On the AirPods, “One Day” by: Matisyahu
https://youtu.be/3WpqZgXRxUM?si=PqalizNmSCvGnf-7
It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog… I think it about it often and miss it terribly. I have probably well over 100 blogs that I’ve started but then life happens… a kid needs me, a husband needs me, a family member needs me, a career needs me. And so they sit… Magnitudes of moments but when I circle back to them they don’t quite feel the same and so they sit in my notes… unfinished…unread. Sometimes, I feel like I’m living from Reels to shorts to TikToks and back again. When I run across one that strikes a chord I forward it on to the people who I think will get it. When it’s something serious it gets shared to a larger audience… sometimes that’s a group chat and other times it goes all the way to my stories on social media. I’m not naive… I realize that there are lots of friends just flying by… See I do it too… my thumb can move almost effortlessly pushing away all of the things. The stories that were once shocking 6 months ago have become grossly normal… Don’t get me wrong there are so many sides to social media and not all of them are bad. But unfortunately there is also a numbness about it and that is the dark side. Which leads me to here…. Sitting in my car during my kids basketball practice forcing myself to write the uncomfortable.
Last Saturday morning my youngest had an early morning soccer game. I was working a dinner party that night so the morning was a bit of a rush. My weekends are like setting up mazes of dominos. A household of people moving in sometimes opposite directions and any wrong move can cause everything to fall. So after balancing the tightrope we were in the car on the way to the game. When we arrived, I pulled up and let him out of the car to run to the field and circled around to find a parking spot. After what felt like half the game I finally found a spot and parked. When I got to the field the game had already started so I quickly set up my chair at about midfield. I was the last one of the parents from our team and the other team was sitting to my right. The team’s coaches usually stand on the opposite side of the field from the parents but today the opposing team’s 2nd coach was walking up and down the parent’s side of the field. He was a bigger dude in all black clothes (which I can appreciate 😉) but as he turned around I realized that in the center of his shirt was a symbol that to some calls for erasing the state of Israel from the map and broader even calls for an uprising by any means necessary against Jews everywhere. At first, I think I was just shocked. Don’t get me wrong I’ve heard all of the sides. I’ve seen the videos, the marches, the violence, the signs, the hateful graffiti messages on a local Jewish city leaders home, and I have even seen the banners being held across the street from my place of worship, but it was the first time I had to see it at my kid’s soccer game. It was the first time I had to sit in my thoughts and wonder if a dad, who signed a coach’s agreement to be fair and honest and treat all of the players equally and with respect, would feel different if he knew my son is Jewish… My first reaction was to down play it…Keep your head down, Amanda. “He probably just wears that shirt everywhere.” “Maybe he doesn’t mean it like that” “Maybe he is just trying to show his support for the innocent civilians who are sadly in the middle of this and deserve aid.” But my brain just couldn’t stop the videos and images and stories from replaying in my head. And the longer I sat there the more physically ill I felt. There were no words exchanged on the field that day. After we won the game… I quickly scooped my son up and went on about my day…I had to be careful that the dominos didn’t start falling over. I really didn’t have time. Not all of the parents noticed the coach’s shirt. Some of them probably wouldn’t have even understood the meaning of the design but the circle of us who were sitting the closest and who all happened to be Jewish felt it. The thing is that no one just wears a shirt like that. When you put it on, you do so to make a statement. I mean I would guess…. The bottom line is that it’s confusing. I didn’t ask the coach about his politics. I didn’t ask him if he was wearing the shirt out of support for his people or hatred of mine. But the truth is that if you are wearing a shirt to a kids soccer game that would make people ask that question maybe you are wearing it to the wrong place. When I got home my brother was picking up my other son for his soccer game and I told him what had happened. His told me that I needed to report it. My initial reaction was along the lines of , “no, it’s ok. He wasn’t being aggressive about it. It was just a shirt.” He asked me, “If the coach was wearing a swastika on his shirt would you report it?” Yes I exclaimed, of course I would… “well maybe you need to ask yourself why it feels different.” What he said to me weighed heavy on my heart. It does feel different. But I don’t know why it feels different. But the day went on… I went and cooked for my dinner party clients and then again I sat in bed with this heavy feeling on my heart… The next morning I took my kids to Sunday school and sat in the parent area at Temple and told the story of events from the day before. And again the jury was split on what if anything to do next… every group I discussed it with seemed torn…
On Monday afternoon, I made the call to the soccer league. The league was thankful for my call they reminded me that the mission of the organization is that EVERY child has access to experience team sports in a fair, safe, uplifting environment and with coaches and refs who offer support and guidance. Across the board they felt like the shirt the coach wore didn’t fit within those guidelines. She told me that they would have a conversation reminding this team of those guidelines. The fear or embarrassment or anxiety I had over making a big deal out of something that maybe wasn’t anything was immediately gone after hearing this leader of the league remind me that the soccer field shouldn’t be a political zone. It’s about the kids and about soccer and that’s it. I was disappointed in myself that it took me so long to speak up. For the days since this happened one question remains… well a million questions remain, but one that I need to answer. Where was the teenage girl who would have stood up that day???? I promise you my 18 year old self would have never needed almost 3 days to say something. Or would she…. Maybe it’s normal to have a hard time believing that people would openly wear a symbol that called for your extermination. Maybe it’s normal to second guess yourself for feeling hated when the world seems to be so quiet about the hate. I’m pretty sure that the swastika was once just a symbol of a political party it wasn’t recognized as a symbol of Jewish hate until they killed us. I bet that made it hard for the Jews to stand up against it 80 years ago. Isn’t that some food for thought…. Tonight I will go to bed thankful that I spoke up.
