This is for AYSO

Tonight as I turn out all the lights in a quiet house that rarely goes quiet, I noticed the soccer trophy Noah received today after his last soccer game of his first soccer season. It reminds me of all the soccer trophies I won playing sports, which cluttered the shelves of my bedroom cabinets for years longer than was decent. It reminds me of early Saturday mornings at the Rose Bowl, the smell of wet grass, Mom's quick "pasta with nothing but butter, salt and pepper" lunches, Skittles from the Rose Bowl snack bar, Mom in her indecent referee short shorts and knee high socks and the post-game Baskin Robbins runs awarded for goals scored and assists made.

We were so excited for soccer to begin, Noah and I. We practiced in Vermont over the summer and that first game was a testament to our hard work. Noah scored 2 goals. I was sure he had inherited the Strong gene for the game and a lust for hitting the back of the net. It turns out, though, that an hour each weekend over the course of a 2 and a half month season is a long time to stay focused on a single activity for a 4-year old. Soccer lost its appeal almost as quickly as it held it for Noah. Toward the end of the season, Bryan and I would grudgingly throw the massive amounts of soccer equipment into the car and begrudgingly head for the fields. It is only because of my "we must see it through" mentality that we managed to finish out the season at all, but it was touch and go there for a while. Three weekends ago as Bryan was fighting to erect the banner I, in my enthusiasm to get involved, volunteered us to make, hammering stakes into the ground and telling me to shove it when I offered advice on where it might best be located and how it might not swing so awkwardly backwards if we were to punch wind holes in it, asked me for the dozenth time if this was perhaps the best use of our weekend time. I gave him my "we're sticking it out look" and he mumbled something about the wasted hours he'd never get back. I settled into my newly purchased, collapsable lawn chair in anticipation of the start of the game. There are only 5 players on each Under-5 boys team and they only play 3 a side, so 2 players always sit out. I was a little taken aback when Noah volunteered himself to sit it out for the first quarter. No biggy, I thought. He's just getting his head in the game, needs a little time to assess the other teams weaknesses. That's my boy. You relax. Gather your thoughts, Bud.

Perhaps I should have recognized the signs when they called for a water break at the quarter and Noah yawned, stretched and finally got up off the ground...to get some water. He looked a little less than enthused when the coach told him to hop to it and get on the field, but I knew he was just mentally prepping himself. As both teams are whistled to begin play, they start running around the ball in swarm fashion , kicking rather aimlessly at it in the hopes of making some kind of contact. With a little parental prodding on my part, "Go get 'em, Noah!", "Kick the ball", Noah seems to break from his momentary daydreaming and take a half-hearted swipe at the ball. But just as he started to find it entertaining, he lost his initial burst of energy and had, in fact, come to a complete stop at the opposing team's sideline, his attention drawn by the enthusiastic cries and displays of support put on by the opposing team's parents. I hit Bryan in the arm and tell him to be more supportive to which he responds "Noah, the goal's the other way." So, I take it on myself to light a fire under Noah and get him going again. Just as I call him over and work myself up to deliver a rather stirring, motivational speech about trying as hard as you can and staying at it, the spasmatic Mom on the opposing team's sideline, who is wearing all green in support of her son's Green Goblin soccer team, pulls out a 34" green cheering foam hand and starts rooting her team on to victory. That small thread of attention I had hold of on Noah was immediately re-directed to the over-zealous mother wielding props. That should be illegal. From that moment on, any activity taking place on the field where he stood was secondary to the activity happening on the sidelines. Bryan looked at me with a knowing smirk that said "She got you. Game. Set. Match." I looked back at him with an equally huffy expression and said "What are you looking at, Banner Bitch."

So, as we paraded the soccer gear out one last time today and watched Noah kick the dirt and pull the grass as his team swarmed the ball not two feet away, I was a little less persistent, maybe even a little less impassioned in my pleas to get Noah to give pursuit. It wasn't until I overheard him ask the coach in the middle of the game, though, just when he would receive his trophy that I fully understood the complexity of his priorities and more importantly the resigned acceptance of mine. So, while he's busy blazing his own childhood path, I have to sigh in remembrance of those long Saturdays at the Rose Bowl and remind myself that his path is his own to make and it may not include soccer. Sign-ups for baseball, though, are around the corner. I think it's Bryan's turn to hoist his childhood memories on the unsuspecting 4-year old.

A green foam hand, though? Really?

That sounded better in my head

Bryan used to jokingly ask after Noah was born if I was losing brain cells through my boobs. His amusement at his own joke lasted only long enough for him to realize that the smirk on my face was not in fact mutual approval of his creative wit and honest sense of humor, but was instead a look of "that comment just cost you access to these boobs for the rest of our newly shortened marriage."

I do not profess to having been a "50 cents in late library book fees", Good Will Hunting "smarty" prior to children, but I do know that my commendable B+/A- IQ has settled somewhere around a solid B- since my third child. You can imagine the depths of my despair when someone tells me to "bring my A game". My mental response, which at one time would have stayed in my head, but is now also my verbal gift to the world, is this: "That was impossible before children, ass-munch, to say nothing of my "A game" now." These comments are not appropriate in front of friends, to say nothing of complete strangers. You know that awkward silence that follows close-ended questions like "So, where are you from?" and "How many kids do you have?" That space of silence, that moment after those easy questions are answered and there is a feeling of "Now what?", that is my specialty. It is at this defining moment that I realize I have now made the effort to converse and that the conversation has reached the limits if its initial efforts. This is where my B- game steps up and brings his good friend Stupidity. While I'm thinking how not to let the thread of conversation come to an end, it is as though my mouth forgets to wait for good manners and propriety and says "Oh, Noah picks his nose like that, as though he's digging for brain matter, does little Joey always go to a corner and eat it afterwards, too?" And this is where I get the "Did that just come out of your mouth?" look. I know it well.

I used to think it was the lack of adult conversation that was responsible for the inappropriate comments I make at inappropriate times like the poor woman who, upon being introduced to me the other day, said "I may not remember your name. I didn't take my meds this morning and I often forget", to which I jokingly commented "Since children, I don't remember names either and there are no meds for that disease." Perhaps it is just a long history of social awkwardness or a genetic disorder that makes me predisposed to saying before thinking. I feel safer in my home most days, away from the lurking conversational disasters that await me outside my doorstep, safe from the sound of crickets that follow in the aftermath of my spoken words.

Parenthood is, I think, one of the most crippling jobs at times. It is certainly the most demanding, often requiring that you "bring your A game". Nobody tells you it will be this hard or that when it gets hard and all the kids are screaming at once, your over-exhausted, under nourished brain is quickly closing the doors to its' more complex departments in order to keep the reverberating noise contained so that the migraine that is already growing at the base of your skull can't grow to be quite so large. They don't tell you that once those doors close, you lose the keys. What is amazing about parenting, though, is how all of this brain collapse is conveniently counter-balanced by the fact that being a parent and bearing witness to the moment when your 2-year old finally says " I wuv you" back, makes it the most rewarding job as well. I wonder, though, how comforting all the "I wuv you"'s will be when I'm old and my children have claimed my old brain cells for themselves. I suddenly and completely understand mid-life crisis.

My optimistic mother tells me it's a permanent phase, this early dementia. If so, my kids are indebted to me for a lot more than just breast-milk and Bryan won't have to worry for too long about sleeping on the couch for his own inability to filter his comments. Chances are my limited brain capacity means I won't remember why I put him there in the first place.