I wonder if the photographers from Planet Earth had to be this patient

We are smack dab in the middle of Helena’s softball season with two games per week. This means that twice a week:

• I ask Mother Nature if she is senile because she keeps mixing up the dead of winter in the Arctic Circle with springtime in upstate New York
• I run around the house playing hide and seek with Helena’s softball shirt
• I berate myself for not hot gluing a GPS to it like I threatened to last week
• I either find it under her bed or on her curtain rod or stuffed in her toy box and immediately fling it into the washing machine, or
• I ultimately do not find it and wind up rummaging in her jammie drawer for her shirt from last year which, THANK YOU GOD, is the same color, or
• I do not find either shirt and grab one of her old white undershirts and scribble all over with a pink fluorescent highlighter

Helena has come miles from where she started out a few weeks ago and her hitting and fielding has improved so much that I barely recognize the little stinker who, a year ago, couldn’t hit a softball unless it was perched atop a tee and she took fifteen “practice” swings beforehand. I am seriously so proud of this little girl.

I took my camera with me to their game last night with the hope that I would capture Helena in one of those defining, it’s-all-worth-it moments that makes me not regret for a second that I inhaled dinner in less than 45 seconds and arrived at the field with Helena in tow a mere two minutes before the start of the game, only to discover that we forgot her water bottle on the kitchen counter and by “we” I mean me. Hence, the big, gaping void in the middle of the array of water bottles neatly lined up in the dugout, which big, gaping, void might just as well have a billboard over it yelling HELENA’S MOM DOESN’T LOVE HER VERY MUCH, DOES SHE?

Regardless, I was determined to capture a bit of the magic that is Helena on the field.

This wasn’t it. I think this is … a sneeze, perhaps? A nose itchie? An inadvertent bug swallow?

This wasn’t it either.

Nope.

I don’t think this is magic, unless Helena is trying to conjure up the spirit of a softball that died last week and was buried in a shallow grave under the pitcher’s mound.

What in the world is she doing here?

And more importantly, is the coach of the other team as cute as I think he is?

Nevermind. Hello? I’m happily married! Remember?

I’m talking to myself.

Note to self: Stop it.

I turned to Nate and asked him just what in heck did his daughter think she was doing out there?

He responded that perhaps she was digging in search of a water bottle.

Hahahahahahaha.

I ignored him for the remainder of the game.

Oooh, ooh, this looked promising. She’s attentive, alert, anticipating anything that might come her way. A fly ball? A grounder? A single? A double? All of the above?

An ant?

Helena, why are you constantly looking down?

What do you find so fascinating down there? Dirt? Your cleats? Your dirty cleats?

Is there candy somewhere about down there?

Did you stuff some Junior Mints in the laces when I wasn’t looking?

Some Nerds, maybe? Milky Ways? Snickers?

I CALL DIBS ON THE MILKY WAYS!

Just in case.

Or maybe you borrowed Zoe’s feet again without asking her and forgot to give them back?

Do you have poison ivy? Are you channeling a ballerina? Practicing yoga? Pilates? The Boot Scootin’ Boogie?

Do you have to pee?

What? What is it? WHAT?

For the love of God, Helena, look up!

Sigh.

Over here, Helena. We’re over here.

Just in case you’re wondering where we all ran off to while you were otherwise occupied.

But what is this? WHOO HOO! There it is! The moment!

GO, PEANUT, GO!

And yet another moment! RUN, RUN, PEANUT, RUN!

Yes, I know it’s blurry. I was too busy jumping up and down and yelling to concentrate on holding my camera steady.

It’s hard to hold anything steady when you’re screaming your lungs out at your eight year old who is quietly dying a thousand deaths because her mother is hollering and hopping around like a bunny on crack and generally making a spectacle of herself.

I am simply awesome at making a spectacle of myself. Seriously. I should sell tickets.

And hey, isn’t that the inalienable right of moms everywhere? To make spectacles of themselves? I’m pretty sure I read something about it in the Big Book of Mom somewhere.

I won’t even tell you that I did the wave too, but no one joined in with me so it wasn’t much of a wave. It was more like a dribble. I don’t blame Helena for feeling a little weirded out by that little bit of awkwardness.

The third moment! Taken just as Helena was throwing home for the third out.

Oh my dear God. I have cut the top off my child’s head. Granted, I was too busy being a spectacle to pay attention to my camera but the fact remains: I have taken a picture in which I inadvertently sliced off the upper portion of my offspring’s skull and thusly, I have become my mother.

Lord help me, what will become of me now? Other than osteoporosis and telling my kids the same story ten times over and calling my kids on their land line and asking them when they pick up “Oh, are you home?”

Wait! Hang on a sec … OK. I’m still 5’2″. I haven’t lost an average of two inches of height a year. Therefore, I can’t yet hide under the coffee table without bending my knees.

I’m not totally my mother! WHEW.

You know what just struck me? Other than the sock that Helena just flung off her sweaty feet on her way to the shower? That thirty years from now, Helena might have spent the night bursting with pride at her own eight year old daughter’s softball game, yelling and cheering and jumping up and down, doing the dribble by herself and inadvertently cutting off her daughter’s head as she was sliding home. And later, she’ll remind her daughter as her daughter drops trow in the office on her way to take a shower that the laundry fairy went on strike and everyone is responsible for carrying their own dirty laundry to the hamper and yes, that means her and no, there will be no arguments about it, and fine, when she grows up and owns her own house and pays her own bills, she can make her own rules but until then, as long as she lives under this roof, she will abide by her rules, and yes, she does suck the fun out of everything because that’s what all good mommies do and yes, the world is totally unfair but that’s the way it is, BECAUSE SHE SAID SO.

And just like that, Helena will have turned into her mother.

I just hope she remembers to hot glue a GPS into her daughter’s softball shirt.

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