Pilgrimage
My dad wasn’t an amazing athlete. I have but the foggiest memories of him chasing me around the yard, and me being astounded at how fast a six-foot adult could move. He spent half his childhood overseas — Costa Rica, Thailand, Brazil. While finishing high school in Rio de Janeiro, he’d fall in love.
That’s where he met my mom. But it was at Estádio da Gávea, training ground of local athletic club Flamengo, where he’d find another reason to love Brazil. Despite Christian’s unremarkable athleticism, he and his brother Buzz both ran track and trained at Gávea. Although Buzz would go on to set track records for Flamengo (including allegedly being the club’s first blonde athlete), Christian was content competing at the high school level. As he trained, he’d watch in astonishment as Flamengo players would race toward the goal mouth, which was covered in numbered placards.
“Eight,” shouted a coach in Portuguese as the ball rolled to an onrushing player — a calculated strike with but a moment to react.
One by one, the Brazilians would rattle the corresponding metal placard with uncanny accuracy to the solemn approval of the coaches.
On the weekends, Christian would supplement his futeból diet by playing with my uncle Roberto or hoof it across town to watch ‘Mengo at the Maracanã — one of soccer’s greatest chapels.
Pelé delivered his swan song for the Seleção in Mexico City two years later and lifted Brazil’s third World Cup. My parents, stymied from listening to the final due to poor short-wave radio reception in Williamstown, Massachusetts, had to call friends in NYC to hear the result. There were no fireworks in the streets, no strangers hugging joyously — just a sleepy farmhouse on the outskirts of his college campus. Although he practiced with the college team, Christian reverted to being an American in a country that already had its definition of football.
Each week, mom, dad and I would set up our NFL pool, debating who had the better QB or worse defense. I could name every member of the 1987 Super Bowl-winning Washington Redskins and their colleges. I was 4. And my Portuguese was as good as my English.
Throughout my childhood, dad visited Brazil a few times, but had stopped going by the early 90s. He would split from my mom soon after.
Neither my dad, his wife or my fiancée managed to win any tickets in the lottery for the 2014 World Cup. But plane tickets were booked. We were going. Through a friend, my fiancée and I scored two tickets to a single group stage match — France vs Ecuador at the Maracanã.
It wasn’t much of a match. France had already qualified, the goalkeepers had the best performances, and no one scored.
But worth more than any goal or World Cup title, were the teary, wrinkled eyes and wide grin on Christian’s face the day before the match as he opened the envelope his future daughter in-law handed him, and pulled out his first World Cup ticket.
