Big Men Walking with Little Children: Futbol

It begins with large men walking into a stadium.  They hold hands with small children. 

     Soccer was pretty foreign to me when I was growing up.  I never knew anybody who played it until my sister went out with a Yugoslav guy from Hoboken (before the rich bought it) who drove a fast car that growled and hopped.  Everyone called him Mike Mercury, I forget his real last name.  Anyway soccer became for me something the Yugoslavs did in Hudson County Park.
     Later on, when I had kids and they played it became swarms of children running about kicking a ball, then older kids trying to ignore their screaming parents.  (I was told by my daughter Kim that I was not to talk to her during games.)  I never thought of it as Futbol, thought it was fun to watch, if chaotic, and was put off by the fact that the best team did not win as often as was to be expected.  The rare moments of TV soccer lulled me to sleep: the passing back and forth, the drone of a chanting crowd.  All of which is to say, I didn't get it.
     Why was all the world so mad for it?  Why were we in the US largely uninterested?  I had heard various arguments, explanations, but the nearest I came to understanding was a comparison to Baseball which I got, and liked.  It is something of a meditative sport, long stretches of nothing, but then there are those moments of everything happening all at once so it is a challenge for the players to maintain focus to be ready for those moments when all hell breaks loose.  Not enough action.  But now I am watching the World Cup and for the first time see and feel why it is called "the beautiful game."
     It has become beautiful to me.  I see a dance with twenty-two men and a ball.  Each side has its own music, each side wants to dance its own dance, and it does when it has control.  And the other side must learn their steps, must find a way to enter into that dance so they might take the ball from them, so they might change the rhythm, change the dance, make it their own.  They watch, they challenge, they study the other to find the chance where they can see the next movement of the dance before it happens, where they can slip their way in and coax the ball to change partners.
     They do not score much.  The moments of triumph are few and far between, like life.  And if we live for those moments then the game will seem long and often pointless, like life.  If we are living for the victories, for those moments of exhilaration then life is a tedious trudge punctuated by brief ecstasies too soon swallowed again by tedium.  We too often do not dance the dance to dance, we dance to leap and leap to shake the grasp of gravity: we would always be aloft, if we could.  But the beauty of the dancer is that she loves both heaven and earth  and brings the two together making harmony with her body.  And if sometimes she flies to heaven it is a wonder and if sometimes she falls to earth it too is a wonder for we are beings of both worlds.
     Now when I watch I see men of many nations come to dance.  They are large men, they hold the hands of children.  Do they lead the children or are they led?  I like to think the children lead, they are born with dance in them, we were born with dance in us but we forget sometimes and sometimes need a child to show the way.  I like Futbol.

Father's Day

     I do not know its genesis but believe that Father's day was invented because Mother's had one and it seemed the fair thing to do.  It is a belief that requires no factual support and is likely impervious to factual debunking.  In any event, I have always had little regard for the day.
     There may be those who have a clear idea of what one must do to be a proper father.  I have probably met some though I could not identify them.  That I am not one has, at times, given me cause to pause and wonder: Is there some plan I should be following?  Should I get a plan?  Should I follow it?  Ultimately though I have just blundered through as I suppose many others do.
     Before my father died, in one of his visits to the hospital, I was able to tell him that he was the best possible father I could have had.  It was important to say this out loud to him.  Like all those in love we did not always get along.  Though it has been tempered some by age I have always been one who said things without regard for the unintended effect they may have on others, especially loved ones, an example:
     My wife, in a conversation with my daughter Cait, mentioned a man who had always wanted children and I said, without thinking that I could not imagine why any man would want to have children.  It did not occur to me that this was an awful thing to say until Caitlin noted with some humor that it was interesting that she was neither surprised nor hurt by this.
     On reflection I could see how a father of four saying this could sound something like regret.  I could see that it might send a message to a child that she was an unwanted intrusion.  I could see that it might be a very hurtful thing to say. 
     Despite all my articulation I was unable then, and still stumble now, to explain what I meant.  I think it is something like this: I could not have ever imagined what it would be like to be a father and do not understand those who could.  What I should have added is how profoundly my children have shaped me, how much I have them to thank for whatever virtue I possess.  They have made me a far more fully human man than I could have ever become without them.
     So on Father's day I find myself blessedly beholding to my children, though I will probably not say this to their faces.  I do not like to cry in public, except on stage.
     I wonder how many other unwitting, awful things I have said over the years, but as this is something I can do nothing about I choose not to dwell on it.
     If the events of my childhood were examined with disinterest they would likely seem unhappy.  And while, in the course of living through these times, I was sometimes deep in sadness, yet I can say that they were happy days.  Happy in the way that happenings strung together lead to learning and a deeper appreciation of life, that what it is that has happened to me has brought me to this place where I can begin to appreciate the wondrous variety of human virtue in others, but especially in my children.
     Renee and I have never been doting parents, our kids got a good deal more criticism than adulation and sometimes I wonder if we had done things a bit differently how that would be but I let this go easily and without regret: the love we had to give in the way we had to give it was all we had to give and it would have to be enough.  I take comfort in the truth of their lives, I love who they each are and the more I learn about them the deeper I appreciate them and the more I am grateful for the love I have for them.
     I hope someday they can say of Renee and I what I once said to my father.
A postscript on the existence of Father's Day:  Whatever its origins I am thankful that it inspired this reflection.