MAY 21, SATURDAY

A BORING AMERICAN POST

To day I was locked out of my house because my house key wasn’t on my set of Kia car keys. So I called my son Tom and he was at the Highland Football Club fundraiser at the the Asheville city soccer fields by the Swannanoa River flipping burgers.

If I had happened on something like this in London or in Paris or Greece I would have thought it was a marvelous event and I would have taken hundreds of photographs of Greeks or Parisians. But this was five miles from Swannanoa and nothing about it seem exotic or particularly interesting.

The Highland Football Club is an organization that overseas a number of children’s soccer leagues by age groups from six year olds up through high school with hundreds of soccer players in boys and girls age groups. The very good players also play on their middle school and high school soccer teams and the the very best get scholarships to play for colleges with the dream of someday playing on the USA team or playing professional soccer. But mostly it is good exercise outdoors with parents sitting on the sidelines and cheering their children’s teams on. It is good parenting. It costs a good deal to play on one of these teams. The money pays the organizers and the officiating crews. To raise more money the HFC persuades corporate sponsors to pay for uniforms and advertising.

Today was an all day tournament with many, many teams playing. To be able to play in the tournament each child had to sign letters to ten people who might contribute a donation which were then mailed out to likely prospects. As grandparents Kathe and I regularly received these letters with our grandchild’s name signed at the bottom. It is the American way, using children to fund raise. The sale of Girl Scout cookies is the same thing and when our children were in public school there were constant fundraisers from the parents for one thing or another. I’ve never wondered whether this is a particularly American practice, using children’s appeal to fundraise, but I expect that it is. My grandchildren, who are now in college and have graduated from the HFC are still involved. For a summer job Hannah gets paid to help organize and Caroline is a volunteer. My son, Tom, was recruited to cook burgers for the lunch that was served to everyone. A parent who owns a Burger King contributed the frozen burgers and corporate sponsors underwrote the day.

To Americans this is a completely boring entry. It is an example of the way we do things being so routine that no one notices. I didn’t even feel moved to take photographs. If this had been a Parisian event or a London event I would have taken hundreds.

I did finally take a few. But by the time I decided to, even though the sun was shining brightly, there was lightning striking somewhere within ten miles of the playing fields and everyone was sent to their cars to wait until the lightning moved on which everyone did cheerfully, emptying the playing fields and halting the serving of food. So I went home with only a few photographs of burgers being cooked.

But thinking back on it this day it is part of a much larger pattern of American parents supporting their children in activity after activity of after school events. American parents drive their children to ballet, to band practice, to soccer practice, to youth events of all kinds. It is part of being a well to do suburban American parent whom we refer to as soccer Moms. There were hundreds of soccer moms and dads here with some grandparents. Tom is so used to being a soccer Dad that even after his children grow up he is still there volunteering.

I am sure that from a Greek parent’s perspective this entire enterprise seems bizarre but to everyone there it was as American as apple pie.

But then looking back on a certain form of American child rearing it seems clear that being a soccer mom and and a soccer family is much more than soccer. It is a form of cultural bonding and support. The men who were flipping the burgers were having a great time connecting with each other. The children playing soccer were having great fun with their friends and their peers. Soccer and soccer camps and camps in general and ballet and visits to Washington are all part of giving children every opportunity in life so that they do well. It is loving parenthood but also, unintentionally, separates those with opportunities from those who don’t, just as growing up in Swannanoa separates children from those I have photographed growing up in Assi Ghat, Varanasi.