A Vote For Basketball

Last week, every meteorologist in the state put the fear of God into us by forecasting a horrendous wind and rain storm for Thursday.  All day long people talked about nothing but the impending storm.  We took in our patio umbrella and I made sure to have batteries for the flashlights.   The forecasters kept pushing back the start time of the storm.  Juliana's coach (aka Ritu) canceled soccer practice in anticipation of nasty conditions.  What we finally ended up getting was a big fat lot of nothing.  It rained, sure, and it was a bit breezy, but really there was nothing to write home about.  I mention this because our forecasters have reached a new level of misinformation this fall and I've pretty much given up on believing the weather.   (For the record, the newspaper on Saturday forecasted "Spotty Showers".)

 Saturday morning my alarm went off at 6:30 and I woke to the sound of torrential rainfall.  David had an early game and Ritu was working all weekend so Juliana and I were on soccer duty.   We loaded into the van around 7:45.  I found myself pulling my glasses out of my purse.  Those would be the glasses I use for night driving.  The rain was still falling hard and the temperature read 44 degrees.  Puddles of water covered the highway and traffic moved slowly.  The game was at a field we hadn't traveled to before and I busied myself with finding the way.  I warned David that Juliana and I might stay in the van and watch from there, but it turned out the parking lot was down the hill from the actual field, so that idea had to be discarded.

The team warms up for 45 minutes before the game starts.  The rain was coming down even harder, so I sent David up the hill to the field armed with his backpack and an umbrella.  Juliana and I stayed in the van for 20 minutes or so, but the rain started to ease and I needed a bathroom, so we set out to walk around a bit.  Juliana enjoyed watching the rainwater course down the sidewalk like a river.  She pranced around with her umbrella and informed me that Winnie the Pooh can turn an umbrella upside down and sail in it like a boat. 

Now, we are no strangers to rain.  Soccer games are not canceled for anything other than lightning.  David has been playing since he was 4 years old.  I've been standing out in the rain since he was four years old.  There is a Rain Hierarchy for parent spectators.  Basic Rain means you wear your jacket that has a hood.  People around here don't bother much with umbrellas because there is no sense in tying up one hand with umbrella-holding 8 months out of the year.  A decent rain jacket with a hood is a must.  On days with Heavy Rain, you wear your jacket with a hood and you don't bother setting up your foldable chair.  Sitting in that sort of rain will just make you wetter than standing in it.  On days with Nasty Rain, you add in the umbrella because the wind is going to  blow the rain in your face despite your hood.  This seemed to qualify as Nasty Rain so I didn't bother with my chair and Juliana and I were both armed with umbrellas.  The one saving grace of this game was that the soccer field was made of artificial turf.  If nothing else, it wouldn't be muddy.  The game started.  The rain continued.  The wind picked up.  Our spectators huddled together and cheered on the boys.  A few of the moms came around looking to see who had towels or blankets in their cars to help with keeping the boys on the bench dry.  I had one of each that I happily donated to the cause.  Beneath our team's portable canopy, the boys sat close together with a blanket over their laps and another one draped across their shoulders.

Juliana was still having fun at this point.  She abandoned her umbrella and turned her face to the sky.  We marveled at one of the boys whose usual mop of curls was completely straight from the saturation.  We laughed at a lost squirrel who, clearly confused, ran across the turf field in the middle of the game.  As the rain started to dampen my spirits (HA, see what I did there?), I mused out loud about the positive attributes of basketball.  Namely the fact that it's played indoors.  Andnever one to suffer silently, I whined "Why did we move to Oregon?"  Another mom try to soothe things by pointing out how beautiful it is here.  I remarked that her cup was always half full.  Mine was half full, too.  Of RAINWATER.

Midway through the first half, the wind and rain picked up again.  My umbrella blew inside out and a nice dad from the other team helped me to fix it.  Juliana was getting cold and crabby and I hugged her to keep her warm.  She started asking to go to the van, but the parking lot was too far from the field for me to leave her there alone.  I guess I could've gone with her, but I wanted to watch the game.  Plus, it didn't seem right that David should be out there while I lounged in the heated van.  At halftime, she and I went to the van for a break and she requested the chair to sit in.  I had an extra sweatshirt in the van, so I set her up in the chair, under a tree, with the sweatshirt like a blanket and her umbrella over her.

The rain continued to come down in buckets.  My pants were soaked from the knee down and, in a handy physics lesson,  they flattened against my legs creating a perfect gutter system for delivering water into my shoes.  The canopy protecting the players kept threatening to blow over.  With each gust of wind, water that had collected on the canopy top drained off in gushes.  I noticed that David was standing awfully close to the kid he was guarding.  I'm not sure if it was to block the wind or steal some of his body heat.  With about five minutes left, the other team broke the scoreless tie with a goal. The soccer was starting to look awfully ineffective as the boys got colder and stiffer.  Our coach had the moms who were helping under the canopy start packing up all the boys' backpacks and she sent another parent to tell us to start warming up our cars.  I took Juliana down to the van to at least be out of the wind and rain while I headed back up to retrieve David, his backpack, my blanket, towel, and umbrella.  The boys came off the field  shivering and with teeth chattering.  A few of them, bless their hearts, were crying. 

I hustled David down the hill and into the van.  I covered him and Juliana with the blanket.  I cranked the heat up to high and got the hell out of there.  By this time Juliana was sobbing because she was so cold and wet.  It was 10:30 when we got home and I saw that there was a message on my voice mail.  I prayed that it was a phone call telling me Juliana's game was canceled.  Instead it was my mom saying, "If those children are out playing soccer in this weather, I am going to call Protective Services."  I sent Juliana up to put on dry clothes and helped peel David out of his uniform and shin guards.  He was still shivering and starting to get teary eyed.  I had him get in the shower and told him he could stay there as long as he wanted.  He started the water but kept standing there adjusting it saying it felt too hot even when he had it turned to cold.  I realized he was checking it with his frozen hands.  I helped him turn the heat back up and told him to check it with a different part of his body. 

Juliana and I got into dry clothes and climbed into my bed.  I returned my mom's phone call and called Ritu at work to let him know there was a good chance we'd be blowing off Juliana's game.  Seeing as he's the coach, he sounded dubious that I would be setting this poor example for the rest of the team.  I kept explaining how it had been at David's game but he'd been inside at work and couldn't appreciate the misery of it. 

By this time 30 minutes had gone by and David was still in the shower.  He finally came out and I knew he was feeling better when he remarked "I think your teeth chatter when you're cold because your body is trying to make a spark come out of your mouth to set you on fire and warm you up."

Now it was after 11:00..  Juliana had to be at her game at noon.  I called my friend who was coaching in Ritu's absence and told him we wouldn't be there.  The weather was clearing up at this point, but no way was I dragging everybody back out.  Ritu called back around noon and sounded a little disappointed that we weren't at the game.  I had zero guilt over it, but I really wanted him to understand how bad it had been.  We finished our conversation, then I immediately called him back.  "Maybe this will help you understand", I said.  "On the way home from the game, David told me that if it was like this for his game tomorrow, he would rather go to Sunday School."