Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

“Memories light the corners of my mind. Misty water-colored memories of the way we were.” (The Way We Were: Bergman, Bergman, and Hamlisch).

“I used to remember everything, but now I only remember the things that never happened.” –Mark Twain.

Twain never disappoints, does he? There’s all kinds of meat on that bone. Is he saying that he no longer remembers things that really happened, only those things he imagined at the time, or imagines now? Or is he rather saying that looking back on his life he only remembers those things that SHOULD have happened, but didn’t?

Knowing Twain, my bet is that his answer would be:”yes.”

Memory is a funny thing. Partly accurate reportage, one’s memory is leavened by equal parts wishful thinking and regret. At least according to Twain. Think of your own narrative, the telling of your story. How much is fact, how much is embellishment (never let the facts interfere with a good story!), and how much is what you wish had happened? We were telling stories at dinner the other night, stories we all knew, ones we’d all taken part in creating and ones we’ve told countless times. Each time they are told they get a little better. Does this happen with you? Some of the stuff in our stories probably never really happened, but we remember it just the same.

“Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind. Smiles we gave to one another for the way we were.”

After my love letter to Cape Week a couple of weeks ago two of my siblings have gently accused me of looking at Cape Week, and by extension I believe at least just a little bit all of our past, through rose-colored glasses. Is this true? Meh, of course it is. Without the aid of the modern technologies that allow us to document chapter and verse of nearly every event in our today lives through the use of our ever-present mondo-pixeled pocket cameras and the vast repositories that live in literally and figuratively in the clouds, we would be left not so much with the “what” of our stories but rather by the memories of how we felt while those stories were being created. Countless neuro-psych studies have shown that humans remember the emotions felt during an event much more accurately than they do the factual details.

There have been times in my life that literally rocked the foundations of who I thought I was. Occurrences that literally had me sprinting down Prometheus’ hill just barely in front of my boulder as it threatened to flatten everything I thought was right in life. Everything that anchored me, formed the foundation upon which I was building whatever “me” meant. At dinner last night our friends talked about “experimentation” during our school years. They were astonished by how little I’d actually done, and when they asked me why I recounted a story about a 5 on 1 fight I lost in rather spectacular fashion that was triggered by my refusal to join a group of my oldest friends as they “inhaled”. The details were as dry and the recounting as rote as memorializing an EKG during a doctor’s visit, but in the telling I was transported back to the 14 year old boy who’d just lost 5 of his oldest friends. I was just as crushed, felt the loneliness and loss at dinner, at age 64, as I’d been on that Friday night so long ago.

“If we had the chance to do it all again tell would we? Could we?’

Twain also touches on regret in this quote, don’t you think? Things that could have been, or should have been, but for one reason or another, never were. Dangerous ground, that. Regret can turn the urn of happiness into a sieve. To regret, to say that you deeply and truly wish that something had not happened, that you could have a mulligan and do whatever it was differently, means that you are saying that everything that happened after that moment has been insufficiently wonderful and that you would trade it all to not have had the moment in question. It simply can’t be any other way. It’s why regret is such a dangerous indulgence in my mind. In his later years Twain was said to be increasingly bitter. One wonders if his regret fertilized the weeds in the garden of his memory.

“Memories may be beautiful and yet what’s too painful to remember we simply choose to forget.”

All stories, it seems, have parts that are wonderful and beautiful, and parts that are not. Was Cape Week all sunshine and skittles, the air in our beach house perfumed with nothing more noxious that unicorn farts? Nope. Not even a little bit. Come on, we had 4 families with kids in two houses next door to one another, all together and under the iron fist of a matriarch who demanded full attendance every moment of the week. There was all kinds of stuff I have chosen to forget.

People sometimes choose to remember an event, sometimes even an event that others present disagree ever happened, and build a narrative around it that influences how they interact with the other people who were there at the time. In their defense, it’s no different: they remember the negative emotions they felt and do the opposite of what I’ve done, keeping those memories front and center in their minds and making decisions in the present based on bad feelings born in the past. Rather than choosing to forget, or even to put beneath the comfort of happy memories, each new story must first climb through the briar patch before it reaches the meadow.

“So it’s the laughter we will remember, whenever we remember the way we were.”

My siblings “rose-colored glasses” quip is really just a good-natured jibe, a tiny, gentle tease about my worldview in general and the Cape in particular. Judging by the simply lovely friendships that we four and our spouses enjoy we have all decided in our own ways to remember first, and most often, the laughter. The memories of of the parts of our stories that made us happy. That made us feel seen, or appreciated, or loved. Some of us are better at the remembering part, and to be honest when I try I can remember pretty much every minute of most stories whether good or bad. At the same time some of us are better at the part about what we choose to remember, and again, if I’m being honest with my siblings and the rest of my family, I really do try to find those rose-colored glasses as much as I can, and I really do try very hard to make them fit.

There’s so very little time left. So many memories already made and so little time to make more. There’ll be more laughter, but soon the only thing left will be the memories of that laughter. We choose not only what we remember now but how we choose to live with the memories today. Soon enough memories will be all that is left. And the rosier my memories the more laughter there seems to be as we make the newest of our memories, and that makes me smile.

I’d like to think that people will put on their own rose-colored glasses and smile as they look back on the way we were.

I’ll see you next week…

1 Wroth. Angry. Wrathful. Usually used as a predictive: the anger will result in wrathful events. Also stormy, violent, stormy.

Did I mention that a tornado hung out over my house this week?

2 Barbecue. “Barbecue is the only food apart from lobster where a grown man is permitted to wear a bib without criticism. It is intended to be messy, sweet and bad for you.” Doublewide in “Titanium Noir” by Nick Hardaway.

Those are two perfect sentences. I really have nothing to add other than to suggest that “Titanium Noir” is one of the wittiest, most clever Sci-fi novels I’ve read in some time. You would do well to pick you up a copy.

3 Consilience. A jumping together of destinies. I like everything about this word and what this word means. Oh yes, I like it very much.

Do you believe in destiny? Honestly, I’m not really all that sure that I do. Still, the part about destinies coming together, right? Even more than that, destinies JUMPING together! Not slowly merging or casually sliding together. No. JUMPING! As if somehow the fates are impelled to compel the union of the fates.

I honestly have no idea what this might mean if it’s a thing. If it’s real. But still, what if consilience is real? What if we have people with whose destinies are literally going to jump together with ours?

I dunno. That just sounds cool.

4 Games. Turns out the Crossfit Games have been going on this week, overlapping with the Paris Olympics. CrossFit was once upon a time a very central aspect of what I did. Maybe even who I was. In the earliest days of dial-up internet I spent so much time on CrossFit.com my daughter called it “CrackFit”. In earlier days when CrossFit’s founder still held the reins I would have assumed that he planned it this way. Planned to show that his particular spectacle and his particular idea of what constituted elite athletes was more on point and more accurate than even the Summer Olympics. That CrossFit athletes were superior to even the Olympic triathletes.

Betting he still feels that way.

In what has to be one of the most amazing and unlikely things CrossFit and CrossFit Games, the first fatality in an officially sanctioned CrossFit competition occurred on Thursday during the first individual event of this year’s competition. During a Run/Swim/Run event one of the male competitors disappeared under the water and drowned. Maddeningly he was literally yards from two volunteer safety workers on paddle boards (it should be noted that all non-CF HQ personnel at the CF Games are, and pretty much always have been, volunteers). This has unleashed a predictable firestorm of criticism of all things CrossFit, but especially the CrossFit Games. I feel that a bit of perspective is in order.

Let me first say that I have had no contact nor any engagement with CrossFit, Inc., the CrossFit Games, or CrossFit.com since some time in 2019. Prior to then I was deeply embedded in all things CrossFit. My sons owned a gym for 7 or 8 years. I was an invited guest at every running of the Games, and while there, volunteered on the media team in the earliest years and on the medical team for 10 or 11 years. Behind the scenes I was one of a small group of physicians and scientists who worked along with CrossFit founder Greg “Coach” Glassman on projects as varied as defining health and preventing rhabdomyolysis from the workouts. While doing this I was a very active on CrossFit.com, writing a Sunday “column” and supporting newcomers to the movement. At no time did I speak on behalf of, or represent the position of CrossFit or Coach Glassman or anyone on the CrossFit staff; my statements reflected my own opinions only.

Today is no different.

In my opinion it is borderline miraculous that it is in year 18 or so that we have a first Games fatality. It is important to note that every year there are tragic fatalities in marathons, triathalons, ultra-endurance, and adventure races. This is not in any way to minimize the fatality at the Games, only to point out that it’s simply amazing that the first one occurred so long after the first competition. Are you a CrossFitter? Do you remember the cluster of a full, as Rx’d “Murph” complete with weight vests in the midday heat of Los Angeles in the summer? I continue to be astonished at the good fortune that no one died.

Which brings me to today and the aftermath. Things are so very different from even 2019. The reach of social media, with new players like Instagram and TikTok exponentially increasing the effects of FaceBook and Twitter/X. The firestorm is driven by both the hot winds of a wildfire and the kerosene of the fanatic. Could Lazar’s death have been prevented? Sure. Of course. It’s always the cluster of the wrong things happening at the wrong time that concludes in tragedy. One head is turned just a couple of clock hours further 10 or 15 seconds sooner and the story is one of tragedy averted.

I do not seek to absolve CrossFit, Inc. of responsibility. I do, however, believe that those who have been critical of anyone involved in the incident should remember that there are real people here who are horrified that this death occurred on their watch. I have no idea what qualities the folks on the paddle boards possessed. Given my experience on the medical team where my fellow volunteers were ER doctors, ER nurses, and EMT’s (there were a few specialty volunteers such as yours truly who only engaged in our specialties), my assumption would be some similar level of competence for the folks right there until or unless it is discovered that this was not the case.

Should the Games have been cancelled? Again, historically events in other disciplines (marathons, etc.) typically run their course in the face of these tragedies. Under the circumstances the weight of the moment then falls most heavily on the organizers of an event, in this case the owners and executives of CrossFit, Inc. How are they addressing the tragedy? How are they addressing the decision to carry on, again, the default decision for most similar events? I believe commentary on how they are performing is appropriate.

Since his ignominious exit from CrossFit, Inc. Greg Glassman’s company had been run by a series of bean-counters. Despite the presence of CrossFit HQ OG’s such as Dave Castro and Nicole Carrol, you just can’t escape the sense that every decision emanating from CF HQ, including this one, is the outcome of a bloodless financial calculation. Do they deserve that this weekend? I believe that they do. For several years they have serially upended many core aspects of what made CrossFitters, especially Box owners, support the company. They have conditioned the community to believe that they lead from the accounting office. It is up to them to convince the community otherwise.

Greg Glassman did not like the CrossFit Games, at least what they became after they decamped from the Castro farm in Aromas. It was one of the few things that had enough momentum to defy his desires; he, and CrossFit, were simply swept along by the current generated by the Sport of Fitness (TM). A first death could have come at any of those earlier Games. Castro, co-Games director Tony Budding and Glassman have been widely quoted as openly worrying about athletes surviving multiple workouts in a single day. Would Coach Glassman be handling this differently? Meh, who knows. Remember, he’s a guy who was quoted in an interview with the NYT as saying “this stuff (CF) can kill ya.” Would he have handled a death in an earlier version of the Games differently? Again, who knows. I’d like to think that the earlier versions of Greg Glassman might have. Who knows…

All of this is really just a (typically) long-winded lead up to a very small point and plea: please remember that everyone who is involved in the aftermath, whether they were near the tragic death or forced to address any aspect of it afterwards, everyone is a living, breathing, and especially feeling person. Not an avatar. Not an address or an @something, a person who is struggling with the fact that someone died during what was supposed to be celebration of something they in one way or another hold dear. Whether well inside the current world of all things CrossFit as I was once upon a time, or far outside as I and so many others find ourselves, we can seek answers to questions fairly asked without adding to the collective trauma.

It was said that the formation of a community around a fitness program was a complete surprise to the founder of CrossFit. It’s been said that the community was born, grew, and prospered because of the shared suffering of the participants. Members of that community have no say in how the owners of CrossFit, Inc run the company. The community members share the burden of a loss in that community. The private equity owners have no say in how the community will respond.

In that response I simply ask that members of the community remember that what makes them so extraordinary is how they have always lifted each other in the suffering.

I’ll see you next week…

It’s late afternoon and as usual, there’s a quickening breeze off the water. Umbrellas are flapping. Towels whip around as if possessed. It feels so familiar. The first weekend in August, sitting near the water, watching kids playing with only the faintest awareness that an adult or two has them in view. Yes, the first Sunday in August. The first full day on the water. The first full day of Cape Week.

Year two dreaming of the 32 Cape Weeks that were.

You see, for the second summer I am sitting under an umbrella at home, gazing out over the inland ocean that is Lake Erie and watching someone else’s family and their kids in the water. Social media, for all of its wonders and all of its ability to connect us with our past is at best a mixed blessing this weekend, with all of the memories and accompanying photos of Cape Weeks past. Have you been coming around here long enough to know the stories? I know I’ve told them. The good ones, or at least the better ones. Would you indulge an old man his memories? Perhaps they will trigger good ones of your own. Maybe even kindle a desire to make some. Memories, that is.

Families are funny, aren’t they? Beth and I are both first-borns. More than that, we also ended up being the first in our families to do pretty much all of the standard issue milestone stuff. You know, graduate from high school and college, get married, have kids. Yup, front of the line for all of that. It all seemed pretty regular, and it all seemed to go pretty smoothly until it became clear that we had also become the first of the respective families to acquire in-laws. Now, depending on your particular family in-laws may or may not get a vote on stuff like who goes where on what holiday, but I’ve yet to come across a single family that didn’t include in-laws that had an opinion.

In our case it was equal parts flattering and infuriating: both families really wanted us, well, us and our kids, to be with them for every single major American holiday. Because our families did not live in the same region, let alone state or town, this just wasn’t gonna happen. Our solution was Christmas in our own house, and alternating family homes on Thanksgiving. To try to fill the gap Beth and I proposed a week on the beach to my siblings, and happily they said “yes”. Cape Cod won out over the Jersey Shore beaches of our youth, and Cape Week was born.

One house. Five bedrooms, one for each family. If I close my eyes I can see us through the windows.* My folks look so young. My Dad took up residence at the head of the table, so far from Mom at the other end. A twinkle in his eye as he drank a “forbidden” third glass of wine. There I am holding Randy, my 6 week old son who would become “Randy Pat” that week to avoid confusion with my younger brother, also Randy. Randy Pat is so tiny. There he is next to that 15 pound lobster we got at the Swan River Fish Market. Little Randy is dwarfed by the crustacean! We must have already been to the pediatrician for his ear infection; he’s smiling up a storm at Darric and Timothy with whom he would form the Three Musketeers. No one had more fun than those three boys at any White family gathering, Cape Cod or otherwise. We ate and drank and laughed, 10 adults and 5 children, and had a good enough time to give it another go the following year.

Cape week would live on.

Was it year four or year five? I have my nosed pressed up against the window overlooking the table at breakfast. Uncle Randy, the “Muffin Man” has delivered once again. I see my brother and his family, both of my sisters and theirs and…where are we? Ah, here we come, strolling over from the cottage right next door where we’d rented overflow sleeping space now that there were 7 or 8 grandchildren if my memory is correct. The bedroom that our little family occupied, the largest one in the house, had nonetheless become too small for the five of us to be comfortable so we slept across the driveway in the cottage. My Mom was apoplectic leading up to Cape Week, but by day 5 or 6 she came around, agreeing that we’d outgrown a single house.

Cape Week would live on.

Oh look, there’s the kids’ table in the kitchen. All 10 grandchildren now. All four Moms working the table, some on food prep, a couple waiting table, at least one looks like they’re the bouncer. Mostly keeping Gram at bay from the looks of it. Wait, what’s happening now? All 10 kids are running for the door with Gramp in tow. Ah, you can hear why: the familiar jingle of the ice cream truck can be heard well before it makes its way around the last corner of our little dirt road. If you stand just this side of the hedge you can see them all, sitting on the front porch, smiles outlined by melted Good Humor treats as Gramp gets his annual photo. As time went by the ice cream truck would become a family caravan to Sundae School, which would later become our little version of Uber Eats as the big kids would drive the young ones to pick up sundaes for their parents.

Cape week would live on.

It’s a long story, no? 32 years in all. Another generation of in-laws arrived in the form of spouses for my kids. One summer we even had 3 from the fourth generation. The view through the windows changes as we speed through the years until 2016 and an empty chair. Gramp, the patriarch was gone. Still, the initial reason for Cape Week lived on. We shuffled the seats, gave up the overflow cottage, extended grace to family members from all of the generations who couldn’t make it, and extended our sincere hopes that we would see them soon. It was all so much the same, and it was all so much different. We still had barbecued chicken on the first Saturday night but pizza lost out to chilled lobster and corn on the cob for Friday. Until at last Gram just couldn’t make it over the dunes. August of 2022 would be our last visit to our beloved little beach on Cape Cod.

But you know what? The spirit of Cape Week would live on.

You don’t think I’d take you on an old man’s trip down memory lane, sharing the view through windows blurred by decades of beach spray and the dried tears of both joy and sorrow without a lesson, do you? Of course not. I, we, may never again set foot upon that little beach on Uncle Steven’s Way, but in some way or another we have all been changed by Beach Week. It was a week about family. About choosing family. About making the choice to invest 1/52 or each year into a family. As I look through those windows back in time I ache to see my parents again. But my siblings and their spouses are 6 of Beth’s and my best friends. Our 10 children, none of whom grew up in the same town, know each other so much better than 10 kids from 4 towns have a right to know each other, at least in part because they spend a week together growing up with nothing to do but be together.

Cape Week lives on through all of these friendships.

My folks and Beth’s (who encouraged other gatherings) did their job. They passed along to us a deep knowledge of who our siblings are, and who the in-laws they would acquire would be and become. Those who would become in-laws joined us in full. We who were the middle generation, Randy and Joanne, Tracey and Steve, Kerstin and Jimmy, Beth and I, we did our job. We made the larger family a cornerstone of our lives and demonstrated that in part through our commitment to Cape Week. We came for as long as Gram and Gramp could come. To this day we continue to seek each other out, to look for ways to be together in both happy times and sad.

Cape week lives on for us.

And what of our children? Those 5 there for the first chicken off the Saturday grill and the 5 cousins who joined them? They have now acquired, are acquiring, or are soon enough to acquire another family, in-laws of their own. What do they see when they gaze through the windows at the ghosts of Cape Week? Their parents fought hard and loved harder. What do they see when they look through those windows at the ghosts of us around that dinner table? What do they remember of the countless hours spent in the ocean and on the beach? Do they remember the outbursts of childhood battles revisited or the outpouring of love that thrived despite them? Will they ask the in-laws who have joined the family to adopt the spirit of Cape Week? Will they fight for Cape Week and what it represents?

Will Cape Week and the family that gave it to them live on for them?

The first Sunday in August. It’s Cape Week. I’ve apparently been here for quite a while. The wind has died down as it does each evening. A quiet ocean fills my horizon. Someone took the towels in to be washed. It’s time to take down the umbrellas and bring in the chairs. It’s been two years since we have spent a week together on Cape Cod.

And yet, our generation’s eight spent a week together on vacation last summer and we will gather in September to celebrate the addition of an in-law. Cape Week lives for each of us. I wish for you who are reading this all that was good about Cape Week. All that is good about what Cape Week represents. My wish is that Cape Week may live for you and yours. And mine.

Long live Cape Week.

I’ll see you next week…

*I am grateful to the late, great columnist Dick Feagler of the Cleveland Plain Dealer for the inspiration of a house filled with the ghosts of family, past. RIP.

1 Path. When I park at my office the path I wore through the woods to my Mom’s facility is the first thing I see. Each day my first impulse is to determine if I’ll have time to walk that path for a quick visit. We would have had so much fun watching another Olympic Games together.

I am left to wonder when, if ever, I will look at that path and not see where it leads.

2 100. It has been 100 years since the Summer Olympics were last held in Paris. In an altogether typical French response, the Parisians left town and went on vacation.

3 Celine. Gotta give them credit though, the French know to throw a party. I mean, come on, 360,000 people stood in the rain, happily, because that OPening Ceremony show was simply fantastic. The hits just kept coming. Not gonna lie, the “specter” that ran through the whole shebang was more than a little bit creepy, but the final entry on horseback?! So. Good.

And then they go and top it off with Celine Dion just crushing a classic French anthem.

Thousands of athletes, some of them the wealthiest, most coddled jocks in history, stayed up and stayed out, many of them without so much as a Walmart disposable poncho, lest they miss a minute of the Ceremony. We were glued to the set.

Alons y!

4 2028. Los Angeles, CA, USA has been awarded the Summer Olympics in 2028, and Salt Lake City, UT, USA has been awarded the Winter Olympics in 2034. Admit it, you forgot that the next Summer Games were in the U.S. until the Salt Lake announcement was made. I sure did. Honestly, my first response was to start plotting and planning to return to Park City. We are such Olympics junkies in my family that we actually bought a home in Park City 6 or 7 years before the Games to ensure that we would have a place to stay (we later sold it when our kids were in school and we couldn’t gather to ski together).

I came by my fascination with the Olympics honestly. My Mom and Dad went to the ’84 Games in LA. In the days prior to digital cameras and cell phones my Dad took something like 10,000 photos, creating slide shows for the ages. Mom and Dad were swimming and gymnastics fans, but they went to the LA Games with the intent to see at least one competition in as many disciplines as they could. Heck, there were a couple hundred slides of their one and only equestrian competition where Dad scored front row seats.

Now that’s big time commitment!

My folks were in their late 60’s, I believe, when we took them to Utah. We tried to see as many events as we could. We were there to see Johnny Mosley’s famous “Dinner Roll”, live and in person! My folks found a way to enjoy the snowboard half-pipe, and we all fell in love with short-track speed skating. Especially the relay races! Crazy good.

I’d sure love to see another Olympics on home soil. I will be mid-70’s for the next Salt Lake City Games, but I am going to do everything possible to get myself and Beth to LA in ’28.

5 Hoopla. Men’s Olympic Basketball is the second biggest lock in team sports, right behind Great Britain in Eventing. Just kidding! The biggest lock in team sports at the Paris Olympic Games is the U.S. Women’s Basketball team. There are 12 women on the team and it seems like 10 of them will be first-ballot Hall-of-Famers. Bet the house, the ranch, the farm. They are a Dream Team, winners of the last, what, every Gold medal? Diana Taurasi is gunning for her sixth for goodness sake. SIX!

And yet, so many folks still obsess about the player who isn’t there.

There really is no one to whom one might compare Caitlyn Clark when it comes to the peculiarity of the Olympics roster. She is, indeed, wildly popular at the moment, but as a basketball player on the biggest professional stage–there are no amateurs in the modern Olympics Games–she really shouldn’t be in the conversation. Folks are invoking icons like Magic and Larry, but at this stage in her athletic career Ms. Clark arguably has more in common with Christian Laettner when it comes to the Olympic team (hoops cognoscenti will recall that a rather famous half-court game-winner made Laettner 12th man on the Dream Team). She is a wonderful player, blessed with not only incredible eye-hand coordination but a preternatural court sense that allows her to find teammates for open looks when none appear to be open. But like Laettner, she is unlikely to be the 12th best woman playing basketball in the United States at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Caitlyn Clark and I like her game. She’s fun to watch, both from the standpoint of a washed up suburban point guard and as a fan of good basketball. She reminds you a bit of a young Pete Maravich, no? Great handle, crazy passes out of nowhere, and just money as soon as she steps across half court. A part of the whole Olympics kerfuffle is that so many otherwise good-on-details pundits have been mixing up the powers that be in determining the Olympics roster, albeit with hilarious takes from some of them. Jason Whitlock took umbrage at the question of whose spot Clark could/should have taken: “The ‘who do you remove from the team?’ debate is comical. Like it matters. For the first time in American history, women have the biggest star in sports and they don’t know how to utilize her. This is high comedy. They’re all Tito. She’s Michael. Beat it.”

That’s good stuff right there, but it’s directed at the wrong folks. You see, it’s USA Basketball, not the WNBA, that’s responsible for selecting the team, and while they are certainly mindful of the need to promote women’s sports in general and basketball in particular, what they are charged with is winning a Gold Medal. Forgive me for picking on poor Mr. Laettner, but his impact on both game outcomes and the promotion of sport was infinitesimal. USA basketball made a call based on the history of the women who were long-time pros before Clark left college with the single-minded goal of Gold.

Jason L. Riley has a weekly opinion piece called “Upward Mobility” in the WSJ. He also conflates USA Basketball with the WNBA with regard to the Olympics roster, but to his credit he directs his comments about Ms. Clark’s importance to women’s basketball toward the WNBA. He does not address her impact in simple basketball terms, as one might have done with someone like Michael Jordan, but more like Larry and Magic, men who were never in the GOAT conversation but nonetheless were responsible for a huge increase in both the popularity of their game and the money the players made playing it. Caitlyn Clark will never be in the GOAT conversation, whether she ends her career more Larry or more Pistol Pete.

Her early influence on the popularity of both college and professional Women’s basketball leads Mr. Riley to the influence that Tiger Woods had on the PGA. During Woods’ reign PGA purses climbed from $68MM to $363MM per year, and golfers in the top 100 made much more money via endorsements. Can Clark do the same thing for the WNBA and the women who play in the league? Tiger overcame literally centuries of discriminatory history in the world of golf through what can only be described as sheer force of will. It can’t have been easy.

But what if it was? If he’d triumphed as completely as he did without any discrimination, elevated the game and the fortunes of all who played during his tenure as completely as he did and he was, I dunno, Doug Sanders, would it have been less meaningful to the sport? Again, don’t get me wrong, Tiger Woods triumph was built on the foundation built by pioneers like Ali and Robinson. In my opinion his broader achievements ARE greater than they would have been if he’d been Doug Sanders precisley because he wasn’t and he isn’t: Tiger Woods, as we all know, is Black.

Riley, also Black, pulls back the curtain on the underlying tension behind the rapid uptick in America’s interest in women’s basketball: Caitlyn Clark is White. Not only that, but unlike Woods she plays in a league where players are predominantly Black, and unlike the PGA a league where many of the brightest stars are gay. Clark, like Woods, is straight. Riley says all of the quiet parts out loud when he questions whether WNBA officials are up to the admittedly delicate task of balancing the already obvious quantitative benefits being reaped by Clark’s arrival (TV viewership up 3x; merchandise sales up 230%; games moved to bigger venues and sold out) with the reality of who she is and what she is not.

Jason L. Riley is to be commended for saying every bit of this.

For me I think there are three take homes from this, all of which can be, and are, true. First, pundits like Jason Whitlock and even Jason L. Riley should be a bit more on point with the WNBA/USA Basketball nuance. Rather than take the however easy but inaccurate shot at the WNBA just say what is: USA Basketball made a proper hoops call that Caitlyn Clark is not one of the 12 best U.S. women basketball players. Riley’s 11yo daughter leads us to conclusion number 2. A budding basketball player, she only started watching WOMEN’S basketball because of Caitlyn Clark. Who cares what Clark is and/or what she’s not. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a PGA golfer of the Tiger Woods era who bemoans the fact that Tiger is Black. Clark is bringing new fans, and new fans will bring new money for everyone.

The third truth? I have no idea who will be the next Tiger Woods. It took an awfully long time for Tiger to become the next Jack Nicklaus, and you could argue that we are still awaiting the next Arnold Palmer. But without Magic and Larry would Michael have had the same impact financially? The same impact growing the game? Would Michael have been, well, Michael?

There’s a certain rising sophomore basketball player on the USC women’s team who makes me think about Magic and Larry and Michael. Will she be who she might be without someone who builds the game so that it is big enough for who she might become when she arrives? I think Mr. Riley understands.

I’ll see you next week…

1 Whelmed. When I say that something is underwhelming or overwhelming you know exactly what I mean. A bit too little, or a bit too much. What do we say when something is pretty much exactly as expected? Why don’t we react to such a thing by saying we were “whelmed”?

Should be a word.

2 Mompliment. When your mother gives you a compliment that’s almost backhanded because it comes along with a nudge to do something that SHE thinks you should do or should have done. HT Erica Rhodes.

Should be a word.

3 Tipping math. Man, is it just me or has the whole tipping thing gotten out of hand? You grabbed me a donut and maybe put a to-go cup under the coffee dispenser. Because you are behind the counter at some fancy coffee joint and not Burger King somehow this is “service” as if I sat at a white table cloth restaurant?

I was always taught that you tipped on the price of the service, that the taxes on the price were not to be included in your “tipable” event. And yet when the tablet is turned toward me, or the “gratuity included” is marked on the bill, all of the percent suggestions or disclosures are calculated against the included tax total. Should I be adding a tip for my accountant when they file my taxes?

Some kind of threshold was broken. Maybe when you got asked for a tip when the flight attendant sold you that weak sauce tiny bottle drink you needed to get through a flight that was delayed for 2 hours.

4 Sports Page. Dan Wolken of USA today wrote a column a few weeks ago about the U.S. Open in which he linked Rory McElroy’s U.S. Open to Greg Norman in the Master’s in 1996. Wolken’s piece is at best an example of journalistic overreach, more likely out and out journalistic malpractice. McElroy flamed out of the Open this weekend. No dishonor, that. 9 of the top 25 ranked pros did as well. Still, the bleating from the commentariat about the “effects” of letting the U.S. Open slip through his grasp continues to be a pebble in my golf shoe. Seriously, they are STILL equating it with Greg Norman’s Masters choke for the ages, and that just makes no sense at all. Let’s look at the numbers, shall we?

In the 1996 Masters Greg Norman went to bed on Saturday with a 6 stroke lead over Nick Faldo. Norman had made no secret that he dearly coveted a Master’s victory; surely this would be the year. There are many rumors about that Saturday night and how Norman spent it, but none of them have been confirmed by the parties that are co-named, so I shan’t tell stories. Suffice it to say that perhaps there were conflicting celebratory plans that may have had an effect on Norman’s pre-round preparations.

Norman and Faldo were in the final pairing that Sunday, Norman at -13 and Faldo at -7. In a round that included 4 bogies and an astonishing 5 double-bogies, Norman shot a 6 over par 78 to finish at -7 (281). Soon-to-be Sir Nick was 5 under to finish at -12 (276). In contradistinction to Norman/Faldo in ’96, McElroy began his 2024 U.S. Open final round 3 shots back of Bryson Dechambeau’s -7. It is true that Rory got it to -8 if I recall correctly, before carding a round of 1 under par, -5 for the tournament. Bryson hardly pulled a “Faldo” here. On the contrary, those thrilling putts he sank on 17 and 18 brought him home in 1 OVER par, -6 for the tournament. Yes, for sure, but for two missed but quite makable putts, Rory has another major on the mantle. But a Normanesqe choke job?

Please.

The need to collect “eyeballs”, views, and clicks is so out of control that pundits large and small resort to the kind of hyperbole that would get you an “F” in Journalism 101. Wolken took an 800 word cheap shot in which he showed little if any concern for historical fact, let alone any sense of perspective. McElroy had the tournament in hand and missed two putts down the stretch, either one of which puts him in a playoff. If Norman finishes -1 on Sunday as Rory did at the U.S. Open he wins by 2; 1-over like Bryson and it’s a playoff. Norman was playing for second place at the turn. It makes one wonder what it is about McElroy that Wolken finds disturbing enough to conjure up such an inept comparison. If he sinks the putts Rory is declared “back”. Does Wolken then write a story about how Bryson choked?

This is why no one tips sports columnists.

5 Deserving. What does it mean to deserve something? I mean, as opposed to earning something, of course. To earn is an easy concept for me, but to deserve is a bit more fraught, I think. The author Anne Patchett, one of Beth’s favorites, has some thoughts that are a nice place to start: “I’d been afraid I’d somehow been given a life I hadn’t deserved, but that’s ridiculous. We don’t deserve anything–not the suffering and not the golden light. It just comes.”

Ms. Patchett is clearly a woman who cares little about karma, at least in the non-fiction part of her life.

What about the rest of us? How often do we say or hear stuff like “Vacation? You deserve it”, or “s/he got what they deserved”? What does that mean? When we think about wealth, or hear people discuss wealth, I find myself hearing stuff like “nobody deserves $X”. Again, what does that mean? I definitely get the whole “nobody needs $X” thing, although it would certainly be fun to try to live like you needed to spend $1BB. For me the lessons likely lie somewhere near the intersection of earned and deserved. For example, one doesn’t deserve a tip, one earns it.

I admit to a little bit of unease with the starkness of Ms. Patchett’s take, though. Maybe it’s the residual Catholic in me or something like that. To deserve something in the purest sense is to have done something, to have behaved in a certain way that one might be rewarded. My understanding of karma in the formal sense is quite shallow, but in the vernacular if you will, I do like the simple (although probably totally made up) concept of the “karma bank”: one’s acts of kindness and generosity of all types become a kind of karmic deposit that will one day be returned to you in some fashion, perhaps with interest. “Do unto others…” and all. Of course, if we believe this we might need to believe that there is some reason all the lousy stuff happens to us, which would be a bummer.

Does it work that way? I dunno. Probably not. Ms. Patchett is probably more right than wrong. Her take inoculates us against the need to search for what it was we must have done to deserve something lousy, however much it robs us of the joy and happiness that something lovely might have come our way because we are nice people who do nice things. Perhaps the deposits in the “karma bank” are nothing but fool’s gold. Maybe we don’t deserve anything at all.

But wouldn’t it be lovely if “the golden light” was our tip when we choose to do what is right and what is kind and what is good?

I’ll see you next week…

Billy Ray (not his real name, of course) turned off his implantable defibrillator (ICD) yesterday. Billy Ray is 44.

In my day job I was asked to evaluate him for a problem in my specialty. I was told he was about to enter hospice care and assumed that he was much, much older and simply out of options. I admit that I was somewhat put out by the request, it being Saturday and the problem already well-controlled. Frankly, I thought it was a waste of my time, Billy Ray’s time, and whoever might read my report’s time, not to mention the unnecessary costs. I had a very pleasant visit with Billy Ray, reassured him that the problem for which I was called was resolving nicely, and left the room to write my report.

44 years old though. What was his fatal illness? What was sending him off to Hospice care? I bumped into his medical doc and couldn’t resist asking. Turns out that Billy Ray has a diseased heart that is on the brink of failing; without the ICD his heart will eventually beat without a rhythm and he will die. A classic indication for a heart transplant–why was Billy Ray not on a transplant list? Why, for Heaven’s sake, did he turn off his ICD?

There is a difference between being alive and having a life. It’s not the same to say that one is alive and that one is living. It turns out that Billy Ray suffered an injury at age 20 and has lived 24 years in unremitting, untreatable pain. Cut off before he even began he never married, has no children. Each day was so filled with the primal effort to stop the pain he had little left over for friendship.

Alive without a life. Alive without living. Billy Ray cried “Uncle”.

I have been haunted by this since I walked out of the hospital. How do you make this decision? Where do you turn? Billy Ray has made clear he has no one. Does a person in this situation become MORE religious or LESS? Rage against an unjust G0d or find comfort in the hope of an afterlife? Charles DeGaulle had a child with Down’s Syndrome. On her death at age 20 he said “now she is just like everyone else.” Is this what Billy Ray is thinking? That in death he will finally be the same as everyone else?

And what does this say about each of us in our lives? What does it say about the problems that we face, the things that might make us rage against some personal injustice? How might we see our various infirmities when cast in the shadow of a man who has lived more than half his life in constant pain, a man alone? The answer, of course, is obvious, eh?

The more subtle message is about people, having people. Having family, friends, people for whom one might choose to live. It’s very easy to understand the heroic efforts others make to survive in spite of the odds, despite the pain. Somewhere deep inside the will to live exists in the drive to live for others. The sadness I felt leaving the hospital and what haunts me is not so much Billy Ray’s decision but my complete and utter understanding of his decision.

Billy Ray gave lie to the heretofore truism that “no man is an island”.

Go out and build your bridges. Build the connections to others that will build your will to live. Live so that you will be alive for your others. Be alive so that your life will be more than something which hinges on nothing more than the switch that can be turned off. Live with and for others so that you, too, can understand not only Billy Ray but also those unnamed people who fight for every minute of a life.

Be more than alive. Live.

Been sitting, stewing over a few things in the world of sports. As things have settled into whatever my new normal is, three pebbles in my shoe have finally worked their way into my foot far enough to get my attention. Any one of them is worthy of a Sunday sports page column. Alas, no one with a platform has stepped in, and no one has abdicated in favor of the eyeball guy.

So here goes…

Nepotism. You had to see this coming. Right? I mean, is there any sentient being paying the least bit of attention to the circus that has become the NBA off-season who didn’t see Lebron James pressing the Lakers behind closed doors to draft his son Bronny while Rich Paul made sure that every other team steered clear? Paul made it clear that Bronny would only accept a full NBA contract. No “two-way” or G-League tender. Don’t bring that soft 10-day contract “stuff” down the lane. Even the Cleveland Cavaliers, the only other “real” destination for La Familia James was invited to the table; Bronny worked out for only the Lakers and the Suns.

What’s your take on the nepotism angle? Honestly it’s the least interesting way to look at this, at least for me. There is just so much nepotism already taking place in professional sports, including the NBA, it’s just a non-story in my book if it has finally bubbled up to the surface. Isaiah Mobley, brother of superstar Evan Mobley, takes up a little bit of real estate at the end of the Cavaliers bench. So, too, does Giannis Antetokounmpo’s big brother in Milwaukee. What’s interesting is that these are all that I can come up with when it comes to the players.

Front office, on the other hand, are littered with the kinfolk of owners, senior management, and their friends.

Terry Pluto of the Cleveland Plain Dealer has taken a bit of a different approach, and I think Terry’s angle is much more interesting: LeBron James has acquired and gone on to use leverage more effectively and to a greater degree than any other NBA player in history. I think he actually under calls it to be honest. Arnold Palmer is responsible for what we know as the modern PGA tour, but he played in perhaps the epitome of an individual sport. In all of my years as an athlete and as a fan I simply can’t remember a single athlete in any professional team sport that so actively and so publicly used the leverage that he had as a superstar to influence the actions of the teams in his league.

Not Bobby Orr or Wayne Gretzky in the NHL. Heck, Gordie Howe had to convince the management of the Hartford Whalers that adding him to a roster already populated by two Howes would be a plus. Bill Russell with the Celtics in the 60’s is a candidate, in that he likely would have retired rather than play for anyone other than Red Auerbach. The Celtics named him the last player coach in league history. Larry Bird, whose expiring contract prompted a change in the rules allowing teams to sign their superstars to a larger than “allowed” contract was not so much using leverage he “owned” as being the leverage used by ownership and agents to achieve the goal. NFL and MLB teams are simply too big to be levered the way LeBron has done to the NBA.

Think about it. Beginning with “The Decision” and “taking my talents to South Beach”, LeBron has changed the business dynamics of game. I wrote an essay here “It’s Not About the Money”, imploring LeBron to make the kind of decision that only he could, to turn away from the glitter and the gold of a “hot” city and make his hometown a perennial winner. Sadly, he didn’t listen. He chose the superstar he wished to partner with in Dwayne Wade, and then openly recruited Chris Bosh to form the nucleus that won 2 titles in Miami. Opted out of his contract when it looked like he could do the same thing again in Cleveland, and burnishes his reputation by bringing the city its first championship since 1958 or some such. Rather than stick around he decides he really belongs with all of the other Hollywood folks he is now getting ready to crush with his new production company and kicks off Showtime v2.0 with the Lakers.

Seriously, compared with all of that, getting your kid a job at the office doesn’t really seem like all that big a deal, does it?

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m underwhelmed by all of the kvetching about nepotism in the “Lakers draft Bronny” thing, and much more impressed by how LeBron has once again maneuvered himself exactly where he wants to be. Do you think he will follow in the footsteps of Magic and Michael and use part of his fortune to by an NBA team? Seems to me that doing so would be aiming too low for LeBron. This is a guy who understands power, and more importantly a guy who understands how to use that power. Terry Pluto is correct, more correct than he realizes. LeBron James is certainly the NBA player who has used his leverage more than anyone before him, including Michael Jordan. Short of literally starting a new league a la Arnold Palmer, my bid is that LeBron is the professional athlete without boundary who has done so.

Folks who know me might raise an eyebrow since one of my kids has been working with me for some 5 years now. It’s been a really good thing for us, but I do wonder about how this will affect young Bronny. How LeBron will look back on this move as a Dad over time. Will playing with your Dad, arguably the most famous non-soccer playing athlete in the world, be worth 10,000 times the attention that a player on the fringe would typically attract? How will the Dad/Son thing play out in the bright lights of LA and the NBA? Fatherhood and sonhood is tough enough around the dinner table. But that’s a topic for another “Sunday musings…”, and I still have two more topics yet to cover.

I’ll see you next week…

“I want a house with a crowded table and a place by the fire for everyone.”*

To be honest I’m a little bit surprised at how difficult is has been to mourn and to move on. Perhaps it’s because my Mom was the last, at least the last for Beth and for me. It seems as if there is still a bit more to say about our parents, the four people who were responsible for bringing us into this world and charting our earliest paths. A torch was passed many, many years ago. It’s funny, now, only now to really be fully aware of the legacy that two couples who on the surface simply could not be more different left to all who would come after them.

Beth and I grew up with a seat at a crowded table. Our happiest memories together have been sitting side by side at a crowded table.

After my Mom’s wake our entire family gathered together at a restaurant across the street from the hotel where most of us were staying. Literally everyone. My siblings and our spouses. All 10 or our collective children, three spouses and two betrothed. We even snuck in an aunt, an uncle and a lone cousin. It looked a bit like a Thanksgiving gathering; all of the young people sitting together at the “kid’s table” while my generation filled up the “adult table”. It was funny; everyone referred to the set-up using the same vocabulary even though the youngest “kid” was 22 or 23. It was a room built by families brought up around crowded tables.

“If we want a garden we’re gonna have to sow the seed. Plant a little happiness. Let the roots run deep. If it’s love that we give then it’s love that we reap. If we want a garden we’re gonna have to sow the seed.”*

My typical MO when I speak is to sorta kinda have a vague idea about where I’m gonna go and how I might get there, and so it was when I got up to give the toast to Mom and set the stage for the next day’s funeral. On the way to the airport the day before Beth and I had been listening to a group of female country singers, superstars in their own rights, who formed the band “The Highwomen”. I was moved by their song “Crowded Table” and this is what I was thinking about as I rose and gazed over our two tables set back to back, each filled to overflowing.

This family was built around the kitchen table. Crowded each night with everyone who was home. After we’d all fledged that table would become more and more crowded as we returned as couples, ever more so when we arrived with kids in tow. But it was more than that, more just those times when we gathered for Thanksgiving weekends or Cape Week. The crowded table was a feeling, a way of life. Even when we were in different locations we felt the urge to be together in some way. Our Moms didn’t get along very well at all until much, much later in life. I like to think that maybe a part of their too long in coming connection is the fact that they eventually saw each other’s crowded table.

“The door is always open. Your picture’s on my wall. Everyone’s a little broken, and everyone belongs.”*

At dinner that night I talked to our children about the legacy of the crowded table. How it begins with family but also extends to friendships both old and new. Mom’s wake and funeral were attended by countless people in my generation who were our friends when we were growing up. To a person they all talked about how our house was a refuge. Warm and welcoming. I talked to our kids about how the baton had been passed from their grandparents to their parents when we started our families and began to build our own crowded tables. My own house has been blessed with what folks have come to call “Beth White’s Extras”. Kids who maybe didn’t have the greatest place to call home who came to find a kind of home around our table. I heard the same things at my Dad’s services and at the memorials for Beth’s parents.

Did you grow up around a crowded table? I concluded my “toast” with an exhortation to both my generation seated at the “adult table” and to young people sitting at the “kid’s table”. We have been left a legacy, one that by and large was a part of the upbringing and early life of everyone in that room. Every grandparent to every one of the kids believed in the crowded table; Mom was just one of the few left. Any and all of us who have been so blessed are left to honor that legacy by crowding our own tables with family and friends. Include everyone as often as possible, especially those parents and grandparents who bequeathed their table to you; once a chair becomes empty the table becomes a little less crowded. There’s joy to be had in finding the room for another seat at every table, joy that each of us can bring now and forever.

“Yeah, I want a house with a crowded table, and a place by the fire for everyone. Let us take on the world while we’re young and able, and bring us back together when the day is done.” –The Highwomen

It’s always going to be tough to see the empty chairs at our tables. Thanks for bringing us back together Mom.

I’ll see you next week…

Each year I post the story of my last true visit with my Dad. His dementia robbed us of him long before he passed. I stumbled across another post about how children so often quietly bond with their Dads over a shared passion, and I thought I would add it to my Father’s Day thoughts. With the loss of my Mom still so fresh today brings equal parts of renewed pain and longing, now for both parents, and joy in the fact that I had them both for as long as we all did.

I will try my best to dwell there, in that joy.

A Brief Father’s Day Visit From My Dad

My siblings and I only need to remember one weekend each year when it comes to celebrating my Dad. His birthday almost always falls within a day or two of Father’s Day. So it was that I found myself in Rhode Island the past couple of days, in the company of my Mom and a guy masquerading as my Dad, a guy who was very curious about the new fella who’d dropped by for a visit.

Getting old is not for sissies, my friends.

Somewhere inside, deep inside, there’s still some of my Dad in the jumbled up connections of his mind, carried by the body that failed him in such spectacular fashion 2 ½ years ago. Dad is extremely intelligent, the only family member in his generation to have gone to college. Quite the athlete, he used football and the GI Bill to pay for school. Like so many in his generation he then worked, raised a family, and put himself through grad school. He won his club championship in golf twice at the ages of 50 and 60. No typo. Beat the reigning RI State Amateur champ on his home course for the first one.

As we sat on the porch of his house overlooking the par 5  14^th hole, I had an ever so brief visit from that guy. From my Dad. Like a citizen of Brigadoon he came slowly through the mist of his mind to join me for a bit. We’d always bonded over golf. My brother and I never turned down an invitation to join him on the course, either as partners or as caddies for him and his buddies. It was quite a privilege to do either; my Dad’s most elemental essence was expressed on the golf course.

A light breeze was blowing through the forest in the back yard just beyond the rough. We chuckled at the golfers who failed to take the wind into consideration, sheepishly trying to sneak into our yard to retrieve their out-of-bounds second shot. Dad talked about caddying as a kid in the Depression. We both noted the absence of caddies as the foursomes passed in and out of view. It was really very nice.

I quite like the Dad of my adulthood. Quick to smile, slow to anger, unfailingly loyal and kind. It’s hard to imagine now how distant he was when I was a boy, his friendship as an adult is so easy. I’m not sure how long we sat there to be honest, nor when I noticed that he was slipping away. As surely as the village of Brigadoon disappears, the mist had returned to claim him. I got up, walked over to his chair, held his hand and gave him a kiss. I wished him a Happy Birthday and a Happy Father’s Day, hoping that I’d made it on time. That he was still there. That he knew it was me, Darrell, his oldest child. I told him I loved him.

He smiled and gave my hand a little pat as he disappeared into the mist.

I really miss my Dad.

Tethered to the Memories

Most of us have (or had) a Dad who played a role in our lives. Mostly good, often hard, unfortunately not so good in some cases, but undoubtedly memorable in all cases. We have memories. At some point memories are all we have.

Most families have a “thing”, a certain activity or place or topic around which memories orbit. Maybe it’s a vacation spot to which your family returns as inexorably as the swallows of Capistrano or the Monarch Butterflies of Brazil. For some it’s not the location so much as what transpires there. Think family dinner here where the memories are of nightly discourse covering anything from poetry to pugilism, a travel of the mind more than the body.

When it comes to Fathers it’s often a case of the child inheriting the father’s chosen sport. As I think of this a hundred images appear of tiny children tagging along as their Dad does whatever it is he does. Invisibly tethered to their father by sharing his time with his passion, all the while being infected with that passion themselves. I see little girls in oversized Wellies holding their Daddy’s hand, his other cradling a shotgun, as they trudge through a marsh. A Dad’s bare feet submerged just off the dock as a tiny son’s size 2’s dangle feet above that same pond while bobbers float just out of view.

For us it was golf, for my brother and me at least. Father’s Day meant getting up an hour or so before Dad, cramming in random calories, and then walking to the caddy shack for another Sunday loop. Except on this Sunday the caddy master tossed us a bone and put us in my Dad’s group. We were pretty good caddies, my brother and I, and my Dad was a more than pretty good golfer. He made sure to make his game with other of the better golfers on Father’s Day. Good caddies always make for better golf, and 4 good golfers squired by 2 good caddies makes for a very good round, indeed. Those are some good memories.

We grew to be good friends on the golf course, my Dad, my brother, and I. On one magical morning Randall and I became men, at least in the golf sense. One Saturday morning (sadly not a Father’s Day) we headed to the first tee with Dad not as caddies but as real golfers. Partners in his foursome, with caddies of our own. In time we were joined by a brother-in-law as we towed our Dad along on a decades long golf odyssey. We’d found our connection, and like the little girl in her Wellies and the little boy with dangling toes we kept ourselves tethered to our Dad through his passion.

And we made memories.

That’s all that’s left now, the memories. We’ll not try to remember what we had in the end. These newer memories don’t sing as sweetly and so we tried to erase them as soon as they arose. Rather, we will try to share those other, older memories with Dad before the tether frayed. Until that one day when we held our end of the tie and it lay quietly against our side, empty, nobody there to whom we were still tethered.

If we are fortunate we reach out our own hand and find it filled with tiny fingers, and we walk to wherever, tethered to tiny little legs that struggle to keep up as they chase our passion with us. We feel the stillness, the emptiness on the other side where we were once tethered ourselves. If we are very fortunate we realize that maybe we still are. Tethered, that is.

Tethered by the memories of when we were the child whose tiny fingers nestled into our Father’s hand and we chased what became our shared passion, together.

Happy Father’s Day.

“She’s in a better place.”

At least that’s what all of my friends and acquaintances have been telling me since my Mom passed from this world on June 3^rd. Presumably my siblings have been hearing the same. Is it true? Is that what happens when you die? Has Mom left our world and entered another, one in which my Dad has been waiting patiently for her to arrive?

If ever there was a time for faith, now is that time. You WANT to believe. You really, REALLY want everything that you learned as a child to be true. Especially when it comes to your parents, and especially if they were as devout in their belief as were my Mom and Dad. And it probably doesn’t really matter what version of an afterlife, a “what comes next” you, or for that matter they, believed. Reincarnation, a lifting of your spirit to join the mass of spirits who preceded, Heaven, or whatever it is that so many of the other great religions believe. With a belief in a thereafter there is peace in our new here and now.

Faith in something greater seems to be a uniquely human endeavor. Faith, and a near-rabid fascination with, and desire to understand and explain our world and our existence. Again, it’s all pretty simple when it comes to the Great Religions (probably need to capitalize that, eh?): everything started when whoever or whatever said it did (“…and on the seventh day…”) and it doesn’t look like it’s ever going to end (“…world without end…” and all). Each great discovery in physics brings us back closer to something that looks like a beginning, although no matter how large or meaningful that discovery may be, each subsequent one actually results in an ever-smaller step back in time.

Until even the most brilliant of physicists throws up their hands and exclaims “from here, nobody knows.”

It’s there, at that point in the “look back”, that faith is the only antidote to sure madness. How can it not be so? The Bosun Particle was nicknamed the “God Particle”, because even the proof of its existence was not enough to explain what happened in the beginning. At some point you go back and back and back, and to preserve your very sanity you must declare that SOMETHING started the whole thing off. It’s about as non-scientific a declaration as you can imagine. It is a declaration of faith.

How about on the other side? At the end? The physicists are pretty sure that the end is just that. The end. Stephen Hawking famously declared the human brain as nothing more or less than the greatest computer ever developed, capable of incredible, limitless feats as long as the current passed through the neural networks between our ears. At the end what remains is no more functional than the celestial junkyard overseen by Wall-E in the eponymous movie. Hawking was all so cut and dried, so distanced from any tiny bit of humanity. Perhaps that’s why he may have been the longest living ALS patient in memory; he couldn’t let go. Death for him meant the end.

But all the rest of humanity seems to have at least enough uncertainty about all things “after” that we wonder. Even Woody Allen, a self-proclaimed atheist once quipped “I don’t believe in an afterlife, but just in case I’m bringing along a change of underwear.” Again, not quite as far from faith as Hawking, but I always had this nagging sense that Allen was mocking those who had faith.

Which brings me all the way back to my Mom. And for me, while not any closer to religion, back to at least a little bit of faith. You see, faith brings with it hope, and hope is what has quietly kept one foot moving past the other for the last many weeks. Just like my Dad, Mom began to spend more and more time somewhere in the past. I hadn’t heard her talk about my grandfather in decades, and yet there he was with her, on the other end of a conversation only Mom could hear. She saw Dad everywhere and in everything. Her desire, her need to be with him was so very powerful. There was comfort for her there; she was happy there with him. She had hope. Mom believed and it made her ready to go. As much as I wasn’t ready for her to go, it made me want to believe.

Tomorrow we will lay Mom to rest, what remains of her earthly body will forever lay next to my Dad. Is there more for her? For us? For tomorrow, at least for me, the answer will be “yes”. Tomorrow I will have the same faith I find when I look so far back that I can’t look any farther, and I will allow myself the hope that faith in “something more” brings. I won’t say goodbye; I will simply tell my Mom that I love her, to say hi to Dad, tell him I miss him, and “I’ll see you later.”

And at least for tomorrow, I will believe.

Anne Lee White 4/21/1937 – 6/3/2024