Friday night lights lament

"Dad says if the baby is a boy we can name him Tyler Rex," my 6 year-old son informed me. "That way, Larry Munson can say 'T-Rex with the ball' when he scores a touchdown for the Georgia Bulldogs!"

A few weeks later, I was lying on the exam table as a sonographer smeared blobs of goopy jelly on my pregnant belly.

The perfect little family of which I had always dreamed included one boy and one girl. After our first son was born, I purchased the book "How to Determine the Sex of Your Child," an illustrated guide to conceiving a boy or a girl. Clearly, I read it upside down because along came our second son. So, we tried again.

As I lay on the sonographer's table in my third and final pregnancy, visions of pink ballerina tutu's, tea parties and patent leather Mary Jane's danced in my head.

I'm the type of person who, when presented with the opportunity, unwraps Christmas presents then re-tapes them so nobody knows I've peeked. Of course I wanted to know the sex of my kids before they were born!

All of a sudden, there it was. The little boy-to-be inside me sprawled out spread eagle and his unmistakable appendage flashed on the screen in full glory.

I reached up, grabbed my husband by the necktie, yanked him down to my eye level and shrieked "YOU ARE NOT NAMING THIS BABY T-REX!!!"

The sonographer awkwardly excused herself from the room to allow me to grasp the reality that there would be no red velvet Christmas dresses, pink hair bows or white wedding gowns. A third boy. God has a bizarre sense of humor.

What I couldn't appreciate at the time was that the next two decades would be filled with stinky cleats, pads, helmets, and sweaty Under Armor and that football would play a big role in growing them from boys to men.

I never thought I would be the kind of mother that found immense joy watching her son obliterate another child. Football does that to you.

You find yourself maniacally screaming "HIT HIM!!! HIT EM HARD!" while the cheerleaders' moms' witness your savagery with mouths agape.

Honestly, it doesn't get any better than seeing your son fly through the air leveling the ball carrier like a puma pouncing on its prey.

Yes, it's fun to watch your kid score a touchdown, but it's equally sweet to watch him sack the quarterback for a loss of eight yards or throw a block enabling the running back to scamper for a first down.

As a mom, sometimes it's tough to watch them succeed and fail, score and fumble, cream and be creamed. They fight like gladiators in a public arena and you, the helicopter parent, are powerless to intervene. You are forbidden to rush on the field for an injury unless there is a decapitation.

In a harsh dose of reality, football season ended abruptly for all of my boys as their teams failed to advance in the playoffs. For my senior linebacker, the Friday Night Lights turned off forever as he wrapped up his football career.

Saying goodbye to football is the first of the many "lasts" we'll experience this year as he heads off to college. It's the first snip at the apron strings.

There are many things I have yet to teach him before he leaves home like how to roast a chicken, e-balance a checkbook and iron a shirt. I take comfort in knowing that many of life's lessons he has already learned on the gridiron: discipline, time management, no-pain-no-gain, respect, punctuality, responsibility and how to operate the washer and dryer.

Most importantly, he understands teamwork. If someone fails to do his job, the team cannot be successful.

As I sewed the patches onto his varsity letter jacket struggling to get the needle through the leather sleeve lamenting the beginning of the end, I realized that maybe God knew what he was doing when he gave me three boys to raise. After all, I still have six more years of football to go!

Here's to all the Boys of Fall and the joy they bring to those of us on the sidelines.

Amy Haywood Hughes is a Savannah writer.