The Body Remembers

One day you picked up a dandelion down to its seeds. You blew the seeds and watched the wind carry them away. The day is inconsequential. That single moment long forgotten. But, you know you did it. You remember doing it. Over and over again. Even now, you can feel the spongy green stem in your hand. Even now, you can remember the shape your lips made when you blew the seeds away. Even now, you can remember the way they swirled once they'd been taken by the breeze. There are memories that never leave you. Even if there isn't a single memory of them left.

We all have memories like that. Memories our muscles and bones remember, even if our brains do not. Memories that are integral to what came after, shaping what was to come. Making us what we are. Reminding us of what we were and what we could be again. Some call it nostalgia. I call it promise. A promise we made to ourselves that greatness wasn't fleeting, it was cumulative. A promise that one day, those feats that are in our past, would one day plant a flag on our future.

In late October, grass stops growing. The smell of it changes. It's still green but even freshly mowed, or freshly watered, it smells different than when it's in its growing season. Your nose remembers. At the beginning of football season, your nose remembers the smell of cut green grass. Your fingers remember sinking down into it until they imprinted on the black soil beneath. Near the end of the season, you remember the smell of the grass as it turned closer to brown. Your fingers remember the brittle grass and dry hardpacked dirt that would reverberate through your body when you landed upon it. Your body remembers the thrill and near serenity that came with a textbook perfect tackle. Your eyes remember the corona of the fall sun you saw from your back as it tried desperately to cling to its summer heat. I remember the past as my senses experienced it, as my body experienced it, with scars to remind me that those memories are real. My mind, on its own, is too full of the absurd responsibilities that the present brings to travel long in the past. My body, though, remembers.

Twenty-seven years ago the summer had been mercifully mild in July and August when we had our summer football camp and first practices of the season. The fall had followed suit. Never too hot nor too cold. By late October, we'd won every game. Some closer than others. My knee, reconstructed from an injury the year prior, was finally starting to feel like the one I was born with. The old familiar bounce and quickness had nearly all returned. And just in time. The team we were facing, about thirty minutes north of us, had ended our season early three years in a row, the last of which, I watched from a wheel chair. At the end of that game, I vowed the next time would be different.

We journeyed to their field. It was a mixture of fleeting green grass, brown dormant fescue, and a muddy quagmire down the center that had been created purposely to slow us down. It wasn't cheating, necessarily, but to me, it was an admission of fear. There was no way we were walking off that field as anything but victors.

As the last two teams in the area still in play, visitors from the surrounding towns had packed the sidelines. The sound of that many people doesn't register in the moment, it's only felt. Absorbed. It drives you but you don't realize until after. With every hard hit, the crowd groaned. With every big play, the noise crescendoed . It was a symphony, conducted by the blood and sweat we sacrificed with every play. It wasn't enough. We were behind. Two minutes left in a game that defined my entire life to that point, and we were losing.

It came down to one moment. One last chance at either immortality, or what could have been. My heart made a vow that my voice couldn't express. That my brain doesn't remember. I was not going to let us lose. They snapped the ball. I ran in, blinded to everything but the man who carried with him, the promise I'd made one year earlier. The hit was so pure, so perfectly timed by providence, that my body didn't even feel it. But the ball was on the ground. In the mad scramble that ensued, one of my teammates recovered it. We had won.

I don't remember much from that game-only the emotions and the desperation to not let it end like it had the years prior. My body remembers though. Now and then, a muscle will twitch, fingers will flex, a smell of dirt and grass will fill my nostrils, and I'll remember the feeling of that Friday night. Maybe, it's not that important. But maybe, you just had to be there.