My Soccer Life

April 13, 2016

Somewhere in New Jersey, thousands of parents are lining soccer fields, sitting in spectator chairs, standing, sometimes crossed legged on picnic blankets with young children beside them, or in cars watching from the parking lot. Somewhere in New Jersey they are cheering, talking, sometimes yelling, hopefully not yelling.

Somewhere in New Jersey past farm stands boarded up until the summer, past dairy farms, and horse farms, and freshly plowed fields, a tournament appears like the circus has come to town. One day a field and overnight there are tents, and food stands, lines of port a potties and soccer goals lining field after field. Tents selling soccer balls, and world cup jerseys, selling the dreams of children, sometimes the dream of parents,

Somewhere in New Jersey, a mother and her 2 daughters enter a Dunkin Donuts after dropping her son at the pre-game warm up. As they order the woman behind the counter says – you are all the same – same face same body – one two three. Her mother says laughing, we are like those Russian Babushka dolls. And then they sit – the girls eat their bribe, their mother enjoys her coffee as an elderly man approaches their table and gives her a donut saying please have this on me. Somehow that changes everything. What he didn’t know is as she was having her coffee she was thinking – I gave sweets up for Lent. What about that Sunday rule? God, do you care? The donut appears, her answer.

The mother and daughters decide to continue the fun and pay it forward. They buy a coffee and dozen donuts for the next person to enter. As they leave they hold the door for an older man, weathered face, tired smile, hands chapped and strong, hands that know labor, hands that will receive a small token.

Somewhere in New Jersey, games are played, and played, and finished. Teams leave with trophies, others with lessons. Fleets of minivans, and SUVs, all with soccer club stickers pour out of the parking lot and drive past horse farms and freshly plowed field to return to Pennsylvania and Maryland, their home in New Jersey or New York.

Somewhere in New Jersey the food tents and concession stands come down. The port a potties removed. The goals taken away and perhaps a man with a weather face, a tired smile enters a Dunkin Donut and buys a coffee for the next person in line.