 The last vestiges of winter crept through my bones at dawn Wednesday morning as a thick, bitter fog washed through Harvard Stadium and my breath hung like a cloud in the early April air.
Football season had begun.
Yes, as they have always said in the hallways of Barnstable High, the season begins the day after Thanksgiving Day, but I personally never quite felt that way until now. It was not until Wednesday morning in the heart of Cambridge when I heard the audibles of quarterbacks whose names I did not know and the crack and slap of helmets and shoulder pads of hulking linemen that I had truly ever felt that the season was already under way.
At best my physiological senses had always reminded me football comes in August, when the grass no longer smells freshly cut but instead opens the memory with a jarring odor of fresh-hewn hay. But not on Wednesday. On Wednesday, as I toed the turf with the tip of my shoe and glared, spellbound at the twists and turns and leaps of Crimson football players, I was reminded and at once entranced by the promise of another autumn on the gridiron.
Silently, I began counting how many days it truly would be before the Red Raiders once again took to W. Leo Shields Memorial Field and it did not seem monotonous to me in any way.
Silently I pined already for those crisp, October nights with the sound of the marching band booming away, raising the spirit. Quietly I yearned for it all and did not seem to mind that summer stood in my fantasy’s way.
When the college school year ends in May, these football players will return to their homes across the nation, shelving their cleats and pads until August. But quietly I thanked them for giving me a glimpse of things to come and the hope that beyond the near horizon waited patiently the sounds and sights and smells of battle on the football field.
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