Existential Angst in a Swiss Hotel

When we flew into Switzerland there was rain everywhere and I thought, naturally enough, of A Farewell to Arms, that novel that I’ve taught generations of Honors Sophomores to mixed reactions. Switzerland is where Frederick Henry and Catherine Barkley flee, hoping to find peace, rest and succor from the war in the mountains. Their idyll is cut short by rain and death.

I do not fly easily and so rain and death were on my mind as we slalomed through the mountains. My youngest son, watching the wing apparatus jounce and shiver, turned to me and said very simply, “Dad, I’m scared.” These are the parenting moments you always wonder about. I turned my pale face to his and smiled blandly. Forcing my hand to relax its white knuckled grip on the seat in front of me, I patted his shoulder. Everything will be all right, I told him; and by saying it I made it so – for both of us.

I’ve been to Switzerland two other times, and each time the mountains presented a different mood based on the weather and light. This year the clouds drifted over the peaks like torn bridal trains, the rain absorbing the light. There were rich medieval possibilities everywhere.

Just last week at soccer practice I shared the narrow shade offered by a field-light stanchion with a woman who had, coincidentally, just come back from Switzerland. Standing there together in the thick humidity and searing heat of a Georgia summer, we marveled at the possibility that we might have crossed each other’s paths while dashing through the rain to the Chapel Bridge through dense crowds of Chinese tourists. But though we were in the same location, at the same time, we were never in the same place. Her husband is an anesthesiologist and their hotel was commensurate with his greater earning power, there on the shores of the Lake itself.

As a teacher I’m at the whims of a Free Market that values anesthesiologists somewhat higher and so our hotel was somewhat less luxurious, but not without its own charms. As a Poor Wayfarer I’m more drawn to the rustic and quaint, anyway.

Our hotel was outside of Lucerne, in a far more bucolic setting. It was one of those four star places that cater to student travelers – with elevators the size of closets and iron keys attached to enormous fobs that you present back to the desk clerk each time you go out. Our wooden stairs creaked as we climbed them and the ceilings of the corridors were high and full of shadows. Previous guests had left books in bins at the stair landings and I briefly considered borrowing a French graphic novel about the battle of Gettysburg. Motion operated footlights came on as we pulled our luggage down the long corridor, and then faded as we passed on.

The room itself was clean and spare and utterly Swiss and, after stowing our luggage in the corner, I threw open the windows and went about the process of logging in to the hotel Wi-Fi so I could check my emails. For all its charm and sophistication the one thing Europe can't yet offer the traveler is consistently high speed Wi-Fi. Downloading emails can make you feel nostalgic for the dial-up of yesteryear when you clicked "download" and then walked away from the computer the way one walks away from a washing machine after loading it.

Behind me my youngest son was reading in his bed, the down comforter pulled up to his chin, his headsets on – the very picture of “cozy”.

Outside the window rain was sifting down again and the air was cool enough - even in July - to be sweetened with wood-smoke.  We were high enough in the Alps to be up in the weather, if that makes sense: the clouds were all around us, obscuring the peaks that surrounded our valley. I could hear but could not see the cattle as they made their way down the mountains across the valley, coming down from their afternoon pastures in the rain. They wore bells that tolled a sweet, mellow tone that inexplicably captured the very essence of nostalgia. To this day I cannot hear Swiss cowbells without mourning something lost that I can not define. I own one – it hangs on my backyard gate and every time someone goes in or out I feel an ache in my heart.

Despite the rain, birds were calling their evening songs.

The email finally down-loaded, an introduction to our faculty of our newest assistant principal - Ms. S. Twenty years ago she and I attended a new employee informational meeting at the high school, mandatory for new faculty and staff. We were new teachers squeezed out of a collapsing school system nearby, our eyes fiery with enthusiasm. True Believers! What a span of time twenty years represents! My oldest son, currently on a different of floor of this very hotel, was not yet born - and now he was within a short month of leaving for college.

Ravens croaked to each other like co-conspirators as the rain outside doubled in intensity, drumming the roof. I thought about Ms. S. and that day twenty years ago. It occurred to me that of all the people I had begun teaching with all those years ago, I was the last one left still in the classroom. Some had quit, others had gone into administration. The only one of that original group that was still in front of a classroom was me. There’s a sense of inchoate dread one feels when one is The Last One Left – am I a survivor? Or am I the slow member of the herd?

Counting Coup

There are few things more frustrating than losing your carefully collected change in a malfunctioning vending machine. Within three days of students arriving at our school the drink machine on my hall was dead. The next closest one, up the stairwell, looked okay - lights on, tiny marquee scrolling an enticing message  regarding the temperature of the drinks - but a closer look revealed bottles stacked up on the floor of the dispenser. I knew from previously putting my money in too hastily, without properly vetting the machine, that those drinks would block the mechanism and I would be left without money or drink, raging impotently at my smeary reflection in the shatter proof glass.

The only drink dispenser in this building that I'm aware of still holding Diet Coke is geographically the most distant machine from my classroom. It is upstairs and catty-corner from my cell down here in the catacombs, up the clogged stairwell and through the teeming halls where students walk four abreast at bovine speed and stop dramatically to add emphasis to their conversation. Sometimes their bodies shift left and right like schools of fish sensing the presence of a predator, frustrating my attempts to slip by on their margins.They seem to know instinctively that I'm feinting to the left and move in coordination to block my path.

I had six minutes.

A young man was standing before the machine I wanted to use, adjusting his ipod with swipes of his thumb. Making a  prod out of my first three fingers and thumb, pinky finger curled in, I pushed him gently aside and began fishing for my coins. In Europe they have done away with single denomination paper currency, it's all coins. How much easier if we didn't have to feed limp paper dollars into these slots, if we were given coins that rolled smartly into the slot, making complex mechanical noises indicating the working of invisible machinery and the inevitable clunk of the drink rolling out. You feed those sweat-limp dollar bills into the slot and you keep thinking about middle age and it's poignant and melancholy.

Perhaps cash-point machines have affected me more than I suspect, but whenever my drink or candy bar clunks down into the dispenser, I always look furtively over my shoulder to make sure a thug isn't standing by to beat me down and run off with my beverage. Or something like that. There was no thug this time, the usual crowd swirled around me and past me - but then two young men caught my eye because they were very obviously and flagrantly wearing ball caps. Usually students have a sixth sense about this sort of thing - they feel your eyes on them and they pull the hat sheepishly from their heads and hold them low, their body language proclaiming surrender. These boys did not - they swept towards me at low speed, insouciant and full of attitude.

"Hats, boys," I said. Usually that's enough. They know the game is over and they doff their hats and nobody cares any further - but these boys didn't even meet my eye. They certainly didn't make any motions towards taking the hats off. My fight-or-flight gland began pumping adrenaline into my system. My face was suddenly hot and my pulse jumped in my throat. They were right in front of me now and clearly not looking at me, but they were aware of me, clearly, because their mouths and eyes were turned up in contemptuous sneers. I stood up holding my cold bottle of Diet Coke and the crowd of students in the lobby faded into the background - like a predator, I was locked on my targets. They took their hats off just before going into the cafeteria for their Free Breakfast, but without haste or humility.

I know how these things work out. I was already moving through the crowd, slotting left and right. I could see them through the window of the cafeteria door and one of them was already putting his hat back on his head - but he never got it there. I was right behind him, plucking it off and snatching it away.

"Mine, " I said, already turning away. "You can get it back at the end of the day." But the words came out strangled because my throat was beating with my pulse. I felt that hot mix of triumph and emotion - I wanted to strut triumphantly but my voice gave me away. My knees were stiff and I have a feeling I pogoed like someone with Aspergers.

It occurred to me as I disappeared into the crowd that these were freshman and didn't know my name. He would never know where his hat went - and perhaps he didn't care all that much. But I did, I cared. I carried his hat down to my room and displayed it like a scalp.

The "American Disease"

I did not grow up with guns - I used to tell my friends, ironically, that this was because I grew up in Connecticut. Now that joke leaves ashes on my tongue. But I did not grow up with guns and, in retrospect, that was probably a wise move on my parents' part. I did have a pellet gun - a Crossman 760 pump action. The instructions said to never pump it more than ten times but, before there was ever a Spinal Tap, I instinctively knew that pumping it to eleven was extreme. Ten was the highest? Then eleven was beyond.

Every songbird and squirrel in my neighborhood paid for my developing skills at marksmanship. We had a black-painted cast-iron mailbox at the end of our driveway that was the shame of the neighborhood due to the countless BB "pits" knocked into it. That mailbox was anything I needed it to be as I stalked it from the thicket across the street: Jap sentry, Kraut solider, gook, injun. It never suspected that across the street, lying low and moving soundlessly, a per-pubescent sniper was pumping that gun to eleven. From my second story window I could take it out consistently - pump, lean the gun on the sill, aim and fire. I could hear the satisfying "ping" of the copper BB hitting from eighty yards away. I recall one time, home sick from school, watching a neighbor coming home, swinging some sort of bag from his hand. As soon as he came even with my mailbox - my range! - I popped up, took aim and fired free hand. I heard the smack of the BB into his bag before I dropped to the floor. But I was a kid, so two seconds later I was peering over the sill, and he was staring back at me. I paid for that one when my parents took the gun away. And rightfully so . . .

I'm older now and own quite a few guns - rifles and shotguns, all for hunting. But not all the guns I own are hunting weapons, and these are the ones in retrospect I'm uneasy about. I have a pistol - a big, bulky single action .357 magnum cowboy gun. I have no illusions about hunting with that gun, though I'm a pretty good shot with it. I bought it to shoot at people in a Worst Case Scenario situation. The grim reality behind handguns is, though you can stretch the point with fringe hunters, pistols are made for killing people. So are assault rifles.

Years ago, when the Soviet Bloc fell apart, America - the Windfall Heaven of all Weaponry - became a clearing house for SKS assault rifles. We found them in our local hunting stores in crates stacked up like Christmas toys at Wal-Mart, all still shiny and redolent of the spicy reek of cosmoline packing grease. When they came to my hometown they were eighty bucks a piece. Eighty bucks! I later got mine for one-twenty but still!What a bargain!

I shot a lot of rounds through it at the local shooting range, but the first time it made an impression on me was at a Critter Hunt on a friend's hunting land. Anyone who hunts deer at a certain latitude in Georgia knows about armadillos. These tiny animals make noise way beyond their size - every armadillo sounds like a trophy buck striding through the underbrush. We've all seen the riverbanks dug up and plowed over, as if hogs two hundred pounds heavier had been at work. These animals are part of the larger environmental disaster perpetrated by human beings - they continue to spread north, beyond their original homerange, with no natural predators to keep them in check. So a hunt was called to eliminate these pests from the bottom lands along this particular section of the Flint River. I, of course, brought the SKS.

That first morning we saw no animals and I was eager to pull the trigger. Armadillo fever! Eventually I soothed the need by lining up the iron sights on a knot-hole on an oak tree and pulled the trigger - not once, but six times,emptying the clip as fast as I could pull that horrible trigger. And the trigger is horrible, too, it's too loose, breaks too far back to ensure accuracy. Still, when you have a semi-automatic assault rifle - I challenge you to pull the trigger just once on an open target.

I won't bore you with boasts of my accuracy; it's enough to say that I never missed the tree. All six bullets hit a tree that was roughly the circumference of a human body. It was when I walked around to the far side of the tree that I had my epiphany: every 7.62 round that hit that tree passed right through it, seemingly unopposed. There were six exit "wounds". Remember when you were a kid playing army, taking cover behind trees when the "enemy" opened fire? Nope. Not a reality. Anyone hiding behind that tree would have been hit by every bullet. I crouched there in the leaves on a beautiful autumn morning in middle Georgia and speculated what all this meant. Your average American house, built of faux wood, with faux plaster "sheet rock" separating the rooms - it's conceivable that my SKS could shoot through the house and kill someone on the other side. Six times . . . or thirty times if I bought one of the magazines available in any of my favorite hunting catalogs . . .

Immediately after the Newtown Massacre - and it was a Massacre, let's not play with terms like "tragedy" - I went to my son's elementary school to pick him up. All those lovely children wearing their "reindeer" antlers made out of craft materials, carrying "goody-bags" from Christmas parties. Those babies slaughtered at Sandy Hook were probably engaged in something similar that morning. I thought about that tree I shot up - everyone of those babies killed was hit more than once - some of them five times, because that's the nature of an assault rifle. Keep on pulling that trigger. It's hard not to.

What is the purpose of an assault rifle? It's to kill people. Some people make a case of using them for hunting, but you can use anything for hunting: a crossbow, a knife, a spear, a grenade. The design of an assault rifle is to simply, chillingly, kill people efficiently. And let's be honest here, when we talk of "assault rifles" we mean any weapon capable of semi-automatic fire, chambered for high velocity rounds and capable of mounting clips up to 30 rounds. If we banned every assault rifle and they all magically disappeared, it would not impact in any way our ability to honestly hunt deer. On the other hand, using a lever-action Marlin with a magazine capacity of maybe five would severely restrict your ability to perpetrate a massacre.

Why do we allow our citizens to have them besides the mania of gun lust that haunts our society? Why do you need one? Is it to "keep your family safe" as I hear from people? How many times in recent history has some god-fearing homeowner utilized his assault rifle to keep a pack of mad dog killers from breaking into his home and menacing his family? A simple pump action shot gun will suffice there and probably do a better job - that assault rifle, if you miss your target, will go through  your walls. How many times has a citizenry, armed with its culturally mandated right to keep an assault rifle, grabbed them up and run towards the sound of shooting to prevent a massacre from getting out of hand?

I'm afraid the odds are firmly on the Dark Side with this one, my friends. Massacres are perpetrated by crazy people who mostly buy their guns legally - not rapists and drug fiends. And let's go ahead and throw pistols in there too. I hear it from my friends on the Free Gun side all the time - the real problem is that not enough Americans are armed. That would solve everything. If most Americans were packing, these things wouldn't happen. Rep. Louie Gohmert on Fox Sunday had the temerity to say, "I wish to God she (Sandy Hook principal Hochsprung) had had an M4 in her office locked up so when she heard gun fire she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands, but she takes him out, takes his head off before he could kill those precious kids.”

I'm calling bullshit on all of that. I'm going to go ahead and speculate that at any one of the many gun-based massacres that have taken place in the last twenty years there were people present who were "packing". Enough of my friends and acquaintances carry guns to theaters, sporting events, etc. I'm willing to go out on a limb here and suggest that at the Aurora, Colorado shooting there was at least one person in the theater who was carrying a concealed weapon. But we'll never know because which one of them would admit that they were there, carrying a gun, and followed their very human instinct to duck, cover and run?

Because that's the reality - it takes law enforcement professionals and soldiers a tremendous amount of training, and "untraining" of natural instincts, to run towards the sound of gun fire. A disquieting ratio of soldiers under fire do not return fire, despite their training and the proximity of danger. How many of our citizens would have the wherewithal to lock and load and return fire? There is not one logical reason why we need more guns any more than there's a logical reason why we shouldn't manage and control guns - the way Australia did following the Port Arthur massacre, again perpetrated by a madman with an assault rifle.

Right now, even as I write this, the NRA will be funneling the millions of dollars at its disposal to kill the very idea of gun control, refurbishing the old myth that it's somehow enshrined in the Constitution, ignoring the words written by our God Fearing Founding Fathers - in accordance with a well-regulated militia. Well-regulated? Does that not mean  . . . well, regulation? Militias, of course, existed in the 18th century because America had a visceral suspicion of professional armies, but once the idea of professional armies took over, the days of the militia were gone . . . like horse-draw wagons and a blacksmith in every village.

Violent crime in America has been on a five year low. Murders, rapes, muggings, etc are all falling. This has nothing to do with an "over-armed" citizenry spoiling for a fight, ready to "Stand Their Ground".

". . . criminologists point to a variety of factors for the continuing decline in overall violence. They cite a more settled crack cocaine market, an increase in incarcerations, an aging population, data-driven policing, and changes in technology that include a big increase in surveillance cameras."

CNN

Note that there's no indication that violent crime is down due to the Average American carrying a Glock to the grocery store.  Note that by "violent crime" we don't mean massacres like the Newtown one. Those sorts of things are on the upswing  . . .

 And here's another thing on the upswing, the numbers of mentally unstable people who cannot get help or medication is on the rise. Hand in hand with our problems with gun control is our unspoken tragedy of untreated mentally ill citizens. Despite the shrieks of the Obamacare Haters, private health care options do not do enough to help those who are mentally ill seek treatment or afford medication. This trend towards ignoring the mental health crisis began in the 1970s and was enshrined in the Reagan Revolution of the Eighties. The problem, as Reagan told us with his loveable "Aw Shucks" manner, was Government. Take government out of the situation and private industry will solve the issues better and more economically.

Except it didn't and it can't. We currently live in a society where it's easier to buy an assault rifle and an extended magazine than to get medications for mental illness.

Take every single pistol and assault rifle out of the hands of untrained private citizens and violent crimes will not go up. We can hunt and protect our homes with average deer rifles and shot guns, weapons that are difficult to conceal and which have a low rate of fire.Think it won't work? It worked in Australia, a rugged nation of frontier individuals - conservative Prime Minister Howard, a good friend to George W. Bush said, "Let us not become victims of this American Disease" after an Australian opened fire on innocent civilians in 1996. He meant an overabundance of guns and a mania equating gun ownership with freedom allowing military human-killer weapons to fall into the hands of anyone, including the mentally ill.

Or at least let's have a serious, real debate about the issue. If our bridges were collapsing across this nation we'd have a debate about how to fix them and how to fund it; if our planes were crashing into each other in the skies above our national cities we'd have a debate on how to fix the situation. When terrorists used our airliners as weapons of mass destruction no one fought the idea that we needed a national debate on how to solve the problem.

Why can't we have a similar debate on gun control? Go ahead and look at the faces of the murdered children and tell me we can't or shouldn't have a debate on gun ownership. 

Part of my morning routine involves reading European news sites in order to get a broad view on world and economic events - I can't bring myself to do it this morning. I can't bring myself to read about the horror of the American Disease from the viewpoint of a continent that can't understand why we refuse to see the root cause of the problem. 

I'm ashamed. 

Saying Goodbye - the End

At the height of our success we were breaking apart - entropy in action! Last season had arguably been our finest, involving a bitter battle with a team that theatrically wore black and who played the role of vaudeville nemesis to our Hero. Though they beat us in the regular season, destroying the knee of one of my original players in the process, we ended up with a better record and finished the season as league champs. Another medal! Hollywood style vindication and justice! Cue the music . . .

It was the beginning of the end - we had been together since U13 at Classic V and now we were looking at going to U19 Classic II and the team was fading away even as we enjoyed the heady success of winning yet another championship. We just didn't know it yet.

Spring Season is referred to in soccer as "Short Season". Because so many boys play for their high schools in the winter and spring, the club season is truncated and involves independently set up games that don't count against your record - sort of like Pakistani arranged marriages. And often times the other team can't field a full squad on that day for one reason or another and more games are cancelled than are played.

Spencer was graduating high school and he would go on to play college at Southern Virginia; Decook switched loyalties so that he could play on a team that included his high school friends. Cason - another original! - followed him because this was a Big Club, with access to college scouts and a higher fewer ethnic minorities. He in turn was joined by Justin who spent the last season pouting because noone else on the team held him in the esteem he held for himself.

Jesus, our keeper,  left because he was a goal keeper and we couldn't seem to hang on to them. He just kind of faded away at the end of the season, claiming he didn't have a phone, a ride, a clue . . .

Patrick had been our number one goal-scorer for years - I had recruited him back in the U12 days when I was shameless about stealing your most talented player from your team with promises of glory. In the ensuing six years I had picked him up and taken him home twice a week - he lived miles away, in Braselton; I had fed him on away games and visited him in the hospital when he ruptured his spleen playing for us. He had never paid a penny towards any fees, never paid for any of the camps we held. Patrick's head was turned by a Big Club that saw his numbers and made him any number of promises, and so he left . . . only to try to return weeks later when the rosters were set and his position had been filled. No dice, Patrick. Despite everything we had done for you, you chose to leave and so no door was left unlocked with a candle in the window for your eventual return.

And so it goes - by summer recruiting time we had refilled our roster but it was like something from a Civil War novel: the proud boys who had joined the regiment in the glory days of Hope and Courage were gone, their spots filled by raw recruits who didn't know the culture and the history. Game enough to try to live up to the Iron Horse name but there were too many of them and we didn't have enough time to shape them: this was the last season for the team. We broke them in and threw them out there. Buncha FNG's .

Brian's son was graduating this year and he was opening his own business and so that would be that. Over the years I began to rely on Brian more and more. Iron Horse was so successful I could afford to turn my attention and worries over to my younger son's team, which always struggled. In time Iron Horse became, by default, Brian's team, and it was a good fit. My relevance began to fade as my attentions were called elsewhere. If Brian and I had a difference of opinion regarding formations or tactics, I began to defer to him. Gone was my old bluster and cockiness. I had found myself out and realized now, after years of experience, how little I actually knew. I'm glad I didn't know that in the beginning - I would have failed miserably.

Brian had coached his last game last Saturday, handed the equipment bag over, and now I was the last man standing, me and the Four Originals, and the  Second Generation players, the ones who flocked to us when we were unstoppable - like Victor, and Junior our other captain. Brian had told me, "We managed to bottle lightning there for a while."  We had both wanted to create a winning team around those who could play the game but were too poor to afford Big Club membership fees and in that we were more successful than we might have hoped for. Or maybe not, we were both full of hubris in those first days.

If only . . . if only we had kept the original crew, we would have dealt handily with this team in the gloaming of late Georgia Autumn. Our esprit and elan and speed would have kept these boys on their back-heels and Patrick or Manuel would have scored the final goal. But this group - there was not enough chemistry. Pieces were missing, we were patched up with tape and wire. The sounds across the street from the other complex were silent now and the cars driving past had their lights on. This field had no lights however and it was getting dark.

With five minutes to play, the refs called the game. It was too dark to see, they said. It was dangerous to play. The other coach looked at me and I shrugged. "I want to finish the game," I said. So did he, so did all the boys on the field - but we were vetoed by the referees. Game over. As ignominous an ending to years of success as you could possibly imagine.

I called the boys over and gave them a halting, disconnected speech regarding pride and joy. It was really dark now and people were fleeing for their cars the game was over, the season was over and the team was over. We had managed to bottle lightning there for awhile, but nothing lasts forever . . .

Saying Goodbye - Part Three

At U12 there were four teams that played each other in continuous rotation and I was already coveting their best players, a shameless poacher of talent - the green team had speed that I craved, the red team had one rotund Mexican kid who could score from any part of the field. And there was that other team that seemed to be where, by common consensus, you went to play if you lacked any sort of athletic ability at all. We'd play that team and I'd tell my boys: "I don't want you scoring more than five goals against them. If you get to five goals, pass it around. Or use your weak foot. I don't care - don't drive the score up." I didn't want anyone from that team.

By the end of the season the green coach - Brian - and I were already scheming like Arabs to build a select team that we were sure could compete with the best in the state. The best players from both our teams and open tryouts to fill in the rest and we'd be ready to go. We were gleeful and spoke confidently of formations and tactics and plans for tryouts. I remember these early conversations as being buoyed up by the flatulence of my own arrogance. Gawd, I was such an ass in those days. The very definition of "puffed up".

The trick to building a team is to be able to recognize talent in an artificial environment that lasts only a few days. We had clipboards and stopwatches and various stations with cones and flags where we tried to make sense of speed, ball control, passing ability. We collected stats and compiled numbers. My head spun with the science of it all. This was number crunching, this was the sort of thing actuarial did in cubicle hives set in glass towers across the corporate landscape. I wasn't much good at it. My ability to spot talent was mostly hit, with some obvious misses. Brian gave me enough rope to hang myself. He was quieter and more thoughtful in those days and so I think I had him fooled by my slick talk and my confident bluster. Later in our association he wouldn't hesitate to veto my more asinine ideas. He must have been baffled at some of the player choices I advocated but, to his credit, he remained circumspect.

You want your team name to reflect something of your local nuances and culture - by all means, you want to avoid the usual hyperbolic cartoon superhero names Americans like to attach to their sports teams: the Blast! The Rage! The Venom-spitting Cobras of Death! The town where we were based was your typical small Southern railroad town, bisected by the tracks which could tie up traffic for long periods of time in the middle of the day. We decided to call our team The Iron Horse Football Club to reflect the reality of where we were from. Plus, it sounded good - and Brian, an artist, designed the logo.

That logo and the team name got a lot of mileage over the years and now they were playing their last game. I stood on the sidelines clutching my dry erase board like Captain America's shield and made a mental tally: there were four men left from the original sixteen boys. Time works in two ways, as I've said before: very slowly and very quickly, both at the same time.

Yesterday we formed a team, today is six years later. That first year we won our first tournament, the Nike Triumph Cup. The boy who scored the winning goal is gone, as are several others either because they dropped out along the way or they were cut at the next round of tryouts. Names drop by the wayside and you wonder about them. Some go looking for greener pastures and, of those, a select few shake your hand and thank you for all you've done for them; others slink off and join other teams and you hear about it by a third party. Some lose their love for the game, some realize that the game left them behind, some just  . . . disappear.

Some improbably stick with you out of fierce loyalty despite recruiting efforts by Big Clubs, and one such now stood at the top of the center circle, waiting for kick-off. Victor came to us from Zimbabwe and in the early days when he joined our club he was notable for his joie de vivre, his smile and his inability to get anywhere on time. We'd be starting a match and Victor would be late but then - wait, here he was! You'd see him get out of his dad's car and amble across the fields towards us, in absolutely no hurry, flummoxed when we scolded him for his lack of haste, slowly putting on his cleats and shaking his head. For a long time we called him candy-cane due to an impromptu song he once sang in the back of my car while enjoying the minty freshness of a candy one of my sons had left on the seat. He pronounced the word "beach" like "bitch" and "sheet" like "shit" and the boys never ceased prodding him to answer questions where he couldn't avoid using those words. He told us that once, back home in Harrare, he had been menaced by a monkey and it seemed to have made an impression on him.

Victor had changed over the years, had developed a gravitas that seemed to be based on his role as elder brother in a house where a father was constantly absent, flying back and forth to Africa. He had two little brothers that he had to take care of while his mother worked and picked up classes at a local school His smile was still brilliant and his humor always ready but there was a distance in his eyes now as if he was peering into the future and weighing options. One option that he stuck with was playing for Iron Horse despite the recruiting of a variety of Big Clubs, despite the fact that he made the first and second cut at the IMG National soccer academy. Colleges were lining up for Victor now and he could go anywhere but, improbably, impossibly, he still wore the Iron Horse shirt, still lined up for us at kick off, the creative heart of our team.

Manuel was still with the team too, the chubby Mexican kid from the U12 Red team who could score from anywhere.His dad and sister used to call him "Chapparro" which means "shorty" in Spanish, or something like that, but now he was as tall as me and his young boy chubbiness was gone and now he was built like a kitchen appliance. Over all the years he stuck with us, scoring improbable goals, finding those long passes, harrying his own team mates until they wanted to drive a nail through his temple to keep him from talking all the damned time. Manuel was the youngest high scoring player in the Mexican Adult league and, as such, he was featured in the local Spanish papers. He always needed a ride to away games and, because he played every weekend all year long for his father's team in the Mexican leagues, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of where every soccer field in this part of Georgia was, a human GPS. If, on the way back from a game, we stopped at a fast food restaurant, Manuel would lean over the counter and call into the kitchen - "Hey, amigo!" Then he'd give specific instructions regarding his food in Spanish. "There's always a Hispanic back there," he once told us, confidently.

Manuel was in goal for us tonight because Iron Horse had Spinal Tap Drummer Syndrome when it came to goal keepers - they dropped away nearly every season for a variety of reasons. We couldn't seem to keep one.

But it wouldn't be a problem after tonight . . .

Saying Goodbye - Part Two

Seventeen years ago I used to drive past this very field on my way to church and look down at the games playing out in a mute frenzy of opposing colors and wonder, "Will my son play down there some day?" Sam was an infant then, bundled into his car-seat and wrapped in blankets against the November chill, but I was a young father and the future was ahead of us and I was comfortable contemplating chances of glory.


In those days I was the successful head coach of the boys' varsity team at my school, and full of my own abilities and potential. Before I took over the team had won two games in two years, but my first year as head coach saw us post our first ever winning season. I had the sense back then to let the boys find themselves as players, and developed their game around what they showed me - it was instinctive coaching rather than tactical. It was coaching by ear rather than scripting a game plan, but it was successful for several years and we went to the state playoffs twice before I was ready to step down, all full of myself as a keen tactical coach, a big game coach able to pull out wins, a player's-coach as they say in the business.

I was deluded by my own successes, but it didn't help that my son's youth teams were also wildly successful, even back during the U6 days when "winning" was an exercise in the theater of the absurd. Organize a U6 team correctly and they'll score dozens of goals per game if you have the right players. Those teams won and won and, by winning, attracted other players who also wanted to win. I saw the potential for building a dynasty.

The first in a wave of recruits arrived unceremoniously when a U8 a mother came up to me and told me that her sons were going to play on my team. You need to know the Hmong to understand how straightforward and without guile they are. She told me this very firmly and identified her two sons - one of whom was no taller than a marionette. The oldest was playing soccer in those days because he liked the snacks and juice-boxes the coaches handed out with largesse after the games, but the younger one played for the love of the game and they were tired of being on the losing end of playing against us. I knew their quality from having coached against them and I shamelessly allowed them to jump ship, to my team.

He was still out there this November day - the younger Hmong boy. He was sixteen now and still small but - again, you had to know the Hmong - an absolute warrior. In a game earlier in the season he had taken down a 19 year old player, big as a linebacker, after a dirty foul, and came up swinging. He had to be pulled away by two other players while his antagonist stumbled off bewildered and cowed but the older brother was gone now, joining a list of absent faces. He had once been the rock at the heart of our defense, the undisputed captain of the team, but something had soured in him when he turned sixteen and he became distant and hostile and no one knew why - this boy who had once played so he could get snacks, who would come off the field on a substitution and run over to his parents so he could hug the baby sister he adored. It all culminated with a fist fight between the two brothers, a sudden and quick affair that saw the younger brother humiliate the older one at a practice one day, and then he was gone. Off the team, never to return.The prodigal soccer player who did not come back . . .

We lost other players over the years, but that one was the first one to hurt my heart. Tonight I said goodbye to him too, one more time, as my boys huddled around and prepared their pre-game cheer: Iron Horse on three! One! Two! Three - IRON HORSE.

This was the last game of the season, and for many of us, the last game we would have together - yet somehow the cheer came out muted and lacked conviction. It trailed away and ended with scornful laughter as the boys pulled apart and the starters took their positions.

I looked at the other team but not with the usual scrutiny. There was nothing on the line for this one. Win or lose, both teams would remain in the middle of the table at Classic II.

Saying Goodbye - Part One.

It was another early November soccer game but this time there was nothing tangible on the line: no championship to be shooting for, no edgy adrenaline rush as we calculated points and tactics and overall strategy towards inevitable victory and another medal. After fourteen seasons of driving through the leagues from Classic V to Classic II, winning each league either flat out, or saving it till the last game . . . this one was anti-climactic. We were in the middle of the table with no chance to win the championship and add more hardware to the trophy cabinet and the glory of the team, but no threat of being relegated back down to Classic III either. The season was done after tonight, and so was I.

The sun was going down and the shadows were reaching across the pitch from the scrub behind me. There had been frost this morning and then enough sun by midday to scorch my nose, but these shadows had the feeling of winter in them, as if they had been hoarding their chill. We were on the only soccer pitch on this side of the street, surrounded by trees and evening shadows – across the street was a large modern complex of something like thirty fields and the last games of the evening were playing out over there, but the sounds were muted through some peculiarity of the landscape and I was put into mind of how I used to be able to hear the playground sounds at my elementary school when I’d stay home sick. We lived less than a mile from the school and the sounds of children would float disembodied through the trees, sounding near and far away at the same time. A melancholy sound . . .

The last time this team had played at the complex across the street we were fighting to remain at the top of the league and every game was do-or-die. In club soccer, only the league champion gets promoted to the next level, switching places with the last-place team in the bracket above. We were U16 then and at the top of the Classic IV table with ambitions to rise to the top league by the time our boys reached U19. In those days we mixed natural talent with organization and preparation and so we knew going into that game who the danger men were and what we had to do. We had studied their statistics and scouted their last game – in fact, we made sure they knew we were scouting them, arriving to watch that game wearing our uniforms so that they couldn’t miss us, hoping to squeeze that much more advantage out of the situation.

We ended up winning that game by a solitary goal scored in the final seconds of the game when our wing-back, playing heroically despite having the flu, drove into the box and slotted an unlikely shot from an unlikely angle – and then collapsed onto the pitch with nothing left to give. That’s who were in those days, dangerous until the final whistle blew, every boy playing like a man. Hero-stuff. We won the league that year and, when we were given our medals, I thought back to that game and how key that victory had been.

But this was a different year, a different league, and the boy who had scored that famous goal was gone now, graduated and playing in college. My co-coach was gone now too, he who had engineered the psy-war-ops scouting tactic; so many had come and gone and now this was my last game too, and the last time I would coach my oldest son and I stood there in the lengthening shadows feeling curiously displaced and inert as the boys stretched and taped their shinguards and tied their cleats with their special knots. I stood quietly and did not come out of myself to bark orders in preparation for this one game, this singular game, as I would have in the past. I found a folding camp chair and plopped down into it and waited for the referees to call for captains . . .