Soccer Mom

You learn things about yourself in a new culture that you wouldn't necessarily notice back in your old one.

The next generation: Matthew, Callum and Aidan

I am the only one who remembers to sign in at the weekly women's group I have been going to recently.  Today they laughed.  "Oh, Christine, how do you remember to do it?"

Remember?  How could you FORGET?  I had to admit that it didn't even occur to me to NOT sign in.  We Germans are a pretty bureaucratic bunch.  You punch in, you follow the rules.

It had never occurred to me that I had become so methodical.

Like the 10 step list I sent to our school principal, Tracy, distinctly outlining the rules for buying lunch bags with your meals at the Tuck Shop.  She condensed it into a nice two lines gently reminding people to include an extra 5 cents with the meal price. 

Aussies are pretty relaxed.  I love it but I'm still coming down off the German rules.

And here I thought I had avoided being sucked in by them all the time I was there!  It's insidous.  I can only hope the Aussie mentality creeps into my subconscious in the same way.

Andrew in goal.  Again.

Andrew began soccer season a few weeks ago too.  I tried telling the coach, a good friend of ours, that I really just wanted him to enjoy the game, learn a few positions outside of goal-keeper, and have a good time with new friends.  Our friend, whose daughter plays goalie for the 12 and unders and who has seen Andrew play, promptly stuck him in goal and asked the scout for the traveling team to take a look at him. 

"I need that kid for goal-keeper" the scout said to my friend, unaware that I was the mother.

Two keepers using their feet!

Did my heart swell with pride?  Of course it did.  On the other hand, I was grieving that he had never had a chance to become a high-scoring forward.  (Watching him play though, where he preferably played defense even in the field, and was actually unintentionally in the goalie's way, subconsciously playing goal even when he wasn't officially in the position, I had to admit that Andrew was a defense guy.)

And even worse, a goalie.

"Sorry about that" said my friend.  "It's alright," I replied.  "As long as Andrew likes playing goal and you think he belongs there.  HE doesn't get stressed playing goal.   I get stressed watching it."

Andrew warms up for goal.

"Don't worry" my friend reassured me "we work with them carefully in practice so that they know how not to get hurt in a game."

Get hurt in a game?  GET HURT IN A GAME?  I had to admit that the thought had never occured to me.  "I'm worried about him letting a ball THROUGH,"  I sheepishly admitted,  "not about him diving after it and getting kicked in the face."

Which I believe was the most competitive thing my friend had ever heard from a soccer mom!

Me?  ME?  I want to save the world, I want everyone to work together, I want us all to live together, peacefully, as members of one great, all-encompassing human-kind.

Now it occurs to me that maybe I just want us all to be equal so that I won't be last.  A 1:1 tie means nobody wins, but it also means that nobody loses!

"Whose that little guy playing keeper?"  I heard this Saturday.  "I don't know, but I heard they found a really excellent kid."  I introduced myself immediately so the parents wouldn't be embarrassed by any remarks made in my presence later.  "Yeah, that's my kid Andrew.  I keep telling everyone he's too short to play goal, but they insist he's alright."  The fact that he finally lost 3 teeth last week - making him look like a 6 year old - didn't help his intimidation factor.   My guess is they look at his dad, and count on a growth spurt in a few years to bring him up to keeper height.

But, after several dives and saves, including one where he raced the offensive player down the goal line and threw himself on the ball as the kid kicked him in the ribs, we all had to admit he belonged in goal.  I got to cheer for the two forwards - one of whom is a girl - and the entire team played well. 

The little guy in goal.  With team support this time around.  (Don't they all look HUGE?!)

It was way more fun than his team in Altdorf who didn't listen, didn't pass, didn't follow positions, and left it a game of Andrew as goalie versus dozens of shots by the opposing team.

He did get a LOT of practice, but it was painful to watch.

Here, the mums and dads pulled up chairs and cheered.  There they resented being there and pulled out a paper.  And Andrew told me later that the kid who (unintentionally) kicked him in the ribs actually helped him up and told him "good save" after apologizing for the kick.  (He WAS going for the ball and Andrew was on top of it!  GO Andrew!  We can fix your teeth later!)

It makes you wonder if that 2:1 Australia win over Germany last week was more than a fluke.  (It DID break my heart; I LOVE my boys!)  The attitude - team spirit, cooperation, working together - in Australia is so much healthier than the competitive, every-man-for-himself attitude fostered in Germany. 

And it makes me question myself yet again.  Do I want Andrew to play for Germany?  Or am I rooting for the Aussies to move up into the final three?  (Let's face it, the USA is just happy to get there at all!)

Still Deutschland and proud. Matthew.

I don't hate Germany.  I love her.  I am so disappointed in her because I do love her.  Do I want 'MY BOYS' to win?   Yeah, I do.  I want Germans to have the same love of life, the same joy of living, the same happiness to think of and help others, that Australians take for granted.  Let the Germans win at soccer, for crying out loud.  The Aussies have everything else.

Forgive me.  I am methodical, pedantic, competitive....and German.  I am so critical of Germany because I AM German, and because I know that if I can change, then so can anyone.  They CAN do better, because I can do better.

Aidan with Deutschland shirt, American baseball hat and South African ball.  In Australia.

All of which I never would have known if I didn't come to Australia!

Where's the LOYALTY?!

"Ballack? You're wearing a BALLACK T-shirt?"

Wanna catch a young man's interest nowadays try wearing a soccer jersey.

(I like to think the jovial mockery erases the fifteen year difference in our ages.)

"Yeah, Ballack." I answer. "Seems to have been forgotten pretty quickly, don't you think?"

"Nothing wrong with Lahm, though, is there?" he replies.

"No, nothing at all wrong with Lahm. I just think they dropped Ballack awfully abruptly."

(Four years ago the man was Germany's golden boy. It was more than mildly disconcerting that my obstetrician in Tuebingen looked just like him. Good times, those.)

"You don't think the German team is doing well without him?" he asks.

"That's not the point. They're doing fantastic."

"But you're not going to root for them without Ballack."

"Of course, I am. I just don't understand where he is."

(This bothers me, really. Not just the Germans, but the Europeans in general seem to forget individuals awfully quickly. In the USA, they'd at least let the poor guy sit on the team bench and watch the game. Where is the loyalty? Or is this whole emphasis on the individual really more of an American concept? But oops - I promised more dialogue and less moralizing. It's probably just a soccer thing anyway!)

"What do you mean, where he is?" my young friend asks me.

"Well, for example, they've given his number away already."

He hasn't heard that - or noticed. "They have? On who?"

"The new guy playing. The 20 year old. He got one of the goals against Australia."

"Oh. Mueller." He seems pretty impressed I'm paying attention to all this.

"So. You don't think that's awfully quick? To take the man's number away already. Last month, before his injury, he was still captain of the team."

"Nobody is irreplaceable." he replies.

And it doesn't seem to bother him.

"Anyway, I'm not going out to buy another jersey, when I've got this one already."

That, however, floors him.

Michael Ballack. My number 13.

HE may be invisible, a has-been with an injury at the age of 34, but I am like an elephant stopping traffic whenever I wear his name.

Youth Sports - Soccer

Spring is here and with it the outdoor soccer season. Soccer is to the rest of the world what baseball is to America. As American boys and girls get out their bats and gloves, the rest of us change from indoor sneakers to cleats, pick up the same soccer ball we've been playing with indoors all winter, and head outdoors. This a serious sport; you don't stop playing just because the weather gets cold and the ground freezes up. You move inside, for cramped standing room only tournaments inside local gymnasiums.

German mothers have been bundling up their children in hats and scarves and gloves since October, something about catching cold if any body surface is exposed to the elements after September 30. (Funny enough, the winters here in southern Germany are actually rather mild in comparison to where I grew up in Connecticut; rarely do we have a day below 0 C/32 F) But once the sun comes out, literally days after the hats and scarves are packed away, out comes the sun screen and the brimmed hats. Something about sunburns, although my German father can testify that a German sunburn has nothing to compare with a Caribbean sunburn! My family runs around barefaced and uncreamed, thrilled to finally see the sun again and to feel the warmth on our skin. The Germans think we are nuts - but I have never had a child burn in Germany. It's 50 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit, we're a continent away from the equator; how close can the sun actually be?

I wonder about a people who take cover from the cold AND from the sun.

So when it started hailing last Tuesday, in the middle of Andrew's second outdoor soccer practice of the season, I figured I'd better head out to pick him up. Better yet, I sent my husband. I figured Andrew would either show up at our door, driven home by a parent who had stayed to watch the practice, or we'd find him huddled in somebody's car, waiting for us to come and get him.

Damon called me laughing. They still had half an hour of practice left. Rain-drenched and mud-soaked, the kids were still running drills under a row of trees in order to provide some protection from the hail. After all, it was small hail. And it was soccer.

On Monday I'd had a phone call from a friend, celebrating the fact that our "A" team had won two out of three games last Saturday, soundly thrashing one team 8-0. Never mind that that team was our own "B" team composed of friends and neighobors; no hard feelings, but we'd still kicked their butts. She then proceeeded to give me play-by-play accounts of all three games; including the one we lost 3 -4; along with suggestions on improved tactics and feedback on each player's strengths and weaknesses. Mind you, these boys - and one girl - are SEVEN years old!

My daughter's third grade standardized tests - conducted in all three third grade classes - were postponed a week because the boys had a soccer game during the first scheduled week.

I personally don't enjoy the soccer games. Andrew plays goalie - and while he LOVES it - I can't stand the pressure. I certainly don't approve of the intense competition - the emphasisis on winning - at such a young age.

But I do recall fondly the summer of 2006, when I was full-term pregnant with the twins, and the World Soccer Cup took place here in Germany. Germany's little team - not expected to win - came close, working its way up against more experienced world teams. The boys - and their coach - became national heroes. The coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, came from our southern neck of the woods. And I still wear my Michael Ballack T-shirt to this day. Never mind that the one now coaches for Munich and the other plays for Chelsea, England. For a time, they belonged to all of us.

Screens were set up in squares, in restuarants, and even in the hospital. German flags flew from cars and homes, were worn on T-shirts and on tattoed faces. People smiled. Everyone was united. Germany lost to Italy - on July 4, the day the twins were born. But our third place finish was celebrated with more enthusiasm than France's 2nd place finish was celebrated in France. (They, too, succumbed to Italy.) First place would have been unbelievabely sweet, but it was about more than winning. It was about a community spirit that is rarely seen here in Germany. We saw ourselves as a team, and the rest of the world saw us - momentarily - as a naive, happy, fairy-tale ending.

We need more of those moments. And soccer - known as football everywhere except for in America - provides them.

I'd been thinking of making T-shirts for the boys. "REMINDER: My children will grow up to pay your retirement benefits." But now I've got a better one. "PATIENCE: One of these kids could grow up to win the World Soccer Cup for Germany."

It might be Andrew Connor, or Orazio Sortino, or maybe even Ghazi Al Aani. (The best player on Andrew's team IS of pure German descent - and also a girl.) More essays in the last line - and I promise, they will follow!