A Time for Team Pride, Term Papers and Turkey

So here we are at our team party, in some airless pizza emporium, giving thanks and plastic trophies to the Blues Sisters, my all-time favorite soccer franchise.

“This next player always played her hardest,” I tell the parents and players as I hand Vanessa her trophy. “At practices, she always smiled.”

This November, there is plenty to be thankful for. The harvest is in. Soccer is over. There are fewer footsteps upon the land.

It’s a good time to stop and admire the maple leaves and the midfielders, then to head inside and warm our fingers with pizza crust and handshakes.

“This next player scored the biggest goal of the season,” I tell the crowd. “Kelly put us in the playoffs.”

That’s right, the mighty Blues Sisters came back from their 0-for-October start to make the playoffs, where they didn’t score many goals but generated plenty of screaming and jumping up and down.

Win or lose, the parents always formed human tunnels with their arms for the kids to run through.

“Good job, Blues Sisters!” Lindsay’s mom always yelled.

“Come get your treats!” Amy’s mom always said.

The girls were a fearsome sight in their dark blue uniforms. When the season began, I wanted to call them the Moody Blues, for their erratic behavior and mercurial happy-sad outlook on life.

But the girls had no idea who the Moody Blues were, so we bagged that idea and named them the Blues Sisters instead.

With felt and glue, one of the mothers created a team banner reminiscent of Aykroyd and Belushi, in their dark suits and shades.

Everybody said it was the best team banner ever.

“This next player,” I say, grabbing another plastic trophy, “is one of the hardest-working players I’ve coached. Whenever Amanda got knocked down, she always got up.”

Yep, there’s plenty to be thankful for.

From all over the country, they arrive home, from South Bend and Boston, Maine and New Mexico, college kids back for Thanksgiving, like a flock of very expensive geese.

They arrive carrying suitcases stuffed with dirty laundry, to greetings usually reserved for rock bands and quarterbacks.

“She’s home! She’s home! She’s home!” someone screams, as if the kid had never arrived home before.

“Hi, Daddy,” says my lovely and patient older daughter.

“Welcome home,” I say.

Now, if you’re like me, you scan your returning college kids closely, look them over hard, perhaps the hardest since that morning they were born, counting their fingers and examining their faces for signs of maturity and enlightenment, thinking, “What happened to your hair?” Or “Is that a ring in your navel?”

“Have you been brushing?” I ask my freshman daughter, just to break the ice.

“My hair?”

“Your teeth.”

“Almost hourly, Dad,” she says.

My eyes are all over her, one eye on her pretty face and the other eye on her shoes, which apparently gives me the look of some google-faced Disney monster.

“Mom?” she asks.

“Yes?” her mother says.

“While I was gone, did Dad develop, like, a lazy eye?”

There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. I’m just looking at her fresh all over, feeling speechless and overwhelmed, my heart swelling, my tongue thick as a potato.

Like that morning she was born.

Tomorrow, we’ll baste a turkey.

The gravy will bubble, and the marshmallows will melt over the side of the sweet potato pan, creating the world’s hardest substance.

The kitchen will steam up, and the windows will fog a little. On TV, the Detroit Lions will probably lose another football game, creating the day’s only discernible stink.

And finally, we’ll gather at the table, say grace while the stuffing cools and kids in sweaters kick each other where no one can see. Ouch. Amen. Ouch.

Then their mother will place heaping plates of food, lovingly prepared, down in front of people who will not take the time to even chew it.

They’ll just shovel and swallow, shovel and swallow. Mouths like train tunnels, they’ll eat the way great tenors sing, barely pausing to breathe. In 15 minutes, it will be mostly gone, this food that took two days to prepare.

“Please slow down,” their mother will scold.

Someone will drink too much wine, possibly me, and the gravy ladle will slip from its perch and stain the only really good tablecloth we have.

The boy will belch and the little girl will giggle and my lovely and patient older daughter will roll her eyes and tell us about her term paper on Vietnam, 30 pages long.

Eventually, some goof will drop a fork, then fall out of his chair while he tries to pick it up, drawing the biggest laugh of the day.

“Dad?” my lovely and patient older daughter will say.

“Yes?”

“Try to stay in your chair.”

Welcome home.

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.