Fútbol and other, more important things

I guess the sudden love for soccer was the first surprise.

My brother had never been much of a sports person before his mission trip to Ethiopia, besides the occasional hockey game we went to, or the shot put and discus he did at school. None of our family really was, of course. At that time, I spent the majority of my time in my bedroom, writing, reading, drawing, or simply messing around. My headphones always accompanied me when I did these things. And I always had a song stuck in my head.

The trip was also before he joined marching band, which he joined about a month later, and was the closest thing to a sport he did that summer. This was probably for the best. Marching band, from what I could infer at the age of eleven, closely resembled the military. Which meant no breaks, a few heat strokes, and very strict rules. 

If my brother had been in marching band earlier that summer, the trip would not have happened. He would have surely missed too many practices.

Either way, I was confused when he had the sudden urge to name our new-born rabbits after soccer players. Besides Gus and Lassie (Who were mostly called Gassie, considering we could never tell them apart) the tiny rodents were dubbed things such as Messie, Neymar Jr., or Ronaldo. 

Furthermore, my parents were somehow convinced to buy Peacock, the cheapest television app from which we could watch soccer, which was gradually becoming fútbol in our household. Of course, Ma and Daddy probably saw this as a chance to make my brother practice his Spanish. I, for one, could not understand a word the commentators said, although I was also bilingual. They were speaking far too fast.

For Thanksgiving (And yes, I realize that this is generally not a gift-giving holiday), a few months later, my parents bought him a soccer ball. This was the alternative to kicking around a basketball. The only problem- he began to use the garage doors as goals. From the outside, round dirt imprints marked them. From the inside, the foam was beginning to tear and come off. 

No one ever really successfully put a stop to it.

I thought this would be just another faze. Like my brother's odd tendency to say “SQUAWK” very loudly when anything even mildly surprising happened from a few years ago (Middle schoolers do strange things sometimes, alright?), this would soon die away.

If only.

A year later, the fútbol obsession was still going strong. He now played Fifa 23 for at least an hour a day, EVERY DAY. The situation would have been no different if he had gotten a girlfriend. Sadly, the household rule “No dating until the age of 18” did not seem to apply to video games. 

And at this point, I couldn’t help but learn a bit about fútbol, as well. And, I admit, it was nice to see my brother enjoy himself so fully, really get invested into it. And his urge to teach the whole family about the sport meant I could more easily converse with the sibling who usually had nothing to talk about with me, his little sister. We had few things in common, really. Our faces looked surprisingly similar, even though my hair was a golden dirty blond, and his was nearly black. But I, as formerly mentioned, spent a lot of time reading and listening to music. He liked video games. I liked to bake, he spent more time outside. I was messy and disorganized, his room was always mostly clean. Writing was my passion, and it was never really his thing.

So when he taught things to me, I felt like we could both actually get something out of it. 

Of course, being 15-ish, he was a fairly impatient teacher. And I was an impatient student. Soccer, like many things he talked about, confused me greatly, and we would sometimes even get into arguments about it. 

But those short conversations made us a little more comfortable around each other. Enough so that, when he asked how my day was, I knew he didn’t just want a favor from me, or something. 

That was another thing that that trip changed about my older brother. He seemed miraculously… nicer.

He seemed more willing to talk with me, like I said. But there was just something about how he acted now… he seemed changed.

I remember a little potluck we held at church one day. It was a small event for the group that went to Ethiopia, to share their experiences. My brother and my best friend’s older sister had been in charge of the games at the VBS they had held there. My friend’s older sister shared a short memory of how they had used long poles to shake the water off the tents from the inside. It was interesting, though she didn’t elaborate much.

When the microphone reached my brother, he took it. He wasn’t nervous at all, it seemed, which amazed me. My hands always would shake when I had to speak in front of over twenty people, and I often fumbled over my words. My brother, on the other hand, took public speaking into his stride. His voice suggested that he was at ease. The church, of course, was our family, and we had both gone there for nearly our whole lives. Still, the idea of talking into a microphone to all of them, at once, on a stage…

Let’s just say I would not act like it was a simple conversation.

My friend’s sister seemed to feel the same way. I could see it in the way she awkwardly held the microphone, the way her eyes roamed the big room. But my brother, he opened his mouth, started talking into that little piece of technology. And though, as his sister, I could never admit it to him, I felt a surge of pride. For my brother. Who had the tendency of surprise attacking me when I was in second grade. 

That brother.

He started talking about missing camp. I never thought about that before. I myself had gone to camp while he and my dad went to Ethiopia on their mission trip, which turned out to be a horrible experience. (For reasons I would rather not disclose.) I hadn’t realized my brother had been supposed to go, as well. 

He said “You know, all camps say that one week will be an ‘experience to change your life.’ But I think that this trip to Ethiopia has really changed my life, in a way some camp never could. I don’t at all regret missing it.”

Yeah. That was pretty nicely done.

And it was true. My brother had changed. Along with fútbol, I think he had developed other, deeper connections with people in Ethiopia. Not just the kids at the VBS, though they all adored him, (and his hair,) but also the guys they worked with there. He had made real friends. To be honest, I think it might have been a little like camp for him. Like how you can’t really avoid becoming friends with the kids in your cabin, my brother couldn’t help forming ties with the Ethiopians. 

He turned 15 in Ethiopia, too. They told me that they sang to him in three different languages- English, Spanish, and, of course, the language they spoke in the region they went to. 

These people-they didn’t have a lot. But from what I heard, they were crazy hospitable. 

And I think that changed my brother. The people he met there made him a better person, and I think he will carry that trip, those people, with him forever.