The Chase

Celebrated American author Annie Dillard died yesterday at age eighty-one. I've only read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, her Pulitzer-winning masterpiece, but today I spent time scrolling through quotes and passages from her other works. One excerpt stopped me cold, particularly in the wake of female athletes' fury over Sydney Sweeney's Novig ad.

A self-described tomboy, Dillard penned an ode to playing football with neighborhood boys:

"Some boys taught me to play football. This was fine sport. You thought up a new strategy for every play and whispered it to the others. You went out for a pass, fooling everyone. Best, you got to throw yourself mightily at someone's running legs. Either you brought him down or you hit the ground flat out on your chin, with your arms empty before you. It was all or nothing. If you hesitated in fear, you would miss and get hurt: you would take a hard fall while the kid got away, or you would get kicked in the face while the kid got away. But if you flung yourself wholeheartedly at the back of his knees—if you gathered and joined body and soul and pointed them diving fearless—then you likely wouldn't get hurt, and you'd stop the ball. Your fate, and your team's score, depended on your concentration and courage. Nothing girls did could compare with it."

"The Chase" from An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard

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Dillard's words hit because I lived them. Born twenty-five years later, in the same year Title IX became law, I was the only girl on the boys' soccer team—no team yet for girls in Ann Arbor. I rock climbed, hiked, skied, and biked with my brother and my father, who pushed us equally hard. Like Dillard, I looked at the activities labeled for girls and found them wanting. I wanted grit. I wanted pain with bigger payoff. I wanted to contribute to the team, to be seen as an equal.

That desire has never left me. The urge to be recognized as an athlete, a teammate, someone worth passing the ball to—it shaped who I became.

So my fists clenched when I saw Sweeney's ad. I recognize her right to make choices for herself, but that ad doesn't celebrate female athleticism. It mocks it. It trivializes our athletic accomplishments. Women before my time didn't have the choice to play sports at all. The opportunity was stolen from them. Not everyone wants to compete, but no one should strip away the chance by reducing the opportunities that exist.

I ran through the neighborhood with a gang of boys—jumping off forts, swinging on ropes, racing through backyards. The male athletes always treated me well. They were never the problem. Like the boys who taught Dillard football, they welcomed me to the team. Shoulder slaps. High fives. Dirty palm to dirty palm. With concentration and courage, female athletes built a ladder to equality, aided by male friends and teammates, climbing on the shoulders of mothers and grandmothers who fought off-book, unseen, unheralded.

That's what Dillard understood. That's what Sweeney's ad betrays. Not everyone needs to see us competing. But everyone should protect our chance to compete without apology, without objectification, without having our hard-won equality demeaned.

The real athletic moment—the one that matters—is the one where you fling yourself wholeheartedly at the back of your opponent's knees. Where you gather body and soul and courage and point them at what matters. No ad campaign can compare with it.

Collective Effervescence

Rex claimed my desk chair as soon as I finished my emails this morning, immediately decorating the black cushion with blond cat hairs. I took his occupation as valid reason for procrastination—an excuse to do chores and to read my book, while my thoughts churned over this blog entry.

An Instagram reel lodged in my head this morning: "Don't let your own imperfections keep you from doing something that gives you joy." Since college, when my professors and fellow students demonstrated superior mastery of writing, I've let my flaws drag on my desire to write, creating excuse after excuse. This morning it was the cat. Other days, it's a persuasive editorial in the NY Times that instills a nagging sense that I have nothing meaningful to contribute. The imposter syndrome wins, and the writing doesn't happen.

But Rachel Feintzig's excellent column in yesterday's Times offered positive motivation to write. Her op ed: "Spend All Your Disposable Income on Events That Make You Feel Alive" described attending a Noah Kahan concert with her family and experiencing "collective effervescence"—a feeling explained in the piece as: "when you're surrounded by people experiencing the exact same emotion as you, the feeling multiplies, refracts, comes back to you heightened."

I experienced this at a Noah Kahan concert in Denver with my daughter—40,000 voices singing beloved lyrics, the roar pushing back like a physical force. My voice disappeared into the collective sound and came back transformed. The expense was not insignificant but the collective joy magnified and heightened the experience to the level of emotional catharsis.

I'd add hiking Colorado's mountains to the list of events that make you feel alive. Though most hikes don't require excess spending, we splurge on a hotel room the night before any major climb of a 14,000 foot peak. We arrive at the trailhead in pure darkness and hike for two hours without a clear view of where we are going. The mountain makes you earn the sunrise and the view—through sweat, burning thighs, lungs gasping for oxygen at altitude. An Instagram meme I saw this morning captured it: "The beach lets you escape reality while the mountain makes you earn it."

Last Sunday at the top of Mt. Harvard, wedged between two boulders with my back plastered to cold rock, I could see layers upon layers of Rocky Mountain ranges. The view was worth every step. But the final boulder required gripping a narrow ledge with fingertips - no ropes and no firm ground to land on, not for 1,000 feet. My fear of heights installed me in a crevice while Aden's courage pushed her up and over. I smiled to hear her taking photos with the few fellow climbers hardy enough to reach the small summit. We shared our own collective effervescence (through the boulder) in the relief and joy of reaching the top.  And on the descent, my knees, hips, and feet all joined in their own collective chorus of complaint and doubt that it's a good idea to keep trekking so far.

Yet I'll do it again. Just as I'll sing badly at the next concert. Just as I'll keep writing despite the voice that says I'm not good enough. Because here's what these three pursuits share: they're worth doing even when you're not perfect. Even when they hurt. Even when you feel like you don't belong. The collective effervescence—whether it's 40,000 voices at a concert, strangers at a mountain summit swapping stories, or the simple act of putting words on a page for others to read—that's what makes me feel alive. The collective effervescence accepts our human frailties and drowns them out for brief moments, magnifying shared joys, passions and triumphs over imperfections.

So I'm moving the cat off my chair. I'm writing this. And I'm keeping my eye out for the next concert, the next mountain, the next opportunity to participate in something larger than my own doubt.

Growing Pains

We have a brand new water polo club at the high school where I coach swimming, and the twenty-six-person team includes three players with experience. The other twenty-three are strong swimmers and solid athletes willing to learn an entirely new game in seven weeks. Watching their leg drills and head-up sprints resurrects memories of my own water polo days—treading water with full gallon jugs overhead, crossing the Blodgett pool dive well corner to corner, chlorine burning my nose as exertion burned my arms and legs.

Yesterday brought the team's first scrimmage against last year's state championship team. Four quarters of play provided eye-opening drives, defensive schemes, shot opportunities, passing sequences—for ninety percent of our athletes, every moment was new territory. On the bench as an assistant coach, I fielded rapid-fire questions: How much contact is legal? What does the ref signal mean when the whistle blows? How do you read the entire pool instead of watching one narrow slice?

Our kids' curiosity thrilled both coaches. They shouted encouragement to teammates in the water, debated offensive tactics they'd use when they got their turn, improved visibly quarter by quarter. The phrase "growth mindset" fits—though it's become a buzzword, it applies perfectly to strong athletes willing to take up a brand new sport and climb from beginner to proficient in seven weeks. We believe they'll make it.

Their willingness to look new, or raw, while learning inspires me—because I'm wrestling with my own new sport, golf, which remains a mystery every time I step onto the course. During practice, I drive and putt with acceptable mediocrity. On the course, my brain short-circuits. The ball lands in trees, creeks, sand traps, or occasionally—miraculously—on the green. My main sports—swimming, hiking, biking, weightlifting—don't require the fine hand-eye coordination that connects a club's small surface with a tiny dimpled ball. Every solid contact instead of whiff or duff feels like victory.

Playing with witnesses destroys what little confidence I have. Last Sunday I connected my 3-wood off the tee (hallelujah!) and nearly reached the green from the men's markers. The rush lasted exactly one hole. On the next tee, that same 3-wood whiffed three times, then dribbled five feet forward into the downslope toward the creek. Storm clouds rolled in and I prayed for the weather to end our round. The humiliation burned hotter than the Colorado sun and isn't so quickly erased.

Yet I keep showing up and swinging at that tiny ball. I keep accepting that some days I'll look ridiculous in front of three strangers. Being a beginner at my age may be harder than it was as a teenager—we live in a culture that celebrates proficiency, not raw newness. I feel the gap between my mind's image and my body's execution. I wince at bad swings. But there's something valuable in that willingness to be incompetent in public, to keep learning alongside much younger athletes who are doing exactly the same thing in water polo. As one of my playing partners said last Sunday: "If you're not growing, you're standing still."

The water polo team plays four games this Saturday. I can't wait to watch them. With each shift in the water, they improve—hesitation replaced by hunger, initial fear giving way to competitive instinct. They're learning what I'm learning on the golf course: that growth requires looking amateurish first. That trying matters more than succeeding. That the willingness to be a beginner, at any age, is its own kind of strength. I have a front-row seat to that courage. That's everything.