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Having someone to gopher for me on the biggest night of the year almost made up for the labor pains, the stretch marks, the night he didn't come home until 3 a.m. and the unholy music he plays too loudly.
Almost.
This is the second year Ben has tagged along to the Celebration for the final night with me and it's always fun. I see things through his eyes and get a new perspective and I get to tease him when the teenaged girls sitting below the press box flirt with him. What more could a mom want?
I started the evening out by letting him drive the white-knuckle twists and turns of the old Shelbyville-Tullahoma Road and despite my initial screaming terror, he did very well. He drove very carefully. Very, very, very carefully.
If you were one of the 37 cars, seven motorcycles and three joggers who passed a gold van Saturday evening as it rounded those curves at a blazing 20 miles per hour, yep, that was us.
I never thought I'd hear myself telling Ben "You can speed up now."
He learned how to poach seats in the boxes as I flitted from one empty box to another, trying to get good shots with an unfamiliar lens (sort of successful) and he learned how to apologize profusely and with humor when the owners of the poached seats finally showed up.
But it was in the press box he really came through for me. The WiFi was down and I didn't know it -- I just thought the company-supplied laptop wasn't wanting to connect. So I sent him hurtling back to the van to get my laptop, which I knew for a fact had worked up there -- albeit slowly -- only days before. By the time he came gasping back up the stairs, I'd discovered the truth and he was kind enough not to beat me about the head and shoulders with the computer.
He went roaming while the show went on, seeing friends he's made in Bedford County through band and theater, but he would text me every 10 minutes or so to see if I needed anything. I thought about sending him out to bring in some contraband soft drinks to the Pepsi dominated venue, but the last thing I needed to do was turn my son into a Coke smuggler.
When it was time to head down for the last class, he showed up, ready, and let me load him up like a pack mule with the camera and its extremely heavy borrowed lens, the laptop case, now containing two laptops, and the camera bag, which actually doubles as my purse and held those essentials for covering the Celebration -- aspirin, cough drops, a sudoku magazine and a book. I grabbed the program, which, by the end of the Celebration, seems to weigh as much as the stuff poor Ben was hauling, and we began the perilous plunge.
I swear, if I win the lottery, I'm paying to put an elevator in the press box. And I'll even spring for a bottle of Clorox for the restrooms ... and some of those incredible meals we used to have up there ...
I would even let myself be seen drinking Diet Pepsi on national television if they'd just put an elevator in ...
By the time it was all over, and my son was wisely following me closely and helping me through my crushing disappointment when not one -- not one -- of my 10 favorite horses won the World Grand Championship.
I can't tell you how many times during that long, long evening that I was grateful the kid was there. Covering the Celebration, especially on the final night, is exciting, but it's also exhausting and having that young person doing all the toting and traveling made it a little less so. (Exhausting, that is -- it was still pretty darned exciting until the end.)
On the way home, I drove. I wasn't concerned about him taking that twisty road at night. Well, okay, maybe I was ... but it was already 1:30 a.m. and I really wanted to get home before daybreak.
"What time do you have to be at work tomorrow ... today?" I said, silently thankful that the only place I had to go was a campsite.
"Six."
"At night? That's an odd time to go in," I said.
"No," he said in that slow, patient voice teenagers use when trying to explain smart phones to their parents. "I go in at 6 a.m. I have to get up by 5."
He knew this before he agreed to come with me to the Celebration, and he knew how late we were going to be, having been at last year's show.
"Why on earth did you come?" I asked. "You're only going to get about three hours of sleep."
He shrugged.
"I knew you needed me," he said.
And that, my friends, is why we really have kids. Not because they'll run and fetch. Not because they make us laugh (although that is a big bonus). But because it is a privilege and a joy to watch them grow and become caring human beings -- even when they're still teenagers.
