Cherishing the bonds formed during a sports odyssey

For the last 15 years, I have been a traveling sports mom for our three kids. We have ventured all over the country and to Europe for many sports, but primarily our time on the road was for soccer and baseball.As our journeys are winding down and the last one heads to college, I have been reflecting on our path taken. A sports mom is really just another name for chauffeur-sandwich maker-medic-sports psychologist-ATM and gas-pumping car mechanic. You know who you are. Watch any televised sporting event and when they flash to the proud parents in the stands, there they are looking completely and utterly exhausted but nonetheless happy and proud. That’s us, and we love it because we love our kids. Travel parents have their challenges in every geographical setting but particularly here in the Northwest Corner. When it is raining in Fairfield County in March, it is inevitably snowing here. When practice is called for 6:30 p.m. in East Hartford that means a 4 p.m. start to conquer the Route 84 traffic, and don’t forget a healthy dinner plan. Will there be parking at the Payne Whitney gym in downtown New Haven? And if you didn’t fill up the tank in Litchfield after midnight on the way home, well, we all know how that ends. There were often obstacles, but once we hit the road, we knew our mission. It was clear. The part of travel that was the toughest, yet became the biggest blessing, was that long car ride. There isn’t a subject that can’t be broached with a teenager in a three-hour drive to and from practice or on a weekend tournament road trip. Homework, friends, relationships, dreams, fears and possibilities. There were of course many triumphs and many defeats, but the time in the car was a chance to vent, regroup, celebrate or reflect on heart wrenching mistakes made. It was a time to nurse wounds in a safe haven and a place to retreat after a pressure-filled game and replay the match of the day — that clutch homerun on a 3-2 count, or the soccer ball hitting the crossbar but never going in the net.Like a modern day, slightly insane epic poem, we miraculously always ended up at the clock tower in Sharon, where we could take a deep breath and be truly thankful for our sports odyssey and the bonds we had forged together in battle. Sharon resident and mother of three, Joanie Wetmore Yahn works for her family’s business, Cascade Mountain Winery in Amenia, and has a blog about life in Sharon at intheatticblog.wordpress.com.

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