PRAY TELL: SWEEPS IMITATE LIFE

I have been on pins and needles all day waiting to hear if Isaac made the select travel soccer team he tried out for two weeks ago. He made it last year, and hoped to play with the same team again in the fall. After hours and hours and hours AND HOURS of waiting – I started checking last evening in the off chance the club had gone ahead and posted the results as a courtesy, but no such luck – we finally got the word. While I waited for the announcement, which was to be posted on the club’s website by 5 P.M, per a noon email from the team manager, I checked the site countless times, I speculated that something unusual was afoot, that they were dropping more players on the team than usual or some such potential complication. I prayed. I cursed. My interior monologue devolved into alternating mantras: “Cruel and unusual” and “SoccerHead headache: how would I spell RELIEF?” and “What the hey?” A little past noon or thereabouts, I noticed his coach was online. (We both have AOL accounts, and his addy automatically pops up in my Buddy List.) Of course, I wondered what to read into that.

Then at 1:37:44, I got an email with the subject line “soccer and stuff” from someone whose email address I did not immediately recognize. I thought, “Who’s this? A GRIEF COUNSELOR? Isaac did not make the cut and they’re dispatching A GRIEF COUNSELOR to bear the bad news?”

It turned out to be about a separate soccer matter.

Ah, the waiting. Last year, Isaac tried out for another team and did not make it. That hurt, even though the waiting only amounted to a few hours. After a team practice, the manager said she’d send out emails that evening, and she did. Isaac made the team he’d tried out for as backup, the one he didn’t care about making when he tried out, at least not going into tryouts last spring. Then he had one of the great experiences of his childhood, with a wonderful coach, wonderful teammates, wonderful families. Which is what made waiting for this news this afternoon nearly unbearable.

True confession: For tryouts, I was nervous about Isaac falling back into his favorite position, defense, and not charging the ball as much as he should, a skill I assumed the men with the clipboards (they all happened to be men) would score, that I went to the store the afternoon of the first tryout and bought two bottles of his two favorite sodas, Orangina and IBC root beer and, like some hybrid Jewish-mother-stage-mother-soccer-mom, ordered him to, “Drink! Drink! DRINK!”

Pop, as they say down south, yes, pop, the soccer mom’s steroids.

By 2:30, I was started to get mildly annoyed, even though not being able to compartmentalize is my issue, not anyone else’s, certainly not a soccer club’s. (That’s right, I own it, I bought it on layaway, the psychotherapy plan.) I contemplated emailing the team manager, but held off. One question on the soccer club’s homepage kept catching my eye: THINK YOU'RE READY TO TRY OUT FOR A TRAVEL/SELECT TEAM? Today, before the team announcement, in the middle of the Big Wait, my answer was a resounding, “I’m not sure anymore.” I was mainly annoyed with myself for having assumed that I would know the answer by the time I went to pick up Isaac after school; he would be expecting the word from high when I went to get him. This was dragging on longer than I'd thought it would, and I was beginning to wonder if that would be the case. Then I fantasized about IM-ing the coach and begging him to take me out of my misery. Oh, what a faux pas that would be. Then, pouf! The coach signed off.

At 3:20 or so, I called Isaac’s father at work, since his is the email the club would be notifying. I wondered if the club would be sending out email notifications in advance of posting resulting online. No answer. I tried his cell. No answer there, either. I left voicemails asking him whether he’d been checking his email this afternoon. He emailed. No email on his end.

I know this is over the top. Therefore, I know I am not losing it. They say lucidity and self-awareness are the last things to go.

At 3:56, there was an announcement on the website confirming the manager’s noon email: TRYOUT SELECTIONS WILL BE POSTED BY 5PM TODAY, MAY 30. This left me wondering whether the manager had gotten a head’s up or whether there’s a four-hour lag with my AOL server and the site – which has been known to happen.

It’s 4:15. Do I know why my child is?

I hate not knowing. My fear of flying is rooted in not knowing, in what might be going on behind the cockpit door. (This pre-dates September 11 by almost 20 years.) I hate when someone asks, “Guess who I ran into today?” or “Guess what?” GUESS? I can’t take that. Tell me at once, I command thee. Or even worse: “I have something I’d like to discuss with you, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.” Oh no you don’t. And what is waiting but not knowing. In its most innocuous form, it’s not knowing when: when it will be your turn to check out, when the plane will take off, when, when, when. In its more complex form, it’s not know the result of something, a medical test, a school application. If there’s uncertainty about the when, it only aggravates not knowing the what.

4:52: I know. He made the team.

To celebrate, I’m entering a Coca-Cola sweeps (refrain: soda as soccer mom’s steroids) for a trip to the country of the winner of the World Cup.

I’ll post the details later. Right now, I’m going to get Isaac. Then, I’ll really going to celebrate. (Though it will be mixed, not knowing who else made the team.) Still, I'm having me a nice cold beer. No pop for this mom.

P.S. 7:44: We drank blue beer, since Isaac’s team has the word “blue” in it. (He just had a wee bit, not as much as the green beer I give him on St. Patrick’s Day.)

To enter the trip to the country of World Cup winner, click HERE. You can enter daily until, well, until the sweeps closes on July 1.

To fantasize about which country you’d like to win the World Cup and then perhaps visit, here's a map of the world with the 32 soccer teams flagged for your traveling fantasies. Click HERE.