I don’t remember the hot games being this hot. I don’t remember the cold games being this cold. The wet ones are absolutely soggy. The windy ones are gale force. These aforementioned hours are excruciating, at times alternating from one climate crisis to another. Is this a scene from The Clan of the Cave Bear, my mother’s favorite book series? Is it a snippet from the Mad Max movies – maybe the one where Tina Turner sang on the soundtrack? Nope. It’s just a day on the fields from the standpoint of a grandma, a soccer grandma, that is. Hear me roar.
I am not complaining, mind you. This is the life I have craved for so many years, my grandchildren underfoot, in my own home, even. True, I did not get to ease into this soccer thing. It has been a baptism by fire within a black and white checkered sphere. And, in this Indian summer that possibly ends this weekend, that is saying so much. Forget a farmer’s tan. I sport a tan only someone forced to sit on the visitor’s side for 2 weeks in a row could comprehend.
It’s funny, too, how many friends I see at the soccer fields. We are a motley crew. Why, once we used to clamor down to lower Greenville for our regularly scheduled girls’ nights. The Blue Goose knew us by name. Now we shriek wildly at each other, one of us on field 7, the others on 8 & 10. “Hey, girl, hey,” we scream. It takes intense volume to communicate in these vicious winds. “How long are you here today?”
Until 4 pm? Oh, hun, I’m sorry. Me? Oh, little Johnny is sick today. SICK. HE IS SICK (winds are rough). Yeah, I get to leave at noon.” While our minds tell us we’d rather be on the patio with an adult beverage, our hearts know alcohol upsets our stomachs these days. Plus, we are the grandmothers dreams are made of, always there on the sidelines, ahem, under the lone shade tree, with extra Gatorade and a wet wipe, perpetually ready to go.
I cannot speak for all of you other grandmothers out there, poised for greatness as you prep for the next sport’s season. But, I am running on borrowed time. These children of my child will soon be moving on, to a foreign country, to boot. There likely won’t be other soccer seasons, band performances, or high school football games. My homemade noisemaker skills will not be needed, no pennies in empty milk jugs for me. I won’t be battling the elements to watch a group of 5-year-olds score goals in the opponent’s net, tears of laughter secretly spilling down my cheeks. There will be no other moments where I watch my granddaughter play forward, my heart willing her to connect to the ball so fiercely that I pull one of my mother’s old stunts, standing halfway up from my foldable chair as if that will help her somehow. In intense moments, my right foot twitches as if I have transformed into my granddaughter’s twin human voodoo doll. We all need help sometimes.
A few weeks ago, there was a family outing to the soccer fields. “C’mon, Didi, come with us. We’re going to kick the soccer ball around at the park. Chynna needs help on formations.” I acquiesced. Once we were there, the understanding of what a 56-yearold body can and cannot do was starkly evident. Granted, there is not a single athletic bone in my body. Not only am I zero percent competitive, but my ankles also have a tendency to hit each other when I do that thing called running. It’s a genetic trait, or perhaps the absence of a gene. My mother also had the ankle bumping disability. My father always told a tale about the time they were boating. While I’m sure this boat was a rehabilitated version of the Nina or the Pinta, as my father’s fineries tended to be genius things he put together from ingredients most men would choose to discard, in my child’s mind, it was a yacht. There was a hatch in the floor, with doors that led down to a small bunk room with a table. Perhaps it was a cot. I have not heard this story in 50 years. They were on the lake with their best Seagoville friends, the Swindles. There was a bump, or was it a stump? My mother stumbled, falling onto the door, which promptly opened, depositing the entirety of her 5’10” frame directly onto the table, or cot, depending on my memory. This is the moment where my always gentle worded and respectable father would let loose with a very ungentlemanly laugh, knee slap included. Through stomach clenched, breathless laughter, there were only a few words he could manage. “Dad gum whooping crane.” That’s the image that popped into his head when he saw his wife halfway into and halfway out of the boat’s inner sanctum. I, too, have that grace.
As I stood on the soccer field that sweltering afternoon, I watched my daughter- in-law show off her old high school soccer skills. At one point, she was in the air, her body holding a perfect C shape, her foot connecting perfectly with the ball. As for me, I provided comic relief, usually missing the ball altogether. Object to body coordination is also not in my wheelhouse. “This is the moment,” I said to myself. “Memorize this. Imprint it on your heart. Make it so that neither old age nor sickness can erase it.” Soccer grandmas have this special power – plus wet wipes. Never underestimate a quality wet wipe.
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