Spring baseball or work? A mother must choose.

Work or baseball? A mother must choose.

On Friday afternoons working mothers everywhere IM each other from their warm, decorated cubicles: “TGIF.” They actually look forward to their weekends at home with the kids.

Those mothers do not have children who play traveling baseball in Minnesota.

I dream about working. I fantasize about where to start with a new speech, fret about my back pain from sitting at my computer too long and even think about …filing. Yes, filing. Because when I file (and let’s be clear, I detest this task) it’s done in the warmth of my office. A baseball game in the spring is played outside. In Minnesota weather, that can mean a nice May day feels like it’s 20 below. Like Sunday’s game. A great deal of the film “The March of The Penguins” was shot in warmer weather.

Sundays, devoted mothers of 12-year-old boys who have watched game after game after game have cheered their son’s on-- prayed that their team would lose so they would be kicked out of the tournament and they could go home. Okay, maybe that was just me. Still…

One mother sat in a lawn chair with a stolen blanket (from a child she deemed warm enough) pulled tightly over her head. She supported the team, but didn’t watch the game. It was simply too cold. Plus, she had worn flip-flops and a cute outfit because yesterday she was dripping with sweat-- it was in the upper 80s.

Flip-Flops, winter boots…hmmm what to wear to spring baseball?

At the Key’s restaurant after the game, some of the mothers came up with the perfect excuse to get out of baseball on those frigid days of the month of (let’s just pick, June) when we don’t want to dress like Inuits with poor taste. We will look at our sons with our devoted, sad eyes, ala Puss n’ Boots from Shrek, and say—“Oh honey, I can’t make it. I have to work.”

And then we’ll gleefully start filing in our warm offices.