#92 Karate

I just signed my oldest son up for karate lessons. He took lessons his first summer at camp (three years ago) and has been asking ever since. I have not been able to find a class that I could get him to, until now. Add this to the 2 nights a week of swim team and one night a week of piano and you get an extremely busy boy (and Mom). But how could I deny him the ONE activity he has ever asked me to do. He is a very congenial child, he likes almost everything he does (except soccer, he wasn’t a fan of all that running, but now says he’d like to try it again…) so he doesn’t want to stop any activities even if they weren’t his idea in the first place. We’re going to try this super packed fall schedule and see how it goes. Hopefully it will be manageable. Some of my guilt at being a working Mom comes from things like this, if I wasn’t working he would have been taking karate for years now. Oh well, at least he’ll get it this year. He’s only 6 after all.

Eric took karate for a while as a child. I can remember the white uniform but not the color of his belt….I’m sure it was whatever you start off with. I can remember the dojo that I think was built in somebody’s back yard or at least it looked that way to me as a child. I remember the cadences and some of the movements. I think he really liked it; I’m not sure why he didn’t stick with it.

Neither Eric nor I were particularly athletic children. We tried…sort of. Eric took a magnifying glass to burn the grass in the outfield during little league, and I took Saturday morning basketball until I decided my sleep was more important. In high school Eric played soccer because that’s what everyone did and I spent one disastrous season on the softball team where we didn’t win a game. Sports was how you fit in in our home-town high school and neither one of us quite did. I don’t want that for my kids.

At least at this age, both of my kids seem into sports. It helps that my husband, while also not very athletically inclined, loves both watching and playing sports. His enthusiasm rubs off. Both of my boys love to swim and the little one can’t wait until he’s old enough to join the older one in Tee-ball.

As an adult, Eric discovered an athletic side of him and enjoyed it immensely. I don’t think I have that side of me. Hopefully my boys will at least have enough of it to not feel lost or left out.