Those Were The Days

When it was time for soccer practice, my son would crawl under his bed and scoot close against the wall so I couldn’t reach him. Sometimes I’d catch hold of a sock or a sleeve and pull him out on to the blue hooked rug in his room where he’d lay limp, a dead 6-year old in black soccer shorts and a red jersey that said Piranhas.

“I don’t wanna play soccer,” he murmured into rug’s fraying threads. A person off the street wouldn’t know what he was saying but I did.  “I hate soccer.”

“You’re on the team. The team’s depending on you.” He was six but still this gambit worked. When he finally got to the soccer field, he often sat down during games to pluck pieces of grass and look at them. Sometimes, he would turn his back to the opposing team so he was facing his own team’s goal. If the other team came charging, he’d stand up and look surprised that his defensive moves had failed. It made us crazy.  The other parents would laugh with us, make jokes about Joey mowing the field blade by blade but we could feel their athletic angst. Our son was messing up the Piranhas’ chances of being in the U-6 play-offs.

Once on the sidelines, because, you know, everyone in youth soccer gets a turn to play, he would clap and cheer for his team as if they were about to win the World Cup. He seemed really happy then, slapping his little teammates on the back when they came off the field and practically pouring Gatorade in their mouths like a trainer for the Packers. I could never figure it, could never figure him.

I thought of all this today while I sat on a bench looking at the soccer field where my kids used to play. I remember bringing the sliced oranges and the water in big jugs when I was the halftime mom or whatever they called me. I should miss this, I thought. I should miss when they were all little. It should make me sad thinking about those days now gone, the days when I stood on the sidelines and watched my son sitting cross-legged in the grass while his teammates ran around him chasing the ball. His team needed him, I told him, and so he went. And then he sat down. And that’s how so much of our life has been. Me wanting what I want and him being who he is.

It made me laugh sitting there on the bench. What a time it has been. What a precious long time.