A Soccer Family

Ever since I got back from a very quick trip to Ohio with the boys in June I have had a terrible time seeing the beauty that this place has to offer. The magical aura of it was fading with each and every day and it seemed like the harder I tried to grasp for it to come back the farther away it would move.
With the heat not allowing room for much exploration during the day and our evenings filled up with soccer and gymnastics my life here has been focused on the ordinary parts of life - the mundane.

This only made my perspective slump even farther into a "I need to get the heck out of here now" mentality because the mundane is hard enough to deal with when you have family and lifelong friends nearby, but it is nearly impossible (for me anyway) to handle with family and lifelong friends 1700 miles away. Sure, there are great people that I have met through homeschooling - some of them I could even imagine becoming life long friends with if we lived here long enough for me to get to know them well enough - but it's not the same.

Soccer has been in hiatus for Josh since the last weekend in May. There is a lot of drama in his age division right now. Drama that began before we even moved here last October that was brewing below the surface that we had no idea about and just came to a head within the last several weeks. Because of all of this drama Josh's team has not began practicing yet and will not begin practicing for another little bit here while the team's roster gets finalized. (Keep in mind that tryouts were June 15th...In Ohio this stuff would have been taken care of by the 19th of June, but not in Las Cruces. I am telling you this is the type of stuff I deal with on a regular basis down here. Aggravating, right?) And you all know how Andy is doing. (He should know in the next week or two if he made the team.)

One of Josh's closest buddies down here is the team manger's son. He is a great kid. Reminds me a lot of Josh's best friend in Ohio. Anyway, his family invited us to go witness the blue moon at White Sands National Park. (It was cloudy and we did not get to see the moon!) We ended up going and met up with 4 other soccer families. I had so much fun last night, and I realized that this is what I have been missing.

Soccer people speak another language, and it is one that only those with dedicated children to the sport understand. We spend so much time together via practices or games or tournaments that we become like second families to each other. Those people whom we have the most in common with we end up hanging out with one another outside of soccer laughing and creating memories.

I miss having a soccer family. Last night was the first night in a long time that I felt that bond with other families that can only be formed through a love of sports. On the way home from White Sands, in the darkness that only the desert can produce, I felt rejuvenated. I felt that this wasn't so bad for a while longer. I was able to see glimpses of the beauty in the shadows of the night that I have come to love about living here.

I thought when we moved down here that it would behoove me to really try to learn some basic Spanish beyond what I already knew from high school. I thought that this would help me to communicate & form strong bonds with people in the community. Little did I know that I already knew the most important language that would help me form those strong bonds I am seeking: soccer speak. This is a universal language that will always be my guide in finding one of the most important pieces of my life no matter where we go: my soccer family.