Goal Posts

Some late summer afternoons, as the sunset drips honeyed light over my neighborhood I would wander out to a vacant field with four bamboo sticks for goalposts and a gaggle of children perpetually at play. The crossbars had long ago been damaged by errant shots, but the grass, yellowed and prickly during the short, hot summer had grown into ankle-high feather-soft and clumped blades of rich green. Every evening the arrival of nighttime was heralded by squawking crowds of parrots and stately clouds of egrets squadroning up to the aged trees on the hills. As the stars began to emerge people start drifting away until at last there was only the moon waiting expectantly in the goal. Usually when I arrive I am placed in the goal (which I can almost completely fill) until some injury or the sudden emergence of chores for a teammate brings me out onto the field. I am not skilled enough to play soccer will people my own age, or even really with children, so I imagine that I have more fun non-competitively waiting in the goal than being constantly shamed by my own students. Initially the hardest part for me to get used to was playing barefoot and ending up with twisted toes, mud caked feet, and a myriad of tiny little cuts from trash, fallen branches, and roots. We play barefoot so that we don't crush one another's feet, and because rubber flip-flops are far too flimsy to last for even a single good kick. As the summer progressed more and more people would come out to play, some evenings the lot resembled a foosball table more than a soccer field. One memorable night at least half the houses in the neighborhood were represented, and more turned out to watch. The teams were never fixed but it was usually the girls and I (and sometimes their parents) against the boys and the high schoolers. Only one sixth grade girl kept track of the scores, and she adjusted the teams accordingly (always making them basically equal, but slightly weighted towards hers). This time of relative neighborhood solidarity amongst both children and adults was brought to a sudden close by the arrival of the rain, which turned the field into mud by mid-May. The goal posts have been brought down and the children have been neatly divided into groups by grade, not to play again until summer returns.