I went to my daughter's soccer game last night, Alma scored two goals plus an assist and made a couple of wicked defensive plays out of the midfield. I taught her well. After the game Marissa and I took the team out for pizza and ice cream. There's nothing quite as happy as a table full of eleven year old girls in dirty soccer uniforms on a pizza high.
Hours later Marissa and I opened her bedroom doorway so softly, just to check on her. She was sound asleep in her flannel night gown, midnight black hair spread across her pillow, the smallest piece of a smile on her lips and the game ball tucked under her arm. Marissa took the ball out of her grip so softly she never even stirred and laid it on the floor by the bed. She whispered that when she was a girl in Cuba she used to do the same thing every time her team won a game. We closed the door so slowly that the latch almost didn't click at all and walked down the hall, our arms around each others' shoulders.
"We've done good, haven't we honey?" Marissa asked me. "Yeah, we have," I answered. "Our daughter is strong and beautiful and in a few years she'll be a soccer superstar, she might even make the Olympics."
Marissa ran her hand down my arm, squeezed my hand and smiled up at me. "And it's not just her, is it Jim? It's us too, isn't it?
You know it, dear.
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