I spent much of today fretting about Neko going to soccer. I should probably backtrack.
The local college has this great little soccer program. It only lasts a month, so it’s not a big commitment, and it’s taught by the varsity women’s team, which means good role models of strong women running around being athletes. All good stuff.
We signed up last year, and Neko made it through one practice and one game before she flat-out refused to go anymore. I was ambivalent about signing her up again this year until one day we passed by the soccer fields and she shouted,”I want to play soccer this year. Yes! Yes! Yes!”
And so I signed her up. Except I think about five seconds after the check cleared, she got cold feet. I’ve been kind of hoping she would warm to the idea, so I keep casually mentioning it. And she keeps refusing.
This is extra bad because I talked my friend Nancy H. into signing up her daughter so that Neko would know someone on her team, and if we didn’t go then Mary Beth wouldn’t have a friend on the team, and, arg, you see the problem.
So this morning I decided it was time for desperate measures. Nancy had given me a hot tip that the sporting goods store had PINK shin guards and cleats with PINK stripes and PINKPINKPINK all over the place because girls and soccer and PINK all go together swimmingly.
I began with the suggestion that we have a mother-daughter outing tonight. We’ll start with dinner at her favorite restaurant (because they serve PINK hot dogs and PINK lemonade). Yay! Suggestion met with grand applause. Then we’ll go to the sporting goods store! (Suspicious look creeps onto face.) To buy soccer equipment! (Smile fades entirely.)
I don’t even know what happened next. All of a sudden I was waving my arms and talking about PINK shin guards and PINK this and won’t this be fun and omigosh somewhere the stars aligned and then she got swept up in my enthusiasm and agreed. Of course, she added that she thought we should go get ice cream afterwards. SOLD! To the five-year-old wearing inside-out red pajamas!
Somewhere in the afternoon we started doing a project with these foam balls, but it turned into a sketch of how soccer is played, which I think is mostly accurate except for the fact that I first drew the referee shirt with horizontal stripes, which I quickly corrected when I realized that referees are far more fashion-forward than that.
The night out really was wonderful. I often forget what it’s like to just have one. To have the space to breathe and just focus all my energy on just one kid. I also love the fact that most of our trip I didn’t even carry a bag—credit card and keys in one pocket, phone in the other. I could so get used to traveling light like that.
We ended the evening with PINK shin guards/socks, PINK striped cleats, a PINK soccer ball, PINK shorts and a PINK hat.
So I apologize if we’ve created some sort of shortage in the color spectrum. They’ll restock shortly.