Marching Band Mom

My daughter plays the tuba in her high school marching band. The tuba is almost as big as she is. I have never been prouder of anything in my life.

I go to every football game, not for the football, which I don't understand, but for the halftime show. I sit in the bleachers with the other band parents in our matching purple sweatshirts, and when the band marches onto the field, we scream like it's the Super Bowl.

This year's show was a medley of songs from the seventies. During "September," the tubas did a little spin move in unison, and the whole stadium cheered. My daughter told me later that she'd practiced that spin in our driveway about four hundred times. I believe her. I watched most of them.

After the game, she found me by the fence, sweaty, grinning, her hat crooked, and said, "Did you see the spin?" I saw the spin. I'll be seeing that spin for the rest of my life.