Soccer and Me

Here they call it Soccer.   In most of the world it is Football or Futbal.  Here it is a relatively minor sport.  In most of the world it is THE sport.  At 36 years old, I knew nothing of the sport except that the athletic fields around our home in Yorba Linda, CA, were filled every Saturday with boys and girls chasing a ball around and parents cheering like it was the Oympics.  Soccer was THE sport for kids and my son wanted to play.   He joined a team coached by the Mom of one of his friends (who played the game) and I agreed to be the assistant coach.  Thus began my my roughly 15 years association with youth soccer.   I would coach my son, Aaron’s team, up until high school and my daughter, Amy’s team until she retired from the game in 6th grade.   I served on the league board and as the President of the high school booster club.  As a coach, I was known to stress sportsmanship over winning, but my teams won a lot, too.  I think I probably took it too seriously and I know I stayed at the fair too long with my son, coaching after he was ready for me to step aside.  That didn’t end well and left me with a bad taste for the game.  A few years later, I took on a girls team without a child of mine on it for two years which rehabilitated my love of Futbol.

Dance Dads

If you’ve ever raised a girl, particularly one interested in dance, you’ve probably know about Dance Moms.  Even if your daughter didn’t dance, you probably knew a few because they have a certain reputation … among other things, for living vicariously through their daughters.    There is even a reality show (to the degree that any of those are reality … I think they are all staged) called Dance Moms.   But unless your daughter was involved in dance, you probably don’t know much about Dance Dads.  Dance Dads are more behind the scenes, building props and sets as needed, putting them up as needed at field shows and competitions where if we took too long the girls lost points.    And, just like the Dance Moms, sitting through hours of loud music and good-to-awful dance routines to see our daughters dance for 5 or 10 minutes.  And while we may never be able to tell pique turn from a plie, we gradually learn what they look like done right … and cheer right along with the Dance Moms when our daughters do them right.

Sentimental Old Fools

My Dad was not a sentimental man.   Don’t get me wrong … he was a loving husband and father and his love of family showed through in everything he did.   But he wasn’t given to nostalgia or romanticizing about his past.   I don’t remember his crying over memories, good or bad while I was growing up.  That changed as he rolled into his mid-seventies, the very territory I am exploring right now.  He would tear up at the memory of my Mom, who’d passed some years ago.  He’d choke up thinking about his children taking care of him as he aged or when someone said something nice about him.  At one point, my sister and I found a Veteran’s Aid program that allowed him to stay in his assisted living home.  At first he said he didn’t want a handout but when I told him he’d earned it through his military service in Italy during World War II, he cried.

TBT – Looking Like Dad

This is a Throwback Thursday repost of a post about my Dad I that first posted in April of 2011 with the title Family Resemblance.   I miss my Dad every time I read it.

For most of my life, I thought I looked like my mother but as I aged and people saw me with my Dad, they began to say we looked alike.   This picture, taken at my daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner, was the first time I ever really saw it.   But I had evidence of the family resemblance much earlier.

Franked

Last week, I was driving down the hill on a Target run, and as I was trying to adjust the GPS unit on the windshield, my wife, Muri, asked if I’d turn down the air conditioning. At 74, doing two things at once is my limit, so I said … in that certain tone of voice … Hold your horses. She gave knowing look and I said, Yes, you’ve been Franked. Frank is, of course, my Dad, and Hold your horses was his favorite response to being told to do something when he was otherwise occupied. For some reason, horses figured prominently in our family’s repertoire of sayings. If you were being a bit uppity to my Mom, she’d offer, Let me hold your high horse while you get off, and if she was tired, she’d say, The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be. But this post is about being Franked, so we’ll leave Mom’s cliches for another day.

A Father’s Day Story

When my Dad got out of the service, we moved to small apartment on the Boulevard in New Haven, Connecticut.   As I recall, it was a refurbished Army barracks.  My mom told me that when the wind blew, you could feel it through the walls.  I am fortunate to have some pictures of our years there but my memories of the Boulevard are sparse and dimly lighted.   I do remember them as good times.   There were tons of kids to play with, my parents had lots of friends (many of whom they kept touch with through most of their lives) and there was lots of space to play baseball or tag on the apartment grounds, even if it was mostly dirt.   What more could a kid ask for?

Old Softies

Twice a week, I find myself in rooms with many men who grew up with difficult, even abusive fathers, men who say things like, I know my father loved me, even if he couldn’t show it.   I am fortunate to have had a father who made it clear that he loved me, more often by his actions than his words.  Was he difficult?  Not by the standards of my friends in those rooms.  Still, he could be a strict disciplinarian with a quick hand (as was the nature of discipline back then) and he had a tendency to push me toward being better by pointing out the things I didn’t do well instead of my successes (also more common back then).  He was a man of few words.  My uncle once said to me, Your Dad doesn’t have much to say but when he does, he sure knows what he’s talking about.   Dad wasn’t given to emotional or philosophical discussions … that was the province of my Mom.  No one ever called my Dad a Softie and if they had, he’d likely have considered it insulting.

Enclave

I am most often a grateful person who can look to the good things that life has given me instead of focusing on the difficulties.  That is not an ability I was born with, in spite of the fact that I am the son of a woman who could do exactly that, even in her later years when the effects of diabetes were making her life harder and harder.   Fortunately, pragmatic optimism and an attitude of gratitude can be learned … my particular education came in the rooms of a 12-Step program but I am sure there are other places it can be found.  However, for the last few months … and in particular, the last few weeks … issues with my adult son have dragged me downward.   A clash of lifestyles made it necessary for us to (finally) push him out the door and this week, after several false starts, he moved out … not, of course, without some nasty arguments with us on the way.  To say life at home has been stressful is an understatement and it certainly doesn’t end with his moving.  He is still our son and still on our minds.

Departure Day

Yesterday was Departure Day for our eleven day visit with our daughter, son-in-law and three grandkids.  That is the most time we have ever spent under their roof, which to some may not seem like a big deal, but for my wife, Muri, and I it was.  We are a strong-willed bunch, from the the oldest (that would be moi) to the youngest (that would be sweet but strong-willed Savy girl).  Muri and I have always needed alone time (that would be quiet alone time) even from each other, a need that seems to get greater as we age.  That is hard to come by in a house with three beautiful, rambunctious and chatty children, not to mention their chatty mother.  And we all know how seniors love their routines, don’t we?  And how they get grouchy when their routines are interrupted or unavailable.  So, in spite of how anxious we were to see those grandkids, we approached the week with some trepidation.  Did my daughter and son-in-law felt the same way?  You’ll have to ask them.

Cheering

It is interesting to me how things I said to my children as a father with Younger Eyes comes back around to Older Eyes via his grandchildren.  Recently, my grandaughter, Savannah, joined a competitive cheerleading team, The Elite Academy Heat.  Originally, my daughter enrolled her in dance but Savy wanted to cheer.  This week, we are here in Utah visiting and we got to see Savy’s team compete.   As we were waiting, Savy asked her Mom, Why didn’t you do cheer, Mommy?   My daughter told her a fact I hardly remembered … Papa said I couldn’t.  Hmmm.  She then leaned over to me: Don’t you remember?  You said you thought girls should do something more than stand on the sidelines cheering for boys while they play sports.   Oh, yeah, I remember that guy … in fact, I’m still him.   But Savy loves cheer (as cheerleading is called these days), and her team isn’t cheering for anyone … they are competing against other teams.  I guess Older Eyes can live with that.   My daughter couldn’t resist adding one more bit of information.  You know the high school cheer team did this kind of comptetition in the off season.  I guess Younger Eyes was wrong.  Nothing new.