Go Seahawks!

As I watched the Seahawks game at a sports bar in Phnom Penh I felt as though I could have been any city in the United States other than those in Washington or Colorado. There were the bar stools, plastic covered couches, big screen TV's with sports (only Super Bowl today), pool tables, and bar food. There were, however, many oddities to being in this bar: it was 6:00 in the morning when I arrived and it was already packed, there was barely a brown face to be seen in the crowd (I have never been around so many expats in Phnom Penh), and all of the highly anticipated Super Bowl commercials were replaced by one commercial for an NGO that kept playing over and over again at every break. There was a balance of Seahawks and Broncos fans present, but half the crowd was silent or groaning for most of the game (easy to guess which half of the crowd that was).

It was without question a great feeling to see the Seahawks finally win the championship. I have been a Seahawks fan as far back as the Jim Zorn days. But for me there was a surprise blessing to this win; something that I didn’t anticipate would happen when I arrived for the game broadcast.

For many years, I would spend every Sunday with my mother. During football season it was a routine for us to watch the Seahawks games on television and I wished so badly that I could have watched the Seahawks win a championship with my mother. I know that she would have loved that and that her main reason for loving it would not be because the Seahawks held a championship, but because she got to witness it with her boys. Sadly, that event would never happen for her; she passed away in 1993. But today, I received a gift from this win that was both unexpected and great. Today I felt a renewed closeness to my mother that I have not felt in several years. In a bar full of mostly strangers , in a time zone 14 hours ahead of Seattle, in a country where few people even know what a football looks like I literally felt as though I was sitting with my mother back in her home in Bellevue, Washington watching the game and cheering the Seahawks to the championship that we have waited nearly four decades for.