Soccer/Mom

Green pitches, infights and soccer moms in Volvos teach young girls how to hold their ground in the world.

“Go! Get outta here! You’re going to be late.”

It was my husband who literally pushed me out the door and back into soccer, twenty odd years after dropping it cold at fourteen, after playing almost every day of my life since Kindergarten. I think he saw me losing myself to new motherhood, slipping into my daughter’s needs like comfy old gray sweats worn day after day. Despite the hiatus, and being dreadfully out of shape, my body instantly remembered: movement, sensation, the clarity of adrenaline, the thrill of having a pulse of my own. When one of my husband’s friends asked why I gave up soccer in the first place, I joked that I couldn’t stand the soccer moms. But the truth is much murkier.

Let me confess — I am a soccer mom. I have the Volvo (never mind that it’s an old clunker), the orange slices (never mind that they are not always organic), and the cleats taking over the front room (never mind that half of them are my own). Growing up, I envied, then resented, the soccer moms of t…