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.