands and get pelted by sleet as the temperature dips well below the freezing point. And we hold our tongues as a wellmeaning and undoubtedly psychotic coach suggests another inning on a night that our faces were sand-blasted with dug-out dirt throughout the entire bottom of the fifth.

And we cheer our children on.

Yet, the long hours and the extreme temperatures are not the hard part of being a sports parent. The hard part comes at the bottomof the ninth, at the sound of the buzzer or at the end of the fourth quarter when our children have been giving it their all for an entire contest and still came up short.

Watching a child walk off the field, beaten and downtrodden with defeat tears out the heart of any parent who has ever waved a banner.

More than once, I have stood at the edge of the playing field and wondered what to say — or if I should say anything at all.

One would think that after a bajillion years of handling losses at sporting events, it would be routine and that I would have the talk down pat.

But the only thing that I've learned is that you can't simply tell a child who gave it his all, "Good game," or "Better luck next time." Certainly you can't say anything as analytical as, "In the grand scheme of things, this is no big deal."

Because for this child who is wet with sweat and covered with bruises and aching in an exhausted body, it wasn't, as we'd like to say, just a game.

So as I stood at the top of the basement steps following a recent trouncing, I desperatelywished I could come up with the perfect antidote. I longed for something profound, something so philosophical that when I said it, it would ease his feeling of defeat just a little.

Most of all, I wished that I didn't even have to go down the steps.

Just then the front door opened and my son's best friend walked in. He hadn't played the game. It wasn't his night. Therefore, he was showered and fresh and was holding a large fruit slush in each hand. "Is he down there?" he asked as he nodded toward the basement.

"Yes," I replied. "Great, I'm going down."

"What will you say?" I called after him.

"I'm going to talk tough and use a lot of bad words."

Although he gave me a big smile, I knew he wasn't kidding.

He was going to make my child feel that his efforts were noteworthy and that it wasn't all for naught.

He might even say the same things that I might have said, but it would sound better coming from a friend who could talk tough.

And that's OK, even if he does use some bad words.

Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book "Are We There Yet?" You can reach her at www.loriclinch.com.