She A Baller

Over Sunday lunch she opened the conversation with a surprising declaration.

“The German Bundesliga is my favorite league name to say.”

This was not the most likely thing one might expect to hear from the mouth of a 14-year old girl, but in her case not totally inexplicable. She likes football, what America calls soccer, and even typically calls it football in conversation. Yet, the extents to which she delved into knowledge of the game were not realized until she voiced that comment about the Bundesliga.

I raised my eyebrows. “Bundesliga? Really?”

She told me it was because she really likes the sound of it, especially as compared to the names of other major national football leagues. Spain’s “La Liga” comes in second. Premier League (England) is just meh. Major League Soccer? Fuggedaboutit. And Ligue 1 from France is a non-starter (boooring.) I didn’t get a chance to ask her about Futebol Brasileiro, so her thoughts on Brazil’s top league will have to wait.

Her take on football in general did not have to wait. She enjoys playing it and watching it. With the Women’s World Cup taking place in the coming summer, interest is particularly high. She has her favorite players. She wears the kit. What is most fascinating to me about her curiosity, interest, and delight in the beautiful game (she has heard me say “jogo bonito” more than once) is that it is almost entirely self-generated. As much as I love the game I have never felt compelled to push football on her. She started playing at an early age and has maintained connection ever since, an occurrence I find gratifying and grounding.

Case in point was our last summer vacation. We had a week down by the ocean, in the midst of the 2018 World Cup. Sun, sand, and ocean? You bet. But she made a point of wanting to watch the two-a-day matches leading up to the knockout rounds. Me, well, I couldn’t argue with that. Quality time with my daughter, cheering or groaning depending on the run of play, and pouncing on the opportunity to bellow “GOOOOOOAL!” Beautiful game? You bet. But most importantly, a beautiful slice of life.

Swift on Her Feet, Light on My heart

Emerald pitch, sprinting,
She blooms the tulip poplars
wakes the sleepy heart

Colts

They run under the sun, chasing dreams of the beautiful game. An impossibly blue sky dusted with wisps of clouds sprays silver-white light over the antics on the field below. These girls carry with them the charming unawareness of their ability to slow down time. My daughter is among them. She tugs my old man heart hither and yon with each run she makes. It is she alone that may be able to stop time, not just slow it down.

There is no sitting for me while they play. I am too excited, too nervous. We are not watching Premier League, La Liga, or even Major League Soccer. We do not have to be. The kids are in the moment without thoughts of million dollar contracts or shoe endorsements. I for one am glad such grown-up concerns are nowhere near the playing field. The lack of polish is more than outweighed by their enthusiasm and concentration. Harried adults such as myself have much to learn from the scampering.

The first goal comes about from an astonishing web of cooperation. I bounce up and down in the bleachers. My daughter’s team has scored. They clap their hands and a few fists are pumped. This is the glory of soccer. Those shining moments when intention and skill come together producing a little magic, lighting up a world desperate for more such low-key miracles. By the end of the game, they will have sent four more shots into the back of the ol’ onion bag, surrendering only one.

This is what constitutes a great game, sometimes. But the goal count has little to do with racing of my heart and the contentment on my brow.

For a small slice of infinity I watched them run free, these spirits on a patch of green. Wildness tempered by team spirit was the order of the day. To witness such beauty is a pure tonic for the heart. The weary oldster that sometimes looks from behind my eyes has found some respite from the world outside, manifest in the quietly majestic youngsters enjoying the game.

Youngsters, I say. But the truth is, they are youngsters because Time is still kind to them. Adolescence is around the corner, young adulthood glimmering on the horizon. I will not speak to them, to my progeny, of such things. I will hug my daughter. She will know that I am proud of her.

What I cannot say, because the words are too big to get out of my mouth, is how grateful I am to my daughter and her friends for stopping time. How thankful this old man is for the gift of bearing witness to spirits running free, out on the range, beyond the reach of resigned endurance. For a few arc minutes of the sun, I was a colt too. It was glorious. It was real. It was life.

Futebol Star

Her seven-league boots
leaping yards, running the pitch,
she is the beautiful game

Her Number (Sunday Meditation #32)

11.

There it is, on my daughter's back, as big as day. Arctic white numerals against royal blue. The color is not the same as the kit I wore.

The pitch comes back in a rush. My legs root me to a ground far away from my teens while my mind lands back in high school. The number on my back is arctic white against deep maroon. Coach didn't put much stock in names on the jersey, the '11' stark and alone.

She wears my number now, a strange and wonderful weft through the warp on the loom of my life. The number turns back the clock, opening the door on a glimpse, however brief, of the boy I used to be looking up at the man I have become.

It seems only possible through her, on days like this one where we run ourselves breathless under a pewter sky. She chasing the ball, me chasing a better man I hope someday to catch.

She wears my number on her back. The honor is mine, though she knows it not. I watch her run the field, I am breathless, I am blessed to wear her number on my heart.

---

Field notes, October 2013. Gracing an emerald field, she plays the beautiful game.

Slamdunk In The Fields Of The Lord

Chewing slowly, savoring a fast-food meal (if one can be said to savor such a thing) and looking out the window, I watched a young kid dribbling a basketball as he gamboled down the street.  He was leaping like a colt and switching the ball back and forth, hand to hand, looking for all the world like someone who wanted to be Kobe or LeBron.  The energy and vigor of his movements could only be demonstrated by someone who does not know the limits of their own physicality.  Someone who is not yet old in mind, whose American heart believes the fuel will never run out.

This is not me.  But I am glad I got to see it.  I thought of myself when I was younger, when I wished for the ability to throw a tight spiral or smack a home run every third trip to the plate.  Those ignorant halcyon days when I believed that if I just kept running faster and kicking harder I too would bury the ball in the back of the ol' "onion bag."

Those days haven't come true, quite.  I'm older, supposedly wiser.  I don't burn white-hot from sunup to sundown anymore.  Kicking off the covers, putting feet on the floor every day is more like firing up the wood stove to bake some biscuits.  It can't be done too fast, it won't get you there in a hurry.  Things take time to catch.  The flames have their moments but what is needed is the slow burn and coals under the ash.

Any sporting heroics I indulge in anymore lie primarily in the fields of my mind., where I am soccer lightning and "running in his seven league boots" to quote from Eduardo Galeano*.  Maybe, maybe that sort of confidence and bravado shows up in these pages now and again.  But the real world leaves me worn out, and I have learned to conserve my energy, saving it for the right time and right place.

This is as it was meant to be, caught up as we are in the turning of the wheels.

I downed the last of the meal, jaw working slow like a cow in the grass.  The young superstar hustled up the street, driving the lane in the court of his mind and I'm sure he was thinking what an awesome dunk he was going to deliver after shaming the defenders with a master class move.  For a brief moment, superimposed over my vision, was a collage of images from the news.  Earthquakes, nuclear disasters, floods and tornadoes...thousand dead and wounded, places unlivable, homes flattened...they ghosted themselves over the kid and the ordinary street in the suburbs.  It was seeing life through old glass negatives of disaster.

I shook my head.  The kid knew nothing of this.  I closed my eyes to make the images go away.  I sent up a prayer, a wish, that that kid would have his slam dunk and the roar of the crowd, that maybe that could be his normal.

I wished and I prayed for all those who have lost so much, their homes and loved ones, that they would get their normal back.

---

*From "Soccer in Sun and Shadow", his essays on soccer published in 1998. If you want to understand the Beautiful Game, or even Life, read this book.

Baseball Been Berry Berry Good To Me

Tonight, I went to a baseball game for the first time in years.  It was in the company of my darling Wee Lass and her mother.  The featured match up was the Bowie Baysox (a double-A farm team for the Baltimore Orioles) versus the Akron Aeros. Her Royal Cuteness had received a free ticket for participation in a reading excellence program at her school.

I lost interest in baseball back during the '96 ALCS Playoffs, when the hated Yankees beat the O's (damn that kid and his interference!) and that sort of broke my (admittedly) lukewarm sports fan heart.  The Wee Lass really wanted to go to this game, and who was I to say no?  We snagged two more tickets and made an evening of it.  Good times were had by all.

It was minor league, and I was prepared to be underwhelmed, but something wonderful happened.  I found myself explaining to Wee Lass how the game worked, the meaning of 'bunt', and how to steal a base.  No one will ever confuse me with an expert on baseball, but it felt good to explain things to someone curious to learn.  I felt as if I actually knew something.  I relaxed into the Now.

We chatted, we goofed off, we laughed.  Things felt right...I can only describe the time with my daughter as contentment.   This is a rare state even in the best of times.  There were no corn fields from which the ghosts or spirits would amble, to teach me a life lesson.  In its own humble way, however, it was a field of dreams.

Joga Bonito! Futebol en Fuego (or an Evening Well Spent)

Milan vs. Chelsea. Just minutes away.

Our seats were primo.

There was noise. There was beer. There was footie.

Milan lost, 2-1, but really? It was an evening well spent. GOOOOOOAAAALLLLLLL!