Yesterday was not poor Dane’s day. All week long he looks forward to Tuesdays. Soccer day. The hours between school and soccer practice are almost unbearable, the boy has no concept of time. Timers, clocks, stickers-on-clocks, nothing works. He must ask me every 1-to-5 minutes;
“Is it time?”
“Can we go now?”
“How much longer?” It drives me crazy, and makes me wish for more soccer days in a week. Thankfully, as spring gets closer, more soccer days will be possible. I’m counting down the days, or would if I knew what day would be The Magic Day that soccer is more than one day a week.
Yesterday we got to soccer with barely a minute a spare, I kicked him out of the car to run into the school and get his sports clothes & shoes while I went to park the van. I go to open my door and see a very sad little boy standing there staring at me:
“Run, Dane! Run!” I yell, but he keeps standing there looking utterly dejected. I slowly notice he has no turnbeutel (sportbag) in his hands. No shoes. No shorts.
“Oh no, is the door locked?” and he nodded his head even sadder than before, if that was possible. Here’s the thing, one of the hardest things for me to adapt to in Germany is the concept of a shoe for every occasion. I mean this is fine for me, in fact, I strongly encourage this for me. I loooooooove shoes. But for a six-year-old growing boy? It’s an exercise in futility and expense. Still, we choose to live here, we must adapt.
Dane has a go-to-school shoe. When he gets to school he changes to hausschuhe (house shoes, or slippers). He also has rainboots at school for muddy/rainy days or snowboots for snowy days. He also keeps turnschuhe (or sportshoes) at school for the 3-times a week sports class. This caused some confusion at the beginning of this year, during the transition from warm & sunny to cold & rainy. Because on cold & rainy days sport is in the gym, and then you must have indoor sportshoes. Shoes never worn outside and shoes with white soles. So he had two different pairs of sportshoes at school, just in case. All of this is uber-logical but it really, really hurts the old pocketbook and challenges a mom with multiple kids with ever-growing feet.
Dane’s feet just grew. He is down to one pair of sportshoes, snowboots, and one pair of hauschuhe. That’s it. No extra’s, no spares. Its almost spring, I will stock up then. It does mean his school sportshoes are also his after-school soccer shoes and they are kept at school. We do not have an extra pair at home, or an extra pair only for soccer. So when that door was locked unexpectedly yesterday, he had no sportshoes and playing soccer in snowboots is not okay. Yesterday Dane missed out on soccer. His favorite day of the week. The day of the week he looks forward to all week. My heart broke just a little.
Thankfully today is horseback riding day. His new second favorite day of the week. I am fervently trying to convince him to ride a pony. He insists he is an awesome horse rider (he did it once!) and I just need to give him the reins and he will run & run with Carmen. I am a little nervous about this afternoon and his overconfidence. I did find out this morning what is wrong with the ponies:
“They are too hairy.”
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