Playing by the Rules

When the kids were small, they learned to play games at their grandparents' table. Candyland and Chutes and Ladders gave way to Uno, which gave way to games of strategy and fierce competition in group Solitaire. They learned the speed and force required to slap a card on the stack, honed their split-second reaction times, respected the rules that made the game possible.

Daniel, in particular, struggled with the black and white boundaries of any game. When he perceived losing, he sought to amend the rules. Why couldn't he flip an extra card, sneak a peek below? If he didn't like the dice roll, shouldn't he try again? His grandparents were patient and unshakeable: no cheating. It's too bad if you don't like how the game is going. You don't get to ignore the rules.

Tears came. Game boards flipped. But Daniel learned.

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After this past week's events—the interference in the World Cup, FIFA's capitulation to demands from our national leader—I've been struck by how many adults never learned that lesson at their grandparents' knees. I know some believe playing by the rules is for suckers, that if you can leverage influence, money, or power to get what you want, you should. The rule is just an obstacle. An inconvenience.

Here's what else life teaches: actions have consequences. If you cheat and the world turns on you, rendering you a villain when you were the plucky underdog the week before, that's not persecution. That's a result. The players seemed uncomfortable with the interference - it wasn't their doing. The coach embraced it. What a sad and unnecessary ending to what had been a brilliant run by USA Soccer.

I hope when my kids have children, I can be patient and thoughtful enough to teach them what Bill and Connie taught ours. We are lucky to have their guidance.

Immersion

International swimmers gathered in Rome last week for the Sette Colli (Seven Hills) meet. Several visited the Vatican, where Pope Leo spoke about sports as an avenue for spiritual growth. He specifically blessed swimming:

"Swimming is practiced while immersed in an element, water, which surrounds the person. This symbolically recalls an aspect that has shaped us from our mother's womb: to live means learning to move in harmony with others and with the environment around us." — Pope Leo

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Though I'm no longer a practicing Catholic, reading the Pope's blessing on my favorite pastime thrilled me—especially his correlation between sport and harmony with others and the environment. When I immerse myself in water, particularly during summer heat, I find peace. I hear only the slosh of water in my ears, watch clouds through nose bubbles on my back, wash away anxieties with each bilateral stroke. My joy in the sport renews itself with every lap.

Pope Leo also noted that sport promotes individual values: commitment, solidarity, honesty—the watch never lies. I witness my swimmers demonstrate these qualities on the deck, and appreciate them in myself, in the young people I coach, and in my own children. The Pope said it best: "the age of competition passes, but those values remain."

I saw those same values again last week, watching World Cup soccer fans fill stadiums across North America. Different countries, languages, colors, passions—all immersed in the same experience. Norwegian fans thundering their rows, Argentine supporters dancing in the stands, French crowds erupting together. The solidarity was palpable. Spectators chose which matches to watch based not just on the game itself but on the electricity of the crowd, the singing and emotion that filled the stands.

Both immersion in water and immersion in community seem to offer the same thing: harmony with others, commitment to something beyond ourselves, the feeling of being held by something larger. Maybe that's what we're starved for—these moments when individual joy becomes collective, when the watch stops mattering and only presence counts.

The Mountains are Calling

We've tipped over the solstice and now roll downhill toward Independence Day, which always marked the unofficial end of summer's beginning—back when my kids were pint-sized swimmers with goggles too big for their faces and hair bleached pale from chlorine. The Fourth meant one more week of swim league, one more week until family vacation, and a prompt to schedule back-to-school shopping and medical checkups.

We're past that stage now. This year, the Fourth signifies something different: William's week-long company holiday and his return home to adventure in the mountains with us. Saturday we saw a mountain portrait captioned with John Muir's words: "The mountains are calling, and I must go." The phrase keeps circling through my mind, a siren song for cooler weather, leg muscles screaming through miles up of steep incline, panoramic views of the Rockies spreading endlessly beneath us.

But I'm reading something that throws a spoke into that wheel of anticipation. Via audiobook, I'm moving through The Correspondent by Virginia Evans—told entirely through letters, emails, unsent journal entries. Different voices and perspectives charm and beguile me, and the novel reminds me of my father's letters to my mother during his months in Vietnam. Letters, a lost art, reach the highest planes of literary expression in this book. I found myself longing for that form—the deliberate slowness of writing a letter, the care it requires, the permanence of ink on paper.

This morning, driving home from the pool, listening to the audiobook, I felt regret about not having letters from my own life. Then I remembered this blog—seventeen years of writing things down that might otherwise disappear. Not the same as a handwritten letter, but something. The mountains are calling. William's coming home. And somewhere in between, I'm writing it all down.

Collective Joy

 "It was an overwhelming sense of joy and solidarity and diversity and community and a good amount of crying and a lot of contact high." - Jon Stewart on NYC celebration after Knicks win

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Living his best sports-fan life in New York City, our older son spent Saturday night in a Financial District bar watching the Knicks win the NBA title for the first time in 53 years, then Tuesday afternoon cheering France to a 3-1 World Cup victory. From shouts of "Knicks in Five!" to "Allez le bleu," he's ping-ponged from one joyous, dance-filled mosh pit to another. The rest of us live vicariously through his videos and photos. One clip lurches from one exuberant group of patrons to another—all jumping, cheering, sloshing their expensive alcohol right out of their cups.

Watching the outdoor Knicks watch parties across the five boroughs filled my heart and made me cry. How often do we witness collective joy that transcends socioeconomic, racial, and gender lines? New York City survived 9-11, was hardest-hit by the pandemic, seems ground zero for big city struggles. To see its people embrace a common victory lifted something in me. The last Knicks championship happened the day after my younger brother was born. I joked with Mom yesterday that Dad was home supposedly watching me while she was in labor, but really watching the Knicks game on TV.

I crashed briefly after realizing basketball was finished, only to realize a wave of near-manic religiosity from World Cup fans had crashed on our shores. Scottish supporters took over Boston Common with bagpipers marching to Fenway. French crowds thronged Central Park. Norwegians "rowed" their way up escalators. Argentine fans partied in Kansas City. Surreal. Joyful. A life-long sports fan, I'm thrilled that so many came to our country to share their passion with us.

I know sports won't fix inflation or water security or the weight of real struggle. But collective joy—the kind that spills across neighborhoods and unites strangers from different countries and backgrounds—that matters too. It's practice. It's proof we're capable of standing together and wanting something.

Dancing Like No One's Watching

"I've got nothing left to prove, and I've got nothing left to hide / I threw those heavy expectations off the mountainside." — "Crone Era" by Psychwitch

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I caught Mumford & Sons at CU Boulder's Folsom Field over the weekend—the fourth Mumford concert my neighborhood friend group had attended together. We drove up and tailgated, then danced in the upper bleachers with a view of the packed stadium stretching below us, light displays blooming across the darkness, sound system vibrating through our chests. As we moved—some of us dancing, some swaying, all of us singing along—I thought about how many blog entries these lyrics have anchored over the years. "Hopeless Wanderer." "Awake, My Soul." "Roll Away Your Stone." Words that helped me survive my autoimmune crash and emerge on the other side, reminding me that I wasn't alone in my darkness.

The joy of watching live music outdoors, singing with thousands of strangers, watching the sky transform from clear to sunset-mottled to opaque, pushed me to buy tickets for another show—close to home at Fiddler's Green, where Aden and I will see Lord Huron tomorrow night. Then Noah Kahan at Mile High Stadium a month later. The summer stretches ahead, energizing and creatively freeing, my personal playlist.

Spotify identifies my musical taste differently, though. While my listening generates youthful feelings inside, the algorithm has identified a women's anthem mentality and started feeding me song titles like "Crone Era (Psychwitch)," "Cinderella Snapped (Jax)," and "I'm that Witch (Esme Rose)." Surprised at first, I found myself liking the lyrics and added them to my 2026 playlist.

Last weekend, driving my kids and a friend home, "Crone Era" came on. I laughed and asked them whether Spotify had it right. Our friend turned serious: "You've got at least twenty years before your crone era, and you'd need a hefty dose of magic to qualify." So, not quite a crone then.

That same day I saw a meme with women my age dancing at a formal event. The caption read: "If you see women in their 50s dancing, let them. They've spent thirty years taking care of everyone and now it's time to let loose."

This felt true. My children have become capable adults—usually more capable than I. Rob and I often find the house to ourselves. The years of constant vigilance and scheduling and worry have finally exhaled. And somewhere in that exhale, I discovered I could sing in the car without self-consciousness, dance in the stadium without checking who was watching, twirl in the bleachers like I'm not being observed—because I'm not. Or more accurately, because I've stopped performing for an audience that no longer exists.

The freedom feels earned. Not reckless, just honest. The voice I'm using now—singing Mumford & Sons lyrics at full volume, swaying without apology—this is the voice that survived thirty years of holding it in. This is what it sounds like when you finally decide you're done asking permission to take up space.

Maybe the crone era joke lands differently when you understand it's not about age but about power—the power that comes from having nothing left to lose, from knowing exactly who you are. From dancing like no one's watching because, in the way that actually matters, no one is. Just thousands of strangers at a concert, all of us singing the same song, and that's enough.