Flameless

I am typing this while watching the Closing Ceremonies of the Olympics, and I suppose I should be properly sarcastic and bitchy, but frankly I am wrung out. I am emotionally wrung out from shoving the extraordinarily hot Aaron Peirsol one last meter, sticking Paul Hamm's feet to the mat, screaming the National Anthem with Julie Foudy, and, in a spirit of peace and the highest sense of sportsmanship, flipping off various televised members of the IOC.

I take with me the sight of my sister in the Notre Dame family winning fencing gold; too much Gary Hall; American pole vaulters rushing to the sky and floating, floating to Earth with the flame behind them; jumping up and down in front of the TV as the American men won yet another relay; WAY too much Gary Hall; images of the shotput at the site of the ancient Olympics; wanting to hug Michael Phelps as he eight times removed his laurel wreath for the National Anthem, and watching the Opening Ceremonies via two-week tape delay, courtesy of Hurricane Charley.

There has been a great deal of partisan screeching over even the idea of the President or members of his cabinet popping into these Ceremonies. And yet the only explosions we saw in Greece were joyful fireworks, and the only demises the death of the dignity of that one diver guy who gloriously hit the pool stomach-first.

I have a new hero, this Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki chick who is speaking now. Got the Games, got Trumped and got called back into service to haul everybody's asses out of the fire when Athens almost whizzed it all away. Let's hear it for the girls--the softballers, the runners, the soccerers, the asskickers.

The Games were just officially closed, and the call given for the youth of the world to gather four years from now in Beijing. I remember the flag being handed from Sydney to Athens in 2000, and wonder where I will be, how my dreams will have fared, when the flame is passed again to Paris, New York, Moscow, London, or Madrid. Because if you had told me as the flame was extinguished in Australia I'd be watching the next Olympics from Orlando, with a baby nephew at the knee of my heart and many thousands of words about Thoroughbred racing in my wake, you would have been much laughed at.

Very few songs can make me spontaneously combust into tears, and the Olympic Hymn is one of them, so I am off now to sit alone in the dark with the world and be a weeper as the Official Joint of the XXVIII Olympiad flickers out.

Athens is quiet tonight. The flame rests, the athletes slumber in safety. Katie Couric has actually shut up for twelve consecutive hours. For now, that's enough for me.