I have great respect for my wife. I don't know how she can work part-time, parent full-time and take care of the house as well. She is so tuned in to the needs of our family, I often wonder if she has superhuman powers!
I work hard during the week and don't often get to my son's games. My wife's schedule allows her to be there, and she rarely misses one. When I get home, we sit around the kitchen table and talk about the game, how the team did, how my son did and what they could have done better as a team and individuals.
David is a very competitive athlete. He works really hard at whichever sport he is playing (soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring) and gets totally wrapped up in it. After David's soccer team suffered a big loss last year, he was sullen and cranky and shut himself in his room. This went on for a couple of days and my wife started wondering if he was missing out on the fun of the game because he was so competitive.
My wife is smart. She knows the way to my heart is through my stomach. One night shortly after this incident I came home and smelled apple pie, my absolute favorite, baking in the oven. I wolfed down my dinner and waited anxiously for dessert. But, my wife had something to discuss with me first.
She's good, my wife. She was able to make her point without making me feel bad. She said she totally understood why I couldn't get to David's games during the week. She knew I had to work and said she felt truly blessed that she could be there. But, she also said that he needed his dad to be involved with his sports. She was right.
And that's when she pulled the apple pie out of the oven. But, it wasn't an apple pie at all. She had made Frosted Flakes Apple-Flax Empanadas. I'm not kidding, I was drooling. She placed one of these babies on my plate and handed me a fork. I had never had an apple empanada before and this was absolutely delicious! She cooked up her own apples, dashed them with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, added her secret ingredient of Frosted Flakes and it was better than any apple pie I had ever tasted.
And then she told me she had signed me up to be a rec soccer coach. David was playing on an elite travel team and hadn't played at the rec level in a couple of years. But my wife thought it would be a good way for him to spend time with me, humble himself on the field and help others who didn't have the same skill set he did.
I opened my mouth to protest. I thought the travel and rec schedules would conflict. I thought it would be too much soccer. I didn't know how to coach. But, instead, I just took another bite of the apple empanada and nodded my head. I knew this was a battle I would never win.
My wife was right, as usual. Rec soccer is very laid back in our town and the kids were thrilled to have a "star" like David on the team. We are having so much fun. I ended up being really good with the kids and knew more than I thought I did. David loves that his dad is the coach and though he always plays hard, he now laughs a lot, which is something I hadn't seen him do on the soccer field in a long, long time.
But the biggest smile I got was after the last game of the season. Unfortunately my wife couldn't be there. She was out of town for the weekend, helping her favorite aunt after foot surgery. When David made a comment about how he wished his mom could be there, I came up with a great idea.
I called my wife who told me where to find the Frosted Flakes Apple-Flax Empanadas recipe. I told you, she's a gem, so she didn't for a minute question my ability to throw these empies together. And, I did it.
At the end of the game, I handed out the empanadas (which tasted almost as good at room temperature as they did right out of the oven!) and the boys chowed down.
"Wow," David said. "I can't believe Mom made these for us before she went away."
"She didn't," I said.
David's mouth dropped open and then he gave me a huge smile.
And, at that moment, I realized that my son understood for sure that there's more to life than scoring goals.
