I continue to be surprised as my life unfurls, unfolds, and unravels. Still surprised, with the Talking Heads blaring in the back of my psyche… How did I get here. Fighting for…this is what I want? Fighting with…this person? How the hell did I get here? Who am I anyway?
This week I am a soccer coach, and I am fighting over soccer goals. The big, official ones they use for full-length games. The ones I need for soccer practice for the older girls. The ones they won’t let me use because they can be stolen, apparently. One was stolen way back in the days of recreational soccer yore, and now they all are locked away with a special combination that only the higher ups in the league are privy to. Which I am not, apparently, as here I am begging for soccer goals.
“Seriously I promise on my life I will lock them up immediately after I use them. Will not tell another soul the secret combo.”
“Well, if I tell you, I have to give them to all the other coaches.”
Ech. The if I let you do it… line. There’s no remedy for that. Try again.
“How am I supposed to train my goalies without a goal?”
“Yeah, you’re right, I know. Let me figure this all out.”
Always go with the small reasons, Matt. Forget the global. People care about what they can see.
And I don’t blame our fearless, peerless, volunteer leader, either. An unpaid, full-time position surrounded by hapless morons such as myself? Oy! Run away! Don’t give me the codes, I’m not to be trusted with such responsibility.
So when I get them a month later, just before my first practice, I am happy. Happy about some stupid giant metal goals I get to roll out. Who the hell could steal one of these anyway? I know they’re worth thousands of dollars, but so is a chicken coop and who the hell is going to steal one of those from the middle of town with a moving truck? Oh, well, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming swimming swimming…
We practice, we sweat, we cheer for the love of soccer and the end of practice. And I return, dutifully to the goals ,to flip them around by myself and lock them with the cords and locks I put right at the base of the far goa….
They’re not here. Fuck me you’ve got to be kidding. Where would the damn locks go? Did they get kicked in a 12 year-old girl’s rage of kicking everything on the ground that wasn’t attached?
It’s getting dark and I need to use the crappy IPhone flashlight to search all around the area. No locks. The darkness oozes out from the short, overgrown woods that creep around the back of the fields. Where Lilah and her best friend Luke were playing as their sisters practiced.
“Lilah!! LILAH!!!”
She runs all the way across the field, not stopping for a ‘what’ as she heard the rare tone in my yell and knows I’m teetering on the edge already.
“Hey, did you guys play with the locks?” I ask as nicely as I could.
“Umm…well…Luke and I…”
“What? You what?” Her 2nd grade stories are long, drawn out, and devoid of much of the pertinent information. Darkness descends and I’ve got to find the goddamn locks.
“We were playing with them and we…”
“Dammit Lilah. WHY were you playing with the…OK, OK, where did you play with them?”
“Well, we took them in the woods, and then the ice plant, and then I said we should bring them back, and Brian took them and said he was going to give them to his Dad…”
AH!!! Playing with the locks!? Why!!?? And BRIAN. None of this was good information. Play. Woods. BRIAN. Oh, I’m screwed now. Brian the miscreant cartoon character had ruined my Monday, as well as my goalies’ future success. Brian’s round, smiling, trickster little face flashed as I rubbed my closed eyes. Missing both of his top front teeth and the notion that stealing was wrong.
“Lilah…why…did BRIAN…have the locks!?”
“I tried to tell him no, but he kept playing with them, and Luke and I kept telling him that…” She went on and on and I just kept searching with my feeble IPhone light.
“Where were you guys?”
She doesn’t know! Why do I even ask. She was hunting fairies and elves and climbing and living in the world of magic that the locks held captive until Brian came and stole them. Cute, slightly bad Brian with the mean streak and a penchant for buggery. Brian who had been in every one of Lilah’s classes, from pre-K on. Always smiling, in love with C., enamored of me whenever I volunteered, immediately plopping down right next to me wherever I was, more than happy to usurp Lilah’s place in the circle. So I could only hate him so much. But right now, I was hating him. Hating the fact that he was born with sticky fingers and a gap-toothed smile to cover it up. And hating the fact that I knew what the next 2 hours held.
Bumping around in the dark with the feeble flash, looking for locks that were already gone. In the woods, Brian’s pocket, his Dad’s garage, it made no difference. I would never find them.
We piled everything into the van in the dark. 30 balls, a cart full of crap, 2 girls, and my Dad who was fresh in town from Iowa with 2 freshly replaced knees. He sighed as he slowly fell into his seat next to me, his cane in his lap.
“So off we go to the hardware store. Sorry.”
He smiled and shrugged. Good times in California. Good times.
I spent 60 dollars on two state of the art locks. Ace had two coded locks, one really crappy and one the best the world had invented so far. I was already in deep with the league, so the jewel encrusted ones it was. The store was closing and the faces were long and hungry in the car. I dropped the girls off at home to eat, and headed back to the stupid soccer fields.
“I’ll go with you,” my Dad said with a sweet smile. He was going to protect me, from the dark, from coyotes, from the grown up lock thieves of the world. He did have a killer cane to fend them off, so I didn’t argue. I assumed it had a small sword you could pull out of the hilt.
When we got back the parking lot was empty and completely dark. Not a light to be seen in our cow town except for the lights of the middle school, way off in the distance, just enough to glint off the sprinklers that were going full force, 20 feet high over the girls’ field we had left. Dammit.
Dad followed behind me on the gravel track, protecting the rear from varmints and vagrants, and I sprinted through the sprinklers like I was in a video game, timing one off the other, barely making it to the back between the last two defending geysers. I fastened the glimmering new locks around the huge, crappy goals and sprinted back out of the outfield, just missing the return of the sprinklers that it was impossible to imagine existed on this fallow, dry field of ours in the day. Ran all the way to the track outside the field that glowed in the starlight and held my Dad, who was waiting and laughing.
We walked back to the car at his pace. It was suddenly very cold. Fall had arrived, with a clear sky full of the sharpest stars you could imagine. The Milky Way in all its glory stretched before us as we walked to the car with our heads up.
“Well at least we get this,” he said and put his arm around me.
“True. Beautiful.”
And it was beautiful. Even perfect. But I’m still gonna get that little lock thief. Thanks for the moment. I guess it was worth it. But you still owe me 60 bucks, you smiling little miscreant.