When it's Time to Let Go (a Little)

There comes a time in the life of every parent, whether they like it or not, when they discover that you can only do so much for your child, can only push so hard and help so much, and then you have to cut them loose and hope and pray that they were listening at least part of the time. I’d have to assume that this particular watershed moment arrives far too quickly in the life any parent whose child is enrolled in any kind of athletic program that offers the opportunity to go to any sort of competition, i.e., afternoon of nauseating, nail biting, gastrointestinal catastrophe. For the parent. The kid’s having an effing blast.

I faced this moment a few days ago when my 9 year old daughter entered her very first ever karate tournament on a weekend when her instructor couldn’t come along and I toted along the child of another parent just to make things that much more interesting. Fortunately for me, a third child entered and brought along both of his parental units who turned out to be just as freaked out as us and seriously nice to boot. The fact that they got my rather unusual sense of humor was another plus since we ended up spending the entire day together, trying desperately not to clutch one another as a result of repeated nervous meltdowns. To add to my gradual downward emotional spiral, my video camera batteries were tragically as old as the video camera itself and held a charge for all of maybe 10 minutes, so I was constantly running back and forth to the gymnasium wall where I had plugged in the charger and swapping batteries.

Check in began at 9:00 a.m. and ran until 11:00 when the tournament was scheduled to start and don’t ask me what I was thinking to insist that we had to be there right at 9:00. I suppose I was thinking “hey get there early and have more practice time!”

I am stupid. What it was turned out to be “get there early and have two more hours during which you can completely lose your mind.” Actually, it DID work out because it DID give the kids another couple of hours to run through the katas they were going to perform. What I didn’t realize was that when the tournament started, they would call all 150+ kids out to the floor, never to return to their parents until their event had concluded. WHAT!!! They can’t DO that!!! I need to be with her!! She NEEDS ME! I need to continue to work this kata with her my God she’ll forget everything we’ve worked on for the past month if I can’t have her still working on it during the hour or so before she’s to compete what in the name of GOD are you people THINKING!!! Yes, I know she can rattle off over 16 katas but she'll forget THIS one if I'm not driving her crazy practicing it over and over right up to the very second she needs to perform. I watched her walk away and I thought “This is it. This is just IT. All that work. Over.”

Right about that time, one of the judges approached me to score in his judging ring and, figuring it would be a reasonable distraction, agreed to keep score even though I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I kept score with minimal hand palsy until I looked over to another judging ring and saw my youngin’ in the yer up next area, at which point, the head judge saw me go white and told me to go on over and watch her round. I managed to get out my chair with no assistance, snatched the video camera out of my husband’s hands and positioned myself (braced myself) in the best possible vantage point. Took in a huge gasp of air. Let out. And waited.

She’s a double stripe green belt and currently anticipating the test for her brown belt. She was in a group of two brown belts, one of which was one step below his black belt, and one other green belt. That made her group one of the few groups who had four or more kids in it. They gave trophies only to the top three. I think I might have stopped breathing for a while. It was then that it occurred to me that her ring was also the main ring, with the three highest ranking judges and positioned right smack dab in front of the bleachers and the entire crowd. DAMN. I started thinking about how her natural method of dealing with stress is to begin to leak from the eyes. She cried all the way through her last belt test and I could just see it happening again here. I watched her as she watched the other kids' katas and she calmly sat there. And then it happened. They called her name and I nearly barfed and peed myself at the same time. It was at this moment that my schooling on letting go began.

She rose to her feet with a loud “oo-ah”, bowed, faced forward and marched to the center of the ring where she whirled to face the panel of judges, brought herself to attention, bowed and rather than choke up, freeze and start to cry, my child bellowed out her name, her rank, her instructor, her style of karate and the kata she was going to perform. Her eyes never wavered, her chin never dipped and her expression never broke. She bowed, she took four giant steps backward, bowed, turned around to face away and gave the top of her uniform one hard yank and her belt an even harder yank, spun back around to again face the judges, bowed and when she stood up, her face had changed. Somewhere in that head of hers, the instruction from her teacher to get ugly, get mean, perform, sell it and make them think they can actually see the person you’re pretending to fight had taken root. She was glowering and she was on fire. From the first second she moved and screamed out her first kia, I knew all my fears were for nothing. She blazed through the kata, smooth, strong, powerful and sharp. Under pressure, in the face of three heavy hitting black belt judges and at least 200 people in the crowd, she nailed it like she’d never nailed it before and finished as powerfully as she’d begun. She bowed. She had a seat. I did NOT cry. I swear. Then she lined back up for the scoring. And my stomach rolled over at least five times.

She had faced two kids doing very complicated brown belt katas, one of which was done beautifully and the other done in a rather unenthusiastic manner and I know she was remembering her instructor telling them that flash isn’t everything. A marvelously, perfectly performed middle level kata will blow away a harder kata that isn’t performed as well provided the judging is fair. The other green belt was pretty good and I was terrified. I had never faced having to deal with my child’s disappointment and I was convinced I was going to have to see her face crumple now. I was so incredibly proud of her, so amazed at her control, a control I'd never seen before, that it tore me up to think that she could do so very very well and end up disappointed anyway. I didn't want that for her. Cause I'm a Mom.

The scoring came down. My heart stopped but at least the camera battery was holding out. She walked away with the second place trophy wearing the biggest smile you ever saw in your life.

I could breathe again.

In conclusion I’ll tell you that she didn’t enter sparring. She wasn’t too keen on fighting kids with whom she wasn’t familiar but on the way out that night, after having watched all the sparring rounds, she clutched her trophy to her, turned to me and said “I should have sparred.” I asked her why, and she grinned at me and said “Cause I could have kicked the crap out of most of those kids and gotten ANOTHER trophy.”

I guess I’ll be buying some headgear this week.