hockey

Today in the Chronicle there was an article about a hockey playing kid we know. My son, J., went to school with him and when J. was in second grade he played a lot with Louie who was in 5th. They were both athletic and outgoing and the age difference seemed to matter less at the tiny school they attended. J. looked up to Louie for his atheletic prowess as well as his warmth and friendliness. I felt a lot of mixed emotions reading this article which describes how Louie is flying back and forth to L.A. every weekend to play hockey. The same mixed emotions I feel about my son's hockey commitments, three practices a week, sometimes three games in a weekend and tournaments that require getting on a plane. He's in 6th grade and could have played at this level a few years ago but we held off as long as we could. Even this year we had many discussions about the stress and the overall toll on our family. Still if we had let him he would have gone to hockey camp all summer and played on the best team he could and gone to as many tournaments as he could. He totally and completely loves the game and has from his first time out on the ice at age 4. So I feel a twinge of guilt that we have held him back from his passion...but HOCKEY?? A sport that requires an incredible amount of electricity to produce the ice and incredible amounts of gasoline to travel to the games. I mean it's pretty much the most environmentally unfriendly sport for a Californian to play. So I feel a huge pile of, not exactly guilt but confusion. Such are the contradictions faced by a green mom in 2007. One small consolation, at least our Oakland ice rink has solar panels....