Summer Reading Assignment #1

Melissa Johnson
AP Language and Composition
Summer Reading Assignment-Essay 1
July 15th, 2010


Midget Dreams, Giant Abilities

Growing up, it is easy to say that I do not recall many happy memories of time spent with my father. It seemed as though he was always returning home from work, too tired to pay any real attention to what was going on in the lives of my siblings and me. If we were lucky, he would have the energy to ask how our days went at school, and occasionally comb our hair while watching the Boston Bruins play. My sisters and I cherished those moments, which always ended when we were dragged up to our bedrooms and put to bed, with a fight, because we were unable to watch the end of the third period. These one-hour memories continued to be all we really knew of our father until my oldest sister, Kristin, turned ten. This is when my dad decided to sign her up for the in-town soccer league, in which we all knew the reason for. We were positive it was not because of the “potential” he saw in her, or the fact that “being dedicated to something could really help her in the long run”. It was simply so there would be set times during the week, the Tuesday and Thursday 7:00 pick up after practice, and the Saturday morning games, that he could act like a committed father and put on a show for us, our mother, and the other parents. After watching her games and becoming friends with almost all the coaches in the league, my father grew a real interest in the sport. This is when things began to spiral out of control. Before we knew it, my eight year old sister, Alicia, was heading to practice on Mondays and Wednesdays, and I was being forced to go play in the under-eight Saturday league at the ripe young age of five. By the time I was old enough to play in the big time in-town league, my father had already bought rule books, skill sheets, and even a mini white board with a soccer field drawn on, in order to show me where to be at all times, in every position. I had begun to hate who he was trying to make me become. Kristin finally spoke up, breaking my father’s heart by telling him that she wanted to take up dance, in turn, dropping soccer. Alicia and I sat back and watched how that decision had affected their relationship, and tried not to, but couldn’t help but listen to the arguments between my mother and father that lasted that entire week. My father refused to attend Kristin’s first few recitals, and with his new free time, decided to become the assistant coach for my first travel team. The speeches I had always been forced to listen to before and after every game had now become the soundtrack to every practice and what filled my ears every time I reached the sidelines during a game. The rides home consisted of “you played well today, but…” and “next time you get put in that position during a game, this is what you should do…”. My sister and I had become accustomed to his own kind of “constructive criticism” and eventually learned to love it. We began to realize that he had actually started to care, and the fact that we had both started to really appreciate the sport put a bigger smile on his face than I had ever seen before. We knew how badly he had wanted to make something of himself in hockey when he was young, before his knee injury that ended his career, and once we were old enough, we realized he had simply been treating us the only way he had known how to. Our father had grown up watching the Bruins and going to as many games he was able to, in order to see first person the potential he had, and that had become the reason for his commitment to our success on the soccer field. He wanted us to realize our ability, which slowly became a reality through going to numbers Boston Breaker and New England Revolution games with him. He no longer had to give us incentives of ice cream as soon as we returned home from practice, or being taken out to lunch after a win. We now wanted to improve and be able to help our team as much as possible. We knew that it not only made our father proud, but it gave us a reason to be proud of ourselves. Once he realized how happy we were to spend our time playing this sport, he became more accepting of Kristin’s dedication to what she loved, dance. Her recitals had become time for the whole family to come together and watch something beautiful, such as soccer games and tournaments had already been for years. We no longer only heard the call from the living room to join him on the couch and watch games that he had on film in order to listen to everything that we had done incorrectly, and how we should do it next time. “Kids get in here! You can see Kristin perfectly in this number, she’s right up front!” had also become something we were forced to hear over and over, but none of us minded. Those years had surprisingly become the best years of my life, which unfortunately took me until the time my family began falling apart to realize. Going into my freshman year of high school, my parents got divorced and I moved in with my mom. I missed all the conversations with my father about not only soccer, but life. Those conversations were built by our mutual love for something so simple, and my soccer games once again became the only time I got to see him. This didn’t affect Kristin or Alicia so much, considering Alicia was off at college, and Kristin had moved in with her boyfriend in Vermont. They had already become used to not seeing our parents every day, while I was forced to become used to it while still being young and unable to understand why everything had to happen that way or why I was being forced to go through that. Somewhere along the way, the unexpected had happened. Despite how many times my father had begun telling me the amount of potential I had, I was unable to see it. This lasted until the day that I realized I couldn’t fight anymore, I had actually fallen in love. Unlike many of the kinds of love that go around today, the love of a high school sweetheart, a best friend, or even a dog, my love for this sport will always be with me. Soccer is not something that can let me down, for it will always be there. It is not something that can detach itself from me, for our only attachment is the amount of love and understanding of the game that we share. My father taught me what it means to be passionate, while at the same time teaching me the tough lesson that despite how much love you may share with another, it may not always last forever. That is what happened with him and my mother, and I understand that now. Because of my father, I also understand that the love you can have with a sport, or anything else in life, may happen to outlive even the most important yet common kind of love for another. I will be forever grateful for the relationship that this sport built between my father and I, and seeing him at the sidelines of every single one of my games to this day makes me happier than I had ever imagined something so simple would. The habitual “GO NUMBER 38!” and endless conversations filled with “constructive criticism” on the car rides home will never get old.