Max, the Lightweight World Champion

Tonight Max will attend his first wrestling class. He is so excited! In my head, I am thinking, he is going to love this sport, and, with the years passing even faster in my head than they do in real life, I imagine him drinking protein shakes and putting on wetsuits and wearing garbage bags and telling me, Bye, Mom, I'm going out for a run! to make weight. I've been blessed with cousins and friends who were great wrestlers to teach me all about that part of the wrestling world. I imagine his wiry little body dressed in a singlet, scurrying around on the mat in the quest for another pin. I see his long dark curls sticking out of his headgear as he gets up and shakes it off, preparing for his next move. I hear myself screaming, Shoot! Shoot! Take him down!

Today, I will just try to worry about how to get him to the gym when I'd secretly rather be tucking him in for bedtime stories and prayers.

Max and I look forward to the community education book that arrives in our mailbox quarterly. I scour the newspaper in search of fun activities to try. Possibilities for this fall were so numerous with many great classes in the arts, math, science, and athletics. I presented him with lots of choices for sports activities: football, floor hockey, ice skating lessons, basketball, soccer, martial arts, and wrestling. Meanwhile, the worried mom in me thought about the potential downfalls of each activity as he would grow up: tackling, body checking, fasting, injuries on the mat.

Tops on his list were wrestling and martial arts, so I signed him up for a six-session wrestling clinic, as well as floor hockey, which was cancelled due to low enrollment, and basketball. This winter I also plan to take him to bowling, swimming lessons, or both. If Max were given his ultimate choice, he might actually choose to stay home all day and play with Legos and experiment with test tubes and chemicals and watch Mythbusters on television. He protested for weeks when I signed him up for baseball two summers ago, until he fell in love with the game after his first practice. I am excited that he is so excited to try something new.

So this evening I am taking camera and my lightweight 53-pounder to his first wrestling class. Shoot the moon, Max!