Saturday, September 13, 2008

The American Dream?

I guess I'm just not properly assimilated or brain-washed or something...not American enough? Could be.

Today was first game day of the year for the "autumn" soccer league of 2008 here and we had a match for Lindsay's skill group and a match of Haley and Anna's team. I note here our extreme good fortune that Haley and Anna have been able to play on the same team for a while; that reduces the number of practices and games a bit.

I love watching my kids play, I do. I love watching them experience the joy of successful team work, I love watching them play at being ferocious. Remember that, OK?

L's skill group began at 10:00 am and as it was the first day, we needed to be there a bit early to check in, etc. Her groups are going to meet a bit further away from home than we've been accustomed to and so we left our house at about 9:15 am. Fine, fine. H and A's match was at 2:15 up near our house and as we missed practice last night due to rain, Coach had asked us all to show up at 1:15 for a rather involved pre-game review and warm up. Uhhhh. OK? I had ONE 15-minute stop to make in between the two matches. When we returned home from the first event at 12:20, we needed to eat lunch and get the other two into their gear and hit the door again by 1:00 pm. Oh---did I mention that it was 100 degrees today? That's not an exaggeration.

So at about 3:45 when we got home, we'd been engaged in soccer pursuit (total actual soccer experience time: 3hours) for 6.5 hours.

So that's the situation of interest. It sucked quite badly for me, the driver and coordinator of player support (uniforms, gear, water bottles, food, team crap 'cuz I'm the team parent) and I had but two games to manage for my three children and I don't work out of the house all week. I can only imagine the kind of day it was for parents with three or four kids on seperate teams, those who have worked all week long and really need some rest and have households to manage, lawns to mow.

Really? This is the suburban dream? Really? You've got to be kidding me! When do families spend time together if kids and parents are apart during the day, evening interaction limited by homework, practices, household stuff and weekends are all about getting those kids to their soccer games? What's the quality of that life style?

While L played, A chatted with me, H read. While H and A played, Lindsay whined because she was hot and tired---who can blame her? It was my inclination as well but I didn't think it would be tolerated so much....

Thank goodness Rob won't be working the entirety of upcoming weekends as he was these last few days; at least I can hang out with him so long as the girls games don't conflict. And now that I mention it....I think they do next week. Bah.

3 comments:

Shamrock said...

Hmm sounds like loads of fun. You could send some sun here, if there's any there. It's plenty warm, just no blue skies or huge glowing orbs.

Don said...

I understand what you are saying, but I can tell you from experience that while tiring, when they are all grown and out of the house, you will look back at this and smile. Debbie and I had three very busy kids with soccer (indoor and outdoor), marching band cheerleading, and other school activities. Now we sit in a quiet house and reminiscence about all the fun we had doing it.

Drew said...

Maybe it's because that is what we (Julie and I) did as kids, but we are definitely looking forward to those days. All weekend soccer tournaments with a band event crammed in there somewhere and a volleyball match to boot. Sounds like a blast to us.