Beanie (March)

Here is the beanie. Humble is the beanie. Even with a pompom stitched to the crown, humble. Knitted in March by grandmother in the club colours, it is elementary. Stripes are the main form, like a brain graph. She’s seen it all before: spirited winters and battles half-won. Thousands worn to the game by believers, like yarmulkes at some secular rite of passage. To belong or not to belong, that seems to be the general gist. To take up a side has meaning, for a season, but such woolly thinking unravels in time. As cheers subside they outgrow the beanie.