Hummingbirds Return and Yardwork

Every year the hummingbirds return with their high-pitched trills and iridescent wings blurring into invisibility. I delight in watching them dive-bomb the flowering crabapple trees, then swoop over tulips and daffodils thrust up through warming soil. Buds swell on bare branches, days stretch longer, light lingers past dinner. What I don't savor is the overwhelming assault of yard cleanup: restoring mulch that's scattered or decomposed, raking tons of rusty pine needles, coaxing the drip irrigation back to life, praying for perennials to emerge after a punishing dry winter.

When Rob and I bought this house nearly twenty-two years ago, the previous owners had just re-landscaped the backyard. The shrubs stood trim and compact, rose bushes exploded in crimson blooms, mulch nestled obediently inside crisp brick boundaries. We installed a swing set and sandbox and tried to keep pace with the seasons' demands, but with three small children pulling us in every direction, we surrendered ground each year. After a decade in the house, the backyard had morphed into something from The Secret Garden—rose bushes erupting in thorny chaos before dying back, grass invading the margins, mulch vanishing into soil.

After abandoning hope of restoration—despite one ambitious swap of swing set for trampoline—we hired Aden and her college friend to resurrect some semblance of order in the areas nearest the house. We celebrated when brick borders reemerged from their grassy graves, when rocks in the landscaping beat back the encroaching turf. Inspired, we hired another crew to tackle the perimeter. Though we've lost the rose bushes and several cottonwood trees to drought and neglect, our yard now somewhat echoes its former glory.

Only somewhat because we live in drought, and without moisture to revive the bluegrass, our pine trees and their gnarled, serpentine roots have conquered the lawn. We're allowed to water just two days per week—Wednesday and Saturday—and I'm eyeing xeriscaping for the backyard like we installed in front: less water demanded, less maintenance required, native plants and stone where Kentucky bluegrass once thrived. For now, the looming task of yard restoration has lifted. I can hear the shrill territorial call of the hummingbird without my blood pressure spiking in response.

Bring on summer—but hopefully with afternoon thunderstorms rolling in from the mountains, rain drumming on the deck and soaking deep into our thirsty soil. The hummingbirds will dart between raindrops. The perennials will drink. And I'll watch from the kitchen window, grateful that for once, someone else is doing the watering.

Masters Nationals Recap

 The crush of swimmers in Friday's warmup pool sent us searching all twenty lanes for an opening. Before jumping in, we ran into Rocky Mountain teammates who warned us about the slippery metal facing on the far walls—already responsible for slips on the 400 free relay. Aden and I raised our eyebrows at each other, then plunged into the waves to test the competition pool, our sleep-deprived haze broken by near-panic.

Aden's 100 breast came first. Already wedged into her new tech suit, she fired off her best time in four years. After a loop through the cool-down pool, Aden and my friend Ellen joined me in the locker room to wrestle me into my own new suit—brick red material so small it seemed impossible it would clear my knees, let alone rise over my rear and hips. Somehow, with a woman on either side hiking the fabric over the Crisco-style spray I'd lubed with, they lifted me at the hips until I hung suspended like a puppet on strings, the suit inching upward.

After adjusting the suit again in warmup, I raced my 50 fly and came close to my goal time, earning second place and posting what currently ranks second in the country for my age group. Disappointed in missing the mark, I threw everything into the 100 free, where altitude training helped me push through the back half to a time I haven't seen in seven years. A talented swimmer from Wisconsin Masters who'd been in several of my races grasped my hand at the finish. I lifted both our hands skyward—relief and joy pouring through me.

The community of swimmers and families sustained and astonished us over three days. Rob and William made the flight to Greensboro to cheer us on, their voices rising above the din each time Aden or I stepped onto the blocks—a reminder that the best support comes from those who watched us overcome every moment of doubt. I encountered a former Harvard teammate and classmate from New England who recognized me despite thirty-four intervening years and a name change. Aden and I rubbed shoulders with former Cal star Reece Whitley. Eight-time Olympic gold medalist Jenny Thompson anchored the relay next to ours in the 45+ mixed free competition.

Even more poignant than the Olympians were encounters with new friends waiting poolside between races. I met a remarkable woman from Idaho in remission from aggressive melanoma. She'd survived brutal treatment over the past few years and lost sight in one eye, but that didn't stop her from climbing the blocks, throwing herself at turns on those treacherous slippery walls, racing to strong times.

The indefatigable human spirit blazed everywhere—ninety-seven-year-olds competing and setting records to the astonishment and delight of 2,000+ athletes and spectators. My personal highlight came in the women's 55+ medley relay, swimming fly and hitting 28.3—surpassing my fourteen-year-old mark by one-tenth of a second. It's not a legal time because I jumped in after anticipating the breaststroker's touch rather than starting from the gun, but I accept the gift from my former self. Next time, I'll do it in the actual race.

What the water teaches: that community matters more than individual times, that courage looks like a woman racing half-blind on unfamiliar walls, that ninety-seven-year-olds can still set records, that two friends can literally lift you into a suit you couldn't manage alone. The relationships forged poolside—the hand grasped at the finish, the warning about slippery walls, the recognition across decades—these prove more rewarding than any clock ever could.

With inspiration drawn from the Masters swimming community and my family, what else is there but to start planning for Irvine next year? The water will be there, waiting. So will the community. And so, I hope, will I—perhaps a tenth of a second faster, certainly grateful for every moment spent in the company of people who understand why we keep diving in.

Channeling Fourteen

Yesterday at Masters practice, one of my dear friends—also preparing for Nationals—asked if I was "freaking out yet." I laughed and said yes, but that I was slamming the door on the nerves because I don't have time for them. The truth is riskier than it sounds: disrupting the workout schedule, even to rest, unsettles bodies that prefer predictable routines to abrupt change. My friends and I hope the reward comes in faster swims, but there are no guarantees. We're all rolling the dice.

My first event is the 50-yard fly, and I'm chasing a time under 29 seconds for the first time in years. I recall racing the event at thirteen or fourteen in the Natick, Massachusetts town pond, representing my town of Medfield, where we also practiced in an oozy, shallow, algae-coated body of water that would horrify modern health inspectors.

I was shaking with nerves, matched against a well-known swimmer in my age group, a girl who excelled at fly. How they started us remains a mystery—it wasn't an electronic timing system!—but I remember diving off a slippery dock into murky waters of unknown depth, sprinting for my life. I wanted to beat this formidable opponent, who would become my college teammate five years later.

The race ended in my narrow victory. I don't even recall adults timing us, though they must have been swaying on those docks, struggling to hold their balance and stopwatches as we powered between thin white nylon ropes marked periodically with blue buoys. On the many-times-folded paper where I recorded all my times from ages thirteen to eighteen, I noted the result: 28.47. Won. I remember my opponent looking over at me—the unknown quantity—in surprise, hearing her ask people later, "Who was that girl?"

So I'm channeling my skinny, raw, untutored self, ready to launch off fancy starting blocks in one of the fastest pools in the country, wearing an expensive tech suit and hoping my decades of experience offset my decades of wear. My body has endured considerable trauma in the intervening forty years—two pregnancies and births, overtraining syndrome, autoimmune breakdowns, nutrient deficiencies, the relentless accumulation of miles and years. But I'm stronger now than I've ever been, fortified by knowledge and intention.

I'm excited to roll the dice and discover whether I can make fourteen-year-old Laura proud—that girl who dove into murky pond water without hesitation, who wanted victory badly enough to shake with nerves and sprint anyway. She didn't know about periodization or tapers, tech suits or underwater streamlines. She just knew how to race. Maybe that raw hunger still lives somewhere in these older bones, waiting for the starting beep to call it forward.

Racing Toward Something

In nine days I leave for Greensboro, North Carolina, to compete in US Masters National Championships. Aden will race alongside me while Rob and William compose our cheering section and driving team. From Denver to Greensboro we fly over 1,400 miles and, more problematic, two time zones. Prepping for 6:30 a.m. warmup and an 8:00 a.m. meet start on the East Coast has required rolling my alarm back from 7:00 to 5:30 here in Denver, a shift my body resents with every fiber.

Each morning I drag myself from bed to silence the alarm before it pulls Rob beyond his going-back-to-sleep threshold, trying to convince myself this adjustment matters—that acclimating somewhat to Eastern time before competing will make a difference. After six months of demanding training in the gym and pool, I refuse to let sleep deprivation or jet lag compromise my events on day one.

This morning I sprawled on the TV room floor wrapped in the purple afghan Aden made for me, struggling through PT exercises for hips and back, wondering if more sleep would serve me better than this forced adjustment. Rob thinks rest trumps everything, but I have nightmares of flopping in my 50 fly—first event on the first day—because my creaky joints, foggy brain, and fast-twitch muscles are still sleeping while I'm supposed to be racing.

Here's what I know: with all the weighty troubles splashed across headlines these sunny spring mornings, a swim meet represents nothing more consequential than a family reunion and a chance to test whether short, fast reps and heavier weights have actually made me faster. I'm chasing my fastest Masters times, or at least my fastest in a decade, despite the betrayal of aging. The pursuit feels simultaneously urgent and absurd—serious enough to warrant 5:30 a.m. alarms yet trivial against the backdrop of global crisis.

But perhaps that's the point. We need these pockets of meaning we can control, these small arenas where effort translates to measurable outcome. We need family road trips and the particular nervousness that comes before stepping onto the blocks. We need to care about small things while the world burns, not as escape but as tether—proof that ordinary life persists, that we can still chase personal goals while holding awareness of larger suffering.

At least the early wake-ups gift me extra morning hours for writing, cleaning, PT, and planning—small victories that accumulate like training yards in the pool. And possibly a nap after lunch, which at my age might be the real competitive advantage. In nine days I'll stand behind the blocks in Greensboro, William and Rob somewhere in the stands, Aden in her own race nearby. The alarm will have done its work. The training will speak for itself. And for a few days, we'll inhabit that strange space where something as inconsequential as a swim race feels like the most important thing in the world—because we've decided it matters, and that decision alone is enough.

Eucatastrophe

"Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief." — J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories"

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I'm reading a book called An Academic Affair: A Novel, in which two protagonists hold PhDs in literary studies. One character, Sadie, wrote her dissertation on "eucatastrophe"—a term coined by J.R.R. Tolkien in his essay "On Fairy-Stories." The word, meaning "good catastrophe," stuck to me like a linty sock on a wool sweater, resonating with memories of last week when Rob's sudden heart procedure transformed from horrible stressor to miraculous saving grace.

The book's author, Jodi McAlister, uses a scene from the Anne of Green Gables series to illustrate eucatastrophe, cementing my attraction to both her novel and the concept—I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on the works of L.M. Montgomery, who created Anne, one of my favorite heroines. The scene McAlister invokes comes from the third book, when Gilbert Blythe lies dying of typhoid fever and Anne realizes, in her terror of losing him, that she loves him. The next morning, a hired hand brings news that Gilbert survived, that his fever broke in the night. In that moment of joyous illumination, Anne experiences her eucatastrophe—the sudden turn from despair to deliverance.

The term calls to me in this moment of wars, escalating conflict, and apocalyptic rhetoric. The world needs a sudden miraculous turn of events that saves our heroes—in this case, all of us—from impending gloom. We need what Tolkien describes as that "piercing glimpse of joy," the shift from despair to victory that arrives when hope seems lost.

At Easter service, Rev. Mark explored John 20:1, which describes Mary Magdalene going to Jesus' tomb "while it was still dark." He selected the word "while" to turn over and examine. While bad things unfold, good is at work, God is at work, he explained. Life doesn't proceed as one concrete event after another—the next phase forms while the previous phase unravels, running concurrent rather than consecutive.

I hold onto this truth: that good things may be unfolding while war crises stutter forward, that the world might yet experience its eucatastrophe. People might yet find joy, breathe deeply, shift focus toward what heals rather than what wounds. Meanwhile, I remain grateful for our moment of miraculous deliverance and try to send its positive energy outward. Sometimes the fever breaks. Sometimes the stent opens the artery. Sometimes the catastrophe becomes good, and the darkness discovers it was never absolute after all. 

Someone Saved My Life Tonight

"And someone saved my life tonight..."

— Lyrics from "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" by Elton John

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On the morning of my fifty-fifth birthday, I walked through the sliding glass doors of the hospital with my husband. Rob's new cardiologist—an angel in blue scrubs—had found a blockage in one of his arteries and scheduled him for a stent within two business days. The rapidity of the scheduling and the sternness of the cardiologist shook us both as his words sank in: "This should have been addressed ten years ago."

My emotions swung between fury at our previous general practitioner's ineptitude and immense gratitude that this had been caught before a cardiac event. I settled on gratitude—rage required energy that I didn't have. I focused instead on positive outcomes and counted blessings: that Rob hadn't departed for his business trip to India (where an event might have been catastrophic), that we had health insurance through his company, that Rob would soon feel like himself again.

Aden and I proceeded with our State Masters swim meet over the weekend despite our preoccupation with Rob's health. I had relays I couldn't abandon, and Rob came to watch on Saturday so I could achieve the dual objectives of competing and keeping watch over him. By Sunday, though, the stress mounted. Aden and I left the pool early to come home for family dinner, FaceTime with William, and birthday cake—the celebration we planned ahead of the big day.

Walking into the hospital Monday morning felt surreal—plunking down our co-pay, sitting in pre-op for what might prove one of the more impactful events of my life. The waiting, the IV prep, the vitals monitoring all reminded me of William's birth. My labor was induced with William, about ninety minutes of waiting before he arrived precipitously in three pushes. Rob and I had switched roles now, and I kept expecting the nurses to ask me to leave, but they never did.

The procedure lasted maybe fifty minutes. A nurse retrieved me from the waiting room, informed me that everything had gone well with no complications, then took me directly to the surgeon just outside the OR. After the doctor finished dictating his notes, he turned to me: "It was 99.9% blocked—just a thin line of an opening. Fortunately I was able to install the stent and open up the artery, so everything will be fine. But if he had even sneezed wrong..."

I didn't ask him to finish that sentence. Didn't do any research on what-ifs. I was shocked when Rob rolled out cognizant and speaking—he'd been awake for the procedure, had watched the video while the surgeon worked. His color looked good, his reflexes sharp, so different from our poor son after his two lengthy ACL surgeries.

The nurses cared for Rob with practiced efficiency. He ate a meal, dressed himself, left with his arm in a brace by 6:15 p.m. As we walked out those same sliding glass doors almost seven hours later, I couldn't fathom—still can't—the difference that had been made in Rob's life, in all of our lives. Standard operating procedure for the doctors and nurses, perhaps. Life-altering for us.

We are lucky beyond measure. And we've learned two crucial lessons: find a good doctor, and don't ignore chest pains. But there's a third lesson I'm still processing—how quickly everything can change, how thin the line between ordinary Monday and catastrophe. How someone in blue scrubs can save your husband's life on your birthday, giving you a gift no wrapped package could match. The gratitude sits in my chest like its own kind of blockage, one I don't want cleared away. Some weight is worth carrying.

Readers in the Wild

Will reading disappear? My book club wrestled with this question on Tuesday as we gathered in our usual circle, reliving bits and pieces of our latest selection and debating the merits of text and author. One member had just finished a class on AI, in which the instructor lauded the ability of AI to generate concise summaries of any book, thus eliminating the need to read the actual work. We all groaned—the author's perspective lost, the brain stimulation and attention span workout avoided. A collective "say it ain't so" moment rippled through the room.

I brought good news from our recent family trip to New York: on the subway, you can observe humans reading actual books in the wild, turning real pages as the train zips from stop to stop. When I told William how wonderful I found this, he rolled his eyes and noted that almost everyone else was reading, too—but on their phones. My older kids dismissed physical books as "performative," done to win approbation from strangers like me who find visible reading attractive.

Performative doesn't bother me. I told my son to go ahead and read his book club selection in the flesh—who knows how many other (much younger) people find an open paperback irresistible? My husband reads on his iPad at night, using the app Libby to borrow books, and I find that attractive too. Reading in bed seems infinitely more conducive to sleep than watching movies or scrolling through ultra-short videos that leave the brain spinning.

On a hopeful note, William belongs to a book club called "Millennials and Gen Z Read the Classics." He's met people with similar interests and abilities—reading an actual book from cover to cover constitutes a genuine skill in these days of texts, TikTok, and Instagram teasers. When we visited MoMA, we spotted Sunday readers scattered throughout the subway cars and art lovers of all ages standing transfixed before the museum's walls, gazing at Monet and Van Gogh and Pollock with the kind of sustained attention that can't be replicated by a screen's flicker.

Art can't be summarized by AI, can't be reduced to bullet points, can't be skimmed. The experience of standing before The Starry Night—the texture of the paint, the swirling depth that photographs flatten, the collective hush of strangers sharing the same arrested breath—this remains irreplaceable. Let's keep making art, seeking it out, celebrating it. Our brains and future generations depend on our insistence that some things are worth the full attention, the unrushed encounter, the turning of actual pages. The subway readers give me hope. So do the museum-goers, the book clubs, the people who still believe that some experiences can't be outsourced to algorithms—that presence, attention, and the slow work of reading remain worth protecting.

Miracles in Manhattan

After last week's post about hiding in tales of 19th century England, I committed further by downloading Season 1 of Victoria on Netflix. The caprices and romances of the young queen captivated me on the flight to New York City, where the whole family converged at William's Brooklyn apartment. From hiding in the past, I dove into living minute-by-minute on a non-stop family weekend—savoring both William's curated tours and the spontaneous, serendipitous moments no one could plan.

The magic started on the subway to the Financial District Friday evening when I received an out-of-the-blue text from my college roommate Laura, who lives on Long Island and works in the city. We text only a few times each year, so her message arriving as we rattled toward Manhattan felt like the universe orchestrating a reunion. We made plans to meet the next day.

Saturday unfolded like a series of small miracles:

• Gluten-free bagels that actually tasted like bagels (a benefit only NYC can deliver)
• Laura appearing in Central Park, strolling with us through the park environs and down to midtown, catching up on our families —a sunny, windy, joyful reunion that shimmered with unexpected grace
• An indoor table at the all-gluten-free Italian restaurant where we had dinner reservations (we were supposed to be outside in the cold)
• The restaurant being cash-only, all of us subtly ransacking purses and wallets, then my discovery of a gift from Mom I'd forgotten to deposit—dinner procured through Nana's generosity
• Exiting the restaurant at the appointed time, catching the subway to Broadway, watching a superb production of Hamilton (aside from the young woman in front of William receiving a breakup text in Act Two, then departing with her crew immediately after—we were riveted)

A thirteen-hour day that ranked among our most magical travel days ever.

Sunday brought William down with a cold, though he heroically accompanied us first to brunch at Kellogg's Diner where we reunited with my cousin Justin (for the first time in six years) over crisp bacon and New York recommendations, then to Domino Park and lastly over to MoMA. We started on the museum's fifth floor and found ourselves floored by what hung there: Monet, Dalí, Picasso, Picabia, O'Keeffe, Pollock, Van Gogh. The Starry Night waited for us—we hadn't known it would be there—and we stood before it in grateful awe, nudging one another and celebrating our luck in whispers.

At day's end we learned via text that our flight was canceled. Brief panic ensued as everyone scrambled to reconfigure Monday schedules. Daniel flew into terror over missing a midterm exam and had to embark on a solo thrifting mission to reclaim his equilibrium. We rallied to an airport hotel and said goodbye to William, hoping he'd heal quickly and visit soon.

The weekend reminded me that the best moments can't be scripted—they arrive as gifts. A text from an old friend. Cash discovered at exactly the right moment. Art that stops your breath. Even a canceled flight becomes part of the story, part of what makes a weekend not just good, but magical. Sometimes hiding in Victorian England is exactly what you need, and sometimes you need to be thrust into the chaotic present, surrounded by the people you love, open to whatever grace the universe decides to deliver.

A Victorian Escape

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Pax est melior quam bellum — Peace is better than war

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I lost myself in the Victorian era last week, reading Beth Brower's delightful series The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion (books 1-8) before bed and watching "Young Sherlock" on Prime whenever I could steal the time. The Latin quote above comes from one of Emma's journals, a simple declaration that echoes with particular force against the backdrop of today's headlines.

Were Victorian times simpler? Not for women. They couldn't own property until 1870, and even then couldn't keep property from before marriage until 1882. Brower's Emma—first encountered in 1883—chafes under society's mandate that she engage a chaperone. When she turns twenty-one and comes into her inheritance, she discovers a distant male relative has drained most of her scant funds. Of course he had access—he was male.

In "Young Sherlock," the protagonist's mother has been drugged and declared insane after losing a child, allowing the father to claim the deed and estate to salvage his failing businesses. Mrs. Holmes—locked in an asylum for twelve years—emerges wholly sane and blazing with righteous rage, freed by sons who learned dubious lessons about treating women from their manipulative father.

The Victorian era was no golden age. Women remained dependent on husbands for stability, reputation, and survival. Brower's beautiful books introduce strong females who buck that tide and stand on their own feet, while depicting the enormous struggle such independence required compared to male counterparts. Yet if one was fortunate enough to possess funds and education, there existed a longing for scholarship—for reading and writing and conversing with friends over intellectual pursuits. We allow ourselves to be robbed of such goals and habits now, distracted by endless scrolling and manufactured urgency.

Though "Young Sherlock" contains fighting over government weapons, violence and espionage, the destruction feels manageable compared to what we witness in today's wars. The Latin quote surfaces each time I read the headlines and recoil from the devastation we inflict on innocents from hundreds of miles away. We don't fight hand to hand anymore, but from joystick and screen to target on the ground—sanitized violence that I suppose makes it easier to unleash.

Pax est melior quam bellum. Peace is better than war. I don't wish to return to the Victorian era with its corsets and constraints, its cruelty to women and rigid hierarchies. But for one week, it offered a refuge—a place to hide while the world outside grows increasingly unrecognizable, increasingly brutal. Sometimes we need these escapes, these reminders that humans have always struggled toward something better, even when better feels impossibly far away.

Stacking the Ribs

The end of high school swim season brought my annual collapse—the familiar inability to rise from bed, drag myself to workouts, keep appointments I'd marked on the calendar weeks before. This year it lasted only a week, mercifully brief compared to the three-week recoveries that followed prior seasons. With help from acupuncture and physical therapy, I've clawed my way back toward normal. I've learned that bad posture and the resulting shallow chest breathing bear responsibility for my lingering back pain and breathlessness during swim workouts—problems I can address, or so I hope. My fifties have not been kind to either workouts or recovery.

The gentleman who administers my PT sent me a video on how to stack ribs over pelvis, accompanied by a loud Flo Rida song that made my husband execute a comic double-take. I'm attempting this rib-stacking, though decades of bad habits render the practice a chore. The will to improve gets fortified by long hours standing on concrete pool decks and such painful morning stiffness that I hobble to my dresser as a way station en route to the bathroom—a journey that shouldn't require strategic planning.

As I lay prone one day last week, willing my back to release and reflecting on my fleeting energy reserves, I stumbled across Lisa Miller's essay "How I Learned to Love Lifting Heavy" in the New York Times. Miller reveals she lifts heavy weights for the anxiolytic effect, a term I had to look up. "Anxiolytic"  describes several classes of drugs that reduce anxiety, but I love its application to weightlifting. Exercise has served as my preferred method of reducing stress and outrunning anxiety since I was thirteen, before I even had vocabulary for what I needed to escape.

In recent years, I've embraced lifting heavy. I've wandered in and out of weight rooms since high school, though usually with ill-conceived routines and less than ideal target weights. When I was coming up in swimming, we operated under the philosophy that swimming massive yardage would make you faster. While this approach might work for the 500, I never found it particularly helpful for the 50.

My son and daughter educated me on form, maxes, and exercise combinations that translate to pool performance. They learned from their club coach—with whom I now work—then refined their knowledge in college. With my daughter spotting me, I hit a lifetime best on bench press recently. I felt immense pride—followed by immense exhaustion. The exercise routines I'd been using to manage the stress of coaching  had been drawing from the same limited energy stores, precipitating the inevitable collapse.

My healers help immensely, as does rest. Today I learned a new practice called "sweeping," developed by Buddhist monks, which focuses on mental release rather than physical manipulation. I need to practice this technique before describing it in full or recommending it—I've tried it only once—but I'm intrigued by the possibility of putting my mind as well as my body to rest. Spring and summer wait just beyond the corner, and it's time to emerge from this mini-hibernation, ribs stacked, breath deepened, ready to meet whatever comes next.

The Joy of Alysa Liu

"My family is out there. My friends are out there. I had to put on a show for them. And when I see other people smiling, because I see them in the audience, I have to smile too, you know?" — Alysa Liu, 2026  Olympic Gold Medalist, Women's Singles Figure Skating

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God bless Alysa Liu for boosting the entire country with a shot of her infectious joy. Watching her gold ponytail spin—one more layer of brilliance—above her shiny, tasseled skate dress, taking in her wide smile as she bedazzled the Olympic audience, I hid tears from my husband. As an athlete who coaches athletes just a few years younger than Liu, I recognize that pure happiness that comes from doing what you love without expectation or attachment to outcome—such a rare and precious commodity.

Every Olympics fan now knows Liu took two years off from skating before rekindling her love affair with the sport. She is an artist, and her routines constitute incomparable art - shared with millions. On the Olympic ice during Thursday's free skate, she never stopped smiling—even during warmup, those tense fifteen minutes where competitive skaters swirl around each other trying to avoid collisions and falls. Her routine personified a freedom, a joy, that drew the audience to its feet in explosive appreciation at the end of her four-minute dance with destiny.

Liu called herself "over the moon, the luckiest girl ever" in her post-competition interview. She shared gratitude with the Japanese skaters who took second and third place, holding seventeen-year-old bronze medalist Ami Nakai after the young skater realized her medal position and burst into tears. Their heart-shaped arms framing beaming faces blessed me in the aftermath—another image to carry forward.

Sisterhood on the podium resonated this week as the high school girls I help coach won their sixth consecutive State title in swimming. Two sets of twin sisters stood on the podium together, along with many other teammates sharing bright smiles with friends and families. Despite nerves, every girl handled business while also offering big hugs, waves, and dance moves to athletes on deck and spectators in the stands. Our head coach notes that the girls swim faster when they're having fun—and I agree wholeheartedly. Our practices get interrupted by social kicks, sing-alongs, coordinated clapping, the freeze challenge —anything we can do to weave competition with companionship.

You can see a mix of emotions on any athlete's face at the end of a race or performance: relief at completing the journey, knowing hard work paid off; sheer exhaustion; disappointment at results that fell short of expectations; frustration at complications; shock and awe at outcomes exceeding wildest dreams. All valid. Every athlete's journey winds over different terrain, carries different motivation, seeks different fulfillment. How lovely this week to witness two stories that ended in joy—proof that sometimes the rainbow's end delivers exactly what it promised.

Love as Resistance

"I know it's tough to 'not hate' these days . . . we get contaminados (contaminated). The hate gets more powerful with more hate. The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love. So please, we need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love. We love our people, we love our family, and that's the way to do it. With love. Don't forget that, please." — Bad Bunny, 2026 Grammys (2/1/26)

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Was it surprising that Bad Bunny—recording artist, cultural icon, Super Bowl halftime performer—gave an acceptance speech worthy of Dr. Martin Luther King upon winning his Grammy for Best Música Urbana Album? When his words about love recalled Dr. King's assertion that "love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend," I wiped away my tears. In a vacuum of moral leadership on the political front, artists and ordinary citizens step into the void to build scaffolding from hope.

Minneapolis and its people were nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize last week for their coordinated work protecting and providing for their neighbors—a response so inspiring that the world took notice. Cities across the globe rallied in support last weekend, citizens standing for each other and against cruelty and lawlessness. Dr. King's words echo again: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

Church leaders, professors, lawyers, and judges provide light when shadow threatens to swallow everything. The judge who ordered the release of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father from an ICE detention center in Texas listed two Bible verses at the bottom of his written decision. One was John 11:35, the shortest verse in Scripture: "Jesus wept." I'm reminded of another: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:5)

The contamination Bad Bunny describes is real—hate multiplying itself, spreading like contagion until we can barely recognize our own faces. But love remains more powerful, more contagious, more capable of transformation. Minneapolis proves this. Bad Bunny reminds us. And we must remember it, especially now, especially when hate seems easier than the hard work of loving our way forward.

**Post script: Bad Bunny doubled down on his positive messaging during his 13-minute Super Bowl halftime show. On the enormous scoreboard over the field his message said: "The only thing more powerful than hate is love." On the football he carried and showed to the cameras at the end of his show - the most-watched in history - "Together we are America."  

Joy is Now

"Joy in the present makes joy in the future seem plausible." — Jenka Gurfinkel

"The whole world is a very narrow bridge. And the most important thing is not to be afraid." — Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

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The drive to Leadville unfolded quick and snowless, remarkable for its lack of traffic and the troubling absence of the white stuff we desperately need. The peaks stood tall and nearly naked while cold wind whipped dry old flakes across the road in ghostly patterns. We left the world behind as we climbed into the small mountain town perched at 10,200 feet where my friend has recently acquired a home.

We spent the weekend setting up furniture and dashing into Leadville's lovely, artistic novelty shops at close intervals to warm ourselves in the single-digit temperatures. After weeks of heartbreaking headlines, I found myself startled by art that lifted me up—including a simple print declaring "Joy is now" that I encountered on Friday and returned to on Saturday afternoon following a bracing seven-mile walk. Delighted to discover a keychain bearing the same words, I replaced my old "Number one mom" token with this new talisman, not yet understanding why these three words felt so necessary.

The understanding arrived this morning when I read Gurfinkel's observation that joy in the present makes future joy seem plausible. Of course. Joy hides, harder to locate in these difficult days, yet I've found it flickering in the radiant faces of my athletes who shattered lifetime bests, in my daughter's return from Guatemala with stories and lovely photos, in mountain walks where breath comes sharp and clean, in hours spent with friends who understand without explanation. These fleeting moments become the lights we follow through darkness.

On Sunday, Daniel and I attended a gathering to hear Phil Weiser, who's running for the Democratic nomination for Colorado governor. Weiser proved outstanding—an accomplished and thoughtful speaker who addressed the events unfolding in Minneapolis and across the country by encouraging us toward bravery rather than despair. "In my faith tradition," he said, invoking Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, "we learn that the whole world is a very narrow bridge. The bridge might be scary to cross, but we must move forward. The most dangerous time comes when we lose equilibrium because we're overcome by our own fear."

The words settled into me like medicine. Life is always a narrow bridge—sometimes we traverse it with ease because we're not looking down, not paralyzed by the distance between ourselves and the rocks below. Other times we freeze mid-crossing, stilled by our downward gaze, unable to take the next step. Overcoming that fear, raising our eyes to the horizon and the possible future waiting there, becomes necessary for any forward movement at all.

The people of Minneapolis inspire me to imagine that future—one where we care for our neighbors as fiercely as we protect our own families, where peaceful protest remains sacred and safe, where we weave bright tapestries together from threads of mutual commitment and shared vision. Joy is now, yes—in the mountain air and the athlete's triumph, in the keychain that reminds me to look up rather than down. And joy now makes the bridge crossable, makes the other side seem possible, gives us the equilibrium we need to keep moving forward despite our fear. The bridge may be narrow, but we don't have to cross it alone.

Reprisal: Hold on to What You Believe

 "Hold on to what you believe, in the night, when the darkness has robbed you of all your sight."                 - Mumford & Sons, "Hold on to What You Believe"

From March, 2013:

In the dark nights when I was most ill, I believed in two things: first, that the life force threading through all the universe flows for good, and second, that the love of family and friends would hold me when I fell.  Many times friends had sight when I had none, when my recovery seemed hopeless. Now I believe something else: that I will be totally well.  Beliefs are urgent when the darkness falls, but must be cultivated in the light. Thankfully I can almost shut the door on the past, and move on to live in the bright spaces.

January, 2026:

Hold on to what you believe in the dark night of our country's soul. Cultivate those beliefs now—in community, in shared resistance, in small acts of grace and large acts of courage. Some days, others will have to hold the vision for us when we cannot see the way forward. We take turns carrying the light, trusting that dawn will come even when we can't imagine its arrival. We have survived dark nights before. We will survive this one, too—not unchanged, but perhaps stronger for having learned what we're willing to fight for.

Grounding in Difficult Times

The first ten days of 2026 delivered little snow and many painful, disturbing headlines. I want to write about all of it, and also about nothing at all. My brain spins with news of invasions and climate catastrophes, the death of innocents—then leaps away from every touchpoint like a finger retracting from a hot stove. The body knows when to pull back, when exposure threatens to burn us beyond our capacity to heal.

My New Year's goal to meditate—or at least breathe in a focused way for five minutes—lasted two and a half days before collapsing under the weight of reality. I've downsized the ambition: now I aim to remember to take a deep breath every once in a while, to focus for one minute on where my feet are and how I can stay rooted to that particular spot on earth. I will return to the expanded goal because meditation has steadied me through previous dark times, and this practice of returning—of beginning again without self-judgment—may be the most important lesson of all.

I find myself asking when we collectively lost access to our prefrontal cortex, that crucial portion of the brain that manages emotions, attention, self-control, and decision-making? When did our society surrender the duties of self-restraint, respect for others, and the assumption of positive intent? The questions themselves feel inadequate, searching for a single moment of fracture when the truth is more complex—a slow erosion rather than a sudden collapse, countless small abandonments that accumulated until we woke to find ourselves here.

As a white person born in this country, I've been shielded from rage and reactivity for much of my life. As a woman, I've endured being bullied or ignored, minimized and scrutinized by society, yet I've been fortunate to escape far worse. This awareness sits heavy—how I've mostly evaded the crushing weight of sustained trauma, the exhaustion of existing as someone else's target, the shock of becoming a repository for misplaced rage. Many people in our country have endured these conditions for what must feel like never-ending lifetimes, and also lives cut tragically short. Their resilience in the face of such sustained assault offers its own form of testimony, its own quiet instruction in how to persist.

I struggle under the onslaught of bad news, the struggle compounded by guilt and uncertainty about how to create meaningful change. Yet I keep returning to what I can touch and tend: my family and friends, those connections that anchor me when the world spins too fast. We've planned a visit to New York to see William. We celebrated our youngest's acceptance to CSU for fall 2026—his face splitting into that particular grin that erases years and lights the future. We carved out a day of rest watching sports, letting ourselves look away from the headlines without drowning in shame for the looking away. These moments don't solve anything, but they sustain us for the work ahead.

Writing about difficult times can deliver me from the mental treadmill, that "monkey mind" that ambushes me for thirty minutes each evening when my head meets the pillow. Focusing on gratitude and moments of genuine connection also helps, as do plans for future reunions—the simple act of believing in a future where we can gather. I'm learning that tending to my own people, ensuring they're seen and loved and supported, is not selfishness but preparation. We cannot pour from empty vessels, cannot offer strength we haven't cultivated in ourselves.

If you're feeling this weight, you're not alone—though I know that knowledge doesn't always lighten the load. We're all searching for our own forms of grounding, our own ways to remain present and useful in times that demand more than we have to give. The work is to keep showing up, to practice those deep breaths, to notice where our feet are planted, to tend our connections with care. Some days, that's enough. Some days, it has to be.