Thank you, mom

This coming winter will mark my tenth season of basketball. I will be a sophomore in college, and for the past ten years I have played organized ball nearly year-round. While I have learned countless skills and life lessons from the game, it has taken me ten years to understand the importance of something simple.

I’ll come back to that later.

After all, what I now understand is influenced greatly by someone who has greatly influenced me: my mom.

There has been no one more important in my basketball career than my mother. The time, money and emotional investment that she has put towards my career have allowed it to become what it is today. She was never a basketball fan until I started playing, and she’s put everything she’s had into making sure that I have what I need to keep doing what I love.

And from an early age, I recognized this. I knew that my mother was making these sacrifices and I respected them.

I remember being in seventh grade, doing conditioning workouts and thinking, “Man, this is tough.” Then I would look over at my mother, sitting in the bleachers. She was wearing her work clothes because she picked me up straight from work to take me to this workout. This workout was 30 minutes away. And this workout cost more than I knew.

“You can make this tiny sacrifice,” I would tell myself. “Run harder.”

While I acknowledged my mother’s sacrifices, however, it took me a while to truly understand their meaning.

I have three years of college basketball left. My mom still goes to every game that she can, but she will never take me to another practice. She will likely never take me to another tryout, overnight camp or workout. She has given me so much and my time with basketball is almost up.

Over the past couple years I have realized this, and it has made me understand the importance of those times when she drove me to practices and workouts. This understanding was increased this spring.

On March 21st, my mom visited to campus to have dinner with me. It was then that she told me the tough news; she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and would be having surgery the following month.

Her surgery in April was physically taxing, but also effective. Doctors concluded that she would not need chemotherapy or radiation treatments. She takes daily medication to help fight the cancer and will be back for a potentially conclusive surgery in August.

Doctors said that because she found the cancer early, they could contain it. My mother is healthier than ever right now, and words cannot describe how lucky I feel every day because of that.

While this spring has not changed the gratitude that I express towards my mother, it has changed the way that I understand the sacrifices that she has made.

Fortunately, my mother was never at a terminal stage, or even close to it, with her cancer. But just the thought of her having cancer (which is terminal to so many others) has made me think deeper about what it means to have her in my life.

The sacrifices that she has made for me, both in basketball and in life, are acts of complete selflessness. When she drove me to practice every day, she was doing more than just that. She was showing her commitment to me as her son. She knew what was important to me, and she put my interests before her own.

There are so many people who do not have someone like this in their life. They do not have someone who is this committed, this selfless, or this caring. And for that, I am truly grateful.

But in my thinking this spring, what stood out the most to me was that I should have been grateful for so much more. Sometimes I would get embarrassed when my mom would cheer loudly for me from the stands. And although I recognized her sacrifices from an early age, I would sometimes still prefer, in a childish way, to ride with my friends to games instead of with my mom.

While I cannot blame myself for these behaviors, as they are symptomatic of any child, I want to use these memories as an opportunity to relay a message to today’s children.

To all of those kids out there, falling in love with the game and blessed enough to have a mother who is willing to make the enumerable sacrifices involved with the fulfillment of that love: Let mom take you to the game.

Let her cheer for you as loudly as she pleases. Let her show how much she cares. And not only recognize this, but also try to understand and appreciate it.

It didn’t take me ten years to recognize the sacrifices that my mother made. But it did take me ten years to truly understand their magnitude.

Thank you, mom.