Being a booster mom kind of sucks.

Growing up as I did, I think you can understand how I've never held that group in very high esteem in the first place. So I find it ironic – or some kind of cosmic joke perhaps? – that I would end up raising a future quarterback. Little old ME. Single, widowed mother who has no particular interest in (or knowledge of) sports. Ha!

Once Finn reached his teens, I knew sports was something I was just gonna have to knuckle down and get used to. Those were the days I missed Christopher the most. But I tried my best. I sat through countless games on TV (well, most of them anyway – the Ladies Home Journal and my Fingerhut catalogs helped get me through most of those LONG hours).

When he was still pretty young, Finn and I always made a big to-do of game days for his favorite teams. Sometimes we'd fire up the grill and have our own tailgate party – Noah was usually around on those days too. At a minimum, we'd make popcorn or cookies decorated in the team colors (okay, I made the cookies and Finn helped decorate them).

Over time I learned that I really enjoyed basketball games. Maybe it reminded me of growing up at home, free-throwing in our driveway on Sundays with Dad and Betty. Daddy made the hoop for that net with his own two hands at the machine shop as a surprise for us after Betty spent weeks yammering on about a boy on the team at school she was crushing on. She hoped to impress him with her knowledge of the sport (and it must've worked because they dated for half a school year).

I didn't mind the baseball games that much either. The rules are pretty easy to follow, and I was known to play a little softball as a kid. Plus, what red-blooded woman in America didn't fall for Crash Davis in Bull Durham? (And hey, I would build it if Kevin Costner would show up in my field of dreams.)

But football? I just couldn't follow the game very well. Sure, I understood touchdowns and extra points, but that's about the extent of it. Finn tried to explain the game to me so many times but it just sort of went over my head. Too many rules, too much color commentary, and oh SO dangerous!

I remember the one game Finn and I watched where a player suffered a compound leg fracture - the guy was tackled, thrown into the air like a ragdoll, and snapped his shin bone right through the skin of his leg! Can you imagine!? Not to mention all the head and knee injuries... As a mother, I certainly never want to see my son put in harm's way, least of all for some silly game.

But Finn was HOOKED. Seeing his eyes light up watching those games, listening to him babble on and on about the strategy of it and talk about his favorite players like they were superheroes... I should've seen it as a future omen.

When we first settled in Lima and Finn started first grade at Lima Elementary, he made fast friends with one boy in particular. You can probably guess who – the ridiculous mohawk sort of gives him away. Finn played with Noah and his cousins and a few other neighborhood kids for most of his life. Finn's grandfathers and uncles (thank GOD for weekend trips to Christopher's brothers!) had taught him all about baseball and football before he got out of grade school, but it was Noah who really roped him into playing those sports.

Noah was already playing T-ball in elementary school and Finn always thought everything Noah did was the coolest. So it was not much of a surprise when whatever Noah did, Finn had to do too. This of course applied to ALL aspects of their youth for the longest time, oftentimes to my dismay (and I soon learned not to use that expression 'if he jumps off a bridge would you follow' since I was increasingly afraid of the answer).

And so it went. Noah joined baseball, so Finn had to join. Noah played summer field hockey so Finn had to play. Noah learned to play basketball, so did Finn. With Finn's height, that was the sport I expected him to gravitate toward, and while he did end up making the basketball team and played a few seasons, he didn't have a real passion for the sport.

Football, however, was one of the few things (surprisingly) that Finn initiated and Noah followed him into.

I'll never forget the year Finn first decided he wanted to try out for the football team at school. It was the most heated debate we'd ever had at a Hudson family gathering that Thanksgiving after Finn turned thirteen. He'd hit a major growth spurt and shot up like a reed to a whopping 5' 10" that year. It felt like I was at K-Mart buying him new clothes and shoes every few weeks!

Anyway, Finn's uncle Carl was the closest to Chris in both looks and age and reminded me so much of Chris sometimes... he was the biggest proponent of Finn trying out for the team. All I could picture was that compound fracture and how many trips to the emergency room we'd be making.

The battle waged on for more than an hour until Grandpap Hudson finally said "Stop Light, I know you're worried honey, but you need to let the boy grow up and become a man. Team sports build character and leadership skills. It'll give him a sense of structure, being part of a team, and working toward a common goal together. Besides, you know as well as I do, Chrissy would've been all for it."

And that settled it. How could I argue with that logic?

Of course the following spring, the boys both tried out and made the team. I remember when Norah called me in a panic over how she was going to afford to pay the fees. I didn't know what she was talking about at the time – boy was I in for a rude awakening! Do you realize it costs nearly a THOUSAND DOLLARS per player in various registration and equipment fees just to let your kid play football?! My god, that's a downpayment on a car! Half that much would buy me a new wardrobe or pay my water bill for a year!

But did I complain? Did I tell my son we couldn't afford it? No. I worked double shifts on weekends (and prayed he stayed out of trouble while unattended at home). Grandpap Hudson chipped in too. And my beautiful loving sweet son, he caught onto why I was working so many extra hours. He went out of his own accord and washed every car, mowed every lawn, raked every leaf, and shoveled every driveway on Whitman Avenue to earn extra cash to offset some of the expense. Pretty terrific kid, right?

Naturally, I wouldn't let him put ALL his hard-earned money into paying those fees. Aside from sports he also had a very (un)healthy video game obsession, so we split his earnings between football and video games, with a little set aside for a rainy day fund.

However, money wasn't the only consideration in Finn joining the football team. Seems like when HE joined the team, so did I. When he was still a second-string bench warmer that first year, I was able to skate by with minimal effort, but once he was named Quarterback (and I am SO eternally proud of him for that! The first incoming sophomore to ever be awarded such an important leadership role on the team in school history!), it was clear I was going to have to be more involved.

Said involvement included participating with the other parents to help organize fundraisers and events, sell merchandise, work the concession stand at home games... basically, it's like having another part-time job! And YES it's exhausting, and NO, I never particularly enjoyed being around all these other parents so much... well, not all of them anyway. Many of them WERE once in the same crowd of jocks and cheerleaders I'd avoided in my youth. They weren't my friends then and I certainly didn't expect them to be now in adulthood. Thank goodness Norah and I were in the same boat together; at least we had each other.

Also fortunately, there were enough parents involved that we were able to rotate the schedule so I don't have to contribute TOO much of my time for those booster duties... and as much as I'd rather just opt out altogether, I knew it was important to my son. He wanted to make me proud and having my support meant everything to him. And how could I not support him? He was good at it, and he enjoyed it. It made him so happy... Of course I was proud, and of course I would support him. As much as I didn't like it, I did it for him.

If his father was still with us, he'd have wanted me to help too. I just know Christopher would've been right there, coaching Finn in his spare time, going over plays, attending practices, pushing him to be the best he could be. I'm certain he was watching over him and cheering for his son. I try hard not to think too much about how he COULD still be here with us today, if only... but those are MY ghosts to deal with. I always knew one day I'd have to share everything about his father with Finn, but at the time I was happy letting him be happy and enjoying his time shining like the star I always knew he was meant to be.

A/N - I should mention, in the last chapter, the butter-whiskers story & haircutting story are REAL tales of things my own daughter pulled when she was age 3-4. Only it was our house with the butter, and thankfully the dog didn't barf (she did demonstrate the SLURP though just as earnestly as Finn did). Her self-haircut wasn't as extreme as Finn's. She did chop off the middle of her bangs (to the scalp!) and a lot of the one side of her shoulder length hair while she was at her nana's house. Yes I did get a call in the afternoon at work from my frantic mother – but no she didn't get a buzz cut. She just sported a rather asymmetric hairstyle for a while! Her 4th birthday pics are pretty interesting though.. :-D