I was a little tyke, five years old and just shy of four-feet tall. I remembered the smell of the turf, the way the helmet and pads felt a little too big on me as I jogged out onto the field. I remembered that I didn’t know a single thing about what I was supposed to be doing, but it was fun to run and catch the ball and get grass stains on my white football pants.

And I remembered both my parents were there.

I could still close my eyes and see their faces — Dad’s severe as he yelled out ways to be better, while Mom was on the verge of crying tears of joy and pride the entire game. I remembered them holding hands.

I remembered them happy.

It was one of the last times I remembered them that way.

Everything changed after that — slowly at first, and then all at once, like a single book falling from a shelf before you realized it was an earthquake that would eventually take down your entire house.

They started by just separating, explaining to me that they were just going to live in different houses for a while. “Mom and Dad just need a little space,” Dad had said. “It’s good for parents to have a little space.”

But a little space turned into not seeing my dad for weeks, and then months, until one day he came by with a stack of papers in his hands. I remember he rolled them into a tube, and I stole them from him and was pretending that tube was a telescope, and the ceiling was a sky full of stars. It wasn’t until Mom asked if she could look through the telescope, and then unfolded those papers as she started to cry, that I realized something fundamental in my life had shifted.

Dad sat me down at our kitchen table and told me we were still a family, even if we weren’t going to live together anymore.

Domino after domino, I watched my life as I knew it crumble around me.

But through it all, I had football.

Every season started the same, with that feeling of coming home, of the last remnants of summer holding on while fall snuck in on the breeze. It was always my favorite day of the year, the one that filled me with hope and joy like a hot air balloon lifting slowly into a clear blue sky. From my first Pee Wee game, to the first time I ran out onto the North Boston University field with a crowd roaring in the stands, it was a drug, powerful and pure.

But this time… I felt nothing.