February 6, 2026
I went to sleep the Sunday after the Seahawks beat the Rams, winning a chance to redo / undo the 2015 Super Bowl loss to the Patriots, buzzing with this essay idea. Football was the white noise of my childhood, a place that felt safe. I thought about watching with my dad when I was ill. I remembered a special game we watched together weeks before he died. And I knew I wanted to do the work to get this into the world before the big game.
It would have been my dad’s birthday, and it feels appropriate to celebrate him with this essay, recently published in Seattle Met. I tell the story of watching a few pivotal football games together, across my brain tumor, then his, and now that he’s gone, with my son. Who knew football could thread together three generations of relationships across illness and loss?
I’m grateful for the opportunity Seattle Met gave me to share, a little different from their typical fare (“10 best Costcos near Seattle!”) but a fitting place to offer what a kind of west coast love (broadly defined) story. Here’s an excerpt.
Football was the white noise of my childhood. I grew up in Prosser, a small town smitten with the game, watched the local Friday night battles, heart in my chest. The games on TV after church were never about the final score. They were about letting my eyes grow heavy to the comforting soundtrack of helmets clacking, of fans roaring, and my dad periodically rising from his recliner in yelps of unbridled joy when the Seahawks scored. The games were about being together. About watching with people who loved me, safe to fall asleep.
January 10, 2004: Patriots vs. Titans
What I remember: a nurse peeking in, seeing the game on the room’s small screen, returning a few times over the course of the afternoon. More nurses coming by to say hello and catch a play, lingering longer than necessary after checking vitals to watch the next down. My dad, as ever, seated in a chair beside me. Did I fall asleep to that same white noise just like I had all those years ago? The Seahawks had lost the week before, so Dad was neutral. But the nurses cared—here in Boston, where I’d come for surgery, the Patriots were not yet the stampeding powerhouse they would grow into. They were simply the home team. In the hospital bed recovering, I cared with them.
Read the full essay.
