It is a bracing Fall day, with blue sky and foliage just barely turning the corner from peak to past. Having burned bright, leaves are starting to drop and swirl then collect themselves in corners of field. The pitch is decorated with posters and carved pumpkins and signs of well wishes created by teammates. Pictures of Dehlia and her senior co-captains are propped up for one last look. Introductions and pictures and then one last whistle gets things underway. An injured and under-girled squad all year, the outcome of one last home game will be as anticlimactic as last-of-anythings tend to be. Dehlia and the seniors have played hundreds of games together, connecting back to when they were near-toddlers, pre-teens, teens and now pulling themselves up one last rung toward being young women. Always on the same team. The same fields, the same lines. Standing tall together, falling down, and getting up again. Thousands of hours of practice, improving themselves and creating ties to each other that are there even when the girls can’t see them. We make too much of these things and too little of them at the same time. These lasts. Finding difficulty in fully appreciating any moment that we’re in, due to the begrudging acknowledgement that it won’t last. Except that sometimes it does.
A battered North Country squad loses to a good Colchester team 5-2. I find myself staring at my daughter and thinking about what’s come before and what’s still in front of her. I think about her new ACl, her brace and the bruises that come with effort and perseverance and hope. I look at Olivia and Hannah and Faith and I see them, simultaneously, as toddlers and young women. Girls we’ve watched and cheered and loved since their parents tied their cleats and showed them how to slide in their shin guards and taught them about offsides and how to shake hands. And how we all tried to keep both arms around these fantastic girls even as we tried to push them away. Pushing them forward. I think about their coaches and assistant coaches and the thousands of hours of dedication that is impossible to ignore but now, somehow even harder to remember as memories that used to be specific give way to thoughts that have turned much more general. I wonder about the women they’ll turn into at the same time I marvel at the girls they’ve become.
They all play hard despite knowing what the likely outcome is. They put their arms around each other one last time, pose for pictures, then stride across the field with their parents who are alternating between putting their sunglasses up and then pushing them back down again. The breeze has picked up and what’s left of the blue, late-afternoon light reminds me more of winter than late fall. Part of the ‘Congratulations Seniors’ banner has already come unhinged and is flapping against itself and we talk about how the season would have been different with Dasha, and Libby and a healthy Faith. I spend a few minutes looking around. At the grass and benches and ball-boys headed off the field. At coaches and teammates. At the tree that overhangs itself into the field of play, now leave-less. At the scoreboard that blinks twice and shuts off.
Having come straight from work, I have my own car and return to it, alone. My wife and her aunt head to their car and Dehlia to hers. I’ve left my passenger side window open, and a few leaves have blown in. My Bluetooth connects immediately after I turn the car over and randomly, or maybe not so, Birdsong comes on; a song I would sing to Dehlia at bedtime when she was little. ‘All I know is she sang a little while and then flew on.’ Even though Garcia is talking about Janis Joplin and her untimely death, it’s impossible for me not to connect the line to my daughter, her friends and the inevitability of growing and changing and leaving. I sit for a minute with my car idling and listen to the rest of the song. ‘If you hear that same sweet song again, will you know why?’ In the same way I never expected girls’ soccer to impact my life in the way it has, I’m sure I won’t recognize the importance of the next song that comes along, until it’s already started. I look forward to singing along with it, though, when it does.