Cup final musings

Last week our son's football team won the cup.
It was only a little cup, only a small game in an unimportant league.
But to the team, all under 15, and their faithful parent fans, it meant more than any championship win anywhere in the world.
The teams were equally matched, either would have deserved to win - but his team did ....and their fans went wild.
After almost a decade of playing together as a team, almost a decade of turning up for training in the pouring rain and freezing cold, almost a decade of nearly winning, at last- they actually won.
They haven't had an easy time of it over the years.
 Different managers, temper tantrums, yellow cards, injuries - just like any team.
But what has been amazing for us parents, has been watching them grow and mature.
They started playing as " under 6's."  
Joss, shy and insecure, had to be dragged along on the day he joined.
A group of small boys in shirts and shorts 3 sizes too big.

And now, almost 10 years on, they are taller than us, with their trendy high-hair adding at least 2 inches and their orange shirts always half tucked into their black shorts- not cool any other way.
And I am amazed at what they have learnt:
how to kick a ball in a straight line, how to pass it to others and not just keep it themselves, how to throw-in, how to tackle without hurting, how to attack and defend, how to angle kicks at goal, how to lose without giving up, they even learnt to play and accept the off-side rule.
As spectators and parents we have watched their characters grow and develop, watch them take on roles and positions .
They have learnt tenacity, self-control (most of the time), determination and most of all they have learnt to work as a team.
And so the cup final last week was not just a game, it was the culmination of all they have learnt and worked at and strived for.
They had lots of missed opportunities, goals saved and missed, but they didn't give up
And when the final whistle blew and they won 2-0, the cheers, almost a decade of pent up emotion, reverberated through Arundel and bounced off the castle walls.

The match was played on a floodlit pitch in front of the castle as the sun was setting  over the Downs..
An age-old game in an age-old city played by the generation of tomorrow.
And who knows what will happen next season.
It's hard to pin down sixteen year olds as they turn from boys into young men.
Hard to know if they will commit to training on rainy Saturdays and matches on freezing  Sundays.
But for now, at least, they are a team and they have won the cup and their hair is still looking good. 
Life doesn't get much better!

Cluttered memories

I have been thinking a lot about "clutter" over the last months.
Partly because of the number of times Ninesh has had to pull important documents out of the recycling bin: cheques, passport applications, insurance documents, all enthusiastically binned by me in my constant desire to keep our house free from unnecessary "stuff".
But mostly because we have spent many weekends over the past year, trying to help my parents-in-law empty their 4 bedroomed home of the clutter accumulated over almost 50 years of marriage.
We started gently with the shed and the garage, getting rid of old flower pots and mouldy books. 
But all of us knew, right from the beginning, that the biggest problem, was the attic.
It's a big attic, running the width of the house and it is piled from boarded floor to pitched roof with "stuff".
Huge suitcases, paper-filled tea chests, children's toys, christmas decorations, curtains, duvets, newspapers.  
Like unpeeling the layers of an onion, the attic reveals year after year of my parents-in-laws married life in reverse chronological order:  the most recent unwanted Christmas presents balanced precariously on top. the love letters of their courtship buried right at the bottom.
When, at last, we pulled down the attic ladder and ascended into the chaos my decluttering fingers were itching to recycle, throw away or donate the seemingly insurmountable mountain of debris.
I could feel the words of Dr Seuss  burning on my tongue.

                                  " This mess is so big and so deep and so tall,
                                    That we can't clear it up,
                                    There is no way at all."

But with the house sold and a moving date pending, surrender was not an option. there had to be a way.
And so, grabbing a dusty, overflowing box  from the furthest corner, we began.
We worked and worked.
By the end of the day we had driven to the tip and local charity shops so many times  that our car could probably have driven there by itself.
But, like the porridge from the magic porridge pot, the stream of objects flowing through the attic hatch seemed never-ending and the ocean of chaos in the living room seemed to be constantly growing.
And in the middle of it all, stood my mother-in-law.
"My father always used to drink from this" she says, stroking a small, dusty cup.
" Look, this is Ninesh's certificate for coming second in athletics when he was 6" she hands it to me, "You should keep it." 
"And here's the horse his sister used to play with. I'll give it to her when we visit next weekend."

And for a moment I pause.
My decluttering frenzy halted by the anguish in her voice.
To her, these are not just dusty cups or bits of paper or broken toys. Instead, 
They are something precious and irreplaceable.
 They let her touch her past and bring it back to life.
We are not just throwing away rubbish, we are dismantling memories.

When my parents-in-law were first married, they left Sri Lanka to live in Canada.  My father-in-law worked for the High Commission, so they knew they would probably spend their lives moving from country to country. 
But while they were away from Sri Lanka, civil war broke out. 
As Tamils, their families were forced to flee and my mother-in-law's family home was burnt to the ground.
Her niece narrowly escaped with her life, everything else inside the house was set ablaze.
Nothing left.
A whole family history destroyed.
Nothing left to hold in your hand and remember.
Perhaps that is why, over the years, everything has been kept and moved to the attic:
A baby tooth, an old pram, a worn-out blanket, an electric heater, a single earring, a newspaper announcing the death of Lady Diana.
Any of them could be important one day.
It is hard to know which of your possessions will form the invisible scaffolding that holds your life together and gives your life meaning.
Everything could be an important something.
So best to keep everything, just in case.  
Perhaps it is too easy to imbue objects with meaning.
But it is also too easy to think they mean nothing.

I walk over to my mother-in-law and touch the cup that belonged to her father.
"You have to keep it," I say.

By the end of the day, we were dust-covered and exhausted but the attic was almost empty.
I surveyed the piles of torn magazines, bagfuls of airmail letters and boxes of bric-a-brac that were strewn across the living room, dining room and kitchen floor.
" Well," I said proudly, " The worst part is over, the attic is empty. What a constructive day.
 My father-in-law smiled and poured us all a big glass of wine.
" True," he said, "that's great.  Now there's just the other attic. The one above the extension, it's quite full.......?"
And I am wondering if you can just have too many memories! 

Running the right way in the wrong direction

A few weeks ago my 16 year old niece went to her first ever football game. 

It wasn't that she has always wanted to go to a match or been desperate to be part of that " more important than life or death," football experience.

It was more that she had promised her boyfriend, a Crystal Palace fan, she would go with him 

She had taken him to an interactive theatre event - something she loved, and he said in that case he was going to take her to a football match - something he loved.

Donning the appropriate colours, my niece joined in with the spirit of the match, supporting the right team once her boyfriend had pointed out which one that was. 

 She came back after half time, ready to full of football wisdom and ready to cheer but got more and more concerned as the game went on.

" Someone needs to tell them," she said anxiously to her boyfriend.

" Tell them what?" he asked.

"Tell them they're running in the wrong direction," she explained

And that's how my niece learnt that in a football match, the goal ends change at half-time.

 And  what looks like running the wrong way, is actually running in the right direction.

And it set me to thinking, that life often feels like that.

Like sometimes everything we do is taking us further from our dreams.

That however hard we try to run in the right direction, something pulls us in the wrong one.

" Life is what happens while we're making other plans," that's what John Lennon said.  

And he is right.

Sometimes it's hard to remember that it is life,  and not the plans, that is what's important.

And perhaps, if we stand still for a moment instead of running, we will realise that it's not that we are running in the wrong direction but that our goals are constantly changing. 

Life is full of "half-times,"- starting school, leaving school, falling in love, falling out of love, getting a job,losing a job, buying a house, selling a house, getting  married, getting divorced, becoming a parent, watching your children leave home- and when you come back for the next part of the match, without us knowing it, our goals have moved..

And even if it feels like the wrong direction, we are usually running the right way.

After the excitement of her first football game,  my niece was persuaded to go to another match.  

Not Crystal Palace this time, but their arch rivals, Brighton and Hove Albion.

Shamelessly exchanging her Palace colours for the blue and white of " The Seagulls," she entered the stadium near her home for the first time.

Now a football expert, she didn't query the change of direction at half-time and could say things like " penalty," and " off-side," and " come on ref, use your eyes! "

And when Brighton and Hove scored, no one cheered louder or raised their arms higher than she did.

Which is why, the next day,  she was on the front cover of her local paper, The Argus: famous forever as a one-time-only-die-hard Seagull's fan. 

Which just goes to show, that  in the end,it's not the direction you're running in that matters so much as how loud you shout and knowing just when to cheer.

Mixed-race disconnections

The strange thing about being the white mother of mixed-race children, is that most of the time people don't think they're my children at all.
When they were little it had it's advantages, it made it much easier to ignore them when they were having a tantrum in the middle of the street.  Older people would search the faces of nearby parents wondering who this nightmare child belonged to and their eyes would never rest on me!
But as I pushed them in their pram through town or held their hands when they were toddlers, people would stop me and say:
" What lovely children.  How many hours a day do you look after them?" 
" 24," I would say.
" It's a hard job being a nanny," they would say, touching by arm supportively.
Or others would say: 
" Aren't they beautiful, how long have you had them?  My friend's daughter has adopted 2 lovely little African children."
Perhaps people just jumped to the conclusion that it was unlikely someone who looked like me would have "lovely," or "beautiful," ( subjective, I know ) children. 
But I don't think that's what they meant.  
I think they would look at Joss and Mia's cafe-au-lait coloured skin and assume that their parents had skin the same colour.
And I don't blame them.  
Mia and Joss look nothing like me.
 I think they must have inherited all their father's genes.
But it's a strange feeling living in a world that immediately assumes a  disconnection between you and the people you love the most. 
And it's not just a " white, thing.
I was walking down our road with Joss and Mia one Friday afternoon a few years ago and two Muslim men stopped us.  They were on their way to the Guide Hall round the corner which doubles up as a mosque on Friday afternoons. 
We smiled at each other.
" How come you've got two little Asian kids then?" one of them asked.
" Fancied a change, so I did a swap! " I said, hugging Mia and Joss close.
We all walked away laughing but a tiny bit of me wished they hadn''t had to ask.

And when we visited Sri Lanka with Ninesh's family it was even worse.
No one connected Mia and Joss with me, one of the tuk-tuk drivers thought14 year old Mia was Ninesh's wife and when people asked me if I was alright and I said I was looking for my husband, they would always take me to the nearest white man. ( Perhaps I should have been less careless!)
It's not racist.
It's about perception and accepted norms.
But it seems  strange that in this modern, melting pot of a world, people still find inter-racial relationships strange and mixed-race children " unusual."
" You're lucky," I tell Mia and Joss, " you'll always be different. Unique."
Joss shrugs and changes theTV channel.
" I just wish people would see me before they see the colour of my skin," sighs Mia. 
She's right and sometimes it upsets her a lot.
And as her white English mum I am helpless because it's a feeling I will never truly understand.

But even Mia can see the funny side.
She and I had gone to visit some friends in London. Walking back to the station, we had looped our arms around each other's waists and were chatting as we wandered from rich houses and perfect squares towards busy main roads with rubbish strewn pavements. 
 It was a warm night and we passed a busker strumming a guitar. 
He glanced up and seeing us sang out:
 " what a lovely couple."
"You should take it as a compliment mum," laughed Mia,less horrified than I thought she would be " you must look young."
" Or we just look so different from each other that he thought we couldn't possibly be related," I said, wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes.
We cannot step out of our skins.
All we can do is wait patiently for the world to catch up.
And while we are waiting, the best thing we can do is laugh.

Our family- spot the difference