She watched her son from the bench at the edge of the pitch.
He was not fast. He was not a natural. He tried very hard and was frequently in the wrong place and occasionally tripped over his own feet and he smiled through all of it with a quality of endurance that she found, at times, nearly unbearable to watch.
He'd asked to try football. She'd said yes. He'd not excelled at it. He'd asked to keep going. She'd said yes again.
Every Saturday morning, nine o'clock, the bench. The cold if it was cold, the heat if it was hot, the mud in November, the particular smell of a football pitch at eight-fifty-five while she waited with the other parents.
She watched him try.
He didn't score today. He almost did, once — got close enough that she'd held her breath — but the keeper had been there. He looked at her from the pitch after the almost and she gave him the thumbs up and he grinned and ran back into position.
On the drive home he talked about the game. He didn't talk about not scoring. He talked about what had happened, who had done what, the funny thing at half-time with the orange slices.
She drove and listened and thought about how much she loved this specific human being. This imperfect, trying, resilient, orange-slice-discussing small person.
She was very tired.
She was also very glad to be here.
The trying that nobody applauds is the trying that matters most.
