My Mom and Football

Tomorrow, I wish, would have been my mom's 83rd birthday. She was an awesome woman. My cousin Sandra described her perfectly to me recently. She said she didn't realize it until she was older and her children loved one of their aunts in a very special way. She told me she just felt the love radiating from my mother and that's what she noticed with her children and their aunt, they just felt her love and loved her in return. She didn't have to buy them anything or take them all over the place, or see them every day, she just loved them.

My mom was a big sports fan. She grew up with the Brooklyn Dodgers and became a Met fan. She taught my brothers how to keep score and there were always pieces of loose leaf paper all over the house with my mom's score sheets. She went to all their baseball games and football games and I was dragged along from as far back as I can remember until I was old enough to stay home. I am not a sports fan. I can enjoy a football game here and there, baseball bores me and when Michael Jordan was playing for the Chicago Bulls I couldn't get enough of basketball. I do enjoy watching my nephews (and nieces) play sports, it's different than it was watching my brothers. I'm sure you understand. Well, I hope you're as lucky as me to understand!!

Everything was sports growing up in my house, my mom, my dad and four brothers of course, and even one of my sisters is a crazy football fan. I remember coming home sometimes and there would be two TVs in the living room and they would be watching whatever sports were crossing seasons. It was crazy. Superbowl Sunday was the biggest holiday in our family. My mom loved those Sundays. She would make up songs and chant at our parties, get everybody going. Her favorite football team was the Jets and she loved Joe Namath. My cousins, aunts and uncles are also pretty much all sports fans, I'm surrounded by them. My friends too. Again, I can enjoy a game or two but that enjoyment didn't come until years after my mom passed away.

I've written in my blog before how I always wanted to be an actress which is something my mom didn't want for me. She didn't want me to be a part of that life and I can understand now why she was so concerned. She wanted me to get married and have a family. She had that and she couldn't have been a happier person. She was always trying to get me dates, that was her main concern. If she was alive today, I know she still would be trying to find me a husband, it would be her main goal.

One of my brothers is a fireman and our family had all attended a party after his wedding so he could invite a lot of his fellow firefighters. It was a great party and lots of fun but the wedding had started 8 in the morning and it was a long day. I'm sure I was at the second party pretty late, but not as late as my mom, which was usual of me and her. This was her chance to find me a husband in a sea of firemen without me watching her and stopping her from doing it. My mom and aunt took turns calling me and telling me to come back and meet this one, that one, I can only imagine what the two of them were saying.

My mom used to give me sports lines that she said I should use to strike up conversations. And trust me, I don't need any lines to strike up a conversation. I talk to everyone and have pretty much found that an easy thing to do my whole life. I remembering her telling me to say "that Doug Flutie, what a pass". I told her she was crazy. I didn't want to talk about sports anymore, my whole life I was drenched in sports, I had enough sports! And what would I say after asking about Doug's pass? She would just give me more lines. I wanted to be an actress, act! Don't get me wrong, my mom didn't want me to be a phony, she just wanted me to get married. It's funny I ended up dating a guy for many years who was a ridiculous sports fan. He was obsessed with sports and drove me crazy. I think if my mom had met him she would have stopped giving me sports lines to lure men in because that sports fan wasn't worthy of me. She wouldn't have stopped looking for a husband though!

The video clip attached is from the ending credits of the movie "Wildcats" starring Goldie Hawn. I remember the first time I heard this rap I thought of me and my mother. The way Goldie sounds just saying "football". It sounds off and kooky and I always think that's how I would sound using my mom's football lines. Enjoy it's cute!