October 1, 2004 - Friday
Rip's dad is the coach for Rip's 4 and 5-year-old soccer team and invited Harry to come to practice this evening. Apparently Rip has been asking about Harry playing soccer with him for a while and when his dad said it was OK he convinced Harry it was a good idea, too. So, I took Harry and Jeremy and a ball to soccer practice. It went just about like anyone might expect. We got there and Harry saw this group of unknown kids all gathered around and immediately freaked out. It probably happens to anyone of any age when entering an unknown circumstance to some degree or another, but it's particularly hard on a 4-year-old. Half way out onto the field he stopped and said he didn't want to go, tears welling up in his eyes. I convinced him to come sit with me near Rip since Rip's dad was just starting to give a little coaching speech. I told Harry that I'd sit right with him. Then, mercifully for Harry, the first practice "drill" was to put a half dozen balls on the field at once and have the kids all try to steal them from each other. Harry didn't join in right away, but when Rip came right by with a ball and I told him to "go get it from Rip," he couldn't resist. The smile never went away after that. The nervousness and the happiness were all predictable.

Yet there was something about it all that was really quite enjoyable to me, if also not surprising in hindsight. I'd taken Jeremy over to an unused goal area so he and I could play out of the way of the bigger kids and he just loved trying to get the ball in the net. It seemed he could have gone on for much longer than the 20-30 minutes we spent doing it and I suppose I could have, too, save for the very slow pace of our play. But even that was for the best because I couldn't keep my eyes off of Harry on the nearby field, running around with the other and playing in a six-on-six scrimmage with the team. The truly touching part was that Harry kept looking over at me, too, not wantingly or in a pained manner, but with a big smile and a kind of unspoken "hey, dad, do you see what I'm doing?" A couple of teams we even traded a thumbs up or a raised fist during the breaks in the action. No, Harry didn't show prodigal skills, nor did he run circles around any of the other kids, but he did get a chance to kickoff once, do a throw-in, and get mixed up in the action a few times and that was more than enough to make us both very happy and very proud.


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