Embracing Fall

If fall is supposed to be about endings, why do so many good things begin in autumn?

By Laura Forrest Hopfauf

My youngest daughter’s name is Summer. So, it’s safe to say that my favorite time of year is when it’s hot and sticky and the days last forever. 

But there’s something about fall. 

I guess that fall is supposed to be about endings, about leaves coming down to leave trees bare, fields transitioning from wild green crops to sterile white winter. Fall stands for the passing of time–a visual reminder that nothing lasts forever. But for me, fall never felt like endings; fall always felt like beginnings.  

When I was nine, I played my first soccer game in Boonsboro. For a long time, I wouldn’t admit soccer was my favorite sport to anyone, most of all myself. I flirted with others: basketball, track, gymnastics, swimming. But the truth was the first time I ever played a soccer game I was in love. Head over heels, full blown, out of control love. There were other sports, but to me, there was never another sport like soccer.  

Soccer went against everything I was as a person: wound tight, trying too hard, fiercely independent, and goal driven. Sure, the goal in soccer is to score goals. But I’d argue with almost anyone that the goal of soccer is cohesion, is unity, is friendship. Soccer is about passing the ball around with your friends while simultaneously passing the ball around other people who just want to pass the same ball around with their friends.  

I’m older now and I haven’t played competitively for almost a decade. There was a time when that was unfathomable to me. To go weeks without touching a soccer ball would have felt like certain death. But life moves in ways I never expected as a child, with turns I couldn’t predict. There was an injury with two surgeries. There was a disappointing college team. There was a dying father. Soccer didn’t disappear from my life with just one thing. It slowly fell away from me the way a first love that you were sure was forever does. It was everything and then there were fissures and then there were breaks and then eventually it was gone. 

I spent most of my athletic career trying too hard. I gave every play too much importance. I made myself believe that sports were something that I could control, like one person on a field could ever control everything that happens in a game. I had no chill. I had no sense of just being part of something and letting it play out how it was going to while being in the moment.  

By the time I finally understood the act of letting go was actually the key to being a great player, the game moved on without me when my college career was cut short by an injury and an early graduation. I’d finally figured out how to just be in the moment and the moment was gone. 

I don’t know how to explain losing something like that, but I know how to feel it. I know that when I pass by those Washington County high school fields on a cool September day and hear the fuzzy speakers and see the lights blaze out onto a game I’m no longer part of that it’s like looking across the bar to see someone you once loved whispering secrets to someone else without ever noticing you staring right at them.  

Maybe that sounds like an ending. Maybe it would be if fall didn’t come every year, if high school sports didn’t return to Washington County every single September. And if every season, a new kid didn’t step out there on some field and find a way to let go and just play the game for a single moment that will pass from their life faster than leaves being blown down the street by a gust of wind. 

The thing about fall, the thing that is so stunningly beautiful, is that it is about giving up, giving over, it’s about letting life run its course without fighting it so hard. It’s about being in that moment and letting go, allowing yourself to turn colors outside of the one you’ve always been. Fall is a green leaf turning sunshine yellow and then falling to the ground to be crunched under your feet. Depending how you decide to see it, that could be an ending or that could be one more chance to give yourself over to the moment and embrace the fall.