I’ll be out of town the next few days.
I leave for DeLand on Thursday to spend Mother’s Day — which also happens to be my birthday this year — with Mom, Joan Dickson, and my sisters.
As best I can remember, this will be the first time all three sisters and I have been together on Mother’s Day since 1975, when my older sister was a senior in high school.
If my dad was my first coach, Mom was my first fan. She cheered for, and encouraged me. There were even a few times that she unintentionally embarrassed me.
Some of those stories have become part of our family’s lore. My favorite of those stories go back to the spring of 1966, when I was in my first year of church league baseball in Memphis, Tenn.
I am right-handed in everything I do, except swinging a bat. Unfortunately, Mom didn’t know I swing a bat from the left side of the plate. When I took my stance in the batter’s box that first game, Mom stood up and yelled, “You’re standing on the wrong side of the plate.”
My coach quickly informed her that I was in fact a left-handed batter and she sat down.
Judging from the way I hit, I might have been better off trying to hit from the right side of the plate.
My mom was a baseball and basketball mom long before anyone coined the term “soccer mom.”
Mom was much like many of the moms I’ve seen and had the good fortune of getting to know in this area. She did her share of concession stand duty and helped me sell whatever the fundraiser of the year might have been.
She bandaged my skinned knees and consoled my damaged emotions. I imagine if anyone said anything derogatory about my limited talents, my mom, the Baptist Sunday School teacher, would have been on them like a rabid dog.
I really think it takes 20 or 30 years for children to fully appreciate the price their moms pay so they can play ball or be in the chorus or band. So take heed, all of you moms in Crestview, Baker and Laurel Hill: your sons and daughters might not understand the sacrifice you are making now, but they will in the years to come.
I will celebrate Mother’s Day with several special moms in my life — Mom, my three sisters, who are all moms, and nieces who are moms, as well as my older sister’s mother-in-law.
And I can’t think of a better way to celebrate my birthday, either.
Happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms out there. Thanks for all you do.
Email News Bulletin Sports Editor Randy Dickson, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: DICKSON: Thanks to all the moms