The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: SOCCER

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are sister, shoes, slippers, snow, snowstorm, soccer, soup, stairs, stamp, stepmother.

SOCCER

Soccer was not a part of my childhood. I avoided team sports at school, and certainly never joined a team outside of school. I don't remember ever even going to a soccer game until my younger brother MicaJon played in high school. He was pretty good at it, I think. He's always enjoyed pushing himself physically... his current passion is road cycling.

For soccer poems, be sure
to check out SOCCERVERSE:
Poems About Soccer 
by Elizabeth Steinglass,
ilus. by Edson Ike.

Back to soccer: I do have soccer memories from the thick of crazy-childrearing years. All three boys played soccer on a little league team at least a few seasons (and often participated in games held at the same time on different fields). At one point I even served as co-commissioner for one of my sons' age groups (though I cannot now remember which!). This meant setting the teams, game schedules, assigning colors, ordering and distributing t-shirts... I helped out for a couple of seasons, until our kids moved on to other activities. Daniel stuck with soccer the longest, but eventually we realized it was not a good fit for him. Better fits were karate and later cross-country. It can be difficult for shy compliant kids to find their place... esp. when they are good at everything, which Daniel was. But that didn't mean he wanted to be there! So even though it seemed a shame for him quit something he was good at, his happiness was (and is!) more important.