Athlete Mom Quotes

I like storms. Thunder torrential rain, puddles, wet shoes. When the clouds roll in, I get filled with this giddy expectation. Everything is more beautiful in the rain. Don't ask me why. But it’s like this whole other realm of opportunity. I used to feel like a superhero, riding my bike over the dangerously slick roads, or maybe an Olympic athlete enduring rough trials to make it to the finish line. On sunny days, as a girl, I could still wake up to that thrilled feeling. You made me giddy with expectation, just like a symphonic rainstorm. You were a tempest in the sun, the thunder in a boring, cloudless sky. I remember I’d shovel in my breakfast as fast as I could, so I could go knock on your door. We’d play all day, only coming back for food and sleep. We played hide and seek, you’d push me on the swing, or we’d climb trees. Being your sidekick gave me a sense of home again. You see, when I was ten, my mom died. She had cancer, and I lost her before I really knew her. My world felt so insecure, and I was scared. You were the person that turned things right again. With you, I became courageous and free. It was like the part of me that died with my mom came back when I met you, and I didn’t hurt if I knew I had you. Then one day, out of the blue, I lost you, too. The hurt returned, and I felt sick when I saw you hating me. My rainstorm was gone, and you became cruel. There was no explanation. You were just gone. And my heart was ripped open. I missed you. I missed my mom. What was worse than losing you, was when you started to hurt me. Your words and actions made me hate coming to school. They made me uncomfortable in my own home. Everything still hurts, but I know none of it is my fault. There are a lot of words that I could use to describe you, but the only one that includes sad, angry, miserable, and pitiful is “coward.” I a year, I’ll be gone, and you’ll be nothing but some washout whose height of existence was in high school. You were my tempest, my thunder cloud, my tree in the downpour. I loved all those things, and I loved you. But now? You’re a fucking drought. I thought that all the assholes drove German cars, but it turns out that pricks in Mustangs can still leave scars.

I could not hold my breath for seven minutes. I couldn’t even make it to one. I once tried to run a mile in seven minutes after hearing some athletes could do it in four but failed spectacularly when a side stitch crippled me about halfway in. However, there was one thing I managed to do in seven minutes that most would say is quite impressive: I became queen. By seven tiny minutes I beat my brother, Ahren, into the world, so the throne that ought to have been his was mine. Had I been born a generation earlier, it wouldn’t have mattered. Ahren was the male, so Ahren would have been the heir. Alas, Mom and Dad couldn’t stand to watch their firstborn be stripped of a title by an unfortunate but rather lovely set of breasts. So they changed the law, and the people rejoiced, and I was trained day by day to become the next ruler of Illéa.

The Lord calls each one of His children, no matter what his occupation—lawyer, doctor, maintenance man, carpenter, accountant, athlete, musician, teacher, homeschooling mom, and so on—to have a real prayer life.

I don't believe professional athletes should be role models. I believe parents should be role models.... It's not like it was when I was growing up. My mom and my grandmother told me how it was going to be. If I didn't like it, they said, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out." Parents have to take better control.

Usually when people hear my parents are scientists, they assume they're awkward, unathletic nerds whose idea of fun is doing long division. That drives me nuts. My parents are the least nerdy people you've ever met. Mom swam competitively in college and competed in triathlons up until we left earth. Dad is a rugged outdoorsman; he's summited dozens of mountains and once free-climbed El Capitan in Yosemite in a day. They met on a Class 5 rafting trip down the Snake River. But more importantly, my parents aren't unusual. I've met hundreds of scientists, and most are almost as athletic and adventurous as my parents. I'm not sure how the whole idea that scientists are nerds ever got started.

watch moms pick up, put down, lift, swing, load and carry fairly large loads all the time. We call these loads ‘children.’ Yet, when we get to the gym, we seem to think a woman needs to use very light loads. Like Milo and his calf, perhaps we should start women off with an eight-pound weight and progress upwards as the child grows.

When I was a kid, my parents were very careful about who was “acceptable” as my heroes if you will, because they didn’t want me being influenced by athletes who lacked morals. Cal Ripken and Dale Murphy were at the top of my mom’s list of players she felt were good role models, so of course I was a diehard fan of both those guys.

I like storms. Thunder, torrential rain, puddles, wet shoes. When the clouds roll in, I get filled with this giddy expectation. Everything is more beautiful in the rain. Don't ask me why. But it’s like this whole other realm of opportunity. I used to feel like a superhero, riding my bike over the dangerously slick roads, or maybe an Olympic athlete enduring rough trials to make it to the finish line. On sunny days, as a girl, I could still wake up to that thrilled feeling. You made me giddy with expectation, just like a symphonic rainstorm. You were a tempest in the sun, the thunder in a boring, cloudless sky. I remember I’d shovel in my breakfast as fast as I could, so I could go knock on your door. We’d play all day, only coming back for food and sleep. We played hide and seek, you’d push me on the swing, or we’d climb trees. Being your sidekick gave me a sense of home again. You see, when I was ten, my mom died. She had cancer, and I lost her before I really knew her. My world felt so insecure, and I was scared. You were the person that turned things right again. With you, I became courageous and free. It was like the part of me that died with my mom came back when I met you, and I didn’t hurt if I knew I had you. Then one day, out of the blue, I lost you, too. The hurt returned, and I felt sick when I saw you hating me. My rainstorm was gone, and you became cruel. There was no explanation. You were just gone. And my heart was ripped open. I missed you. I missed my mom. What was worse than losing you, was when you started to hurt me. Your words and actions made me hate coming to school. They made me uncomfortable in my own home. Everything still hurts, but I know none of it is my fault. There are a lot of words that I could use to describe you, but the only one that includes sad, angry, miserable, and pitiful is “coward.” I a year, I’ll be gone, and you’ll be nothing but some washout whose height of existence was in high school. You were my tempest, my thunder cloud, my tree in the downpour. I loved all those things, and I loved you. But now? You’re a fucking drought.

From: Bernadette Fox To: Manjula Kapoor Oh! Could you make dinner reservations for us on Thanksgiving? You can call up the Washington Athletic Club and get us something for 7 PM for three. You are able to place calls, aren’t you? Of course, what am I thinking? That’s all you people do now. I recognize it’s slightly odd to ask you to call from India to make a reservation for a place I can see out my window, but here’s the thing: there’s always this one guy who answers the phone, “Washington Athletic Club, how may I direct your call?” And he always says it in this friendly, flat… Canadian way. One of the main reasons I don’t like leaving the house is because I might find myself face-to-face with a Canadian. Seattle is crawling with them. You probably think, U.S./Canada, they’re interchangeable because they’re both filled with English-speaking, morbidly obese white people. Well, Manjula, you couldn’t be more mistaken. Americans are pushy, obnoxious, neurotic, crass—anything and everything—the full catastrophe as our friend Zorba might say. Canadians are none of that. The way you might fear a cow sitting down in the middle of the street during rush hour, that’s how I fear Canadians. To Canadians, everyone is equal. Joni Mitchell is interchangeable with a secretary at open-mic night. Frank Gehry is no greater than a hack pumping out McMansions on AutoCAD. John Candy is no funnier than Uncle Lou when he gets a couple of beers in him. No wonder the only Canadians anyone’s ever heard of are the ones who have gotten the hell out. Anyone with talent who stayed would be flattened under an avalanche of equality. The thing Canadians don’t understand is that some people are extraordinary and should be treated as such. Yes, I’m done. If the WAC can’t take us, which may be the case, because Thanksgiving is only two days away, you can find someplace else on the magical Internet. * I was wondering how we ended up at Daniel’s Broiler for Thanksgiving dinner. That morning, I slept late and came downstairs in my pajamas. I knew it was going to rain because on my way to the kitchen I passed a patchwork of plastic bags and towels. It was a system Mom had invented for when the house leaks.

Today I feel like this job is truly a part of God’s purpose for me— as a former athlete and former teacher/coach, this role of leadership was a natural fit once I realized how I could apply it to my new business.

I don’t mind,” I said. “My mom was a really good athlete. She liked to go on these exotic trips with her geologist friends. Dad didn’t like going so much. He’d stay home with me. That was before he had all these long business trips. Anyway, Mom spent months preparing for some hike in Antarctica. She was so excited. Dad and I were following her trek in the cold, through this awesome video feed, when a snowstorm hit . . . It was really bad. We could hear yelling. Then the yelling got drowned out by the wind. Dad says I started screaming, like I knew what was about to happen. The screen turned totally white . . . and then nothing . . .

One example is the “stage mom” who, out of her own frustrated desire to be famous, drives her daughter to fulfill her failed ambitions. Another is the “football father” who pushes his son to fulfill his dreams of athletic glory. Children will protect the attachment relationship with their parents by adopting the false self that their parents require. Having to choose between their own authenticity and the parents’ demands puts these children in an impossible bind. In the process, children of such parents fail to develop an authentic self.

Mom showed me a section. It was a passage about a fifty-fifth high school reunion. It began: The list of our deceased classmates on the back of the program grows longer; the class beauties have gone to fat or bony-cronehood; the sports stars and non-athletes alike move about with the aid of pacemakers and plastic knees, retired and taking up space at an age when most of our fathers were considerately dead. It continued: But we don’t see ourselves that way, as lame and old. We see kindergarten children—the same round fresh faces, the same cup ears and long-lashed eyes. We hear the gleeful shrieking during elementary-school recess and the seductive saxophones and muted trumpets of the locally bred swing bands that serenaded the blue-lit gymnasium during high-school dances.

I'd never had an audience like Rebecca Cross. Her shining eyes and respectful silence spurred me to ever greater heights of invention. Ever deeper trenches of imagined horrors. By Friday, I'd pegged half our class as speeding towards some kind of astonishing doom. And Becca was mine. We'd been written off as weirdos together. Together. Some girls treated their friends as athletes in competitive trials, constantly moving them up and down the ranks. But for us best friendship was deadly serious. More permanent than a tattoo. We invented code words and handshakes. We made repeated blood pacts. We scratched each other's arms with pine needles and sipped unholy potions we invented in our parents' gardens out of some nebulous, but passionate desire to show out devotion. We snuck clothes into each other's drawers, so we could swear to anyone who asked (no-one ever asked) that we lived together. Our mom's conducted hush phone calls, worried we'd burn bright then break each others hearts. They set up play dates with other children who never asked to come back. Our parents didn't get it. That was all. They didn't believe you could find your soulmate at six.

It’s your life,” Mom said. “I just never pictured you with someone like Mad Rogan.” Oh no, not the unsuitable boyfriend lecture. I winked at her. “Who did you picture me with?” She frowned, stumped. “I don’t know. Someone tall. Athletic.

That wasn’t very polite, Bristol.” “Neither is ogling your daughter’s boyfriend, Mom.” She shrugged, completely unphased. “I’m forty-four, honey, not dead. And dead is what I’d have to be not to appreciate the athletic specimen you’ve brought home.

Well, I was trying to avoid that, but yes. Somehow I thought you’d be the ideal man, you know, athletic and overwhelmingly good-looking.” “It’s my nose, isn’t it?” Mack didn’t know what to say. Jesus laughed. “I am Jewish, you know. My grandfather on my mother’s side had a big nose. In fact, most of the men on my mom’s side had big noses.” “I just thought you’d be better-looking.

Curtis looked up into those sparkling green eyes, full of life, full of kindness, full of potential love, with just a hint of mischief. But that was going to make going out with Genesis so much fun. Curtis needed a lot more of that in his life. It’d been lacking for many years. He had his family now and hopefully a new man. He knew Genesis would be the perfect Southern gentleman until he turned eighteen, but that was okay. It was more than okay. He may be a superstar athlete, but he was raised by a good Christian mom who’d taught her sons well. Curtis was going to do everything he could to be a good match for Genesis Godfrey. “You’re

Mom wasn’t a weak person, or a wisp of a domineered housewife who hid in the background. Far from it. She was a vivacious, funny, and smart woman who loudly voiced her opinions, and would’ve been a suffragette had she lived in the twenties. She was gorgeous, with shoulder-length brown hair and beautiful brown eyes. She was strong and was an athlete as a teenager. She smoked, drank, and laughed out loud. A vital presence. She just never did understand or relate to children. She left school as a teenager and worked full-time in an office, then married young and became a mother and housewife. Now she found herself in New York in the swinging sixties, and despite my dad’s best efforts to make her the perfect square wife, she was energized, curious, and had time on her hands. She took music lessons, looked longingly at the bohemian lifestyle, and went off alone to the Newport Jazz Festival to see Miles Davis. Not about to be the happy homemaker, she wanted to party.

When I see professional athletes talk about how much they love their moms after a big win, I often tear up. Partly because a raw and vulnerable display of love is just a poignant thing, but also, part of me realizes I missed out on something.

Mom wasn’t a weak person, or a wisp of a domineered housewife who hid in the background. Far from it. She was a vivacious, funny, and smart woman who loudly voiced her opinions, and would’ve been a suffragette had she lived in the twenties. She was gorgeous, with shoulder-length brown hair and beautiful brown eyes. She was strong and was an athlete as a teenager. She smoked, drank, and laughed out loud. A vital presence. She just never did understand or relate to children. She left school as a teenager and worked full-time in an office, then married young and became a mother and housewife. Now she found herself in New York in the swinging sixties, and despite my dad’s best efforts to make her the perfect square wife, she was energized, curious, and had time on her hands. She took music lessons, looked longingly at the bohemian lifestyle, and went off alone to the Newport Jazz Festival to see Miles Davis. Not about to be the happy homemaker, she wanted to party. Dad never became rich, and I’ve been told some blame fell upon my mom for failing to help him climb the career ladder. Instead of standing by her man, she acquired hippie habits, wore dashikis, and was a lousy teammate at cocktail parties.