Lina and I were having one of our classic mother-daughter conversations while I was driving her to CCD the other day. She told me I would be very excited by what she had to say.
“Why is that, honey?”
“You won’t believe what is in my homework folder.”
She said it in that first-gradey, sing-song voice… the way Donkey sings when he’s searching inside the windmill for Fiona in the first Shrek movie: “Princess… It’s very spooky in here and I ain’t playing no games.”
I tried to imagine what could possibly be in her homework folder that would make me “very excited.” Was it a stack of fifties? A winning lottery ticket? One-way airfare to Italy?
“Soccer sign-ups is in there.”
She was pleased as punch to torment me with this information. She knows I get a charge out of watching her play, but she’s only played on a team once. She always acts like she’s not interested, but you wouldn’t know it by the way she kicks my butt in the backyard. Often after we finish clearing the dinner dishes, I’ll take her and Gianni out to the backyard and we’ll scrimmage. The back wall of the house is my goal and the side of the shed is hers. (G-man is the ref, but I have yet to get him an official whistle.) I have to say, the kid is good, real good and if futbol skills are transferred down the bloodline, it must come from the Petti strand of her DNA chain, because the Donnelly’s don’t have the ability nor the interest to pursue an evasive ball . Stick us on a battlefield or a fishing boat or a large comfortable chair, and we are in our respective elements. Kevin is the exception, but we think maybe he’s from space.
I asked her why I should be so excited about that, seeing as she wasn’t going to let me sign her up anyway.
“Because you love it when I play soccer,” she said, very much impressed with herself.
“You’re right, sweetie,” I said. “I do love when you play soccer.” I was immediately stricken ill at the very idea, aghast at the image of myself now as a thirty-something soccer mom. I checked my pulse, double checked that I wasn’t driving a mini-van, and dabbed at the sweat beginning to bead between my boobs.
“I’m real good at it, right mom?” she asked.
“Yes, you are really good at it, honey. How ’bout we sign you up?” I glanced at her in the rear view mirror to evaluate her reaction.
“Nah,” she replied. “I don’t want to.”She held her hand out the window watching it float on invisible waves of air.
One thing is for sure, the kid has always known what she wants. Her most passionate desires typically revolve around Spongebob episodes, chocolate, climbable trees and web-manipulated plush toys, but sports don’t seem to rank supreme.
In my own sly way, I attempted to subtly weave in the value of team sports, even if it meant refusing to openly admit how much I hated them myself when I was her age.
“Pickles, didn’t you have fun when you played soccer with Erin last year?”
Erin is her best friend, so I figured manipulation surely must have it’s benefits.
“I guess it was fun.”
“What was your favorite part?” I asked her, hoping to reel in the vision for her.
She thought about this for a moment and then replied with a sudden jolt of enthusiasm, “I like the break part!”
I laughed out loud. “The break part?”
“Yeah. The break part,” she said. “You know, when we stop playing and eat snacks and drink juice?”
“Oh okay,” I said with a chuckle. “Did you also like the part when you ran around kicking the ball with your friends?”
She thought about this and replied, “Yeah. I like that part too, but I like the break part best because after all that running, my breath was outta sight.”
She’s the social butterfly and you, my friend, are far from a soccermom. I’ve seen you in action. There’s not a gram of soccermom in your body! Like a ….