Thread by @TheRealHoarse

My son has a soccer game in a couple hours. He plays in a travel league. His team is made up of a great group of kids. It has been an absolute joy.

Lately, my son has been signaling that this may be his last year.

1/

The road is diverging. Kids who are hardcore into soccer are going in one direction and kids who just enjoy being on a competitive team are going another.

He might change his mind. We’ll see.

I will support his decision no matter what.

2/

But knowing that we may be nearing the end of his youth soccer days, each of these soccer Saturdays rests on me with a little more specialness, a little more meaning.

I am fully present for them with the wakefulness of someone who knows to capture it all, for it is fading.

4/

My son’s love of soccer started when he was six.

I asked him to watch a World Cup game with me. I explained the basics. He sat with me for the full two hours. Rapt.

5/

Afterwards, it was bedtime. We had used up his playtime and he wasn’t happy. Got mad about he hadn’t gotten to play because of the game.

The soccer thing might have been en route to dying a quick death.

6/

The next day when I picked him up, the first thing he asked was “Did you take Russia-Greece?”

And a passion was born.

I got him a ball and mini goals for the yard. On steamy summer nights, we’d sneak past a locked gate onto a turf field to play together.

7/

Afterwards, we’d get Slurpees or ice cream.

We took up playing FIFA on the iPad. We watched English Premier League every weekend morning. We followed Barcelona. He came to love Lionel Messi.

8/

When he was 8, he tried out for the travel team and made it. He was driven by a fierce competitiveness.

He was small for his age but fearless. He could not be intimidated. Kids sometimes tried to mess with him once. Never twice.

9/

When he was 10, we ran into a bumpy stretch where his travel team had a lousy coach who sapped his joy of playing.

We agreed he’d drop off the team and we’d find another program.

10/

The next season, we decided he’d drop down to the town rec league for a year to just have fun playing again.

When the league asked parents to volunteer to coach, my son asked “Why don’t you do it?”

11/

And so I did. I had never played soccer. Had never coached. But I loved it to my bones.

We went 7-1-1 our first season. We lost the league title on a last-second goal by an undefeated team.

I had out-coached the other coach. My boys had outplayed his.

12/

There were tears on the sideline after the game. but what I saw was a group of kids who came together, embraced a team-first mentality and played with heart and passion and fire. I loved those boys.

My son says that was his most fun year of soccer. It was mine too.

13/

After that, he went back to the travel program. They put him on a team with kids a year older. Still small for his age, the other kids towered over him.

The first game, I thought “Okay, let’s see how this goes.”

It was his first game full-field, 11 v 11. This was a big step up.

A few minutes in, a bigger kid clocked my son. Hard foul.

My son just got up and played on.

A couple minutes later, the kid who had fouled him had the ball. My son just absolutely wiped him out with a clean tackle.

I smiled and was like “Okay, we’re good here.”

15/

Off the field, my son grew into being a teenager. He developed other passions. His friends became more important. His priorities evolved - as they should and do.

He still loves playing but it isn’t a passion that eclipses everything else now.

16/

And this season might be the time when he reaches the point when he is ready to let it go.

He has about 8 games left.

I am sentimental as shit. Before each one, I have flashbacks of him as 6 and 7 and 8 year old.

17/

I flash back to a thousand practices watched from the bleachers.

I flash back to the ear to ear grin on his face when we bought his first cleats.

I remember the Saturdays on the sofa watching games together.

18/

In a couple hours, he’ll play his third game in what might be his final season.

Win or lose, when we get in the car, I’ll tell him what I have told him after every game he has ever played.

“I love watching you play.”

19/

Seasons are finite. So are childhoods. We are given only so many Saturdays. Only so many years.

I adore my son. I love him with my full capacity to love anything.

I have cherished every little bit of him playing soccer.

Today, I get 90 more minutes to cherish that.

20/

Whether this year is his last playing soccer or not, we are still in a countdown.

For kids, childhoods are ascendant. They are climbs toward adulthood.

For parents, they are long sunsets in perpetual fade.

Today, I’m just going to bask in the golden light while I can.

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