Salt in the wound

My mom worked when I was growing up. And it was fine. I don’t remember her ever missing anything important or not having time for me and my two younger siblings. She was (and is) a great mom. As time passed she was able to work part time and that gave her the freedom to do more things with us as we grew up, especially with my younger brother and sister.

Sometime in my early teens I realized that my mom never had time to go on field trips with my classes. But since she worked less when my siblings were in school, she was able to go with them. The snotty teenager I was made sure she knew I knew that she did things with them that she couldn’t do with me.

But this post isn’t about parenting. It is about pointing out weaknesses.

Yesterday I got an email documenting pretty much every mistake I have made in the last three months of coaching. There was nothing shocking or eye opening. They were all things I knew. Some were things I had addressed, some were things I let slide. They aren’t the sort of mistakes that make me a terrible coach. Just the kind that I would do differently if given another chance. But reading it hurt. We know things about ourselves and our choices that we wish we could change and sometimes we suppress those things in hopes that they will be forgotten or ignored.

And I thought of my mom. I feel bad 10 years later that I gave her a hard time for not going on field trips because she knew she couldn’t and there was nothing she could do about it.

*****

By the way, the pregnancy hormones have finally hit me. I am emotional and people who I used to tolerate are going to be lucky if they are alive in the next 6 months.