Play: Footballer's Wife



 



I know I've complained about soccer's pernicious creep into my life (and maybe a bit hyperbolically by invoking 1984), but I survived our first double soccer weekend of the season --Big E on Saturday and my husband on Sunday.  I'm trying to keep a more positive outlook, which in spring is made easier by the fact that the weather is getting warmer rather than colder and high school soccer isn't in season so my husband's coaching duties are restricted to Saturday afternoons.

Of course, I still have some gripes.  For one thing, calling the field the pitch and cleats boots makes me uncomfortable in the same manner that Madonna's and Gwyneth Paltrow's British accents do.  I also struggle to find patience for any game that can end in a tie and in which the referee adds injury time at the end seemingly on a whim.  I've always been a basketball girl, and in my world all games have winners and playing time is kept with precision and transparency.  I won't even get into the business of what happens when an injury occurs; suffice it to say it's all very well-mannered and involves passing to the other team and clapping.  Weird.

But, despite my complaints there is at least one thing I love about soccer, the thing that makes it okay to drive over an hour and cross state lines to watch a game that ends in a one-one tie.  What I really love is my husband's Sunday morning soccer alter ego.

My husband is a genuinely nice guy most of the time. He takes the first shower every morning so that I get a few extra minutes of sleep and uninterrupted hairdrying time.  He is effusively appreciative of my cooking and doesn't complain about cleaning up my mess in the kitchen. He delights the girls, though probably not the dog, by using our Boston Terrier as a puppet to act out scenarios like Cleo is a supervillian, Cleo is a lifeguard and Cleo is the Great Cleodini.  He is a kind and patient coach to Big E's soccer team and reminds them before every game that their goal is to work hard and have fun.  

But if you only knew him from watching him play soccer, you would guess none of this. That is because my husband --the man who tucks me in at night and then irons my clothes for the next day-- is that guy on the field tugging on people's jerseys, throwing discreet elbows and generally raising the ire of the opposing team.  He is the guy who provokes his opponents to say within earshot of the wives and children on the sideline words that make even me a little uncomfortable, and he is the guy who can feign utter shock and innocence when the man who is marking him retaliates with an angry shove.       

At a game this past summer the wife of one of his teammates turned to me and marvelled, "He's just like a bull in a china shop.  I mean, you go up against him, you're on the ground."

I opened my mouth to explain to her that it really wasn't like that, that I really hadn't married a brute, but instead I nodded in agreement.  "Yup," I said, accepting the compliment.

Maybe he is the guy that the other team delighted in crashing to the dirt in front of where the girls and I sat on Sunday, but he's also the guy who turned to me a few plays later as he stood on the sideline awaiting the ball for the throw in and reminded me that I could wear his jacket if I was chilly.  That tenderness, along with the toughness to get right up and dust off after the dirty hit (and, honestly, to inspire the dirty hit in the first place), is what I love.  It's how I survive a double soccer weekend.

Play: Travels with Cleo

A lot of people consider their dog to be sort of a practice child.  While my husband and I wouldn't have admitted it to ourselves back in 2002 when we first got our little Boston Terrier, Cleo, it's surely no coincidence that a year later I was seven months pregnant with Big E.

If you met Cleo, you'd be really glad that we had the opportunity to practice on an animal before we started in on human babies.

Cleo stoically tolerates the girls' pokes and pulls. She is so reliably housetrained that I think she'd sooner rupture her bladder than embarrass us all with a puddle on the floor. She welcomes us home with an enthusiastic flurry of licks whether we've been gone for 10 hours or 10 minutes.  She love us immensely; it's the rest of the world that she can't tolerate.

Our vet has flagged Cleo's file with a bright orange "caution" sign.  When he found out that we had children, he was horrified to the point that I wondered if he wouldn't make a call to Child Protective Services.

During a visit to another vet's office to check bandages on a mysterious (and expensive) wound she got during a rare escape from our fenced yard, she leaped at least three feet in the air in an attempt to clamp onto the crotch of a friendly technician who'd had the audacity to wave hello to her.  His fertility was saved only by the plastic cone she'd been forced to wear around her neck.

Once on a ferry boat ride to an island rental cottage, after she rebuffed a fellow passenger's attempts to befriend her, he sympathetically asked if we'd rescued her from an abusive home, and more than once people have politely inquired about whether we'd ever consider sending her to one of those no-kill shelters.

Because of Cleo's anti-social tendencies, my parents are pretty much the only people who can (or will) dogsit for us.  So when we all attended a family engagement party in New Jersey the weekend before last, we were forced to take Cleo on the road.  As an added bonus, my husband, the girls and I were staying with my in-laws who are definitely not dog people.  My mother-in-law is, in fact, terrified of dogs and has been scared of Cleo since she first met her when she was just a fluffy guinea pig-sized puppy I could hold in the palm of my hand, long before we knew she was vicious.

So I fretted about this trip for weeks, imagining various scenarios that involved my in-laws huddled in terror on top of the dining room table or animal control officers storming the house with tranquilizer guns.  I was convinced that failure was the only option.

Cleo, apparently, had other ideas.  Save the occasional dirty look or low octave growl at my father-in-law, she was a model travelling companion.  She wagged her tail at my mother-in-law but knew enough not to approach her, she exhibited far better manners than Little E on the trip, and unlike the children she was happy to sleep for the entire six-hour drive home.

It was a relief and it was a lesson: I must stop catastrophizing and expecting the worst of every situation.  Thanks to the practice child for reminding me so that I might learn to spare the actual children.

Let's hope my mother-in-law never stumbles across this photo of our dog contaminating her pristine white spread.

Eat: Brussels Sprouts even my dog can enjoy

I don't know many people who consider Brussels Sprouts to be a favorite, which is why I am particularly fond of the Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Lemon and Bacon from the December 2005 issue of Bon Appetit.  Not only is it my favorite vegetable side dish, but it is my husband's and, even more impressively, it is my dog's.

The dog is probably swayed by the delicious infusion of bacon, and I agree. Bacon improves anything, especially when it's brightened up with subtle lemon flavor.  That it's relatively painless to make is all the better.  I'll be roasting up a recipe of these tonight and re-heating them tomorrow while the turkey rests.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Lemon and Bacon

1 1/2 pounds of small Brussels Sprouts, trimmed and halved the long way
1 1/4 cups diced raw bacon
1 lemon sliced in half lengthwise, then thinly sliced crosswise

Preheat the oven to 450.

Cook the sprouts in boiling water until crisp-tender (about 5 minutes)

Drain the sprouts and spread them on a rimmed baking sheet.

Toss them with bacon and lemon slices, the sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Cook for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.

Transfer to a bowl and serve, or transfer to an oven proof dish, refrigerate and serve teh next day.  While serving them immediately is preferable, if oven space is at a premium, you can cook ahead and re-heat in the oven as I'm doing without losing much in the way of flavor or texture.  They even fare well in the microwave, though the dog prefers them lukewarm.

Happy Thanksgiving.