She was swimming in pink.
From head to toe, her five-year-old self was coated in the candy-colored flamingo, a color she adorned proudly alongside her fellow friends. Every weekend, she trod the field of grass behind her elementary school, a patchy place surrounded by uncharted woods and little girls dipped in their own feverishly bright shades. They all toted their parents around, most of whom held lawn chairs around their shoulders and picnic blankets folded in their one idle arm; the occasional little sibling held a poster-board sign they had made in support.
It has now been a long time since then, but she can still remember how it all felt.
If she closes her eyes, she can picture it: the euphoric rush of the ball at her feet as the goal crept closer and closer. Her arms swung by her side as her cleats hit the ground, those too draped in pink. She could picture herself as a bystander, a witness to her great feat, seeing a blur of pink go by like a speeding bullet. As she kicked her leg back to strike the ball at the open net in front of her, she felt invincible.
But she could not stay five forever, and soon she graduated from the blotchy grass that was once her kindergarten territory. Her pink jersey was replaced with a black one, but her fervent passion remained.
A few years went by in that jersey the color of midnight. She had traded in her neon socks for ones of less blinding colors. The grade-school-sized field that had once seemed colossal to her was soon minuscule in comparison to the new domain she played on. She inhabited the space with growing ardor, breaking the surface of the grass with every hunger-driven pace she pursued. Stitched into the fibers of the black jersey was an impassioned enthusiasm, one that had sewn together her dedication with a string of commitment and a needle of unwavering hope.
But, like all good things, the black jersey had eventually met its end one day too.
Then came the blue.
It was a foreign color to her. The terrain she had traversed before, a pathway once etched into the strings of her heart like a tattoo, felt muddled. And with it came the words of someone who’d given up: “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Swimming was not the right word to describe how she felt in the blue. It is more likely that she was drowning, her head poking just above the water to the point where every mocking shift in its wary levels seemed like a taunt. She couldn’t remember how the pink felt, nor did she seek to find it again. The rain was pouring and it gripped at her skin as it fell, stinging like acid as it burnt away the little girl who was once tempestuously driven. For she was no longer five years old with flames of devotion lighting a fire underneath her, but thirteen with nothing left but a dwindling spark for what she once could never bear to give up.
Yet, somewhere deep inside her, the pink was still there; like a nag at her heart, its lingering presence was a conscience that could not be ignored. Some place within her, she knew she could not leave.
Perhaps it was the voice of her five-year-old self that convinced her to step back onto the turf field again. The blue had riddled her with doubt, a love tempered by hesitation. With the ball at her feet, a story line she had lived a thousand times before, she searched for the feeling of chapter one once more.
As she closed her eyes, all she could see was a little girl. The girl was wearing a pink jersey that was too big for her and neon socks, and her eyes twinkled as she looked around at the scintillating stadium lights and the emerald expanse of the field in awe.
And then I opened my eyes.
And the pink was back again.
The same passion, holding strong and true once more, was rekindled again under the fluorescent lights of a new beginning and a resurrected dream. For the eyes of the little girl, so full of hope and so proud of the places she’d one day find herself, were more than enough to relight a fire of endearment within me for the game I have so faithfully adored.
As I scanned the field, the kaleidoscope of colors around me—ones I had grown to appreciate over both the idyllic and arduous halcyon of my life—brought could bring me back to only one thing: the passion of a five year old, swimming in pink.
