I've caught up with a few friends with kids lately, and the conversation inevitably turns to what activities our kids are participating in during [insert season]. As usual, my kid isn't doing shit.

We started out strong. We put her in Twinkle Toes ballet class starting at two, and she followed it through up until last December, when she hung up her leotard after class went to twice a week with an hour-long round-trip commute. She took gymnastics for a year, long enough to convince me to buy the expensive leotard she ended  up wearing maybe five times. It was easier when she was wee -- all I had to do was drive her to wherever and we'd sit through an hour of music class or tumbling or what have you. Now she's older and opinions, she's got them. 

She just doesn't care.

We've lined up another mom to watch her while I work for the majority of summer vacation. She'll be with two of her best friends doing whatever it is kids do when their moms are off during the summer. There will be gaps, and I tried to interest her in drama camp or robot camp or basketball camp, but she had zero interest in any of them, and at the end of the day, paying hundreds of dollars and driving halfway across the city when I'm supposed to be working for something she'll protest seems ridiculous.

I dangled swimming in front of her yesterday, but she flipped over in the pool and demonstrated that she already knows how to swim with non-race-worthy proficiency, point taken. 

And then I asked myself for the hundredth time why I care. 

It's probably because I shit you not every single other mother I know has her kids in at least one sport or lesson each, usually multiple leagues of multiple sports all happening at the same time. When I was growing up, I myself took dance lessons and drama lessons and drum lessons and any camp I could get my hands on. I was spending a week at sleepaway horse camp once a summer by the time I was her age.

My daughter doesn't care.

On the flip side, her complete and total lack of involvement in any extracurricular activities has left her available to go visit her friend Ka'Vyea in the hospital. She's played quite a bit of pick-up cul-de-sac kickball. Her dolls are all currently in the doll hospital for various broken bones she lovingly wrapped with gauze and signed like casts. We spent all day this past Sunday and Monday at the swimming pool, floating lazily on our backs and eating Starburst. She made paper lanterns for our Memorial Day cookout of her own volition.

I'm ambivalent. I spent my whole life ambitious, and sometimes I feel like I've lost my ambition when it comes to trying to get my daughter to participate in things. I worry I've been worn down by this working-mama gig to the point where I'm taking the unnecessarily easy way out, that I should force her to get more involved.

I absolutely insist that she behave and wear age-appropriate clothing and her seatbelt and eat her vegetables. But I've been letting her completely self-direct on most activities. Beloved and I agree we'll make her take band or strings for at least a year, because MATH and ART and CULTURE, but if after that year she wants to chuck it, I'd let her.

But then I find myself justifying it. It's not like she's sitting around cooking meth while she's home. And when I start talking to the other mothers I question whether I shouldn't be pushing her harder to do something that requires sign-ups and special shoes and schedules. People say over and over they think it's so great she's all Free-to-Be-You-and-Me, but then I look at their kids and see eight different uniforms and a piano practice book and a calendar full to popping and I think they would never ever let their kid opt out of all competition.

I hope I'm doing this right. The sad thing is, at ten, she's already past the point of no return for a lot of sports. Fifth grade is too old to start anything that could be played as league starting at age four in a suburb my size. 

Sometimes it feels like there's no which way but loose when it comes to modern parenting.

I'm not a big flag-waver. Sometimes I think it's because the flag of the United States of America has been waved from a bully pulpit so many times I've grown weary of it. Sometimes I think it's because it's so often pictured next to oh, say, a gun or a tea bag or someone shouting 'MERICA! while disagreeing with something political that I believe in, as though having an opposing opinion made me less 'MERICAN! than he or she were. 

Late last week, I skimmed an article in The Atlantic that nailed my ambivalence pretty well, and I flagged it (you know I had to go there) for further pondering:

It is one thing to believe that America's history and founding principles are exceptional, and another thing — deluded and profoundly unconservative — to believe that the U.S. is inoculated against acting badly, or is justified in doing things that Americans would condemn if anyone else did them. 

That's it, precisely. I love my country. I was born here, I grew up in its breadbasket and I was raised quite unironically. I believe in a voluntary military, in the three branches of our executive government and even in the checks and balances that have our government temporarily shut down. I believe in the need for freedom of speech even when that freedom gives a voice to someone I deem an idiot. But man. The last few presidential election cycles have been so ugly. The attack ads get worse every time. I didn't agree with the last few military maneuvers. I'm still mad about Guantanomo Bay. The older I get, the more I realize how incredibly ambivalent I am about my country. I love it, but I question its people all the time. I'm very grateful for the right to vote and freedom of speech and really all of my freedoms, and I think the framers of the Constitution were really brilliant in ways they probably didn't even realize.

There just haven't been very many times since we invaded Iraq that I felt like waving a flag. I felt like linking arms with my neighbors. I felt like praying for the health and safe return of our soldiers. I was excited when the guy I voted for got elected, but that's the guy I voted for, not the country itself. There is a difference between one man or one party or even one idea and an entire country, which is where the flag-waving confusion sets in for me. 

Still, deep inside my thirty-nine-year-old self is the six-year-old who believed that America was perfect. That little girl loved the state of Iowa and didn't realize it was considered a fly-over state by some. She earnestly waved her flag for her country and her pom poms for her town's high school and didn't realize how complex the world is. I miss her sometimes. Last Friday, I got to be her again for a few hours because of soccer.

For Beloved's 40th birthday, I got us tickets to the U.S. vs. Jamaica soccer game at Sporting Park in Kansas City, Kansas. I have nothing against Jamaica and neither did anyone there. There just weren't very many Jamaican fans in the stadium, so everyone in the crowd was kind of on the same team, just cheering and happy and ... earnestly and unironically flag-waving. 

And I loved every minute of it. It turns out the soccer was awesome (2-0, US) but the flag-waving was worth the wait. 

USA!

She was wearing a white skirt. The bus seemed to take forever. So I handed her a badminton racket and a birdie. She frowned at me.

"What do I do with this?"

"Throw it up in the air and hit it."

She threw it wildly to the right, snapping at it with her right hand.

"You're left-handed. Put the racket in your left hand."

"Why?"

Why indeed.

"Always use your strong side in sports."

We practiced her throwing the birdie in the air until she could hit it. I told her not to worry about aiming right now, just hit the birdie. At first she held the racket and swiped laterally without connecting the flat part to the birdie at all. She is my daughter -- unpossessing of sports common sense.

"Just bounce it on your racket and get used to how that feels."

She smiled as it started to pop up and down without falling off.

"You're a natural, honey."

"Yeah, I'm a natural!"

Now, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I've never played badminton competitively in my entire life. I'm not good at ping pong, I don't know how to play tennis or golf. I never played basketball and don't know the rules to volleyball. I lasted two seasons in softball Little League playing right field when nobody could hit past third base.

There is nobody more unqualified than me to teach a kid any sport at all, whatsoever.

And I taught my little girl to hit the birdie yesterday.

Damn, I did it!