Me, my lawn chair, and my book (my usual soccer game fair) approached the field and searched for a place to settle down for one and half hours of no moving, no email, no thinking, no nothing but for to sit and be. About 99 percent of the time Bob has other stuff going on so he can't go to Amanda's Sunday soccer games. But I don't mind because me and my personal time do just fine together.
"Mom, did you see me make that awesome move or were you reading your book?" asks my daughter, often, after any given game.
"You did great! I saw some of your moves." But she and I both know that I mostly read my book at any given game.
On this past Sunday, I looked for a place to settle and since I was the last parent to arrive the whole parent side of the field was filled up. I had to start the second row and it occurred to me that I had no idea which side was "my" side. I didn't know who the opponent parents were and who my people were. I looked and looked and seriously, I didn't recognize anyone. You may think that Des Moines is just another small town in Iowa, but it's big enough so that we don't know anyone. People in school, in church, in soccer, in baseball--they don't mix. They are all completely different sets of people. I'm sure it's not like this for our opposing, host team, Waukee, a true blue small town in Iowa, where everyone really does mix and match. I don't even see the one family we do know to a small degree, our car pool family.
So I picked a random spot close to the center line and settled into the peace of the afternoon and my book. Suddenly, interrupting my la la land with all the fervor of a Budweiser commercial, Mustache Dad emerged from the line of parents -- standing, pacing, and sweating about ten feet in front of me.
"YOU'RE CLUMPING! GET OUT OF YOUR CLUMP GIRLS! SEPARATE! LET'S GO WILDCATS!"
To be honest, I didn't know what our team name was, but I was pretty sure it wasn't Wildcats. I was sitting in the opposing parent section. And I was in a beer commercial with Mustache Dad and a selection of mom's with an usually high ratio of long red hair.
"HEY WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? NICE KICK! QUIT STANDING AROUND AND LOOKING AT THE BALL! BE A LEADER!"
I considered moving, but I was already cozied in and besides, where would I go? I didn't know which way was my people. All I could do was pull out a scrap paper from my purse (a crumpled envelope with my rumpled wages for 2010, which I was supposed to give to our tax man) and start scribbling down all the things that Mustache Dad was screaming into my ears. They say that no one is safe when there's a writer around.
"DON'T BACK OFF! NICE JOB! OUTSIDE! KICK THE BALL! GET IT OUT OF THERE! GET OUT OF YOUR CLUMP, GIRLS!"
The one percent of the time that Bob has joined me at soccer games, he is tempted to be like Mustache Dad, feeling that urge to coach from the parent section. Coaching is a vocation that comes from deep within, apparently. I just can't take it. I tell Bob he absolutely cannot yell instructions from the side. It makes me feel bad for the real coaches. Or maybe I'm just a prude. The ref did tell Mustache Dad to cool it, but there was some kind of explanation that I didn't catch wind of to the effect that Mustache Dad continued with his high decibel drill sergeant act for the entire game.
At half time two of the red headed mothers kindly befriended me. "Hi! Are you Amber's mom?!"
When they looked at my confused face, they knew what I was going to say before I said it. I knew that at that point, they didn't care who's mom I was. I thought it best just to say a polite, "Oh, no, I'm from the, um, other side."
"Oh," they said, with dropped faces. "Well, it's nice to see you anyway!"
"Your soccer field is really pretty," I said.
"It's rustic," they said. "Thanks."
"I love the cornfields," I said.
They could not have known that I was reading Shirley Jackson's memoir, Life Among the Savages which chronicles the maddening minutia of being a mother, wife, and citizen of a small town. The more I read it, the more I am convinced it forms the basis of her chilling short story, "The Lottery." (Which by now you surely believe I'm obsessed with.) And after being haunted by that tale since sixth grade, I now wonder if the protagonist--that poor woman who got stoned to death by her neighbors--was actually her, the author, Shirley Jackson. Because sometimes you feel like everything and everyone is coming after you, even when you're just trying to get your kids dressed and breakfast on the table and your daughter to school and your son to piano lessons and yourself to work and your deadlines met and your coffee cup to not leak all over the inside of your car. Maybe she wasn't making a sweeping social statement, but instead just conveying the experience of an extremely overwhelmed and harried mother. Maybe she's just telling the story of a woman who can't get any peace and quiet.
"WOW, WHAT AN AWESOME KICK! DID YOU SEE THAT KICK? GREAT KICK! NOW GIRLS, QUIT YOUR CLUMPING! THEY'RE NOT SEEING HOW THEY'RE CLUMPING."
It got to 87 degrees on Sunday. (Back to 30 degrees on Monday.) And so Amanda and I stopped for ice cream on the way home from Waukee. I forgot the score.
Thanks so much for coming over to the Charmer Blog and I would like to especially thank my friend Marty for making my day by asking for The Snake Charmer's Wife. And while I'm on tributes, I'll offer one up for my husband too, who listens to me drone on and on about this and that frustration. I'm starting to think that God is just plain and simple gratitude.
With love, T
