World Cup Fever

When I was a kid I went once a year to a Bruins game with my dad.  He had season tickets, and one Saturday afternoon a year each of us five kids got to go watch a game with him, get a chipwich (vanilla ice cream covered in chocolate chips and held together by two chocolate chip cookies -- I've found a gelato treat that is similar at Antica Latteria) or a sports bar (vanilla ice cream covered in milk chocolate.  I knew the players (Rick Middleton was my favorite), I had a Bruins hat, and the one year outing was something I looked forward to as I imagine my siblings did, too.

When we were planning our trip to France, Daniel wanted to plan our going to a Women's World Cup game.  I don't know whether there is a better way to call this World Cup.  I think we call the Men's World Cup just the World Cup, so I want to specify.  Since one kid didn't want to go, we got four tickets -- one adult and three kids.  The day

In Spain Sebastian tracked the games, the brackets, the teams, the players.  In our air b and b, the tv was on in the living room for every game.  Sebastian watched every one, and the rest of us dipped in and out and then heard the highlights each night afterwards from Sebastian.  It felt like summer in Scituate from years ago, when my Gram would be watching golf on a weekend afternoon when we came up from the beach or an evening when my dad would have on a Red Sox game.

The day of the game in Paris Daniel and I debated which of us would go.  Generally neither of us gets excited by professional sports events, and we both know that Sebastian likes to stay until the very end.  Daniel preferred not to go, so I went with Sebastian, Mary, and Hannah.

We arrived around 5:40 for a 6pm game.  I've never in my life done this.  But Sebastian was clear on this one: we had to get there early to see the players, watch them walk in, be in our seats well before the starting kick-off.  We sat in the second to last row (reminding me of Mary's birthday gift years ago: I took her to a Taylor Swift concert at Gillette, and our seats were in the penultimate row) at the center of the field.

"These seats are great!"  Sebastian said.  "We can see the whole field."

The U. S. star Alex Morgan didn't play, nor did another star player, their captain, I think.  Chile played hard, and I felt excited for their team -- after the U. S. decimation of Thailand (13-0), I wanted the Chilean women to come closer to the U. S., to feel pride at the World Cup.  The crowd did the wave, cheered, waved Chilean and American flags.  It was festive and positive and exuberant.  I hadn't enjoyed a professional (do we call this professional?) sporting event this much in a long time (I did enjoy taking the boys to a Red Sox game some years ago; I sat beside Sebastian that night, and he taught me how to solve the Rubik's Cube while he watched the game).  After the game, a 3-0 win for the U. S., the Chileans celebrated outside the stadium just like the Americans -- happy happy.

Italy just lost to Netherlands today.  Sebastian tells me that the final game is on my birthday.