I still remember the silence in the car on the way home, even after winning the state championship. It was a long drive from the stadium, almost an hour back to the suburbs. My son, the star forward, was in the backseat with the enormous trophy. It dominated the space, catching the streetlights as we passed. He barely spoke a word, just stared out the window. His best friend, Mark, who played defense – not as flashy, but crucial, always – had been benched the entire game. Sat on the sidelines, arm in a sling from a practice injury a week before. My son, he never said it, but I could feel it… the victory felt hollow to him. Almost like it wasn’t real, not entirely. The subsequent celebrations, the pizza parties, the newspaper photos with the team holding the trophy high… it all felt like a performance. He participated, of course. He smiled for the cameras. He accepted the accolades. But there was always a distance in his eyes, a kind of… detachment. I remember one evening, a few weeks later, I found him polishing that trophy in his room. The house was quiet, everyone else asleep. He just kept wiping it, turning it over and over. I asked him, very quietly, if he was proud. He just shrugged, a small, almost imperceptible movement. “It’s just… it’s not the same without Mark,” he mumbled, barely audible. That was all he ever said about it. Years later, watching my own grandson play a rec league game, I see it again sometimes. That same look. When someone gets left out, when the victory feels… incomplete. I suppose it’s a form of loyalty, isn’t it? This refusal to fully embrace triumph when a comrade, a friend, is sidelined. It’s a quiet ache, not a roar. And it never really goes away, that quiet reservation. You just learn to carry it, like an invisible weight. The trophy sits on the mantle, years pass, and the shine dulls… but the memory of that silence, that particular kind of emptiness, remains. And it always will, I expect.