I became a mother fifteen years ago to a girl who went out into outer space at eight months. A girl who was characterized, and characterized, by restlessness. When she was a girl she would touch her nose and wonder why we have it under our eyes and not the other way around; Or if her curly hair would be straight like mine when she was older because she liked her curls and didn't want to lose them. One day she got bored of being curious with her hands and started using her feet.
The 2014 World Cup in Brazil saw him lying on the couch with his Messi trout shirt on. At six years old, he connected with each game, turned up the volume to listen carefully to the plays through the voice of the reporter; and silenced, from the window and with his index finger in his mouth, the cars that passed through the door of the apartment. If Argentina suffered inside the court, Martina got up from the chair and walked from one end of the living room to the other clutching her head, her morochos curlers vibrated, and the energy warmed her cheeks. She didn't say bad words, she just walked until, a play in favor, made her come back. In the final, against the 1-0 down against Germany, I could not contain myself and I could not contain it. He screamed, cried, and locked himself in the room – in that order; His hands pounded on the door and his feet, on the ground. I went to calm her down, but it wasn't the time: I was furious with the result.
Martina Parodi was passionate about football since she was a child.
That girl went through several activities that I myself was looking for her to channel all her energy, like that energy that made her angry when Argentina lost the game. Martina liked to paint with watercolors and brushes, so it occurred to me to take her to a painting workshop. We were going to the exit of the garden, walking hand in hand. One afternoon, standing at the door about to enter, she ran down the block for me to catch her, a game to buy time. I convinced her that it was just a little while. It had not taken more than half an hour for the voice of the teacher, on the other end of the phone, to make the request to please go find my daughter because she had become ill. I grabbed my daughter's hand but she let go, said it was okay, and she didn't want to talk. I was scared, but I understood right away that there was no need to worry, I had a peaceful look. We quietly made our way back home.
Martina Parodi is happy with the ball at her feet.
Dance was what followed. A discipline that seemed to me according to his interest in the movement of the body, but not enough because the distance appeared, again. The year-end show was in December. In the theater the heat was unbearable. His group was the first. His movements on stage, to the beat of the music, his face full of silver glitter and a hairstyle that had made him earthquake-proof made me applaud to tears. Maybe her performance wasn't perfect, but I was sure my daughter enjoyed it.
However, when I went to congratulate her, she looked at me seriously and said, "Never do this to me again." And that I was hungry and tired from having spent so many hours wasting time. We got home, I cooked him his favorite hamburger and, when he finished eating, he put the clothes from the dance show in the box of toys to give away.
With her first-grade bench partner she started skating. The other girl was very enthusiastic, immediately put on her skates and went out to the rink. But Martina kept her shoes in a corner until I insisted, put on her skates, and fell to her knees on the first lap. My third attempt ended with the skates posted on the internet, used but in perfect condition. It was enough for this girl to feel the bitter taste of things to not want to continue trying them.
"Today you become a hero," that was the phrase that seemed to have made her fall in love. Five emblematic words that Javier Mascherano had said to "Chiquito" Romero in the semifinal with Holland and that crossed oceans, generations and social classes. Also to my daughter. "I want to play football, Mom," she told me, confident and moved, after Argentina won that penalty shootout.
One afternoon I came home from work, it was winter, and it was dark early; I knew I would find her awake, because sleep wasn't an option, even though school made her a little tired. I waited all day to see her, missed her while she was away from home. The first thing I could see when I passed the door were his legs in motion and the way he concentrated kicking a teddy bear – because at home there was no ball – and his dad in the arch where several pieces of clothing worked like sticks. I stood still, silent. I was not invited to participate in the game because I would lose the structure: a World Cup on penalties. She didn't like being let win. If his dad gave him an advantage, he would tilt his twenty feet forward and slowly shake his hips, right and left, and say, "Not like that. It's played again."
The "Barça" matches – as she forced me to call them – became a ceremony. Martina took command and left out the cartoons. Sitting in the armchair and in front of the TV in the living room, she honored her idol. The 10 crossed the court in a way, according to her, "inexplicable". Before the game started, I grabbed a block of white sheets and some crayons; They were part of the plan. On the sheet he drew lines in different perspectives that he would use to perfect his technique in penalties, because the game with his dad had not disappeared, but became more serious, especially when we bought a ball. De River, because her father showed her the millionaire world, told her his story and invited her to join the club.
The ball inside the house terrified me, because it passed very close to furniture and appliances. The apartment we rented was small, and the desire to play, getting bigger. "Let's go to the square, mom," that translated to "Let's go the three to the square," her, the ball and me. We arrived at the square walking, their steps were more advanced than mine, they had another rhythm. He would hang out by the hammock, the slide and quickly get bored. I proposed the seesaw, but no. She was struck by the bites between men. With the ball under his arm, he hoped that some child would have to return home to take his place. The boys looked at her funny, at that time the girls still did not play ball, and I must admit that it also took me a bit to get used to the idea. The sun was the stopwatch that warned us when we returned home. She wanted to stay, when it came to football time was never enough.
At that time the proposals for women's football were negligible. The Porteño club, near the Ramos Mejía station, was his first space. There were very few girls. The club's colours were the same as Barça's. Training sessions were held twice a week in the club and as many times in the living room at home. He looked for his notes on the block, the ball, and the increasingly white wall of his room. "Mom, I'm practicing to get better," she would tell me when I came in to ask her to please cut it a little.
He started playing his first Futsal matches with girls of different ages. When I first saw her, I got a lump in my throat. My daughter would touch the ball and her feelings would become transparent, credible, true; She seemed to be in another dimension, she did not seek to capture my gaze, nor that of others, she simply played football, as she always knew she wanted to do.
He played eight years in Futsal. One day – he had just turned thirteen – he told me that he wanted to try himself on a big court, because "something had run out". I asked her if she was sure. "It's what I want," she replied seriously.
The first test was in Vélez, but the club only accepted players fourteen years and older, so they promised that later they would take it into account: "For a year!", "If what you see is on the court!", "I can not understand these injustices!". I tried to explain to him that things are not always the way we want them to, but my words slipped through his heads.
A month later we were at River Plate. It wasn't just any club, it was his club, he didn't miss a game. December again, but this time it was different. For days he just spoke to tell us – dad and me – not to ask him anything, that he didn't need to listen to anything but his coach. He came out of the last test with teary eyes, but without giving away a tear, and put a "yes" on the tip of his tongue.
A month and a half lasted in the sub 16 category. Until the technical director told me that she had seen my daughter play and that, although she was still a girl, the club wanted her training with the reserve, just one step away from the first. A proposal that came to our lives to change everything, because the training would no longer be in the afternoon, but first thing in the morning, the alarm clock at home would sound at five thirty, six times a week, to be able to arrive on time. The trip at that time would be loaded, and the return after school, too. Now his energy would be wide occupied. We had to decide, and as in any decision some things change. I was no longer going to be able to go to the same school, or have the same friends. Outings, birthdays, holidays, long weekends. All that was going to disappear. Between fear, nostalgia and joy, Martina took on the responsibility of taking another step in her goal.
Desire and discipline formed a great team. Processing all the information took her and me a while. We were barely used to the new life when we received another piece of news: the broken voice on the phone, a paper in her trembling hands: the Argentina Under 17 team summoned her to report to train at the AFA grounds the following week. "Mom, it can't be, I don't fall, as a girl I dreamed of this."
Martina got up before dawn. Fiaca a while after the alarm went off was not possible. He would jump out of bed and put on River's equipment with which he would train. I helped her prepare breakfast; The nutritionist told him that his body was like the engine of a car, it needed enough fuel to make it work: two scrambled eggs, a fruit, two toasts and a glass of milk or yogurt. Half awake and half asleep, Martina walked down the stairs of the apartment with her bag loaded. I kept an extra change of clothes for him in case it rained, because training was not suspended due to rain. To get to the club we took two buses and during the trip each one wore their headphones. We greeted each other by high-fives before she walked through the pinwheel of the club's front door, and I was waiting for her over coffee at the gas station around the corner. Inside the court my daughter moved with the freedom that perhaps I did not know how to give her, because it was not about regulating her energy, but about enhancing it; and I could tell when Martina was no longer silent, but ended her training day with a smile of pure happiness.
Today, at fifteen years old, the daughter who rejected skating, watercolors and dance, is preparing to play the CONMEBOL Cup in Paraguay with River. And he trains to compete next year with the blue and white in the South Americans. That T-shirt she saw on TV now beats on her chest. Just like football.
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Sofía Leiva is dedicated to writing. From a very young age she found a connection with reading; He would invent stories and put them in a notebook, or sometimes record himself on a cassette to give voice to his characters, and he wondered if this was a game or a way of life. He studied psychology for two years and recently decided to bet on the world of letters; During her time in college, she began to write poetry, a genre that identified her a lot. Then he got carried away by the narrative where he explored the writing of stories and stories in a literary workshop; The same one that accompanies her in the work of her first novel (bet, with the desire in hand, to publish it). Today she affirms that literature was not a child's game, but a life choice.