The Beautiful Game
These hot mid-July days, I find myself up before dawn, eager to open the screen doors and capture any early morning coolness that I can. By 8:00, Peekay is in his Catio on the porch while I begin my daily watering routine. With high temperatures now reaching into the upper 90s here in the Sierra Nevada foothills, pots on our porch are parched by late afternoon and ready for a serious soaking the next morning.
Fortunately, watering is not a chore for me. And because of this summer’s FIFA World Cup fever, it’s been a meditation that has given me time to reflect on what’s been happening in the final feverish days of the competition that began in June and comes to an end this Sunday. In the hours Kit and I are together at the “Lodge” where he resides, I share news of the latest football matches in what is known as “the beautiful game.” In the hours I’m at home, I get my soccer practice kicking assorted balls to Peekay—a feline football phenom who fetches felt balls adorned with colorful feathers and bells. Quick as a soccer striker armed with razor sharp claws on broad paws, he can also stop approaching balls like the best of the World Cup keepers.
Leading up to the quarter final match between Spain and Belgium on July 10, I shared my excitement in texts and FaceTime visits with our son Hayden who has lived and worked as an architect in Madrid, Spain for the past three decades. During the years that Hayden and his wife Ana were raising their three beautiful children Nico, Ines and Catalina, their American grandparents (Abuelo Kit and Abuela Cathy) were present in their lives as often as we could make the journey to Madrid.
Spain and Belgium played their match in L.A.’s SoFi stadium in Inglewood, CA. Los Angeles is where Kit and I met fifty years ago when he was a UCLA geography professor; his children Hayden and Heidi were in elementary school in West L.A.; and I was teaching history and geography at a JHS in South Central L.A. The four of us joined forces a year later and began a new chapter in all of our lives. At the time, Heidi was into skateboarding and gymnastics. Hayden was playing Little League baseball and falling in love with surfboarding. Soccer simply wasn’t on their radar or America’s map back then.
That didn’t happen until Hayden moved to Madrid after he earned his degree in architecture and learned that soccer IS football Spain—the only kind of football that much of the world takes seriously. It would be another couple of decades before interest in soccer began to germinate in Kansas City, Missouri and gradually gained a real following across America.
During our many visits to Spain after Hayden’s move there, Kit and I began collecting Spanish football club scarves and fell in love with the beautiful game. We also began watching the World Cup every four years and came to love Argentina’s soccer legendary Lionel Messi (No. 10) who moved to Spain when he was 13 years old and played for F.C. Barcelona (2004-2021). During this summer’s World Cup, we’ve been following Lamine Yamal—Spain’s 18-year-old rising star—who plays for Barcelona during the regular season.
Kit and I were wearing our Spanish FBC scarves last week when Spain defeated Belgium in the World Cup quarterfinal in L.A. and wore them during Spain’s semifinal match on Tuesday with France. But today as this amazing mental and physical marathon approaches its end, Peekay and I are resting up for Sunday’s championship match and staying indoors from the heat.
Soccer! Oh what a beautiful game!