Fill In the Gap

Cedahlia’s second soccer game was yesterday, exactly during Ronan’s which necessitates me to run back and forth to try and catch both. Her being in soccer stirs up all kinds of angst and buried insecurities, for me, for her. She is clearly the only one who has never played before and is clearly the weakest link. I am so proud of her for doing it and for obediently running alongside her teammates and staying involved, even if she never really goes for the ball. I am torn with the desire to get out there and physically do it for her, to embody her and kick that dang ball when it bounces right up to her little pink and white cleats. I want to slip inside her 6 year old self and get aggressive and score a goal and make her feel like part of the team. She is silent as she sits on the sidelines, kind of nervously and boringly drinking all of her Powerade and not watching the plays on the field. I cringe as I see her coach try to hide his reactions when she has a chance to contribute and she hops around like a baby gazelle, running and then giving a little happy, oblivious kick as she comes to a stop. He calls out things like ‘Come on White, get defensive’, which means absolute gibberish to her and mostly to me as well. Her jockish little teammate named Mia yells at her to ‘fill in the gap, FILL IN THE GAP!’ and I want to charge onto the field and yell ‘I quit. WE QUIT!’. But I don’t because she doesn’t quit and I can’t teach her to quit when it’s uncomfortable and hard. I want her to learn that being physically active feels good, that there is a sense of accomplishment when a team works together, and that following instruction and practicing actually helps you be better; at soccer, at anything.

I was never part of a team as a child, although there was that one summer when I vaguely recall being forced to play softball. I don’t recall my parents staying for practices, I don’t recall games. I just vividly remember a moment when the coach yelled out to me to be the ‘shortstop’ and I kind of jogged out in the general vicinity of the field and stood lost. What is a shortstop, for goodness sakes? How would I know that unless someone had shown me?

After the game, I asked Cedahlia if she knew what ‘fill in the gap’ meant, and she did not. I asked her if her teammates were nice and what did they talk about on the sidelines? She said they are nice. She did not say that they yelled directions to her, that they shoved her into the area they understood she should be standing in, waiting to be ‘offensive’. I saw those things. Did she not feel it the way I did, clenching up and desperate to stuff her back into my womb?

Cedahlia is missing Daddy, and says so less than I actually observe the missing. She is reluctant to go to school and cries because she doesn’t know her words and writing like the other kids, and had to miss the My Little Pony movie because it took her so long to list all of her classmates names because she didn’t know which were boys and which were girls. She cries because she does not know her numbers. She does not, and this has been a source of anxiety for me. My six year old is stressed out and feeling not good enough and not smart enough and not *enough*.

Fill in the gap.

I am trying. As Ronan snuggled sweatily into my lap to watch the last few minutes of her game, all of these thoughts were swirling passionately in my mind. He looked up at me and said, ‘Who were you before? Were you just a lady?’

Who was I, indeed. Who am I? Or more to the point, whatever I am made of, I hope I can do this year well.