As a mother of two boys who are 25 months apart, I feel for Jackie Harbaugh.
We have an ongoing discussion in our house—who gets the bigger piece of watermelon, who gets more noodles in his soup, and which one gets to climb into the car first.
I try to remain impartial, but it’s not easy.
And now John and Jim Harbaugh’s mother needs to root for both—or neither—of her sons when their teams face each other in the Super Bowl.
Every mother wants to see her sons succeed, but I can almost imagine her wondering why her two sons had to do so well during the same season.
She has my sympathy.
Tonight after Leo and I finished reading his books, we were lying in his bed together, talking.
“Want to hear something funny?” I asked Leo.
Then I told him a story about two brothers who both loved football.
I told him how they worked hard and one day they got to be coaches of football teams.
Their teams practiced hard and played a lot of games and won and won and won.
All of a sudden, they were going to the Super Bowl.
And the brothers were going to play against each other in the biggest football game of the year.
“Imagine that,” I said. “What if you and your little brother grew up and got to be the coaches of the Ravens and the Forty Niners. And what if you were going to play against each other in the Super Bowl. What would I do? Which team would I root for?”
Leo stopped and thought. And I was sure he would say, “For the Ravens!”
But I was wrong.
“Mama,” he said, “if that happens, you will have to root for the Orioles.”
Problem solved.
