What I See

Brussels in February was a city of grey on grey. The mist didn’t just hang in the air; it clung to the cobblestones and seeped through the window frames, bringing a bone-deep chill that only a Belgian winter could provide. On the evening of February 23, 1980, I sat in the dim light of our house, the wood-paneled television set humming with the static of a trans-Atlantic delay.

In Lake Placid, the celebrations had already peaked. In the United States, people were likely already hoarse from screaming, their flags tucked away after a day of improbable joy. But because of the seven-hour time difference and the slow, analog speed of 1980s media, I was living in a bubble of "yesterday." I was watching a replay of the Men’s Olympic hockey game, a rerun of a miracle that the rest of the world had already processed.

I sat cross-legged on the floor, an American teenager in a foreign land, watching grainy college kids in blue jerseys skate their hearts out. When the final buzzer sounded on the screen, the announcer’s voice cracked with an emotion that was immediate to me, even if it was already hours old. As the national anthem began to play, my heart swelled with pride. I thought I was just watching a hockey game. I didn't know I was watching a scene from my future life that wouldn't fully calibrate for another forty years. I was a girl living abroad, seeing my country celebrate a bunch of college boys, never asking what that victory was meant to distract us from.

Brussels eventually became a distant memory of my childhood. The television with bunny ears was replaced by the high-definition demands of adulthood and parenthood. We moved back to the States, and I had settled into my motherhood life in Michigan, the early morning rinks, the smell of damp equipment, the quiet labor of raising athletes.

Twenty-four years later, the setting was a movie theater in a small beachside town. It was 2004, the eighth birthday of my oldest son, Tate. The lobby was a swarm of jerseys and sneakers as a dozen eight-year-old hockey players, fueled by blue Icees and birthday cake, tumbled into their seats. They were there to see Miracle on Ice, the cinematic retelling of that 1980 team.

As the lights dimmed and the boys finally went silent, the screen didn’t open with the sound of skates or the roar of a crowd. Instead, it opened with a montage of news clips from 1979 and 1980: Russian tanks rolling through the dust, endless lines of cars waiting for gas, the haunting footage of the Iran Hostage Crisis, and the weary, defeated face of Jimmy Carter.

I sat frozen in my seat, a handful of popcorn forgotten in my lap. The kids around me saw “history,” newsreels, as something to be ignored until the hockey started. But I saw a world I didn’t recognize. I leaned forward, my brow furrowing. I had lived through those years. I was a teenager in 1980. Why hadn’t I seen these clips? Why was this footage of my own country’s turmoil foreign to me?

The realization didn’t hit me right away; it seeped in over the following days, cold and sobering. I hadn’t lived that history because I hadn’t seen it. For five years in Brussels, I had been tucked away from the American broadcast cycle. I had the "Miracle," but I didn’t have the version from newscasters in the United States.

For the first time, at thirty-eight, my grandmother’s long-unspoken anxieties finally made sense. I remembered the way she used to fret when we lived abroad, the concern that would cloud her eyes when she spoke of us living "over there." I had always chalked it up to her being just a worrywart. But sitting in that theater, I finally understood: her fear wasn't about geography. It was about the danger of only knowing what you are shown.

Now, decades after the years in Brussels, I am awake at 4:00 AM in a hotel room in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The air here is thin and cool, smelling of ancient stone and night-blooming bougainvillea. I am 3,000 miles from home, in a place my own children begged me not to visit. They had been persuaded by the warnings on American television, the "Breaking News" banners, and the frantic newscasters describing Mexico as a landscape of burning buses and civil unrest.

But as I sit in the dark, watching the first hints of purple light touch the cathedral spires outside, I am struck by a familiar epiphany. It is the same one that started in that theater in 2004, now coming full circle.

The journey to this hotel room was a collision of two worlds. Days ago, on our Delta flight, the cabin had erupted in a single, roaring cheer that shook the overhead bins. The Men’s American Hockey team had just won gold, exactly 30 years to the date of that first miracle I watched in Brussels. Total strangers were high-fiving across the aisles. It was a moment of pure, unadulterated American joy.

But the high was short-lived. Minutes after the final goal, the stewardess’s voice crackled over the speakers, her tone flat and urgent. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have received orders to turn around. We are returning to Minneapolis. There is civil unrest in Puerto Vallarta. It is not safe to land.”

The collective joy vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp fear. We chose to fly to Austin from Minneapolis and spent the next few days, watching the news. We saw the screen transform the hockey heroes we had just cheered for into something ugly. Because of a speakerphone call with the President, social media and news anchors began to dismantle them, labeling them symbols of "white privilege" and "male chauvinism." We watched our own Red Wings captain, a young father who has spent his life bleeding for the sport, being smeared by his supposed fans.

On the screen, Mexico was a war zone, and our athletes were a disgrace. The "official" story was one of unrest and character flaws.

But I remembered Brussels. I remembered the movie theater. Sam and I looked at the beautiful, quiet morning in Austin, then at the news, and realized the gap was there again. We ignored the screen, and we flew to Mexico anyway.

Last night, we sat in a restaurant in the heart of San Miguel. The courtyard was filled with at least two hundred people, mostly Americans. Dining under a clear, star-studded sky, laughing over beer and cheeseburgers. There were no burning cars. There were no soldiers in the streets. There was only the sound of a Spanish guitar and the laughter of a vibrant, peaceful city.

As I watched the Americans stumble with what bathroom was male or female, I turned to Sam and thought about those hockey players on that speakerphone call. The media had dissected their laughter, calling it a sign of their "privilege," but I saw something else entirely. I saw the same silence I had practiced for thirty years.

I saw young men who had spent their lives in the basements of billet parents, driving six hours through snowstorms at 5:00 AM, sacrificing their childhoods for a chance to wear the jersey. I saw kids who had been thrust onto a call with the Commander-in-Chief. They weren’t being chauvinists; they were being respectful. They were doing what we are taught to do until we learn better: they were being polite to power.

My mind drifted back to a family Easter dinner years ago. I remembered the paper plate in my hand, the smell of ham and casseroles, and the moment Sam’s father looked at me and asked where I went to church. When I told him, he looked me in the eye and said, “Every Catholic I’ve met is a liar.”

I remember the hot flash of hurt in my chest. I remember the way I chose to stay silent, staring down at my potato salad, the silver fork heavy in my hand. I didn't want to make a scene. I wanted to be the "good" guest. I wanted to show respect to a patriarch. It has taken me thirty years to realize that my silence wasn't respect, it was a survival reflex in the face of a pattern I wasn't ready to confront.

In 1980, I didn't know the truth because I had no news. In 2026, it is arguably harder; the news is everywhere, a 24-hour flood of information, but so much of it is a projection. Whether it’s the "danger" of a Mexican sunrise or the "privilege" of a kid who has spent a decade on freezing ice, the "truth" on the screen is rarely the truth on the ground.

I woke up to realize that my grandmother’s fear was right, but for the wrong reasons. She feared the world "over there," but the real danger is the world "in here,” the one we allow the television to build for us inside our own heads.

Last night, karma prevailed. The Red Wings captain, the man the media tried to tear down, scored the game-winning goal in overtime. And here I am, safe and at peace in a city the world told me to fear.

I am finally done watching the replay. I am finally done letting the screen tell me where the miracles are. I’m stepping out of my childhood in Brussels and the theater in 2004. I am finally looking at the world for myself.