“soccer mom” is a term i never wanted applied to me… museum mom or high tea mom or movie mom or banana split mom or snuggle all afternoon on the sofa mom are all ones i can embrace (even though they haven’t really made it into the vernacular.) but the other weekend i found myself schlepping three twelve year old boys and my daughter and my puppy across the state to a tournament to kick off the boys’ fall soccer season. i don’t really know where we were… i just obediently listened to the google maps lady and followed all of her turns… but i do know that we were way past ikea, which is about as far away as i ever drive. and we didn’t even stop there for my customary hotdog and ice cream cone, which was a little disappointing.
i was on car duty the second day of the tourney. since they had decisively won both of their games the day before, winning the morning game i drove them to would ensure that they made it to the finals. of course, that’s very exciting…. except that there was a FOUR HOUR layover between games. that is a lot of time when you are out in the middle of nowhere, way past ikea. so a small part of me (truly most of me) was selfishly hoping they wouldn’t win. but they did. and i was proud, if a bit bummed that we weren’t having brunch and then hightailing it back home. no… we stayed out in the prairies of colorado for so long that i had to use the port o’ potty… practically camping. i would have preferred a “nature pee” but there was just enough civilization there that i didn’t think i could pull it off. i am actually quite good at this because i spent half my childhood following my father around a golf course and peeing in the various woods that surrounded the greens. plus i had a sundress on, which just makes it all a lot easier...
the following saturday, the soccer season officially began with a mid-morning home game. this was a day where i woke up way before the sun came up and i’m pretty sure the vampires were still out. and i felt like crap. i wish i could say that i’d enjoyed a big, fun night the evening before, but no… i woke up for no good reason and just couldn’t go back to sleep. this seems to happen with greater and greater frequency since i started the second half of my forties and it is TERRIBLE. also surprising because i used to be an AMAZING sleeper. it was really one of the things i did best… i could sleep ANYWHERE! in high school, i would fall asleep on the ride home from whatever party we had been to (no matter how many kids were in the car) and my chauffeur (typically P) would have to nudge me awake when we pulled up to my parents’ house. i would fall asleep at basketball games where everyone around me was standing up and cheering. i slept through a multitude of lectures in college and at least one section when i was sitting right next to my professor. in my twenties, i fell asleep in bars waiting for my friends to be ready to go home and on many dates (to mixed reactions)… most were offended, but one guy was touched that i felt so “comfortable” with him that i could drift off. i regularly napped in taxis when i was living in new york… naively trusting that i would get home safely (and praise jesus - i always did! now i've seen enough law and order that i can't do that anymore.) i’ve slept on planes and trains (missing my station and having to back track) and i’ve obviously never seen a movie straight through… i always have to watch with someone else so they can fill me in on whatever part i snooze through. so with all of this extra sleeping, in addition to sleeping through the night, i was a well rested girl. but now all of that has changed. and on that first soccer game saturday, i was exhausted. and it was hotter than hades. so of course, i fell asleep, under the cover of my giant rainbow golf umbrella. luckily, my son didn’t make a score until nearly the end of the game and i was awake for that, if a little groggy.