Aussie Rules Football

Here we are, over half way through the trip. Good times! On Sunday we went to Mass at St Patrick's Cathedral. It's an impressive, no, imposing place. The architecture is Gothic Revival, and while you all know I like me some goth, this place makes Blessed Sacrament look like a bright and airy space. (Well, it is for a Gothic church, but that's another discussion). The exterior is black stone with tan spires and roof. Don't think I've ever seen a black stone church before. The interior is all narrow nave, high arches, dark wood and gilding. It's beautiful but somber.

The acoustic was wonderful, although whenever I opened my mouth to sing Ruby elbowed me and told me to be quiet. Wow, I'm looking forward to adolescence. We went to the 9:30 Mass so that we could get to Max's swim meet, and there was only a cantor rather than a whole choir. He had a beautiful voice, although it was a bit of a disconnect to hear him go from singing perfect round vowels and diction to announcing the hymns with a flat vowel Aussie twang. They must have a pretty good choir, though. Their bulletin listed the music for all the Masses, and the later Masses used Mass parts by Victoria and a closing piece by Couperin. In my experience, you don't sing Couperin unless you know what you're doing. We won't likely make it back to Mass there next Sunday, although it would be cool to hear the choir.

Monday's big event was the Super Bowl. It was broadcast live at 10am. We made a big pot of chili w/ guacamole, shredded cheese and cornbread (Yum, Heidi!) for lunch, which we ate during the 2nd half. My brother-in-law takes Super Bowl Monday off from work every year, and he spent the whole game sending text messages to one of the kids one the swim team, keeping him updated on the score while he was in school. According to my sister, if you asked 10 people on the streets of Melbourne if they knew what the Super Bowl was, fewer than 5 would know, which makes Kevin and young Harry the exceptions, not the rule. Most of us were honorary New Orleans fans, so we liked the outcome. We missed the commercials, though. They didn't broadcast the US commercials, so instead we watched quite a few bits advertising life insurance, then long stretches showing highlights of previously played games accompanied by music. You guys sure got to watch a lot of commercials, especially towards the end of the game. Sorry we missed them!

Tuesday we practiced with the bus system, riding the 301 into town to the Fitzroy district. It was fun to poke around in the little shops and restaurants. Got some great pictures, then spent the afternoon by the pool at Chez Halson. Wednesday we got bolder and went by bus and tram to the Melbourne Zoo. It's one of the oldest zoos in the world. It's set up with naturalistic exhibits, but the emphasis is on creatures from the southern hemisphere. My son needs to write an article for his class newspaper as homework while he's here. He hasn't come up with anything yet, and I kept suggesting potential topics as we went along. Like, how about the Philippine water crocodile that's an endangered species, and the Melbourne Zoo is part of an international effort to preserve the species. Maybe the Woodland Park Zoo is part of the same effort, which would give the story a local angle. He didn't like that one.

Then I read aloud the sign by the pen holding Mary the wombat, who was rescued from the fires that burned throughout the states of Victoria and New South Wales this time last year. That topic was also a nonstarter for the school paper, although we've heard a lot about the fires since we've been here. Last Sunday was the one-year anniversary of Black Saturday, when 173 people died in the fires. The sermon at church last Sunday was in part a commemoration of Black Saturday, and we've heard mention of the fires on news stories over the last few days. You can really feel the strength of the shared group memories. Heidi says they only thing that affected them was that they could see ash raining down into their yard, which is probably closer than I'd want them to be to something that horrible.

Both of our tourist days have been somewhat limited by the 35C temperatures. (XC x 2 + 30 = YF; X = 35....do the math). We've been saved by the pool here at Chez Halson. Last night the kids went for a swim after dinner, practicing with their boogie boards for the beach today. The grown-ups sat by the pool sipping wine and watching the fruit bats fly over the backyard. Every night they fly over on their way to the Botanical Garden in Kew. Not a bad way to live....

Aloha from Melbourne

We've been here two days now. My sister and her husband have been so gracious. Their home is lovely. Heidi must have memorized the Martha Stewart chapter on how to welcome guests. She's done many many Good Things. There were thick robes and slippers and little samples of shampoos and lotions in our room when we got here. The whole house is so open and clean; lots of windows, lots of light.

They live down a country lane, one with large and lovely homes all around. It reminds me of New England, the suburbs around Boston where Kent's Aunt Caroline & Uncle Dave live. The view from her back yard suggests Italy...or at least pictures I've seen of Italy. They're surrounded by hills that roll down to the Yarra River, with stucco homes settled on their flanks. It's very much what I'd imagine Tuscany to look like, except for the gum trees and eucalyptus.

The yard itself is huge. Green grass flows down hill to a triangle point, lined with trees along both sides. Heidi has a vegie bed that's bigger than my front yard. They say they lost a number of trees and shrubs to last summer's drought, and she had to completely plow under the vegie bed because there was no water to spare for it. It's raining more regularly this year, and Kevin says their reservoir levels are up over 35%. The grassy areas along the highways are still brown, but their yard and the hills around them are generously green.

Last night we sat outside and had dinner by the pool. The cicadas were loud, which Heidi says means it's going to be a warm day today. They don't come out when it's cool. We've seen lorakeets and cockateils and kookaburras, and yesterday morning we hiked down toward the river to see the kangaroos. Even more unusual for us Northwesterners, in the afternoon we walked through downtown Melbourne to see AC-DC Lane and Batman Avenue. Go figure.

This morning we'll go to Mass at St Patrick's Cathedral. My nephew has a swim meet, so we'll go see him swim this afternoon. Apparently the meet's being held in a complex that has both indoor and outdoor pools, and there's a wave pool that we'll all be able to swim in when we're not actually cheering on the Surrey Park swimmers. This is where I wanted to paste in a couple paragraphs written by the kids describing their experiences so far. Funny, I can't get them to sit down and write anything. They've been too busy. Maybe later today.....

idea for a poem

teaching the kids to jaywalk across Broadway
good job Mom

making dinner out of pasta and pastry and cheese
with vegetables as a condiment
laughter as a sauce
strong work Dad

letting them listen to songs with 4-letter words
in the lyrics
they know Gramma would have a fit
if she heard them use those words


daughter passes me in the kitchen
"that cookie dough is good"
Wait, I think
you know you're not supposed to eat
raw cookie dough,
and her eyes sparkle
she does know
but dares me to say....

What?

Do I really want to raise my kids
in a world where you can't eat
raw cookie dough?
(truly one of the finest things in life)
where you can't
(after looking both ways twice)
jaywalk
cuz it's raining and you need the shortest path
from A to B?
and swearing? no swearing?

a world where you Must Always Eat Vegetables
or suffer the wrath of
who?
The Parent Police?
God?
The endless pain of knowing you weren't the perfect parent?

Oh, that.

ideas

Reality is stratified, like the layers of an onion or the pages of a book. Between the pages are the spaces where ideas grow. Just fragile shreds of summer-green lace, these tiny poppy sprouts spread wild across the crumbled chocolate earth. They're not in rows like the seedlings in a vegetable bed, not as formal as furrows or as homely as beans. They wait, dancing radiant and random, weaving in and out of the pages of reality.
You need to be still, still as dust, still as your favorite cat, to feel the pages turn and see the spaces open up. The ideas are already there, little needy things that require the light of your attention, salty moisture from the sweat of your practice, and the fine fertile earth of imagination in which to put down roots. Then they'll grow as they grow. You can't push them, can't force a poppy to be a tree. You open yourself, offer your voice, maybe weed a little or sometimes gently prune. Giving them this quiet care will cultivate thriving ideas that you can transplant easily.

thankful

I'm thankful for the floor.
I'm thankful that the cats are usually willing to keep me company.
I'm thankful that the coffee's almost done and that right now my back hurts < 5.
I'm thankful that my mini-Frankenstein didn't also fracture his jaw.
I'm thankful for stick-on heat patches and doctors who respond to email.
I'm thankful I get to be a soccer mom.
I'm thankful for the magical dinners that have appeared at critical moments over the last couple weeks.
I'm thankful that Dear Husband vacuumed the rug yesterday.
I'm thankful for friends and family who are as solid as the floor I'm laying on.
The perspective's a bit different this year, but there's no less emotion attached.
Peace.

did nothing today

Let me repeat that. Did nothing today. The kids were out of school because of the holiday, so I slept in till almost 8:30, and when I did get up, I made it just as far as the living room floor, where I made up a nest of blankets and pillows and settled in with my feet up on the ottoman, resting my back. I read a book. I guess that counts for something.

Never once did the kids say, "What are we doing today, Mom?" They needed a day off as badly as I did. Around 11am I felt a little guilty, so I pulled them away from the computer and the Wii and made them get dressed. Told them we were going for a walk. They thought that was fine, as long as it involved a stop at 7-11. Deal. As a bonus there were a couple of near-sun experiences along the way.

The walk was hard because my back hurt, so we didn't make it any farther than 7-11 and back. Bought a lottery ticket. That counts too. After the walk I went back to the living room floor, Dear Daughter picked up some homework, Daughter's Dear Friend started drawing, and Dear Son went back to the computer. The kids made themselves lunch and played outside while I took a nap. Gotta love older kids. The biggest excursion was taking Dear Son to his piano lesson at 4, with a stop a Safeway afterwards. Then I started dinner, letting Loving Husband finish putting it together. I get partial credit for that one.

Tonight I have to work, and I've been here since 7pm, which probably does count as doing something, although it's sort of like a different day stuck onto the end of the one I already had. The one where I didn't do anything. I finished a book and bought a lottery ticket and took a nap and scrambled some hamburger. Not so much, really.

the game

I'll do my best to set the scene. We were down in Georgetown, a neighborhood on the south end of Seattle. It's mostly light industry, but there's a crosshatch of around a dozen blocks of houses between Michigan St and the freeway. The houses are mostly small post-war boxes, with a few old Victorians mixed in. With the incredible rise in housing prices over the last ten years, Georgetown earned the reputation as one of the last affordable neighborhoods, a place you could buy at a semi-reasonable price. You could buy if you were adventurous and didn't mind that there wasn't a neighborhood school or a grocery store. People did buy, and most of the old houses have been fixed up. Now, except for the trucks and the traffic noise, the strip malls and office complexes, it looks ok.

The soccer field has also been fixed up recently. My Mom says that she and a friend once tried to go metal detecting on that field but left soon after starting because it was so filthy. "It's the only time that's happened," she said. "We're pretty hardy, but it was just gross." Now it has an artificial surface, tall lights, a clean bathroom, and two short sections of silver metal bleachers. The Catholics must have a contract for use of the field, because one of the coaches told me it used to be the practice field for the O'Day soccer team.

This was a second round play-off game for the CYO soccer 6th grade girls teams. Our team is made up of girls from St Catherine's and Our Lady of the Lake (OLL). St Catherine's is a small-to-medium-sized school. OLL is a little smaller. The team is about 2/3rds St C's players to 1/3 OLL. The St C's mascot is the tiger and the OLL mascot is the lion. The girls'll stand on the sidelines and yell, "Go Ligers!" during the game. Before the game they'll gather in a cluster, hold hands in the center, and yell, "Lions and tigers and goals, Oh My! Lions and tigers and goals, Oh My!" The dynamic the St C's/OLL team has is really cool.

We were playing the team from Holy Family in West Seattle. When we all got to the field, the Holy Family parents had already staked out the north end bleacher, so we took the south. The Holy Family girls were already on the field warming up. Their warm-ups seemed to involve a whole lot of cheering. They cheered during their drills. They ran around the field in a cluster, cheering the whole way, like a bunch of Marines in ponytails, skinny headbands and red white and blue uniforms. Our girls ran their drills without making nearly as much noise. At first I thought they might be intimidated. They weren't.

When we got to the field, it was raining. Not a normal Seattle drizzle, but a,"hey you might be somewhere tropical except it's 50 degrees" kind of downpour. The girls were completely soaked by about ten minutes into their warm up. My main concern was for the girls who wouldn't be starting the game, that they'd get cold standing on the sidelines. Turns out they were all so jacked up they didn't notice. I'd brought a 10x10' canopy and set it up a little past our bleachers, pulling the girl's backpacks and jackets underneath it to keep them out of the rain. The Holy Family parents set up two canopies, which I tried not to take as some kind of omen. Then, one of our coaches showed up with a second canopy, so I felt like we'd at least equaled their effort. A while later an OLL Dad showed up with another one, so we had three. We were able to cover most of our bleacher and had room to walk around. Point to St C's/OLL.

By the time the game actually started, the rain had let up. Adding to the complexity of the situation, last spring St C's hired as our new principal a woman who'd been principal at Holy Family for the last 20 years. She did the opening coin toss. I'm not sure which school won but I do know our girls got the ball right away and took it down the field. They were aggressive, passing the ball cleanly, moving quick. The first half was a draw, although St C's made three or four solid shots on goal. One went over top of the goal, one bounced off an upright, one was a bit wide. They were close but didn't get one over. In the meantime, our goalie only had to handle the ball once in the first half, and even that wasn't a serious shot. At halftime we were playing well, but the score was tied at zero.

The Holy Family girls didn't cheer for themselves during the half-time break. When the whistle blew, both teams came back onto the field. Play resumed. It felt a little more balanced, with Holy Family getting the ball down on the St C's/OLL end of the field a little more often. Still no score. The tension on the field was nothing compared with the tension on the sideline. It was interesting to watch the parents, most of whom I've known since Dear Daughter was in first grade. Some of the mothers stood in little clumps, heads together and almost holding hands. The men were more likely to stand alone, or maybe in pairs. Some of us walked. I kept telling myself that as long as I was moving and saying the Hail Mary, I wouldn't throw up. I didn't, so it must have worked. I passed the same people again and again as I went back and forth along the sideline. I was the only one mumbling to myself.

In Seattle in November, the sun sets by around 5 o'clock. Since the game started at 3:30, by the time the second half started it was dark enough that we needed the overhead lights. It felt surreal, standing in the cold and damp, the freeway running above us to the east, the long offramp from I5 into Georgetown wrapping along the south end of the field. Georgetown is just north of Boeing Field, which put us right under the flight path. The later it got, the more frequently small planes and jets flew right overhead, their silver bellies looking close enough to touch. A couple of times the planes were low enough that it held up the game, the ref standing on the sideline holding the ball and looking up instead of tossing it to a player for the in-bound play.

St C's/OLL got a couple more shots on goal, then FINALLY punched one through. I think it was actually one of the midfielders who got off a good kick from about a quarter of the way back up the field. The girls went crazy, and so did everyone on the south end of the sidelines. I was afraid the girls would be so excited they'd forget to play defense. They kept their focus, though, and held on. At one point I walked past my Dad, who was really impressed. He said he thought the girls were playing at a much higher level than he'd seen before. It didn't feel like we were watching eleven year olds out there. These girls can rock it.

The St C's/OLL score happened at probably the 10 minute mark of the 30 minute half, which meant we had to play for 20 more minutes without letting them score. That got harder and harder to do. The last three to five minutes, the Holy Family girls found another gear and really ratcheted things up. Out of the maybe six solid shots on goal they had all game, four came in the last two to three minutes. Our goalie made a couple of mind-blowing plays to hold them off. I've known this kid since before Darling Daughter actually started at St C's, because they took swimming lessons together when they were in kindergarten. It was just amazing to see her focus and composure when they were just hammering the ball at her. On one play, the Holy Family player got off a solid, high kick, point blank in front of the goal. Our goalie jumped straight up, arms fully extended, and got her fingertips on the underside of the ball just enough to flick it up and over top of the goal. No score. The sideline went crazy on that one. After another flurry of shots, it looked like they got one in, but apparently the ref had blown the whistle so it didn't count. There was less than a minute left at that point.

Finally, FINALLY, the whistle blew the long blasts that meant the game was over. The girls on our sideline all ran out on the field, and as a group they picked the goalie up and carried her back to the sideline. The parents faced each other in two rows, forming a tunnel with our arms that the girls ran through as they were coming off the field. It had started to rain again, but no one really paid much attention. Girls were laughing and crying and hugging and so were their parents. I've shared a lot with these people in the last 5 years. St C's is a tight community. There have been good times and there have been tough times. For me, this was right up there with the best.

Watching Dear Daughter's face after the game was an absolute joy. She's really having fun with this. She doesn't seem to have any ego about whether she starts or not or how much she plays. She's happy to be there, happy to be part of the team, and happy they're winning. The team is deep. After the coaches send in their starting players, they could field a pretty decent team with the girls left on the sideline. They've done a great job of balancing the playing time so that no one has been unhappy. The St C's players have played together since kindergarten, some of them, or first grade. All the girls in the 6th grade class, except for two, are on the soccer team. They've been a combined team with OLL since third grade. This is turning into a really cohesive group. They're a team. Lions and tigers and goals, Oh My!

They've got one game left. Tomorrow they play Assumption-St Bridgets (ASB) for the championship. ASB had a better regular season record, but the last time we played them we beat them 5 - 0. Ok, so that was in 5th grade. They probably hold a grudge against us because of it. The girls have all worked so hard, and they're having so much fun, that it's too bad someone has to lose tomorrow. Several times this week I've reminded Dear Daughter to enjoy this. Enjoy wearing your team jersey to school on Thursday, with your soccer shorts under your uniform khaki pants. Enjoy getting out of school an hour early to get to the game. Enjoy going back to school on Friday to hear the score of the game as part of the morning announcements, then listen to the cheers from all over the school. This kind of lightening doesn't strike every day. Get out there and rock the soccer field. Have fun.

Update: Despite an amazing effort, the St C's/OLL team lost 0-1 to ASB this afternoon. They can be proud of themselves, though, because they left it all on the field. Everyone gave 100%, but ASB snuck a goal in with less than 30 seconds left in the game. It's been a great season, and now that we know the way, we're going to want to be back in the Championship game next year. Lions and tigers and goals, OH MY!