Summer of Joy

Notes on Love & Laundry

Dear Love and Laundry Readers,

Like everyone else on the planet, I’m mesmerized by the beautiful stories of global mutual admiration coming out of the World Cup. I love the Scots crowning all the statues with orange construction cones in Boston and the Norwegians rowing in the center of Times Square.

My old college roommate recently returned from the World Cup games in Kansas City, where everyone welcomed players and fans with open arms. She texted us pictures and said, “Everyone is so happy and super friendly! This is how the world SHOULD be.”

I don’t fully understand why soccer has transformed everyone on the planet into a nicer person, but I do have a theory, so here goes:

I think people have always been joyful, curious, generous, and welcoming. But I think we’ve forgotten this as we increasingly observe humanity through the filter of an angry algorithm on our phones rather than in person and in real life.

So when thousands of people leave their homes, jump on an airplane and go explore the world in person, they discover not just free re-fills at an American McDonalds, but a whole continent full of good and decent people who are also curious about them and where they come from.

I see this festival of World Cup brotherly love as reason number 899,383,939 to get off our phones.

As many of you know, I have a love-hate relationship with my phone. I try to take a break from it on Sundays, but that can make Monday even harder when I’m presented with all the messages and alerts and text messages I’ve missed.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time on social media lately as I work to promote Behind White Picket Fences. Some of this is enjoyable. But I also find that if I spend too much time scrolling, I start to develop a warped view of myself and everyone else. Because on social media, everyone is feeling “proud” or “happy” or “excited.”

And I sometimes wonder what social media would be like if we posted things like:

Feeling awkward as I stand alone at a party where I don’t know anyone.

Feeling resentful as I clean the mudroom where my children have dumped an entire school year’s worth of lunch boxes, sports equipment, and broken mechanical pencils. Feeling ancient as my joints creak each morning when I get out of bed.

So which is worse? Posts where everyone pretends to be happy all the time about all the wonderful things in their perfect lives? Or posts where everyone admits to questioning the life choices that led to being stuck in traffic on the 14th Street Bridge on a rainy Monday morning?

I don’t know the answer to that question. I just know that we are happiest when we feel connected to other people. And posts where everything looks perfect invite us to compare our insides to everyone else’s curated outsides.

And comparison is the opposite of connection.

Success is noisy. Landing on the New York Times bestseller list, getting a new job, graduating from high school or college, winning an election, getting married, having a baby.

Failure is quiet. Failure feels shameful in a way we can’t define.

We don’t post when we get fired or passed over for promotion, or don’t get into college, or break up or get divorced, even though these things happen to perfectly kind and successful people all the time.

But maybe we should post about these things. It’s so much easier to connect over a shared hardship than it is to compare ourselves to a success we might never enjoy.

Which brings us back to the World Cup. We find both victory and failure here, but the failure is witnessed and shared by thousands of people, together in the stands, groaning in unison over missed goals and lost opportunities. There’s no silence here, no shame, just shared grief.

The Scots marched to Fenway Park while playing bagpipes and cheered for the Boston Red Socks, their newly adopted home team. When Boston lost to the Texas Rangers 6 to 4, the Scots mourned with the baseball fans of Boston, sharing their defeat. The Scots basically said, ‘we’re staying in your city, you’ve made us welcome, so your losses will be become our losses, too.’

And because the people of Boston welcomed the Scots with open arms, Boston shared in Scotland’s victory on the soccer pitch.

Shared victory. Shared defeat. Connection, not comparison.

In our house, we cheer for the Norwegians when the Americans aren’t playing. We still have warm memories of our distant Norwegian cousins welcoming us to Norway with open arms when we visited a few years ago.

They told us the story of how our ancestors left the farm in Norway to seek a new life in the Dakota Territories because they were literally starving. Our ancestors had resorted to eating tree bark, and our Norwegian cousins showed us the tree the old people had warned them never to cut down in case the hard times came again.

A shared grief.

And now, four or five generations later, Norway is one of the wealthiest countries in the world (thanks to natural gas deposits) and we can visit each other and discuss our shared past over a wonderful lunch at a table filled with food.

A shared victory.

I don’t know much about soccer, so I’ll be happy no matter who wins to World Cup. There’s no grief for me, only joy. And maybe that’s the key to life. Not keeping score and not caring too much about the outcome, since we can’t control it anyway. Maybe the point of the whole exercise is to openly share both grief and joy wherever we find them and with everyone around us, even if, or perhaps especially if, they’re wearing a kilt. Or a Viking helmet.

I hope your World Cup Summer of Joy is filled with quiet time in a lawn chair, or on a boat, or at a beach. I hope you’re enjoying Behind White Picket Fences and if so, I hope you leave a rating or a review so the mean girl in the algorithm cafeteria shows the book to other readers.

I leave you today with a picture from something joyful. Renee Gage, the photographer who took my book jacket pictures for Friends with Secrets hosted a book party to celebrate the launch of Behind White Picket Fences.

It was a beautiful night with my family and wonderful friends. We even had gluten free tiramisu. It was pretty great.

Now I’m back at my desk, sifting through all the crazy ideas inside my head, searching for the next book. Thanks for sharing the joy, and perhaps more importantly, thanks for sharing the journey.

Yours till next month,

Christine