It Has Not Been the Best of Weeks

Some unfortunate events occurred with my youngest son’s hockey team last week.  I could go into it all, but what’s the point?  The bottom line is that although my son JJ is still on the team, I have a different outlook about the team now, and I’m not sure anything could happen that will make me feel as good about the team as I did last year when I felt like we were all truly a big, happy family.  But, I will suck up my frustration and anger and allow my son to have fun with his friends, because that’s what parents do.

If I thought JJ’s situation was bad, that’s nothing compared to Jamie’s. It was just over three weeks ago that we got the news telling us that the team we had been led to believe Jamie would be skating with for the fall was suddenly disbanded, the coach leaving to take on a “new opportunity,” with barely a backward glance at those team members whose skill level wasn’t at the “elite select” status.  I love my son, but I know his abilities better than anyone, and I know that trying him out for a high-level travel team would be an exercise in futility. So instead, we sucked up our hurt and anger and bravely put on a happy face, figuring we’d just try out for other teams, because certainly there was a team out there for us somewhere.

Well, three weeks and umpteen tryouts later, the happy faces are all but gone, and, in my case anyway, a lot of crying, frustration, and despair have taken their place. It doesn’t matter how many times I smile and say, “It’s okay, we’ll find something” when yet another coach calls or emails with a politely-worded rejection; when someone tells you that your son isn’t “good enough”…well, damn it, it hurts.  It hurts to watch my son get so excited about a team and then try to pretend like it’s no big deal when he doesn’t make it, again. It hurts to see him force a smile and say, “It’s okay, Mom, I can always play house*,” when his very demeanor clearly says that it’s not okay at all. (*House = rec league hockey, which he hasn’t played in 5 years)

Many of his friends made the super-select team, and I know that he was a bit frustrated with us for not allowing him to try out, but my husband and I simply couldn’t do it.  The main reason was on principal; if the coach had wanted him, he would have called and asked us to bring him, tried to “sell” us on the team, as it were.  I’ve learned that that’s how it’s done in hockey.  But we received nothing but a generic “everyone’s welcome to try out” email ending with “best of luck to you,” so that was pretty clear.  But even beyond that, I know that if the coach had taken my son, it would have been an indication that the team wasn’t really as “elite” as advertised, and I don’t need for my son to be on a team that gets trounced at every game because they’re competing at a level higher than what they really are.  So, although we know he’s disappointed, we hope in the long run that he sees the logic of our decision.

With that said, the “logic” is hard to swallow, even for my husband and me, as we attend tryout after tryout and watch our son put forth his best effort every time, only to be disappointed.  Unfortunately, Jamie is learning a lot of hard life lessons at the ripe age of 13.  He’s learning that hard work and a great attitude can’t necessarily overcome a lack of speed or a “just average” shooting skill, and he’s also learning that being among the last of your age group to hit your growth spurt is a definite disadvantage.

As of today, Jamie has attended tryouts for four (soon to be five) teams, with nothing to show for it.  I feel compelled to point out that he also managed to run a 10k and deal with a sudden bout of 24-hour flu during that time.  He went through all of this while never outwardly showing a chink in his “positive” armor. I honestly don’t know how he does it; my armor is beyond “chinked”…it’s pretty much destroyed at this point.

Tuesday night he had a tryout for a team he really wanted to make.  We didn’t get home until 10pm, and then, on Wednesday morning, I’d barely sat down at my desk at 8am before getting the all-too-familiar “sorry but we went with someone else” email.  After almost three weeks of this, and with our prospects looking bleaker by the moment, I can’t lie: I totally lost it.  I went in the bathroom and cried for half an hour, and then spent the rest of the day at my desk, barely able to hold it together, and using up half of my new box of Kleenex.  I was just devastated, because I knew how much he wanted to make the team.  The reality is that the team was too high-level for him, but that didn’t stop him (or me or my husband) from hoping that they might see his potential and bring him on board.  But, at this age, it’s not about potential; it’s about results, and he just doesn’t have the kind of results that the other kids do.

We had another tryout last night, but it was for another high-level team and I’m not holding out much (any) hope.  We have a final one on Saturday for a team that is a year above his age level; again, it’s a long shot, but long shots are all we have at this point.

I am well aware that this is not the end of the world, and I should count my many blessings and stop stressing about this.  There are much worse things in the world, I know.  But this is my personal struggle right now, and the point of all this whining is to show that, even though I put on a happy face every day and am Suzy Positive 99.9% of the time, I actually get discouraged, too. And you know what happens when I get discouraged?  I eat.  God, do I eat.

On Tuesday, in a moment of weakness brought on by the stress of the unknown, I bought a bag of Hershey’s miniatures at Target during lunch. I’d forgotten to bring my 5 Hershey’s kisses from home (my trick to portion control while at work), and I was having one of those moments where I simply could not survive without chocolate. Somehow, I convinced myself that having a whole bag of chocolate in my desk would be fine, because I could totally restrain myself.  And Tuesday, I actually did okay.  Not great, but I guestimated how many I had and tracked them.

Wednesday, after the early-morning rejection email, I was such a mess that multiple coworkers felt the need to ask me what was wrong (probably the fact that I had cried off all my makeup by 8:30am didn’t help).  As I sat at my desk, trying not to be noisy about my sniffling and nose-blowing, I remembered the bag, right there next to me in the drawer.  I tried to tell myself I would just have one or two, but all morning long, whenever I started feeling down, I found myself opening the drawer and taking another.  It got to the point where I knew I was out of control, so in the early afternoon I made the effort to put them in the office fridge to get them away from me.  But I couldn’t stop thinking about them, and, an hour later, I got the bag out of the fridge and put them back in my drawer.  I don’t know how many I had, but I knew it was more a couple.  In an effort to get back in control, I logged it in my eTools as 10 points worth of chocolate and moved on.

At the end of the day, I went to go throw away yet another tissue, and I realized that I had all the wrappers right there in my garbage. I was composed enough by that point that I knew I needed to hold myself accountable, so I reached in, grabbed them all, and put them on my desk. And then I counted.

That is 20 candy-bar wrappers you see there.  After counting (and being rather horrified), I took it the final step and actually calculated the points.  How many do you think it was? Well, let me tell you, I was shocked by the final tally: 24. Yes, I ate almost my entirely daily points allotment in Hershey’s miniatures. And you know what? Those 20 little candy bars didn’t make my son any more likely to get picked for a hockey team.  But they did make me feel like sh*t, and cause me to be angry and disappointed in myself. So clearly, a lose-lose situation if ever there was one.

It was hard to overcome eating 24 points worth of chocolate in a day, but thanks to a very small dinner (who needed dinner anyway? I was full of chocolate!), as well as my consistent running this week, I was able to get back in the positive by this morning, when I ran another 4 miles (that makes 16 for the week).  One thing that has kept me sane through all this is my running.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent most of my runs fretting about hockey, but it’s still calming to me, especially when I can enjoy a nice dip in the pool after I’ve worked up a sweat at 6am.

Nothing like a sunrise swim to help bring you some semblance of peace.

Thanks for listening to my whining.  I’m doing strawberry jam this weekend, so you won’t hear from me again until next week.  Our last tryout is tomorrow, so one way or another, it should all be over with by the time I post again.

Thanks for reading!