Confessions of a Terrible Soccer Mom. Part 1

Here is my first confession: I entitled this blog a Part 1, and I don't even have a Part 2 yet. I just know that I will probably need one, because I sort of suck at being an American Soccer Mom.

Let's start with the schedule. In Belgium it was easy (I never knew how good I had it!) Practice two days a week at the same time, same place (our Club's field, five minutes away) and matches on Saturday. Even when their practice schedules overlapped, everything was always at the same field. Here, we've got soccer three days a week, Monkey is Monday/Wednesday, AJ is Tuesday/Thursday. And they each have a practice on Sunday. They are never at the same place twice, and matches are always evenings during the week. Sometimes on the opposite end of downtown, meaning a rush hour traffic battle.

In the beginning, before the matches really started, the planned practice was only an hour long. With the drive time, it made more sense to stay and "watch" (or sometimes try to run a quick errand) during that hour. Often, I would fight hard to get to be the one to "drive" - just so I could have that hour to sit by myself, or run an errand, ALONE. Confession: when I stayed to "watch," I didn't really watch. I worked. Reading my manuscript on my kindle, or reading a book for background research, or catching up on emails. I was the only parent not cheering for my kid at practice, and despite the sideways glances, I didn't feel the least bit guilty about it.

When the matches began, everything changed. (Just when I had it all figured out.) The practice times and locations changed. We even have two different "home" fields that we play on - on opposite ends of town. They have two different colors of jerseys. They have to wear one and bring the other for all matches. One team uses red for away. "It's easy," they told me when I once asked how to know what color to put on him, "Red = road." Yeah, it's easy if you can remember which team uses that method, because the other kid's team doesn't do that.

At the end of the day, I could use a personal assistant, just to help me manage the schedule. And if they show up wearing a clean jersey, that's the right color and not their brother's number, I feel a  major sense of accomplishment. Purple shorts and purple socks were so much easier, especially after several years and we had collected several sets of both.

We've been meeting people non-stop for the last six months. I am bombarded with new names and faces on a regular basis. Parents at school. Parents from ballet. Parents from soccer. It's getting much better, but I can't always remember which names go with which faces from which team. Maybe if I hadn't had my nose in a book at practice, it wouldn't have taken so long.

I did, however, finally start remembering to bring my camping chair to the matches here. In Belgium, we just stood for the match. I liked that, actually. Less stuff to schlep. And when it started raining, it was less stuff to get wet. You just popped open your umbrella or pulled up your hood. And you could move around when the teams switched goals at halftime. But here, everyone parks themselves and sits. And without a chair, you have no way to claim your space.

So the first day I remembered to bring my chair to the match, I was faced with a major dilemma. As I walked over to the field with my camping chair slung over my arm, I realized there were two separate sets of parents. Which group were the parents of my team? I honestly had no idea. My pace slowed as I tried to figure it out. I could only imagine how awkward it would be to choose the wrong set, and have to get up out of my chair and move it to the other group. Oh well, I figured, it would make a good blog entry if that's what happened.

In the end, I chose correctly. And now, I even know most of the parents by name. (Or at least know which kid they belong to.) Just in time for the season to end, and get a new team for Fall.

Taking Turns

My expat friends in Belgium, always complained to me about the road rage of Belgian drivers. I guess I never drove on the Ring (highway) there as much as I do here, but I just never saw that. Not compared to here. For the most part, I always found that Belgian drivers were especially courteous.

For example, at our new school. We don't have a bus, and there are 900 students at our school (of course, keep in mind that it is a Catholic school, so there are some really big families). In any event, there are a lot of cars trying to turn down the same street at the same time. My first week of school, images from the 80's movie Mr. Mom, kept flashing into my mind. Do you remember the scene where he takes the kids to school and the kids keep telling him, "You're doing it wrong." And the other moms are screaming at him, "South to drop off, north to pick-up you moron!" Well, that's what I felt like our first week of school.

But anyway. In Belgium, whenever there was a back-up of traffic, drivers would just naturally take turns. There, unlike here, there was usually only one way to get somewhere. In Europe, roads grew organically from well traveled paths and ancient highways that led from town to town. Here, early American city planners had enough space to plot everything on a logical grid. The result there, is that you have to wait in traffic. A lot. And sometimes it's for something as stupid as a delivery truck that decides to block an entire (or sometimes both) lanes of traffic. It's almost like sense of camaraderie develops. An attitude that "we're all in the together, let's work it out together". With a collective disgust for the delivery truck driver, of course.

That doesn't happen so much here. A few weeks ago, a large delivery truck was blocking a lane of traffic on our route to school. We saw it in time to change course, turn down the next street, drive one block down, and get around it easily. Drivers that could foresee the upcoming challenge, get themselves around it, were rewarded with a minimal delay. The drivers who didn't realize there was a problem until it was too late to turn, were stuck. And I found myself thinking, "it sucks to be them."

On the way into school, we turn right down the "west to drop-off" street. And obviously, because we are turning right, we have the right of way. There is always a line of cars waiting to turn left. I always let a car from the left lane go before me, just like I learned from driving in Belgium. But no one else ever does. This amazes me. Especially because we are all parents of kids at the same Catholic school. Which sort of makes me think we should follow higher standards of courtesy or something. Not to mention we're all going to see each other in the parking lot in a minute.

My Belgian and/or French friends would say this is an example of Americans being rude. (They say that a lot.) But I don't think that's it, exactly. I just think that in the mornings especially, we are so focused on where we are going and what we are doing, that we don't always pay attention to what's going on around us. But maybe we should pay attention a little more? So that we can take turns if we need to.

Monkey would be able to tell you how many times I've said to myself (out loud, so of course the kids were eavesdropping): "I can't believe no one here takes turns, I need to blog about this." Because I said it enough that he started counting.

So now that school is out, and our mornings are quiet again, I can cross "blog about taking turns" off my end of the school year list.

Coming up next: Reasons I'm a Terrible Soccer Mom.