Sideline Moments of Magic

Every Sunday morning this fall, for an hour, I stand around a street hockey cage in which my daughter participates in a lacrosse league. The girls, tweens and teens, run around on the cement, ponytails bouncing, sticks up, balls flying, trying, learning, growing. I watch. Also, as I pan out, I see the trees surrounding this cage, like stadium seats at an arena with prime viewing for the show. Slowly since September, as I continue to look up, I have noticed their hues beginning to slowly transform as their deep verdant greens take on more of a golden hue. A yellowy burnt ember color is starting to emerge from their tippy top leaves. It is so fascinating to watch these furthest little extensions of the tree itself, revealing the sunshine portion of the chlorophyll. A public unmasking of the beauty that was always within the tree. As I look up even further, I remember having read that in the season of autumn, there is less moisture in the air than in summer months, which causes the sky to appear even more blue in color to our eyes. Since reading that, it seems to me, to be true. In my ears, I hear athlete parents with giant hearts who volunteer their time and knowledge shouting words of encouragement and strategy.  An out of bounds ball smacks against the metal wire cage. The thwack of tennis balls being hit by rackets at the neighboring tennis courts. Cars as they whizz by on the road. Hawks scream as they lazily float through the blue overhead, now and again. 

These little moments are simple, and, if we are unaware, they can begin to feel monotonous, week on week.  Hurry, drive, park, wait. Whirring in the background of all the spectator parents’ minds, too, distracting us from feeling and being fully, is the incessant silent hum of all of our individual and collective worries…about our nation, our world, lost jobs, new jobs, big moves, the pandemic, health concerns for ourselves and others, and and and.  The truth is though, that if we don’t snap ourselves out of our whir and worry once in a while and straight back into the moment, we can miss the whole show, leaving the trees with the good view and leaving us as the unconscious and tired coffee-sucking chauffeurs. But this is our life.

Let’s choose not to miss the leaves slowly changing color.

Let’s choose not to miss our children growing before our very eyes.

Let’s choose to realize that the voices and ponytails bouncing are aging and developing in skill and strength and capability, the sights and sounds so very different from the tot games we attended when they were five.

This parking lot is the very same one where I sat as a child and tween myself, being carted to my brothers’ soccer games and practices. And here I am, an adult carting my own children to this same spot. There were people playing tennis on these courts back in the ‘90s too, just with different hairstyles and outfits and cars. Everything about this show is somehow simultaneously the exact same, and also ever-changing season by season, year by year. These tall, mature trees are the only ones actually watching every single moment, live. W.B. Yeats said, “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”  Once in a while, I think it does our souls good to wake from our stand-up-slumber and really look. Really see. Really feel. I bet there’s a whole lot of magic we could find. The trees are lucky enough…but so too are we.