Soccer on the Edge of Town

I still remember the soccer fields at the edge of Nashville, off Highway 70. Way out in Bellevue by the Toys ’R Us and the Sonic and the psychic with the big white sign. We had to be there early for our games. Squinting hour, foggy hour. Can’t-finish-your-cereal hour. It was the epoch of socks rolled on in the backseat and hair hurried into ponytails in the parking lot. Of maybe we’ll get Sonic if you win.

The sidelines were lush with weeds and daisies. They’d grow wild beside our parents, who sat in folding chairs with coolers of Capri Sun and orange slices and talked about whatever parents talked about. Mostly acronyms. PTA, ADHD. I once heard my mother telling someone else’s mother that it was all to do with the preservatives in the chicken tenders. I was one of those kids who would rather pick the dandelions than kick the soccer ball. The chicken tenders were doing a number on me.

Before the game could start, a kerfuffle had to be made over pierced ears. The refs, grown men in neon pinnies, leaned over to determine whether the Band-Aid had been properly applied to the ear. Was it covering the stud? Couldn’t you just take it out? No! The girl would protest. It hadn’t been six weeks and the lady at Claire’s had said loud and clear to keep the studs in for six weeks. What if you get hurt? the ref would ask. I won’t, the girl would say. The soccer field is maybe the only arena where grown men and 10-year-old girls spar, which is part of its charm. Sacred ground, fighting place. There’s a reason you need shin guards.

We’d name ourselves something like the Cyclones and clamor for sips of Gatorade at halftime, one big red bottle that had someone’s name on a piece of tape futilely Sharpied against cold and flu season. There were little siblings toddling from parent’s lap to parent’s lap. And bees. I remember how I’d make crowns from the white flowered weeds and wish this was soccer, the drinking of red nectar and weaving of crowns and rolling around in the grass with my friends. Why did we need to beat the other team? What was the point of running? Eventually, my parents started to bribe me. If you score a goal, they promised, you can go to Phillips Toy Mart and pick out a glass animal. Tiny pelicans. Grinning poodles. Reader, there are not many star athletes who collect glass animals.

On the way home from the games, we’d pass the Highway 70 psychic. Her shop was only a red brick house, but when it is Saturday and you are exhausted and magic is still real, a brick house psychic will do. Please, we begged. No, our mothers said. They had laundry to fold, flowers to plant. The very real alchemy that mothers never quite get enough credit for.

One day, when it was Dad driving me home, I asked him. Dads have the privilege of pulling into Sonic, of letting bad grades slide, of saying yes. Before you knew it, we were putting the car in park.

The red brick psychic led us into a small room at the front of her house. There was a card table. Some silk scarves. Otherwise it looked no different from my great-aunt’s house, where the queen of England smiled down at you from tea cups and the carpet was as thick as moss.

“Soon you will receive a great gift,” the psychic said, taking my hands. “Soon you will do whatever you like.”

In a way, she was right. I got to stop playing soccer. I started babysitting and driving and buying my own glass animals. My pierced ears no longer required constant vigilance to keep from closing up. But I do feel there is something lost when there is no one left to tell you what to do, no coach directing you to kick a ball between orange cones and show me some hustle. There comes a point when nobody bothers to label your Gatorade anymore, much less buy it, and the team scatters. It’s painful, this loss, this growing up.

I was driving to an estate sale recently when I happened upon those fields again. It was a Saturday morning. I was after trinkets. I watched a father carry a drawstring bag of soccer balls across the gravel parking lot, his daughter trailing behind. She had not yet laced up her cleats. The mothers were out with folding chairs, with visors and gossip. It suddenly seemed so strange that I was not striding up to the field, but instead old enough to drive a car. Sure, there were folding chairs in my trunk, but where would I plop them? Cupping my hand against the sun, who would I cheer for?

But maybe it’s not about me. There is still a Saturday, after all. Still a highway, still a field, still a herd of Cyclones, picking daisies.

Tagged: Essays