The next time you’re out jogging or at the gym or taking a yoga class or going on a bike ride, if you do such things, appreciate for a moment your freedom to exercise. If you’re a sweater like me, be grateful. Enjoy your sweat. There was a time when physical exercise was deemed a masculine activity, and a moral issue, anathema to your true role as companion of the male and mother of the…

As a teenager and young adult, I often wondered if my family had a way of communicating on a soul-level through sports that I didn’t understand. Granted, it wasn’t entirely my family’s fault. They tried. I hadn’t followed my grandmother’s advice to read the entire sports page in the paper every morning, especially Jim Murray’s column, and I didn’t take sports very seriously. I just didn’t seem to care the way that they did. I…