watching soccer..

At the soccer on Sunday I was there on my own. I stood by the rail amongst the opposition parents. They spoke fast and passionately. Someone told me it was a Croatian club and I listened hard to try and pick out a few words as I can still remember a little Ukrainian courtesy of Uncle Jack. Dan was on the sidelines. The woman beside me had a load of silver rings on her hands and was smoking a cigarette. Why did I notice these details and not other things about her? Maybe because it just seemed very European: she looked glamorous and sounded openly confident. Another thing that struck me was that several men came and talked to her and the woman beside her quite naturally. Nothing to do with gender- it was as if they were all equals standing there watching the game. This free conversation amongst parents doesn’t happen with our team. Most of the men just talk to other men. Women are somehow a bit off limits at the soccer. We're the invisible supporters.

Anyway not long afterwards the two women began circling the pitch -it reminded me of a velodrome the way it sloped away to the field- and they walked around that dry loop again and again while the game was going on. After half time I took up a new spot. By now, the women had stopped walking –their goals were down this end- and they sat on the ground a little way in front of me. The younger of the two squatted next to her companion. Within a minute or so, after being nil-all a goal was scored. The woman who was crouching jumped up and began to shout. She put her hand over her mouth and wooollaa-woooollaadd just like an Indian in an old western. She did this for about 20 seconds. Everyone around us was laughing. The game went on and a while later she turned around and apologized to me for the outburst. I said not to worry. With that she came over and told me her son wasn't playing but was sitting in the car watching his team. The goal was God’s gift to him. I wasn’t sure what she meant but then she told me that her son had fatigue -"the chronic fatigue thing" and we clicked. I started telling her about Anthony and she listened so intently that it felt as if I was feeding her a meal and she was eating everything I put out. She’d spent $30,000 trying to find a cure. "Now I try acupuncture. Tell me what you do for your son. I try anything to help." Her son is 15 and has just gone back to school but is unable to do much at all. My son is 27 and I think after four years is finally on the way to being well again. I don’t have a cure for her though, only empathy. She is dabbing her eyes and crying at the same time. She tells me she's Bosnian and that she’s given up her work as an interpreter/counsellor because now she has no energy to listen to the stories of cruelty and torture that have come out of the Yugoslavian war. "I cannot do this work anymore. I have to help my son."

I do not see her son waiting by himself in the car. She points out her daughter on the playground and her husband in the blue and white shirt standing by the race. She tells me he is a beautiful man. We talk about how hard it is to see your children suffer and then the conversation turns to religion. She was raised Catholic by her Christian mum but now, married to a Muslim man says she has the best of both religions. "One god" she says. "I tell my children everyday to treat everybody the same. Same god for all of us."
She also tells me that the parents at this club have terrible stories before coming to Australia. "I don’t like politics" she says.

I leave this game remembering Bob Dylan’s grandmother. Everyone’s got their own trouble she tells him. Be kind.