This saturday I went to a morning meeting and had to miss co-coaching my daughter’s soccer game. This week her team was playing Malia Obama’s team. I didn’t feel that bad about missing the game – we had already seen Malia’s team play a couple of weeks ago when we had arrived early to warm up. More importantly, we got to see Bo, the First Dog. The kids immediately swarmed around Bo who had at the other end of the leash a very patient Michelle Obama. Our team’s jersey is a soft lemon yellow – and Bo looked like he was jumping in a field of Dutch yellow tulips. My daughter and her teammates came home with multiple puppy autographs across their jerseys.
As I drove away from my meeting – I got a text from my wife at the game. Don’t tell anyone, but I picked up my phone. The text read: “Th epres is here.” Epres? No. I didn’t try to text back to ask. A minute later the answer came: “Mr. o.”
Turns out that the game started like any other. There was a sparse crowd. My wife was there, to be joined later by our other 2 daughters who were walking from home to see their sister play. I hear that it was a good match. In middle of the game, a lone black SUV quietly, stealthily even, backed up, toward the field, unobserved, except by my older daughters who were just arriving. Sometime later the soccer fans slowly realized that the President of the United States was sitting on the grass with them, watching his daughter and all of our daughters scramble across the soccer pitch. Gradually the kids on the field realized that the Coach in Chief was on the sidelines. Like flowers gradually opening up in the approaching morning sunlight, one-by-one, they raised their yellow arms and looked wide-eyed to their parents. After the game, our team (who, ahem, won by the way – I hope that this doesn’t mean we all get audited), joined together 2-by-2 to make the Tunnel of Honor, through which their opponents ran through to cheers. Malia, the last in line, is so tall that she needed to crawl through – to even more cheers. As the President got up to leave, all the girls were naturally drawn toward him, gently enveloping him as he walked; a tall Tree standing in the field of tulips, this time waving gently in the wind as they raised their hands to receive his. One by one the girls plucked themselves away with brilliant smiles on their faces. One girl bounced up and down continuously before and after shaking his hand. Another held her hand half-raised as if in an invisible sling, so as to protect it from touching anything else ever again.
After hearing the story, I was sad for the briefest of moments that I didn’t get to see my daughter’s face as she saw the President and shook his hand. And then I remembered a story that she told me a few months ago. She was working on a school paper about Woodrow Wilson. She was struck by the fact that Wilson never forgot that as a boy he saw Union and Confederate soldiers, including Robert E Lee, pass by his Virginia home during and after the Civil War. The memory stayed with him, imprinting on him the horrors of war. Petting Bo, playing with Malia, shaking hands with the President, seeing Michelle and Barak Obama watch their daughter play a Saturday soccer game just like all the other parents who have so much hope for their children – she will always remember these moments. No matter what, this is now all part of her story as it continues to move through history. And for me, that is enough to make me smile.
What a great story. Your daughter is very lucky.