Only the athletes are getting older
Nothing ages a coaches wife more than when the children her husband coaches go off to college, graduate, get married, have kids…I just returned from the nuptials of one of our favorite families from three coaching stops ago. While I watched from the second-to-last row, I kept wondering who was this young man in front of us, declaring his love for a woman I had never met? Was it that long ago that he cradled my 3-year-old daughter in the hallway of an old gym during a marathon basketball tournament in the Texas Panhandle? Were the boys walking down the aisle with bridesmaids by their sides really the same ones who came by on sleepy Sunday afternoons for the key to paradise (the gym) really now engineers? Who were they?
A sense of pride overtook me, but also a sense of longing. Just like the mother who was giving her son to another woman, I longed for the days when a key to the gym was as much of the future that they could fathom.
Mothers and fathers often long for the days of yesteryear. I long for them as well with my own children and for those I have watched, nurtured, cheered, coddled, and loved go on. There’s a certain kind of love you have for a group of teen-agers who work so hard for the man you love. I miss those kids, and I miss those towns and I miss those times in the stands. But there’s a new year ahead of us and I look forward to starting the process all over again and one day enjoying watching them walk down the aisle. God bless the children we coach and the parents who raise them.
