Home Team

As it turns out, both of my kids appear to be destined for the varsity team. In something. I have spent the summer watching their athletic abilities sprout, and I am fascinated. They didn't get them from me. That's the thing with adoption. When you adopt your kids, you don't literally, physically pass on traits to them (duh). When I was a kid, my dad liked to pinpoint where everything about me came from. Any undesirable trait he declared accusingly "you get that from your mother." Conversely, he took personal genetic credit for anything about me that he was proud of. I count my kids fortunate that I can't play that game.

So why am I so fascinated and proud as I watch them this summer, marveling and commenting at every sprint, every game of catch or leap into the pool? The Butterly, my oldest, has such arm strength that she can swing from a bar, hooking her legs at the top, hanging upside down, re-positioning her arms and swinging back and forth for a half hour without a break. She effortlessly supports her own weight, swings and bends and flips, balancing with every move. She is built like a gymnast- short, sturdy, with strong arms and a fast run. I'm pretty sure she's the Ethiopian Mary Lou Retton. She is an artist though, lost in her own thoughts, and will swing from those bars or make up dances, doing handstands and cartwheels to the tune of whatever it is she hears in her head.
The Chief Conservation and Housework Advisor, who is four and proud of it, runs like a runner, elbows in, chest forward, knees up. The glee on her face when she learned to jump into a pool and bob to the surface on her own was beyond happiness, beyond fun, beyond pride. She played catch with some friends of ours, firmly catching and throwing a soccer ball with focus not normal for her age. She can dribble a basketball. She has the obsessiveness and determination of athletes, repeating the same motion again and again until she has mastered it, beaming when she is satisfied with the results.

I wasn't like that. Perhaps my body's instruction manual was lost in the mail. I was tall and thin. I remember hearing the word "gangly" in reference to my physique. I was afraid to hang upside down from the monkey bars because I might fall. I wasn't a fast runner and took a long time to learn to ride a bike. My basketball playing could best be described as "flailing about." This is how I know I had nothing to do with their abilities, and it's why I have no place taking such personal pride in what they can do. And yet I do. As if I had been their personal coach. As if I had personally injected each of them with the special abilities they possess. How cool is it that a child of mine has calluses on her hands from the monkey bars, can run for blocks, or according to her own reports, kick the soccer ball farther than anyone else?

One of the cool things about being a mom is that I get to take pride in my kids' accomplishments and talents, whether I really deserve to or not. When your kids are biologically yours, you never really know what traits came from you or what is just "theirs." I know I didn't literally, physically give my kids any of their abilities. But I still get to watch them come out, and I still get to watch that look on their faces when they're doing something they're really good at. And that's pretty damn cool.