Jonah,
By the time you have read this, your age-out game will have come and gone. Our grandparents will have gone home, life will have gone back to normal, and we will watch as this season, your final season, fades into the rearview.
I can't even really say that this will be your final season because it won't be; you'll go off to college in Niagara, I will continue planning my wedding, and I am sure we will talk periodically. But I vividly remember the seasons spent in various rinks across the country, finding out that I was accepted into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in a hotel room in Arizona because you had a tournament there the week before Christmas, when early admission letters were starting to roll out, visiting various states across the U.S. on our way there and being yelled at by mom on our way back because I was tired and nauseous and she wasn't having my antics.
I remember the summers spent in Vermont watching you skate on the sheet of ice, I think you and I first touched, before figure skating and hockey became our lives. You and about 40 other goalies who all looked like you, because let's be honest, you all look the same in gear. (Sorry.) I remember spending weekends down in Cinci, roaming a graveyard with mom and dad while you did goalie camps with Mitch Korn. There are a million and one great memories from our life on the road while we supported you, and even before that.
I remember you crying in the Meijer parking lot, your very first year of house, because you were put on the Bruins and not the Blackhawks (You were like 10 or something like that), or the first year of pond that dad coached and mom managed, and none of us had even the slightest clue what we were doing half the time. Somewhere there is a video of your hockey team singing me happy birthday in the lobby of a hotel in Canada with a Costco unicorn cake in front of me, and birthday balloons from the Pattons (that I still have).
Regardless of all of the memories and the fights and the crying and whining (mostly on my end, sometimes on yours), I cannot help but have this immense sense of pride in the fact that through it all, I have been the one to watch you grow and evolve into a semi-decent goalie (like a solid 7/10). I know that here soon we won't always share the same last name on our jerseys or be on the ice together, or hell, even in the same state. But there is not a thing I would trade for in the end. I would take the 12-20 hour car rides, spendion nights in hotels in the middle of nowhere, explaining to my teachers why I would be out. Friday's over a holiday weekend because you had a tournament in pittsburg or indiana or detroit. I never want to give back the nights I spent in hotel lobbies or the pool or the rink, wearing your jerseys that smelled worse than anything god could've mustered up on his own.
So I hope you know how proud I am of you, of everything you have become and every outcome you have achieved. I am proud, so proud. Proud enough that I have shown up time and time again to a rink and a team that has left me more scorned than you will know with a camera that I love and a pride I will carry my whole life. Pride for you, and a life you are building that I could only dream of.
So I am proud of you, and I love you dearly,
Lily
