Sucker for redemption

March 14, 2024 Amy O1 Comment

When our daughter was young, she played competitive soccer for a coach who had little use for her. Rather than try to fit her in the team in a place where she could add the most value, he tried to fit her in the team where he had the greatest need. I remember getting an email from him in which he told me goalkeeper was her best position. My daughter was a good athlete and a good soccer player, but I knew for a fact that she was not a good goalkeeper. He learned that as well in a tournament match in which the team got trounced. My daughter let in goal after goal. It’s never only a goalkeeper’s fault when goals go in, but there’s a reason they measure the quality of a keeper based on clean sheets. That was one of the world’s dirtiest sheets. After that, he didn’t much bother to fit her in at all.

My daughter is introverted to begin with, and I watched her lose confidence in herself and feel more and more unimportant to proceedings. Also importantly, her skills were clearly regressing. I remember she had a stint as a defender and what pleased her coach more than anything was for her to race up to the ball and boot it up the field. Naturally, once she realized what it took to make the people happy, she made the people happy.

It was dismal. After a few seasons with the team, I felt it was important for her to move on. She tried out for and was invited to join a few teams. With the best team she tried out for, she had an amazing tryout. I had never seen her play as well as she had on that day, and she made the team.

It could have gone lots of different ways but the way it went was well. Her new coach, Coach Nick, gave my introverted daughter an endearing nickname. He made her feel that hard work and good play really mattered to the team. He held her accountable. And she got everything out of that experience that you want your child to get out of a sport, whether they ultimately continue in the sport or not (she did not). She was confident and happy and felt that she fit in. And mostly because a person who had no reason to trust her displayed trust.

I was thinking about this after watching Kai Havertz score the winning goal in the Brentford match and the ensuing celebrations. Havertz joined Arsenal over the summer after what might charitably been deemed a just-OK stint at Chelsea. And not for cheap. He cost the club £62,000. Arsenal did good transfer business last summer but the Havertz purchase was the one that had everyone shaking their heads. What was our manager Mikel Arteta thinking?

And, whatever Arteta had been thinking when the purchase had been made, why, during the season was he continuing to think that?

Now, I do not know how new songs get created by fans for players or for the team, but I would say that past few years have featured somewhat of a renaissance for Arsenal song making. While it has always been the case that songs often get recycled for players or borrowed in part from other teams or generically get repurposed depending on what’s happening on the field, there has been a particular level of creativity from the Arsenal fans of late. And this creativity seems to be on display during away matches. For example, the song honoring William Saliba, which is based on the 50s pop hit “Tequila,” was first sung by the Arsenal away supporters for the August 2022 away match against Bournemouth. Saliba had been such a positive addition to the team, the fans couldn’t help but be excited and honor him. You can have a look at it here.

With regard to Kai Havertz, his song first made an appearance during the September 2023 away match also at Bournemouth. But in Havertz’ case, nothing good had happened such that creating a song made any sense. As far as the fans were concerned, he was struggling in the team and due for a long stint on the bench. But during that match that Arsenal had been winning handily, a penalty had been given to Arsenal and team captain Martin Odegaard handed it over to Kai Havertz. Clearly a charity case. Given the struggles he’d had in the team to date, it was a big gamble. How might it have gone down if he missed the penalty? But he managed to hit it and the fans broke out his newly minted song. Football chants are almost always recycled but I’d never heard the tune used by any other team so I have to believe that the Arsenal away fans had practiced it or planned it for some time, just never finding the moment until then.

And on first hearing, I wonder how Kai Havertz felt about it. On the surface, it’s kind of cruel. Sung to the tune of Shakira’s Waka waka, these are the words:

Tsamina mina, eh eh
Waka waka, eh eh
60 million down the drain
Kai Havertz scores again

It’s several months down the road and, during 2024, Arsenal haven’t lost a Premier League game. Kai Havertz has been a big factor. He has been on a serious scoring streak, including one during this week’s Brentford match.

The song is ubiquitous in the stadium. It no longer seems mean. It seems ironic, as ironic as it was clearly intended by the folks who invented it. When nothing was going right for him, somehow they anticipated that Kai Havertz was going to be important to the team. And even inspired him to live into those aspirations. It’s not so much a redemption–he never had a chance to lose value and regain it–as a “demption.” Being deemed valuable before you show an ounce of value.

Here’s to the people who expect much from us.

And speaking of Havertz, he was a big factor in Tuesday’s Champions League win against Porto. He worked hard all night. Porto did what teams do to be successful against skilled teams. Stalled, time wasted, disrupted flow. Like the Brentford match it was a bit frustrating. But we Arsenal fans were up for it. The stadium was rocking.

It’s hard to play well under the conditions Porto threw at us, but we managed to score the goal that put us equal on aggregate just before the first half ended. We weren’t successful scoring in the second half—not any goal that stood up to VAR review, anyway—or in the two overtime halves, but we prevailed in penalty kicks to move to the next round. David Raya had a wonderful night in goal and saved two, very difficult to accomplish. And all of the Arsenal players who took a penalty, including Kai Havertz, hit the back of the net. He also managed to get a little shove on the Porto manager during the match, cementing his place in Arsenal lore.

I’m still warming up to the guy, but what can you say? 60 million down the drain. Kai Havertz scores again.

London Rain

March 13, 2024 Amy O2 Comments

Often, what we’ll try to do in a trip to London follows closely what we were unsuccessful organizing in the prior trip. I had hoped to visit the Sky Garden in our December trip, but hadn’t realized how much advance notice was required during the Festive Season. For this trip, I registered for a free visit to the Sky Garden as soon as we learned we could make the trip. In reality, very little advance planning would have been required because today was so rainy. I suspect many people decided not to bother. And for sure, it would have been a better experience with a clearer view. But it was still fun and I’m glad we got to do it. We learned that while the Sky Garden does indeed have a garden, the greater attraction is the view. The garden is on the 35th floor of a tower and you can see all of London on a clear day. On a not-at-all-clear day, I really enjoyed the view of The Tower of London.

We also scheduled lunch at the Piazza, the restaurant at the Opera House that has a balcony bar overlooking Covent Garden. In the cold and wet, the balcony was less of a draw, but we enjoyed a yummy lunch anyway. Covent garden market is mostly covered. While we normally are not big shoppers, we enjoyed ducking in out of the rain. I sampled some warm tea at the Wittard of Chelsea tea shop and bought some rose tea for my daughter.

On Sunday we had planned a day that included a return to Kew gardens, so I selected a pub in Brentford called the The Black Dog for Sunday roast. It was a 10-minute walk from a museum called the Musical Museum of London, where we started our day. The Musical Museum turned out to be mostly the collection of machines that made music started through the compilation of one man, Frank Holland. The collection includes a Wurlitzer museum organ, player pianos, and some of the most interesting music “boxes” I could ever have imagined, including huge ones that play drums, violins, horns. The museum holds music machines built since the 1700s, right up to the phonograph that first brought music machinery to the masses, a great many of them still functional. We enjoyed a wonderful tour of the museum given by Edward. Highly recommend.

Our Sunday roast was also delicious. The Black Dog was a friendly neighborhood pub. We had the roast beef.

Sadly, we had to cut our tour of Brentford short with no Kew gardens because the rain had become seriously aggressive. Given how we had hit the ground in London running, we were happy for an excuse to return to the hotel for a quick nap before heading out for dinner and going to the musical, Six, about the six wives of Henry VIII. It was a good musical to attend while jet lagged. Loud and energetic.

In our visits to London, we’ve rarely left town, but I had always wanted to visit the Cotswolds, a hilly and picturesque area about 2 hours away by car. I’m too much of a chicken to attempt to drive on the “other” side of the road, so I booked a tour with Viator. We’ve used Viator when traveling to other places when we’ve wanted mostly to plan for ourselves but sometimes pass the planning (and driving) off to someone else. Our tour was Monday, the only day since we’ve been in London that it didn’t rain. That was extremely lucky. Our tour went to Burford, Bibery, Bourton-on-the-Water, and Stow on the Wold. Our tour guide, David, was extremely knowledgeable about the area and, as it turned out, a wonderful jazz vocalist. We got him to play some of his music on the bus. We had time to walk, eat, and pub, and enjoy scenery on the nicest day of our visit.

Even with the rain, we did plenty. And what we could not do because of the rain, well, hopefully that’s a seed of an idea for next time.

A note for future me: maybe consult the weather before you show up. 🙂

Pep talk from the universe

March 8, 2024March 8, 2024 Amy O1 Comment

A lot has happened in our world since our last visit to London. My dear mother-in-law passed away recently, not long after she moved into assisted living. She was such a lovely person, it’s hard to think about her not being among us. My husband has been busy, visiting with his mom in her final days, helping my father-in-law with financial stuff, researching and writing an obituary, and so forth. My husband has also some challenges with joint pain and is in the process of commencing physical therapy. And, right before our last trip to London, I was diagnosed with noninvasive breast cancer. My 2024 has included a lot of doctor visits and two surgeries, with radiation treatment to come in a few weeks. And every time I get together with friends lately, the subject has come up, “When are you planning to retire?”

The sum of all this addition has produced at our home a lot of what my son refers to as “old people talk.” I’ve been especially exploring the idea of what makes for a good retirement, or more to the point, what kind of retirement doesn’t feel like you are just waiting around to finally die? I’ve seen examples of people in retirement who’ve look like death would be a serious interruption of some great living, and examples where it seems death already came–they just haven’t realized it yet.

A few weeks ago, I was in the office of one of the financial planners who works for my firm. I help build software for our financial planners and was visiting to get his impression of a new feature we are building. I noticed he had a Post-it note attached to his bookcase and asked him about it. He told me one of his clients had quoted it to him and he wrote it down. A good life, so the client said, requires:

Something to do
Someone to love
Something to believe in
Something to look forward to

Note that the planner is quoting a client who is quoting someone, but in googling I’m unable to come up with a definitive source to attribute. In any case, I find this simplistic list to be compelling. The people who look like they are living out a good life all seem to have those things. And the ones who have a life I do not wish to emulate are missing some or all of those things.

That’s Message 1 from the universe.

Message 2: as I navigate the cancer diagnosis, for better or for worse, I’m working with physicians in a medical group associated with a particular hospital. It has made taking each “next step” relatively easy. Dr. A’s office says “make an appointment with Dr. X.” I have barely entered my house after leaving Dr. A’s office when Dr. X’s scheduling person is on the phone to set up an appointment.

This particular group has a prior association with a particular religious order. So at the end of the endless collection of data in every visit about my health history and the history of every family member, they always ask four kind of strange questions.

Do you have someone in your life who loves you?
Do you have something you look forward to?
Do you have something in your life that brings you joy?
Are you at peace today?

The first time I was asked those questions, I asked, “Is someone doing a research project?” Now I wonder if it’s not just a more disarming way to ask people about how they are really doing. Yes, they already asked me if I live with someone because they need to make sure I can get by without heavy lifting after surgery. But does that person love me? We are at a different level now. I don’t know what they would do differently if ever I answered “no” to the questions but so far, with clean conscience, I have always been able to answer “yes.”

I say “with clean conscience” because I’ve been surprised sometimes how much my inclination has been to not be fully honest. When my husband is with me during the medical questioning, he serves as a truth meter. Once before an MRI I was asked by a medical professional how I function in tight spaces. Naturally, I behaved as though this would not be a problem at all. But my husband was present and he said, “uh, really?” In the end, it was agreed that this procedure was best completed under anti-anxiety medication. My husband is not usually present at my appointments so the truth is sometimes, let us say, under-examined.

The way I choose to look at those four questions is they must be asking because those things are medically important to quality of life. Looking at the people who seem like they are living well, I have to agree that they would usually be able to answer these four questions in the affirmative.

If we were to do a Venn diagram of the two messages from the universe, we are easily able to note that one of the overlapping ideas is to have something to look forward to.

And that is the one that would be a bit of a struggle, if not for one essential fact: We’ve been lucky enough to score two tickets to the Champions League match against Porto next Tuesday and are leaving for London tonight. As unlucky as it was to have to have a second surgery when we had thought it would only be one, it re-set the clock a bit on radiation treatment which allows the perfect window for travel.

And so, I depart for London after weeks of looking forward to the trip, with someone I love (who I have every reason to believe also loves me), to do a bunch of fun things that will bring us joy, in the hope & belief that Arsenal can make it to the next round of the Champions League. And hopefully, return to Chicago at great peace.

It’s practice for the future.