“You don’t like football,” my son says.

I disagree and cite evidence to prove my support: team apparel for myself and the family, hundreds of dollars of “football food” from Costco, hours online uploading and organizing lists and forms, and a rearrangement of life to meet the schedule of practices and games. We’re in a deep argument by now, and frankly, I’ve had it.

It’s only later I realize, he’s right. I don’t like it. And so, for years I had not allowed him to play for the usual reasons: concussions and more concussions.

Other than one dismal season of elementary school summer league softball, where I caught exactly one ball—a fly ball that landed in my glove, I never played a team sport. I have never watched an entire Superbowl game. Football was one of those sports that had failed to engage me on any level. I enjoyed a few movies about football, but live game time? Not really.

Early Trauma

For my 9th birthday, my father took me to see the University of Iowa football team play a game—the year they lost every one. Dad bought me a pom-pom and we stayed until half time so I could watch the cheerleaders and then we went home.

At boarding school there were co-ed cheerleaders who sported creamy white wool sweaters emblazoned with a navy blue “A” who led cheers at the homecoming game. As part of the senior advisory group I confidently led a cheer wherein I misspelled our school’s name. I liked yelling through the megaphone. Details like who was playing, the game itself, and spelling were another matter.

Fast-forward another ten years. My mother won a raffle and I got four tickets to a live Raiders game on the 50-yard-line. I went with a sister and two friends: Ballet Dancer from acting class and Writer Coach whose day job was coaching a high school football team. Ballet Dancer initially suggested selling the tickets and going out to brunch, but it was too late to do that. 

The three of us stayed for Writer Coach, but I spent most of the time going back and forth for snacks. I had no idea football moved so slowly. I think the team lost the game. I can’t remember.

Academic Expendables

As a teacher, I knew that to be a teenage football player was to step into an American myth, a boyhood dream. Fall semester’s big event, homecoming, revolved around football. The game defined school culture. None of it sat comfortably with me.

My football student athletes were always polite in class. There were a few exceptional players who engaged deeply with reading and stories, or who asked questions and pondered the material. But mostly, players were exhausted and suffered from lack of sleep and too many obligations. They were recruited to high-fee schools like ours for their athletic prowess. They were professionals, there to serve an elite school with their bodies.

The majority were students of color. Their family’s and community’s dreams were on the line. A ticket out. Neighborhood pride. I understood, but also chafed under this. Poets and musicians are rarely granted such privileges and absences. Football players are exclusively boys.

More disturbing was that boys with interesting academic or creative abilities were often overlooked because they were football players. When I look back on the kids I taught who were athletes, what poetry they held was often buried by institutional pressure to serve the school.

No Dad, No Playing Time

When living overseas in Hong Kong, there was no American football, only rugby (nope, didn’t allow him to play that either) and soccer, the chosen sport of his father. (He played.)

Upon relocation to Hawai‘i he continued to play, but it was only the two of us here. The first year as a Team Mom could only be described as a heteronormative extreme. While all parents had to contribute, the team parent who took the reins was extremely disgruntled when I explained my hour and a half one-way commute, and disparagingly added I was more or less like a single mom, (an abject state from her tone), so let me off some duties and gruffly assigned me others. I was glad about the break, not-so-glad to be sized up in this way by the team mom.

Families are pressed. The pace and expectation of sporting activities takes a toll on families, as it involves a lot of time and there are specific expectations of how one participates in these activities. On that team, most of the coaches for the team were the dads who had not played when they were younger, or so it seemed. Both parents were present. It was a heteronormative friendly atmosphere. There were boring drills; not much playing time. There was well-intentioned yelling “Get your head out of your butt, Nalu” and parents’ dreams of a soccer star dying at every practice. A very heavy kid lost 25 pounds that season, and the entire team cheered him on as he ran down the field and scored a single goal.

Yet without a male figure by my side The Kid had minimal playing time. Fatherly interest assures time on the field, and while I raced home for practice, showed up for every game, brought the required snacks, and enthusiastically cheered, my presence as a mom didn’t hold much sway. The Kid’s athletic, but his short attention span became shorter as he played defense. He liked the camaraderie, was distracted by his hair falling in his eyes, and amiably followed the rest of the team. I vowed that the next time I would be more involved. 

Soccer Mom Takeover

The following year I volunteered for team parent and became the uber Soccer Mom to blow out all Soccer Moms. Suggested snacks. Get well cards. Car pool coordination. Emails. Times. Assigned tasks. I refused to be trifled with.

The team had several single moms and this time women, not men, were present at all practices and games. The coach had minimal drills and the kids scrimmaged at every practice. “Kids like playing,” was his response. “Drills, not so much.” The coach never yelled, everyone played. Fun was the priority. The philosophy worked. The team did well. We’re still in contact with a few of the boys from that time. The Kid still says that was his best year of playing soccer. It was that mythic time before boys’ playing abilities were held up for public scrutiny and the only goal was fun.

Private School or Bust

The following year, several members of the soccer team decided to try basketball. Indoor games ran late—up to 9 p.m. for an elementary school kid. Parents were friendly, but the vibe was different. Competitive. From what I could see, no one was heading to a professional team, but the parental involvement with the kids was down to this: they were gunning for private school spots, and to do this, their children had to show that they excelled at a sport.

 Parents were not messing around. I heard a parent brag that her child’s ambition was to play basketball at Yale. He was 10. What school is your child applying to? An admissions officer encouraged me to keep my child on a team, as that would influence his private school acceptance.

My child liked basketball as much as soccer, but it was about the camaraderie. Why I was supposed to make sure he did sports instead of art class for a private school spot was beyond me. It was, in fact, the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard—that is, unless the child is extremely keen to do the sport.

Had I been dealing with an aspiring Olympic figure skater it would be one thing. But I wasn’t sure that sacrificing time to the altar of sport for a school spot for a 10-year-old was the right move.

Reality Checks

The next soccer season happened when my marriage headed to extinction. But unlike the previous season, the fathers were friendly. But it was hard for me to focus on being Uber Soccer Mom given what was happening personally. I did what I could. I coordinated the snacks. I sent out schedules. The tent was in my car. One dad gave me weights to hold it in place. But everything was a blur and while The Kid enjoyed the time on the field, through no fault of anyone, the team didn’t quite have the magic of the previous year. And too: I was preoccupied. I wasn’t quite divorced, but I was negotiating my existence as a single parent and trying to decide how I felt about it.

My divorce finalized the following year. A few weeks after signing the paperwork, The Kid made the cut at a competitive soccer club in town. The coach gathered the parents and began his speech with the ominous statement: do not count on a soccer college scholarship. It won’t happen.

He also firmly announced that certain behavior would not be tolerated. No brawling parents, no bad attitudes, no sideline refereeing. By then I knew that playing time, thus scholarships, ran in tandem with parental ego and bragging rights; a player’s genuine abilities or even desires were often an afterthought.

By now I was in the throes of a high conflict divorce. We moved to Maui. Given The Kid’s entry into club soccer, and my feeling that continuity was important, I agreed to drive over an hour one way for practices, but a teacher’s salary meant several hundred dollars a month for fees and gas. Did The Kid like soccer that much? What was this for anyway?

When his father refused to pay soccer fees, my son’s soccer trajectory shifted. My budget couldn’t handle it. I was too exhausted to drive. It might have been different if the cash was in place, but it wasn’t. I began to see that soccer playing was never The Kid’s fantasy, but his father’s. I also realized that his father was one of those parents that the coach had complained about. I felt an odd sense of reassurance with this observation. There was me, one of the normal parents, and then there was him, the parent who harbored delusional fantasies.

The upshot was The Kid ended up playing a short drive from home with others from his neighborhood and school. The coaches knew The Kid lost interest unless he was directly chasing the ball. Parents harbored no scholarship ambitions; they wanted their sons to make friends, to have fun.

I began to question how much The Kid enjoyed soccer when I saw a photo I took of him gazing in the opposite direction of everyone on his team. Everyone but him was intensely focused on the ball. Soccer was habit and recreation, but unlike his father, did not define any part of his personality.

Basketball Interlude

Basketball season showed me what team sports could be: The best coach on the Island took over the team and magic happened. No matter their ability, everyone played. There was camaraderie and laughter as the boys tumbled into the backseat. The Kid had a ball.

My fondest memories of that year of signing papers and going in and out of court for the divorce revolved around The Kid’s basketball practice and games. E. a friend from decades prior, stepped off the plane the day after my divorce was inked, and for the first time ever, myself and The Kid enjoyed a family life that we had always wanted to have, but had never experienced. We laughed together. E. cooked dinner every night and we became during those brief months, a family.

A former student athlete, E advised The Kid to have protein the night before the game and the morning of, diligently prepared him meals, and together we shuttled The Kid and other boys in the back of the car to late afternoon practices and morning games. E. chatted to parents and the coach; we cheered from the sidelines. We became part of the crowd and suddenly I was experiencing the joy and celebration of heteronormative youth sporting event participation and found myself having fun.

The Kid and I have fond memories of that time. E. showed The Kid what it meant to have a man be kind to his mother and to take interest in his activities. It was also where I saw the fallout from the divorce begin to manifest.

Class Divides

“That guy I played with today called me a rich kid, because of where I’m going to school,” The Kid said defiantly.  As a teacher, I earned an exemption for his tuition. I would never afford it otherwise.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I asked him where he lived. He lives where those big houses are. I asked him how many bedrooms he had in his house. He said four. I said I live in a one-bedroom cottage,” said The Kid.

“Oh?”

“Then I beat him on the court,” said The Kid defiantly. “Screw him. But he’s OK. Now we’re friends.”

The jockeying for dominance. The haves and the have-nots. Loss had become acute in his mind. He did not have a house anymore. He had lost a family. There was upheaval, envy, anger, and confusion. The divorce, as far as The Kid was concerned, was not only a split up, it was a new way of socially framing himself in every arena of his life.

“Mom, am I a poor kid now? I think I was kind of a richer kid before.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t have my own bedroom. I sleep in the living room.”

“You’ll get a bedroom. Don’t worry. You’re not poor.”

Back to Public School

Circumstances shifted upon return to Honolulu. The Kid got a bedroom, but basketball at a big public middle school was no longer a friendly well-organized sport. He left the first day of middle school tryouts. While before he had loved the coach and playing on his team now he was intimidated: “I’m not doing this.”

I was disappointed as I remembered how much he had enjoyed it. I explained the point was to play for fun, but he refused to join. Fear. Ego. Acceptance. By 7th grade many kids had already been playing basketball for years and mistakes were not as easy to make in front of a pack of boys fighting for dominance. It was where and how your masculinity and mettle were tested. It was all the stuff that drove me away from participating in organized sports my entire life.

The Maui coach had told me that The Kid would be a good player; he would have the height and he had the coordination. But I knew that without some of the handholding that he may have needed, or the guidance of a kind coach who saw potential and prioritized playing time for all, The Kid would never play. Basketball days ended.

I was disappointed. But it wasn’t the game. It was what the game meant.

Football? No Way

And so, during COVID, the football campaign began. The Kid had briefly waged one in elementary school, I refused to budge. He had made football rosters for his friends and played every recess, but now there was a desperate urgency in his voice.

“Football is important in Hawai‘i,” he said to me. “It’s the sport here, Mom.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I have wanted to play it since 3rd grade. I’m good at it.”

“You never play it. You hardly watch it!”

“I’m good at it.”

“You’re good at a lot of stuff. Tennis. You’re good at tennis too. Maybe join the tennis team.”

“No. Dad wanted me to play soccer. You wanted me to play basketball. I want to play football. Football is my choice. I have always wanted to play it and you never let me play it.”

“I never wanted you to play basketball. You liked basketball. I don’t care which sport you play, I care about injury.”

“Sandy’s is dangerous, Mom. You let me go there.”

“It’s the ocean.”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s dangerous.”

“The water’s different.”

“How?”

“It’s the natural world. It’s something else. It’s the ocean.”

How to explain rocks and gods and water to a teenager hell-bent on acceptance? The meaning of ocean as life, of who we are on this earth. Football translates into mainstream popularity. Campus stardom. Friends in a pack. A position. Belonging.

“I want a family. I don’t have one anymore,” The Kid declared.

Finding Family

COVID had offered a respite from the politics of middle school and the fallout of divorce. The instability of a family life underscored by strife came tumbling out.

The final straw for The Kid was when he clicked on Instagram and discovered his father had remarried without telling him. Memories of bottles of alcohol in the morning reeking on a kitchen counter, yelling, and fear creeped in. A longing for a family that never was. Escape. Confrontation. The dissolution.

And then, there was the ocean, specifically, Uncle N., the surf instructor, and the ocean. The Kid had begun to surf when we had lived on Maui, and when we moved back to Honolulu, he started paddling out with Uncle N.

Sandy’s

But the water took on another dimension once he started going to Sandy’s. The water became a way of life. Three or four days a week, Uncle N would swing by and pick him up. Time schedules shifted. After a late night of gaming and yelling over a Discord call, The Kid would quickly eat breakfast, amble out the door, and hop in Uncle N’s car. There he would spend a few hours at Sandy’s, under the tutelage of Uncle N and the uncles in the early morning surf, sharing tips and guidance and here he found, if only a while, a place to belong.

Sandy’s was the beach my uncle refused to let us go to when we arrived in Honolulu for the summer. No. Too rough. We never went. The shore break is dangerous; the current strong. Yet it was here that The Kid began to find himself, charging and challenging the blue, eating big plate lunches with Uncle N or downing a half a dozen grilled hot dogs on the beach. His hair turned light, his skin browned, and he developed confidence. His back got cuts and scars from the rocks and shoreline, he battled a current, and still, he went out every morning.

My parents and I went to see him. A boy in the blue. Light. Strength. Joy. Calm. A slow transformation, if only a few hours a day. Healing had begun. A teacher, Uncle N. said with pride: “He’s looking good.”

My heart swelled. It is something else to see a child who has suffered experience freedom. I wanted to cry; I laughed. The Kid looked awesome. Grandma smiled. Aunty said, “Those are big waves.”

Grandpa looked for a few minutes too, said, “Is that wave too big?” walked down the road.

He found petting a friendly pet pig lying under the shade to be of greater interest than seeing his sole grandson in the ocean. 

Commit—or Die

One day The Kid came in and sprawled out on the bed, his body now stretched from one end to the other. He looked up the ceiling and said to me: “Mom, I thought I was going to die today on a wave.”

“Then what?”

“I prayed. Then, I committed,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Good job. I’m proud of you.”

The ocean heals. The water eases. The sea. A boy and the elements.

All during COVID I watched my Facebook feed. Mothers with sons who cheerfully played puzzles and made pizza. Families that made crafts and read piles of books. Everyone’s child was writing long stories and practicing musical instruments. The only way we got through the COVID school year intact was that I installed a punching bag outside the front door.

It didn’t always work. The bedroom doors had five holes in them.

The Kid grew five inches, his voice changed, he worked out like it was a religion, and he entered the water. He came in from the ocean to do a few hours of schoolwork. COVID was Discord and gaming. Two gallons of milk a week. Piles of toast. He changed his diet, grilled meat, and scrambled more than a dozen eggs a week. He swore off sugar, and just plain swore.

Defiance. Rage. It’s the kick-off of what I am well aware will be a long period of rebellion that is likely to intensify. I think I am prepared. I know I am not. The last several years were hard.

A month before school began a friend invited him to football practice.

“I’m going to play football. Mom, this is the one thing I have always wanted to do. My whole life. You say no, you always say no. To everything. You’re such a negative thinker.”

“No, I don’t.”

“When you say maybe, maybe is a NO. You are a Debbie Downer.”

“I’m not a Debbie Downer.”

“Yes, you are! Moms say no.”

“Moms do not say no.”

“Well YOU as a mom say no. ALL THE TIME.”

“Listen, football is…it’s a complicated thing. It’s really…we saw that movie together about concussions.”

“I want to play. Not everyone gets one. This is for me. It’s my choice. This is my life. This is me. I’m going to play.”

Whose Life Is It, Anyway?

This is my life, Mom. When does it become this, exactly? My uncle and a cousin played. My students. But horror stories abounded. My mother’s doctor’s friend’s son: paralyzed. A former student brain damaged. I never watched the sport. Tennis? Cross country? Hiking? Wilderness sports? Biking? Why did it have to be football?

“Why do you always think something bad will happen? What is wrong with you?” said The Kid. “You always think the worst will happen.”

Friends and family weighed in: No! Absolutely not. I will not let my child do it. Yes. Let him do it a few weeks. Once he gets sacked it will be different. Those are men on the field. Some of those kids, they are full grown.

The anxiety increased (me). The anger mounted (him).

I researched the coaches and team. Somehow the interview and stories reassured me. From what I read, at least for his school’s team, the point was play, not the NFL.

To my surprise and to everyone else’s, I capitulated:

“OK. You can play. You have to get to bed early and eat right. You have to take ballet. You have to maintain a 3.5 GPA. You have to do your chores. You’re basically just a machine during season. Understand? And if you get one injury, I don’t care what it is, you are out. Got it?”

Law of the Pack

He’s running with a pack now. School is about to start. Scrimmages.

He got bigger after a week of hearty eating. The last time I thought about his eating like this was when he was a baby. But when I drove to pick him up it looked like every other player had also increased in size.

“You don’t like it. I can tell. I can tell you don’t like it,” said The Kid, angrily.

And then I had to examine myself: Was he right? After another late night argument I had to agree: he was right. I dug deeper.

Alien in the Corn

Growing up in Iowa, football became the symbol to me of not belonging. Of bullying and whiteness. Of mockery of my father, of my Asian self, my Korean family.

We were three girls and a father who didn’t care about football who never saw it until he came to the U.S. We had no point of reference for this game. But we lived in a neighborhood and school filled with boys and girls who lived for football, talked about football, whose families followed it religiously. Those who failed to do so were excluded.

Briefly there was inclusion: A young neighborhood boy, Bill, who owned no football, and who played on the 7th grade team, corralled my sisters and I, and another neighborhood girl into playing. Bill commanded the plays and we played with a red rubber ball, and those are, in all honesty, my only fond memories of the sport, and some of my best childhood moments.

Sometimes other kids joined in with a real football. One day my younger sister wound up flat on her back, the wind knocked out of her. We stood over her looking at her carefully.

“She’s the running back,” said Bill. What to do? Tell Mom? Stop playing? Was she breathing? My sister nodded. We needed the running back. Mom didn’t have to know. Game on!

Football was also Whiteness, big people, and gatherings where I observed a lot of potato chips and no rice. As I lay awake thinking about The Kid and all of the misery that football culture gave me growing up, I realized that my reaction to write, to embrace art, to willfully leave Iowa at the age of thirteen for boarding school, was deeply connected with my utter distaste and dislike of organized sports, for all the feelings and ways it isolated and belittled, and at the center of this loathing was the sport of football. Proms. Homecoming. The Game.

I had to let go. It was coming back to bite me.

I thought of The Kid’s very first word: “ball.” He runs, moves, and takes to almost any sport with a basic level of competence. He’s athletic and the way he moves through the world can be very foreign to me. I’m physical, but it is something else when this is what defines someone. 

The Breaks

My capitulation meant that his dream had finally come true. He was now a football player.

On the fourth day he broke his finger. He lashed out and said, “You’re going to take me out.”

“No, I’m not.”

I rationalized it by noting his changes. He feels the belonging. He’s catching balls. Kicking goals. He’s happier. Angst and discontent are always underneath, but football takes up a lot of space. I could use the break. We both could.

“I missed a few. I missed,” he said ruefully. “It sucks.”

“It does not suck. You’re doing great. You’re having fun, right?”

“Yeah.”

“OK. Good.”

He memorizes plays. He texts his teammates. He’s in for the season. The Kid’s a football player and me, I’m the mom who worries, the one who hated football, and now the person who is trying to understand. These are the final years before The Kid goes out into the world. He has his own goals and dreams for the season, and for his own life. How long will football be a part of this? A season? A game? Four years? It’s hard to say. Adolescence is a time of constant dramatic change.

My football goals are more modest, but involve a lifetime of unraveling perceptions and feeling. I’m doing what I can to resist voicing my concerns and to have faith that it will all work out. I got my T-shirt. And now? I’m sitting in the stands, apprehensive, letting myself sink into it, happiness, that is, watching my son live his dream.

Image by Ben Hershey.