Track Meet

Yesterday was my eight-year-old daughter's first track meet.

I learned about it purely by accident. While clearing out her backpack, I decided it was time to get rid of all the crumpled pieces of paper that line the bottom of her bag.

One of them was a form that allowed her to attend the meet.

“This is so exciting!” I said, remembering my own sprinting days fondly through the misty lens of nostalgia. You know, the one that filters out the long, anxious waits before your event, the fear of coming in last, or in my case, spending hours in the bathroom with a stomach full of nerves.

“I don't want to go,” my daughter said. “I really can't pass the baton.”

“You've been chosen to represent your school, honey,” I said. “This is a big honor.” Her event was the 4x100 relay which meant, I explained, that she was part of a team. She couldn't let her team down.

"But I need shorts!" she said.

It just so happened that I had bought her a pair of pink-and-turquoise running shorts a month earlier, in anticipation for summer, and promptly forgot about them. I presented the shorts to her now, as her special running shorts.

"I love them!" she said, and immediately put them on. "They're perfect!" There couldn't have been a better coincidence.

Next morning, I took her to school to catch the 7:45 a.m. team bus to Varsity Stadium. It was windy and chilly, and my big girl was suddenly the smallest one in the crowd. She was uncharacteristically quiet, and looked terribly nervous and shy.

Her event wasn't until lunch time. By the time I got there, the place was packed with about a thousand students and parents. Finding one child? Forget it.

I stood around, feeling the nerves again, hoping she was being looked after in this overwhelming crowd, and hoping I could position myself at the right spot on the track so I could watch her run by.

They lined up the Grade 2 teams, but I couldn't see my daughter. Then they were off. I could barely see the first two runners on the opposite side of the track, but by the time the baton was going to the third runner, I recognized the pink and turquoise shorts.

Her team was fast but, just like she said, she really couldn't pass the baton. Or receive it, for that matter. None of them could. When the number two runner approached to pass it to her, my daughter stopped running, turned around to face her teammate, took the baton, did a little skipping dance while turning around again, then bolted to catch up with the other runners.

"She still has those cheeks," I thought, as I saw her run past, her little face scrunched up against the sunlight. Then she and the fourth runner, in a comic jumble of arms, hands and fingers, somehow got the baton off again.

They didn't drop it.

I couldn't have been more proud of my girl. I called her off the track when the race was done, and she came over and let me give her a hug, before she walked off again.

"Honey," I called to her, but she was small and quick, and slipped easily through the crowd. I pushed through aggressively to keep up with her.

"Sweetie!"

“I need to find my school,” she said when I finally caught up.

Of course. They would need to account for her. And she would need her ribbon. I followed her to the north end of the track where we finally found one of her teachers. She gave my daughter a big hug, and presented her with a light blue ribbon. Eighth place. Dead last.

Another teacher, eyes bulging wide with stress, proceeded to chew me out. She scolded me for taking my daughter off the track and causing a panic when the officials couldn't find her.

"I didn't know I couldn't walk with her! There were officials who saw me take her!" I said. "I didn't even know about this meet until yesterday!"

The teacher narrowed her eyes at me. The panic of her own potential ineptitude was now no longer the issue, and she was assessing just what kind of parent she was dealing with.

"You need better communication with the parents!" I shouted. Her features suddenly softened. This was clearly a refrain she was familiar with and she flashed her "sympathetic nod" response. I realized she had sized me up as the one of the most reviled creatures in the school system: The Helicopter Mom.

At that point, we both heard my daughter's voice.

"See?" she said to her friends. She had been talking to her friends who had finished their events.

“Eighth!” she said, beaming, and proudly held up her ribbon.

The Dark Side of Neuroplasticity

There's a lot of hype these days about neuroplasticity. It's an amazing feat of the brain that allows it to change itself in response to new experiences. So much so that it can even learn to restructure neural pathways after brain damage incurred from a stroke or brain injury.

That's great for stroke victims. Sucks for parents with small children, though—especially those of us who stay at home and therefore spend way too much time with them.

Before kids I was happy, bright and focused. I could spend hours absorbed in my work, or a book. But since kids my neuroplastic brain has turned to silly putty.

Part of the problem with many moms is that we care too much. We engage.

We get involved in petty squabbles between siblings, hunt for a missing sock for much, much longer than we should. 

Worst of all, we keep trying to answer those baffling questions kids blindside us with. Questions that on the surface seem answerable, but, like a Chinese finger puzzle, become harder the more you try.

For example, my eldest daughter asked this over breakfast yesterday, as I was trying to figure out what to pack in her lunch box:

“Why are there days of the week?”

My answer: “Uhhh...because—well, if you divide the year up...” but it was too long a response time, and they lost interest. To be honest, so did I.

Then, from her four-year-old brother: “Why can't we have Fruit Loops for breakfast?” (with a look of genuine disappointment, like we had never had the discussion.)

“Fruit Loops aren't a healthy breakfast.”

“Why aren't Fruit Loops healthy?”

“Well, there's something called high-fructose corn syrup, and...” Blank stares.

I was in the middle of thinking, “I know I'm smarter than this,” when the middle child suddenly remembered something.

“Mom, Mom, MOM!!” she shouted. “Can we make a crazy sandwich and online it to iCarly?”

At the time this statement was impossible for me to translate. I had no idea what my daughter was talking about. Still, a less emotionally-invested person (i.e. any male relative) would simply say, “Yes!” and let the kids just try to follow through on it.

But it wasn't that simple for me. I was concerned about the mess that could possibly ensue from letting kids make any sandwich, let alone a crazy one. Then there would probably be some attempt to stuff the sandwich into the computer. It was over. I was engaged.

I tried to answer, and felt a thick, sleepy fog descend over me. I asked about the episode of iCarly, then went through a lengthy explanation about why you can't “online” a sandwich, expounded upon what being online really means and, finally, dealt with the resulting disappointment about the matter.

By the end I was sunk deep into a mental quagmire and barely able to remember the names of my own children, let alone what I should pack for my daughter's lunch.

This is not the case for dads.

They just seem to lack the part of the brain that gets all wound up about explaining things. They care less. They are less engaged. That whole “emotionally unavailable” thing that men have? Turns out it's not a handicap! It's a cunning self-defense mechanism against the darker side of neuroplasticity.

For as many moms know, though you might have been a successful criminal prosecutor, a star chemical engineer or, as in my case, an almost-award-winning financial journalist, you will wave goodbye to any intellect you had when you leave your job and spend large amounts of time with small children.

But it's OK, because by the time the last of that intellect permanently evaporates, you won't even remember that old you.