A (Super Bowl) Sunday Where Love Held

Yesterday didn’t feel like the Super Bowl in our house.

It felt like a day we were holding gently, unsure what it would ask of us. No 49ers. No Bears. Two teams we carry for different reasons, both missing when it mattered. We said we would root for the Seahawks. It felt neutral enough. And also because there are teams our house will never root for. A decision made long before yesterday.

I made the chili anyway. I only make it once a year, for this day. Sparrow chili. No beans. All flavor. It starts early, when the light is still soft, and it fills the house before the game ever does. This year, I added sofrito on purpose. Not as a twist. Not as a joke. It felt like a way of paying attention with my hands. A small acknowledgment that what we were waiting for was not really the game. We called it the Benito Bowl and meant it.

We live on the border of Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, close enough to the stadium that we like to say it’s across the street. That isn’t true, not exactly. It’s across the 101. A wide, loud river of asphalt that separates our quiet neighborhood from the spectacle. Still, close enough that the jets make themselves known.

We heard them yesterday afternoon. We had heard them for days. Practicing. Low and steady, rolling over the house, vibrating something in the walls. There had been nervous talk all week. About crowds. About ICE. About what happens now when big moments arrive, carrying too much tension. But the day held. Credit to the city. To Santa Clara police. To the people whose job it is to keep things from tipping. Nothing did. And that felt like a relief we didn’t know we needed.

When halftime began, Bad Bunny came out and said his name.

His whole name.

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio.

Not shortened. Not adjusted. Not made easier.

Spanish followed immediately. No preamble. No translation. Just sound, rhythm, and confidence. The field changed. Yard lines faded. Sugarcane rose. Domino tables appeared. A bodega scene unfolded. It didn’t feel like a stage so much as a place. As if the stadium had briefly agreed to become someone else’s home.

Our kids sat still on the couch. They didn’t drift. They didn’t talk. They watched. Really watched. They recognized faces when they appeared. Pedro Pascal. Jessica Alba. But mostly they were taking in the feeling of it. The ease. The joy. The way no one was asking permission to exist.

Lady Gaga stepped into that world and let it shape her. She took a song we thought we knew and let it loosen into a salsa. It felt generous. Like listening. Ricky Martin followed, his voice carrying memory without polishing it into nostalgia. Something lived-in. Something unresolved.

I felt my chest tighten in a way that surprised me.

I’m Asian. Malaysian. I grew up learning when to adjust. When to anglicize. When to answer questions carefully. When to bring food that smells less. When to preemptively explain myself so no one else has to do the work. Immigrants learn early how to make themselves smaller without being told to.

Watching Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio stand on that field, say his name first, and refuse to smooth anything out felt like being reminded of something I had learned to tuck away. That you are allowed to be whole. That you do not have to apologize for where you come from in order to belong.

The show kept moving. A couple got married at midfield. Ordinary and unguarded in the middle of all that spectacle. Flags crossed the grass together, carried calmly, without urgency. When he began naming countries, I felt that familiar instinct rise. That visibility can be dangerous. That claiming space might cost you something.

And then the words appeared behind him.

Not shouted. Not explained. Just written there, steady and unafraid.

The only thing more powerful than hate is love.

I didn’t think about arguments or headlines. I thought about classrooms where my name was mispronounced. About lunches, I stopped bringing. About the quiet calculation of when it was safer to stay small. I thought about how tired that makes you. How long can you carry it before you forget it wasn’t supposed to be this heavy?

When he said Seguimos aquí, it didn’t sound like a declaration. It sounded like a truth that had survived a lot. We are still here. That sentence doesn’t belong to one culture. It belongs to anyone who crossed something and stayed.

By the time the jets quieted and the chili pot was empty, the house felt different. Quieter. Across the 101, the stadium lights dimmed. The game moved on. The score became whatever it was always going to be.

But something had already settled into us.

A reminder that you don’t have to flatten yourself to belong.
That saying your full name is not defiance. It is honesty.
That love does not need to be loud to be powerful.

We didn’t get a team we loved this year.

But we watched something that felt truer than football.

And from our small edge of Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, across the highway, that felt like enough.