The Other Parents, the Child, and Me

I’m drinking it again. This stuff that the sign calls coffee. I’m standing on the sideline, holding the cup, because you have to hold on to something.

Other parents are standing around me. They’re talking about conditions. About the coach. About how the groups are divided. But they mean something else. They mean the list. Who’s at the top, who’s at the bottom. Who’s in, who’s out. There are more kids than spots. Everyone knows the math.

The kids know it too. They don’t see it in what’s being said. They see it in what happens after the run. In the car ride home. In the silence when it wasn’t enough. Or in the relief that feels like love but isn’t.

Next to me stands a father. His eyes are glued to his kid racing through the gates. He’s standing still, but his body isn’t still. His shoulders pull up with every gate. His breathing gets faster. His hand squeezes the cup. He rides every turn. Every hundredth of a second.

The kid doesn’t see him. The kid sees the next turn. Does what it’s supposed to do.

At the bottom, the kid looks up. Not at the scoreboard. At the father. Searching the face. Reading whether it was enough.

On good days the car ride is easy. There’s talking. Maybe ice cream, or a compliment that sounds casual but isn’t meant casually. The kid feels it: Today I’m right. Today I belong.

On other days the father says: Not bad. Or he says nothing. He analyzes the course. Explains where time was lost. He means well. He wants to help. But the kid hears something else. The kid hears: It wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.

I know this father. I know him because I see him every Saturday. And because I see him in the mirror.

The parents on the sideline talk about technique and equipment and training schedules. They organize carpools and training camps. They invest money they don’t mention and time they don’t count. They say it’s about the kid. About the experience. About the sport.

But something else is happening on the sideline.

On the sideline stand people who prove themselves through their children. Not because they’re bad people. But because they once stood on the sideline themselves, and someone looked up, and it wasn’t enough. That feeling of not being enough, it nests inside you. It sits in your chest like a stone that never gets warm. And the only way to silence the stone is to make sure your own kid doesn’t feel the same thing.

But that’s exactly what happens. It gets passed on. Not through words. Through looks. Through silence. Through the way the shoulders rise when the kid goes through the gates.

There’s only one winner. That’s the rule. And the parents on the sideline fight a quiet war for the illusion that it will be their kid.

The coffee is cold. I drink it anyway.

Who am I actually standing here for?