I RECENTLY attended my graduation ceremony. Instead of walking across a stage, though, I walked halfway across a soccer field. Instead of a diploma, I was handed a single red rose. And instead of my name being called out, it was my son’s that was announced: “No. 6, midfielder Paul Lombardi.”
He jogged over with the rose, leaned down to give me a hug and rejoined his team. I went back to the bleachers with the other moms. This ceremony is a school tradition. During halftime of the last home game of the regular season, the seniors on the high school varsity soccer team put on this brief ritual — a thank-you, an acknowledgment, for all those years, all that travel and all those hours on the sidelines. We were retiring as soccer moms.
There is no bigger cliché than “soccer mom.” The term has a lot of pejorative connotations. You know us — we are those women who have nothing to do but drive our kids to practices and games, who live vicariously through our children’s performance on the field, and who barrel down narrow roads in oversize vehicles while dispensing snacks and yammering on the cellphone.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/nyregion/generations-all-those-miles-all-those-games-722022.html