Ye Olde Soccer Mom

Last Saturday, at the end of my soccer practice, as we all changed out of our indoor shoes (yep, still playing indoors at the end of April) a young woman with a blond pony-tail mentioned that she would be celebrating her birthday the next day.

“Oh, how old?" asked another player, with short black hair.

"Twenty-eight," said the first.

It turned out that the short-haired one was the same age.

“Well, at least we’re not thirty yet,” said pony-tail, laughing. Then she glanced at me and said, “Oh, sorry.” 

There was no need for them to apologize. I've been around the pitch.

I am a soccer mom. In England this was called being a 'football mum', or equally, a 'mum'. Here in Canada the equivalent is a hockey mom, and I count my lucky stars I'm not one of them. I couldn't cope with the amount of kit, the shockingly early hours, and the ice. This country is cold enough without adding insult to hard, slippery injury.

But long before I was a soccer mom, I was a soccer player. I began my playing career as an undergraduate on a year-abroad scheme at the University of Sussex. All the foreign exchange students were encouraged to join clubs, which, along with bars, formed the backbone of UK undergraduate social life. I enrolled in Ceramics first, hankering to try the throwing wheel, but after the first couple of sessions I had failed to create an object I desired. Everyone else was ready for firing and all I had was a wet lump of clay. "I don't think you belong here," said the instructor, exasperated. "Try a different club." I wiped my greasy hands on a filthy towel and gave up artistic pretensions.

Instead I joined the Sussex University Ladies football side. In that long-ago era, very few ladies, girls, or women in England played the sport, so even with zero ability, my presence was warmly welcomed. I forgot all about the throwing wheel and threw myself into learning new skills, like dribbling and kicking. I gained experience quickly. We were regularly short of team members so that rather than warming the bench as might have been expected, I played nearly all of every game.  I missed the ball more often than I connected, but I could run, often full tilt into the opposition.  "You do a lot of damage to the other team, considering your lack of skill," my coach said to me admiringly, toward the end of the season. I fell in love with the game. The coach had recently defected to England from Hungary and in addition to being brilliant at football, it turned out he had a love of the arts and a wicked sense of humor. "I'm even funnier in Hungarian," he assured me. I fell in love with him too. 

Everywhere I've lived since, I have played the beautiful game. It could almost be a unifying thread of my patchwork life: after Brighton, Berkeley (where I joined the university women's B team); then Bandung. Also, non-alliteratively, I played in Philadelphia, where I suffered a knee injury that kept me off the pitch for a year, and in Durham. After several years in Durham, I developed another condition that interfered with my playing: repeated pregnancy.

Pregnancies became children. In 2004 our family of five moved south, to Brighton, where I transformed fully from player to mother of players. My role became that of standing on the sidelines, often in gusting rain, cheering wetly, or sheltering in the clubhouse, selling lukewarm tea to other parents. I washed the children's football kit, and bought them new boots when they outgrew the old ones. I rescued mis-kicked balls from neighbours' gardens and rooftops. I shivered at the local park while they fashioned a goal from discarded coats and played 'Wembley', or as they called it, 'Wemberley.'

After yet more years, we moved to Toronto and began to learn a new country. We all struggled to adjust but I was particularly unmoored, having no job and no school to ground me, no structure. An acquaintance, now a friend, another anthropologist, asked me to join her soccer team, Genesis. "Come play," she urged. I demurred; how could I, after all these years, get back on the pitch? "Join us for one practice," she said, so I did, just the once, I said. And I loved it. I joined the team. Despite my advancing years, I play once a week, sometimes a game, sometimes a practice. It can take a lot out of me and there's a limit to how much I’m willing to suffer these days. I’m often bruised and battered, and I wear out faster than I did, but-- thus far anyway-- I keep going back for more. 

So, to the young women at last week's practice who were still on the left side of thirty, I said, cheerfully, “No worries. That decade is long past." I shocked them by telling them my age.

"Whoa!" they chorused.

“And you’re out there playing with us?” asked pony-tail. 

“When I'm old, I want to be like you!” said the one with the pixie cut. "Oh. I mean..." And she trailed off.

I knew what she meant, and I knew it was a compliment, and for a few moments I basked in being a role model. Then the glow faded, I gathered up my water bottle and my shin-guards and my ankle brace, and headed home to sort out the kids’ team sign-ups for this season. And to apply ice to my bruises. Ice is good for that.