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full screen Semi-final between Congo and Ivory Coast in the African Championship. Photo: Sunday Alamba / AP
Unlike most of the earth’s minorities, women who like football have no common sign to communicate belonging. That is, one can spend everyday in the vicinity of a soul sister without knowing it.
I think of kindergarten, also known as pre-school by those who work there and unfailingly hear bans when you happen to write the d-word. But now we’re in France, so let’s call it the manger, because that’s what it’s called here. Why? Apparently because the mayor’s assistant Firmin Marbeau, the architect behind the first municipal daycare in Paris in 1844, was a devout Catholic. It is not illogical to think of the baby Jesus because the French manger today accepts babies from the age of ten weeks (and before you reach for the smelling salts; it works perfectly!).
The early enrollment has several advantages, above all it becomes a hell of an order for even quite young children. At just over a year, suddenly everyone sits and eats – okay, scribbles – by their own machine around a low table in the manger as if they were in a restaurant. Then they help to set the table. Unfortunately, the strict discipline does not automatically follow home, something I have first-hand experience of.
But the biggest the difference to Swedish daycare, sorry preschool, is probably the view of the outdoors. In Sweden: A place where small children are expected to be in torrential rain, freezing temperatures, hurricanes and blizzards. In France: A small playground behind the building that the children may be able to visit this spring for the first time if the temperature starts to move above 20 degrees. Incidentally, one of the first excursions goes to the local bakery, where the children will be allowed to buy a baguette to “learn the value of money”.
And the staff at the manger are mostly real angels. Poorly paid, often understaffed, and almost without exception immigrant women who receive with a smile week after week. The community carriers. The everyday heroes. All that.
Still, there’s something about this all-female universe that I never quite feel comfortable in. For much the same reason, I have a hard time with so-called girls’ dinners. There is some sort of expectation of a feminine atmosphere in the room that I am unable to calibrate. And despite diligent attempts to bond with other mothers, I have so far only made really intimate contact with a young father with facial tattoos who usually passes the time smoking weed in tracksuits outside my convenience store when our children are at the nursery. (He usually calls me “madame” while I pigeonhole him back.)
Therefore judge by mine surprise when Amélie, one of the educators, received a few weeks ago in a PSG jersey with Neymar’s name and number on the back. I felt warm inside and felt an unexpectedly strong kinship even though I neither support PSG nor like Neymar.
I didn’t say anything then, but yesterday I couldn’t help myself.
Amélie had a new soccer jersey that I couldn’t place and curiosity took over.
“It’s Congo’s national team,” she informed me, and after a second I put one and one together: Congo would play the semi-finals of the African Championship later that evening. I explained that my sympathies were with the Ivory Coast in the match and if Amélie was surprised, she didn’t show it with a face.
“Late tonight, we’ll know how it goes,” she said, before waving my child and me off for the day.
And during yesterday’s game, I couldn’t help but think about the atmosphere at Amélie’s house when Kongo lost and went out of the tournament. Today, at least, we have something to talk about beyond bedtimes and the number of diaper changes.
And then the realization: What if my suburban everyday life is teeming with soccer girls that I just don’t know about.
2024-02-09 03:29:23
#Imagine #suburban #everyday #life #teeming #soccer #girls #dont
