The Kind of Mom I Am, Or: Bruins Hockey

I grew up with my dad watching the Bruins on Channel 38, yelling, "SCORE!! Woooohoo!!" whenever they got a goal. It seemed to happen a lot just as I was drifting off to sleep, and his shout would pierce through walls and wake me up. It was always and constantly Bobby Orr--either him or Phil Esposito. My father took us to Red Sox games at Fenway--presumably it did not cost a week's paycheck back then--which overcame me with tedium at least by the seventh-inning stretch--but to a Bruins game only once, when my sister and I were in high school and had serious crushes on the rookie Mike Krushelnyski. (They played the Hartford Whalers and hammered them.)

My kids don't care about sports, especially sports on TV. I think if someone gave my daughter a catcher's mitt and put her in the outfield, she would spend her time there fiddling on her cellphone sending texts to the bullpen. Neither child can skate, or wants to. My son is starting to enjoy basketball, and plays it for fun at the Boys and Girls Club after school, but he doesn't exactly have a killer competitive edge about it.

They had no idea that their mom cared about hockey until I started to watch the playoffs this year. We don't get many TV stations at home here, so I could only watch the games televised on NBC. By the time the Bruins were up against the Lightening for the Eastern Conference title, I was into it enough to listen on the radio to the games I couldn't watch, and my kids thought I was nuts.

"Mom! Why are you suddenly OBSESSED with hockey?!!"

"Shhhhhh!! I'm listening. Go brush your teeth."

Sports on the radio is very cozy. It reminds me of the happy days of childhood, with adults relaxing and chatting and laughing, the game (baseball, of course) coming through a transistor radio parked on a picnic table.

My daughter would not join me in front of the TV, preferring music and texting and makeup application in her room. My son watched some while he played with his action figures on the couch. "Mommy, this is boring. Can we watch Modern Family?"

"Nope. For once I'm watching what I want to watch, and that's hockey."

And then the whine. "But Mommy, it's sooo boring! You are obsessed with hockey, and it's boring to me!", mimicking his sister.

"Put your toys down and watch it! Hockey isn't a game you can just sort of pay attention to, like baseball or football. It's fast, like basketball, you have to watch it every second! The whole game can change in a flash!"

Their father hates sports, and if they are ever to appreciate them, it is totally up to me. "Anyway," I told my son, "you're a guy. You have to know sports! How are you ever going to start conversations with other guys? The beginning of any conversation between guys is, "Dude, didja see The Game last night?" Don't you know that?"

My son laughed in protest, but did watch a little hockey, and almost got it.

The Bruins won the Eastern Conference and made it to the Finals against the Vancouver Canucks, who I quickly grew to hate. I would have hated them anyway, of course, but the vicious hit on Nathan Horton early in Game Three (which I missed, as I was herding children into pajamas and wasn't able to hear the radio from the next room) cemented it and made it an obligation that the Bruins MUST WIN THE STANLEY CUP. It was down to the memory of my father, too--dead ten years, huge hockey fan, Bobby Orr leading the pre-game rally at the Garden in Boston for Game Four. Playoff superstitions started to beckon at me...okay, I was not capable of growing a playoff beard, obviously, but since they seemed to win the games I could only hear on the radio, maybe I should just listen to the games on the radio?? (It wasn't just me, it was called the "NBC Curse".)



Sanity won out. I wanted to watch those games.

They won Game Six and I had watched it happen, so it was with a sense of okayness that I settled in for Game Seven. This was it; an away game, at Vancouver, which had all been won by Vancouver so far; the series tied 3-3; this was it.

"Don't either of you ask me for anything motherlike after the puck drops at 8! After that, you are ON YOUR OWN!!"

My daughter rolled her eyes and went to her room to do whatever it is she does in there. My son settled in on the couch with me. "You can watch the first period, but then it's bed," I told him.

"Okay, Mommy."

When the Bruins scored the first goal, there in the first period, I think everybody knew. You could feel the wind being sucked right out of Vancouver. It seemed to be the very Will of God. I was so happy it was ridiculous. I yelled "Woooohoo!!" loud enough to make my dad proud. Even my son was happy.

The rest of the game was mostly a lot of icing being heaped on the cake. Vancouver didn't score anything. I felt a little lonely in my jubilance, so I texted my friend John. My daughter wandered out of her room and lay on the loveseat to watch. John texted, "History is being made and your son is sleeping through it??" The mom in me protested, "but it's a school night!" John texted, "You will never be able to live it down if he misses this!"

"Hey, sweetie, wake up," I said, and shook him a little, then finally scooped him up and carried him into the livingroom. He never did really wake up, as much as I tried, even when the buzzer sounded and it was over--Bruins 4, Vancouver 0-- and me and the TV were cheering again. After the players had finished carrying the Cup around the ice and that annoying guy from Channel 7 was trying to power-on the interviews, I put him back in bed, and woke my sleeping daughter and sent her to bed, too.

The next morning my son said, "I missed it!"

I was ready. "No, you didn't! I tried to wake you up--you were a little awake--you were right in front of the TV!"

"But I don't remember!"

"It doesn't matter anyway, because you saw the winning goal, and that's all that matters."

"I did?"

"Yes! That first goal in the first period! Patrice Bergeron! Vancouver never scored, so the first goal was the winning goal! The other goals were only extra."

"Yeah...and my SISTER didn't see it!"

"That's right, she didn't, she was in her room."

His sister interjected, "But I saw the END, and he was sleeping!"

And so it went.

The day passed, and so did their interest, and when I said later on, "I think I want a t-shirt," they both commented on "how obsessed mom is". The season is over anyway.

I'm considering adding Versus onto my TV tier for the fall. Do you think the kids will watch with me?