Take Me Home

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2026Leave a comment

Dear Will:

On the morning of June 19, I shimmied into the too-small Team USA jersey Seth had given me. It was like a fat rat being swallowed headfirst by a pencil-thin snake. He and his friends then informed me that I would have to put flag tattoos on each cheeks and wear my too-ugly-to-be-seen-in-public patriotic running hat. This was not negotiable. It was still four hours before game time, and the excitement and anticipation inside our Airbnb was electric.

We walked a block to a diner for breakfast, entering too loudly and unapologetically. On our way to our table, we stopped to slap five with a group of bro’s dressed in matching red-white-and-blue overalls. “Where are you guys sitting?” we asked them. “Oh, we don’t have tickets,” they told us. “We’re just going downtown to one of the watch parties!” They seemed genuinely delighted.

After breakfast, we walked several blocks to the metro, Seth and his buddies adorned in red-white-and-blue sunnies and flag capes. Strangers honked and waved as we pumped our fists and answered back with “U-S-A! U-S-A!” As we made our way down into the underground, we hooted and hollered with others, anxiously awaiting a train to carry us into downtown Seattle. The first train to arrive was already packed with fans. It looked like 500 candy canes stuffed into a box made to hold 250. Everyone was smiling. The next train gathered us in, and once again we greeted and dapped up other fans adorned to similar excess. This was really happening. We were going to the World Cup!

The train unleashed us somewhere in downtown, but there was no question where we needed to go. Everywhere we looked, we could see rivulets of red, white, and blue Americans alongside smaller streams of yellow-and-green Australians. We waded in, eventually merging with a river of supporters, flowing toward Lumen Field. There were Americans dressed in revolutionary war garb, Aussies hoisting inflatable kangaroos, fans of every shape and size and ethnicity. We chanted, posed for pictures with inebriated rivals, wished the Aussies luck (but not too much luck) as we snaked our way toward the field. We were bouncing.

Inside the stadium, you could feel the tension and noise rising as 60,000+ people found their way to their seats. When the time came for the national anthem, everybody sang, poorly but beautifully, a full-throated tribute like you will never hear at a weeknight ballgame at your local ballpark. As the game began, we chanted and chanted and chanted, banged our hands and threw ourselves into our roles with full-bodied commitment. Those of us in the stands were determined to be a force.

Ten minutes in, the US team scored and the place exploded in euphoria. We hugged each other, double-slapped the guys behind us, teased a high-five from the kid one row up, felt the collective embrace of tens of thousands of others who were joining us in celebration throughout the stadium. When the second goal came, the reaction could only properly be measured with a Richter scale. (It was.) We all stood for the duration of the 90-minute contest, sitting only for hydration breaks (whatever it takes, right?). When at last the referee blew his whistle, signaling the end of a 2–0 USA victory, the boys and I high-fived it up with everyone around us and hollered at the top of our lungs. We remained standing, chanting, whooping, nobody but the Australians wanting to leave.

Then (strangely) someone cued the music: John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” I thought, John Denver? But hey, we won, didn’t we? So we joined right in. Some of us knew every word, but everyone knew the chorus. It was magical, unlike anything I have experienced. Even the players joined in. And in the moment we truly together, united, one nation under God, as the saying goes. No more red versus blue. Only red, white and blue. As it should be.

Tomorrow is our nation’s 250th birthday. I will (gladly and intentionally) avoid the “official” celebrations that have been co-opted and turned into political rallies which will, no doubt, highlight our differences and perceived grievances. Instead I’ll contort my way into that too small shirt and throw on my ugly lucky hat. I’ll attend an early-morning flag raising ceremony in which a ragtag collection of sleepy Scouts will outdo anything a Marine Corps honor guard could ever hope to muster. I’ll pledge allegiance. I’ll sing (if my emotions let me) whatever patriotic hymns they serve up. After that, I’ll join with many of my favorite people on the planet for a pancake breakfast, an event I’ve been attending for almost 30 years. The flapjacks will be (let’s be honest) not that great. There will be crumbly scrambled eggs, imitation maple syrup, and margarine in a squeeze bottle. But the company will be unrivaled. The spirit of it all will be joyous, with an abundance of laughter and love. At some point I will reach for a breakfast sausage, either slightly undercooked or charred almost beyond recognition (there is rarely an in between), and I will look around me at the scene. It will feel so good, so familiar, so right, so true. Like coming home. To the place I belong.

Happy birthday, America. Go team!

PW

Photo by Tim Foster

Read Into This Whatever You Want

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20262 Comments

Dear Will:

My mother, God bless her, tried mightily throughout my childhood to turn me into a reader. Our home was filled with books which I mostly ignored. When she took me to the library, I would skip past the Newbery Medal winners and come home with Great Running Backs of the NFL instead. When I had to fulfill a specific page count to satisfy my elementary school teachers, I would re-read my tattered copy of Sports Shorts or (not making this up) paperback collections of comics from “Tumbleweeds.” Given the option, I always preferred to shoot hoops in the driveway instead. How I ever became an English major remains one of the great literary mysteries of our time.

It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that Mrs. Zastrow, my English teacher, succeeded where my mother had not. When she compelled me to read Walden by Henry David Thoreau, I fell hard. There was something about the off-the-grid experiment at the Pond combined with Thoreau’s excellent prose that just grabbed me. To this day, I consider Walden one of the all-time greats, a favorite that has survived multiple re-readings and still remains on top (ahead, even, of Sports Shorts, if you can believe it). One thing I have discovered, however, is that no one remains neutral when it comes to Walden. You either hate it (most people) or you love it (cool people).

In college I also discovered John Steinbeck, and he remains one of my literary heroes. Of his many books, two stand out for me: The Grapes of Wrath (of course) and East of Eden. No one is better than Steinbeck at helping you see the world through very different eyes and getting you to feel for people who are nothing like you. One of the things I admire most about his writing is how he sometimes takes you right up to the dramatic moment and then begins the next chapter after the moment has passed. He leaves it to the reader to connect the two. It’s great.

I think the most beautiful prose I have ever read can be found in Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. I can’t even begin to describe it. I read that book as an adult while sitting through the tedium of jury duty. I remember being so blown away by the language that I kept wondering why everybody wasn’t talking about this book even though it had been written 30 years earlier. The story in the book is not my favorite, but the language is so stunningly rich and evocative that it remains among my favorite books without question.

Along the way there have been many other books that have impressed me for one reason or another. In no particular order, here’s my Honorable Mention list of books I continue to recommend with enthusiasm: 

  • Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathon Safran Foer (which you MUST read in print—no audio books or electronic readers, please)
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (so good)
  • Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (which I recommended to Dana while we were dating, and although she didn’t like it, she married me anyway)
  • Just about anything by Barbara Kingsolver
  • One True Thing by Anna Quindlen (she makes good writing seem so easy)
  • Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
  • Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
  • Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (which is just brilliant)

I also not-so-secretly enjoy the works of Elmore Leonard, who I discovered when I needed something to read on a weekend getaway to Lake Arrowhead (it was Get Shorty, I’m pretty sure). There’s nothing “classic” about his books, but he does know how to tell a story and people it with clearly drawn characters, which makes him perfect for reading at the poolside on a weekend getaway.

One final note, which I share with you as a public service: I’m not sure I ever hated any book as much as I did The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Goethe. I am not a violent man, but I think if I ever met young Werther I would want to punch him in the nose—he is just that annoying. Perhaps if I had not read it as an 18-year-old college freshman I might have reacted differently, but (I cannot state this strongly enough) I am not willing to go back and find out.

But Sports Shorts? I’d read that again in a heartbeat.

PW

Photo by Matias North on Unsplash

How I’d Like to Be Misremembered

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20264 Comments

Dear Will:

Someone asked me once how I’d like to be remembered. I thought the question was totally unfair. If after I’m gone people remember me—truly remember me—their memories will be awash with all of my character flaws and shortcomings. No, thanks. What I would prefer it to be misremembered, for years and years receiving credit for virtues I never actually mastered while my annoying quirks, bad habits, and weaknesses would be lost forever. That I would sign up for. In a heartbeat.

I realize I’m not really in a position to negotiate, but if I’m allowed a suggestion or two, in that future someday I’d like those false memories to look something like this:

I’d like to be remembered as the guy who said just the right thing in that moment when it really mattered. Someone who was there in the middle of that one memory that you’ll always treasure. A central figure in the story that you tell over and over at social gatherings and everybody has a good laugh. Someone who you always associate with one of your very favorite things—that song, that place, that book, that special treat. So that when you think of any of those things, and smile, I’m part of that smile.

I’d like to be remembered as someone who put others first, mostly, or who left you glad in those instances when he made a selfish choice and dragged you along with him. A guy who filled most settings with positive energy and light. Someone who found a way to include those who might otherwise have been left out. Who made others feel that they belong.

I’d like to be remembered as a man who loved easily and openly, judged generously, found ways to give others the benefit of the doubt. Someone who made those around him want to be better and do better. A guy who consistently showed up and made others glad that he did. Someone about whom you might tell tales that inspire others far beyond his lifetime. A doer and a difference maker who left the world, or his little patch of it in any case, better in ways that you could name right off the top of your head.

All of that would be GREAT. But I would forego any of it (or most of it, anyway) if only I could be remembered as someone who was good at the relationships that matter most: husband, father, brother, friend. Someone who left those in his closest inner circle with the absolute certainty that he loved each one deeply and eternally and showed that love in a hundred different ways both large and small. Someone who, in memory, could make you feel that way again and again, long after he’s gone.

Alas. 

If I died tomorrow and you remembered me that way, it would be clear that you were not paying close attention. But since I don’t expect to die tomorrow, or anytime soon thereafter, that idealized, fictionalized image of myself gives me something clear to shoot for. It will take lots of work. There is almost certainly not enough time or divine intervention to close the gap between who I am and who I’d like to be. But on the other hand, it’s nice to have a project, isn’t it?

Facing those high aspirations and impossible odds, I find hope in the scripture that promises: “My grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.”

So what it seems to be saying is there’s a chance. I hope and pray that’s true. For everyone’s sake.

PW

Photo by Kirk Cameron on Unsplash