Teaming up

If you're going to go to a track meet, let me suggest you pick a sunny day in April. When you get there, the air will still have enough of an edge so you can carry and sip from a cardboard cup of coffee, knowing that within a half-hour you'll pour it onto the grass, craving something colder.

You probably don't need to know anyone competing because the spirit of the day will engulf you as soon as you walk toward the stadium. You'll hear blurred excited voices, and flurries of footsteps. The P.A. system blares YMCA, with periodic interruptions from a voice announcing the first call for the girls 800; the last call for the high jump; the start of the hurdles, the triple jump, the pole vault.

You'll be alternately amused and awed by the bodily twists and turns, the exaggerated jumping jacks, the high steps and kicks that make up various athletes' warm-up routines. 

If you hardly even know their names, that doesn't matter all that much. But if you are lucky enough to know (or quite probably love) a competitor, and perhaps even have surprised him by showing up, that makes the colors of the uniforms that much brighter, the vividness of the sun even more blindingly beautiful, the entire experience even more memory-making profound.

He seems to sense this too -- this added bonus of faces from home cheering him on -- because he seems to scan the crowd when he jumps extra far, or when he fouls, or when his hand releases the baton into the outstretched hand of his teammate. You're pretty sure he doesn't notice you're wearing the blue and silver earrings he gave you, the pair you lost and almost cried upon finding a month or so later. You don't care. You're wearing them for luck, for support, for that connection that really can't be measured in mementos or things.

The coach walks by, glances his way.

"Go Charlie!" he calls, clapping his hands twice above his head. "Another big day!"

The event begins. You hold tightly onto the chain-link fence separating the observers from the athletes. You're mesmerized as you watch your competitor swing his arms before his favorite event, the triple jump, feel the breath in his lungs as he pauses, as  he inhales composure and channels confidence.

You find yourself taking a synchronous deep breath as he sprints toward the jumping line. When he lands in the sand pit and starts clapping because he knows he's done well, you realize you've yet to exhale.

With each movement, each event, you catch yourself marveling at his prowess, staring at his muscles in action. You make yourself look away; he'd be mortified if he knew. You walk to the car, pull out an umbrella because the sun is unrelenting and the stadium seats shadeless. When the announcer calls for the girls in the 4X100 relay to come onto the field, you put down the umbrella and walk down the metal steps.

You love relays. You could watch a dozen in a row for two weeks straight and never lose that sense of jaw-dropping awe at the timing, as one hand reaches forward and the other back. More quickly than a finger-snap, than the blink of an eye, that exchange has to be perfect.

As the girls round the corner near where you stand, you get an unexpected catch in your throat. You don't even know these runners, but the precision takes your breath away. The boy -- the young man, your son -- you have come to watch has told you where to stand so you can watch him hand off to the anchor the baton he's received 100 meters earlier.

You see him coming. Good heavens, did you realize he was so fast? You're screaming out his name now, jumping up and down as the nanoseconds unfold and he gets closer to his teammate whose arm is outstretched and waiting.

You feel the earth move but stand still at the same time.

You see the cluster of runners, strain to watch the exchange. The anchor reaches back, trusting trusting trusting as he starts moving forward, hardly looking behind.

The dark-haired runner you can't take your eyes off stretches his right arm out.




The baton connects his hand with that of his teammate, who then grasps it tight and runs toward the finish line.


You stand on tiptoes, stretching to see what's happening down there. The colors and uniforms are a blur, but then you see someone familiar jump high into the air, hear that yell that could come only from him.


Third place -- just two-tenths of a second slower than the second place winners; three-fourths of a second slower than the winner. That means the team earned a place on the podium. Later, you learn they broke a school record, and are the first 4X100 relay quartet to stand there.

You're more tired than you thought you'd be -- as if you were the one warming up, the one jumping, the one focusing first on the baton and then on the finish line. It's field day at summer camp all over again, and you feel sunburned, satisfied, and starving.

You'd love to rehash the day, the events, the meters and the seconds with the kid you came to see. But you also know that right now, nothing is more important to him than being with those with whom he spent not only today, but the countless hours of practice and camaraderie that brought them here.


So when he says, "Do you mind if I have dinner with the team?" you answer him no, of course you don't.

And truth to tell, you don't merely mean it. You mean it with all your heart.

Inhaling the sweet scent of a perfect Thanksgiving weekend

I have to write this now. I have to write before the scent of the last few days fades away, and I find myself sniffing the air, or my sleeve, or my pillow, hoping for an olfactory remnant I might have overlooked, one that will bring Thanksgiving weekend back all over again.

You know how some days are filled with moments you want to tie together with twine and put into a drawer with your favorite t-shirts and softest socks? They don't come around all that often, and truth to tell, what makes them special isn't anything you'd find in a movie or a book, or something anyone other than you would care to watch or to read.

They tend to occur quickly as a finger snap; occasionally lingering as long as a few castanet clicks, maybe once in awhile even stretching to the length of the last lyric of a favorite song. You know that very second they're happening, and you smile, and you feel like honey was poured into your very soul. You vow you'll remember and then, by the time you get home or the sun drops below the horizon, you've forgotten.

But I determined when the first bit of goodness tickled my nose that I would remember. It must have been Thanksgiving morning, as my son Charlie and I jogged together from our perfect parking place to the starting line of the Turkey Trot -- which, this year, was blissfully next to a corral for the timed runners. 


I remember how happy Charlie and I were watching my nephew/his cousin Paul cross the 8-mile finish line, and walking to our car with him, his sister Julie and her boyfriend Tyler. I freeze-frame moments at dinner, as well as the game we played and how much we laughed.
  
Saturday morning, my run merited a gold star -- which I knew before I'd even reached the corner because it felt so good. I didn't even realize till I checked my watch 6.2 miles later that I'd never run that distance so fast. But what keeps touching my memory is gazing at the blue, blue sky and being almost-stop awestruck by the storybook V-formation of geese -- whose honking as they headed south jostled me from my running trance.

Just now, a day or so later, I find myself taking a deep breath, wanting to recount on the exhale even more moments from a weekend that Charlie and I each marveled at during those days -- more than a few times, and completely out of context.

Instead, I'll tug at a roll of twine, snipping off one piece, two pieces, a dozen. I'll wrap each one around a moment, a smell, a piece of sky, a drop of honey. I'll scoop the pile into my arms, shifting a little; freeing my fingers enough to open a drawer. As I lift my wrists, the little bouquets will fall inside. 

I'll close the drawer and, just for a second, my eyes. I'll inhale deeply, holding onto my breath, onto the scent. Then I'll open my eyes as I empty my lungs, fill my soul, and allow myself to linger. Just -- but really never quite -- long enough.

Komen and going

There are many reasons to run Komen Dallas Race for the Cure. Some are obvious and huge; namely, the ever-growing number of women with breast cancer. The race, with its 20,000 runners and walkers, plus who-knows-how-many police officers, volunteers and spectators, raises awareness and money to fight this awful disease.

The numbers make you shake your head with disbelief and horror. The Komen represents that staggering, hard-to-wrap-your-head-around number of people whose lives have been touched, whose stomachs punched, whose psyches left reeling, by this disease.

But it also reminds us that each number is a person -- someone honored or memorialized by pink rectangles on the backs of runners and walkers, or t-shirts emblazoned with photos of loved ones who fought the good fight, but who ultimately succumbed.

As my son Charlie and I fast-walked to the Race for the Cure starting line on October 19,  we drew near a man wearing a yellow long-sleeved t-shirt. On the back were words that said something like "Here in memory of my wife," and the likeness of a smiling and beautiful woman. A few feet ahead was a young man with a similar shirt and the words "Here in memory of my mom."

I looked over at the husband and told him how sorry I was for his loss, and that he was doing such a good thing by being here. Clumsy, yes, but I wanted to say something to acknowledge the sorrow that must be so all-pervasive.

Charlie and I got closer to the starting line, and he tugged on my arm to stop walking so we could sing the national anthem. The gun sounded; Charlie and I started off together, and he quickly took off. For the first five minutes or so, I could see him up ahead, his fluorescent half-zip jacket and matching ear band weaving through the spreading-out crowd. I lost him in the dapple of leaves, and focused more on my own breathing and pace.

When I crossed the finish line, I looked around for Charlie and was surprised to see him almost immediately. He was talking to a young man who somehow looked familiar (but who, as it turned out, Charlie had never met until 10 minutes earlier).


I introduced myself. He had a beautiful smile as he motioned to Charlie and said, "Man, he kept me going."


Charlie said, "We kept each other going."

He explained that during the third mile, he felt himself slowing down a bit. Then he saw someone in his right-side periphery who a moment earlier had been on his left. The person -- who turned out to be this young man -- said, "C'mon. You can do it."

They stayed pretty much together. At one point, the young man said he felt like he was going to throw up. Charlie said, "No, you've got this. C'mon."

They crossed the finish line together and started talking. That's when I came up. I asked what had brought him here. Turns out I should have asked "who." He turned around to show me the pink rectangle on which he'd written "Running for Granny Moss" in black felt-tip pen.

"My grandmother's a two-year survivor," he said.

"That's great," I said. "How's she doing now?"

"Good," he said, "but I lost my granddad."

I said I was sorry and asked when. Last summer, he told me, and I told him that my dad and Charlie's grandfather had died in 2012. He expressed his condolences.

"What did your grandmother say about you running today?" I asked.

"She doesn't know," he said. "I just decided to do this. I'd never run a race before. I'm going to go see her and bring her a bunch of stuff."

He turned again to Charlie. "Man, you are ripped," he said. "I bet you don't smoke or dip or do drugs or drink carbonated drinks, do you?"

"No," Charlie said, equally amused, embarrassed and flattered. "I haven't had a soda in four years. You look like you work out, too."

"Oh, I do construction," he said. "This was really rough though."

He told us he hadn't eaten before the race. I said he really should eat a couple of bananas or something. I also noticed the cotton race shirt he was wearing. Cotton -- as any resident fitness nag, former running-store employee or frequent runner will tell you -- absorbs moisture, which can be mighty uncomfortable. Therefore she'll tell you (as I told him), the fabric isn't the best for working out.

"Oh thanks," he said. "I didn't know that."


As we talked and our heart rates slowed down, the northerly breeze became obvious again. I was getting chilly and then noticed the cotton t-shirt our new friend was wearing seemed stuck to his body. He was starting to shiver.

Charlie and I had carried our own race shirts as we ran, mistakenly taking them with us to the registration table, where we picked up timing chips. When I saw how cold our new friend looked, I handed him shirt.

"Here," I said. "You need it more than I do."

He was pretty muscular, and said he might bust right out of it.

"Take mine," said Charlie. "It's bigger."

"Wow, man," he said, pulling his own sweaty shirt over his head and putting on Charlie's dry one. "Thank you."

I told him how much we enjoyed meeting him. We reached out our hands to shake, but instead hugged each other. Charlie held out his hand, and Monty (oops; I let his name slip) engulfed Charlie (who's a hugger anyway) in a big bear hug.

Monty walked away smiling and just looked so darn happy. Charlie and I stood there for a moment; for a second, I thought I was going to cry. I think Charlie was taken aback emotionally, too.

"That was worth every minute of sleep we missed, all the traffic, the cold -- everything," I said.

"It was," he said. He slipped his arm through mine and we walked -- first to try to find my friend Laura, and then back to the car. All that day, which turned out to be really busy, periodically one of us would mention Monty.

"I wonder, did he just wake up and decide he wanted to do this?" I asked, totally out of context of anything we were doing or talking about. But Charlie knew exactly what I meant, offering his own wondering a few hours later.

"Do you think he went right to his grandmother's house? I wonder what she said," he asked.

We'll probably never know; our questions were, in all likelihood, rhetorical. What we do know, though, is that Monty and his grandmother put faces on huge and almost unfathomable numbers of those touched by breast cancer. That complete strangers can find commonality in shared steps and requited support.

And that this caring person and loving grandson unknowingly gave a mom and her son yet another connection, yet another something sacred and shared.

Crossing the finish line

My son and I don't often -- as in we never -- run together.  We had great plans to run the half portion of the White Rock Marathon (as it was called back then) his senior year of high school. But Charlie did something to his knee while playing volleyball, and while the details elude me, I do recall that not wearing knee pads was a significant factor.

His physical therapist was pretty specific about the race, saying (or perhaps he shouted) NO RUNNING.

Charlie's knee healed, but then track season started and thus, the two of us running together was out. He graduated; summer came. Any race we would have trained for would have taken place while he was in college.

Last fall, his freshman year at Hendrix College, we did run the 5K over Parents' Weekend (a.k.a. the Campus Kitty). It was tremendously fun, but we didn't stay together. One of us had youth, long legs, and inherent ability on his side. We met up after it was over and recounted our respective miles and a good time was had by both.

When Parents' Weekend rolled around again, we of course signed up for the race again. As part of his shake-your-head-at-all-he-does training, he's been running on the (gasp) treadmill (for which I've forgiven him) -- a pretty steady 3.1 miles at a pace (surprise) faster than mine.

I assumed that on race day, we'd start out together and, in an echo of last year, he'd be waiting for me at the finish line. But when we began talking about the upcoming weekend, what he said surprised me.


"Mom," he said. "I have an idea. Let's run together, and when we cross the finish line, we can hold hands and raise our arms like the marathoners do."

"That's great with me, but are you sure?" I answered, secretly tickled beyond words. "You're so much faster than I am."

"Of course I'm sure," he said. "It'll be fun."

And it was. First of all, the race was much better organized than last year. We had NUMBERS! Plus there were water stops and someone on a bike showing runners the route. But mostly, it was great because we were running together.

At a point or two, Charlie talked while we scurried through campus. "Look," he said, pointing to a building as we crossed some railroad tracks. "That's the language house" (where he'll live his junior year and speak only German). I tried to answer, but could barely get out two words: "Can't...talk..."

We passed some fellow runners, grabbed cups of water, reveled in the relatively cool weather and in the orange and rising sun. I'd lent Charlie one of my Garmin Forerunner 10 watches, and we'd compare paces as we ran and the time each mile took us.

Way too soon, we saw tables set up and people gathered at what could be nothing but the finish line.

"Mom!" he said, jostling me out of the zone I tend to get into when I run. He reached for my hand with his own and, as planned, we held them far above our heads.

Then, because he is his mother's son, when we looked at our watches and realized the course was a bit short and that we'd only gone 2.9 miles instead of the 3.1 that make up a 5K, he said, "Let's go!"

We ran a couple more blocks, walked back and picked up our allotted share of apples and bananas and energy bars.

We couldn't talk about our race right then because we had to change clothes and go to a meet-the-professors breakfast.
Throughout the rest of the day and the evening, though, we did. We reveled in the beauty of the morning and of the campus and, most truly and especially, what we had accomplished together.

The rest of the weekend was fun, too. Charlie got a haircut from a white-haired barber who looked him right in the eye while doing a questionable Elvis impersonation. We had great meals. Charlie painted his face and chest school colors -- black and orange -- and cheered at the top of his lungs for the girls' volleyball team.

I remember all those when I look back on those precious 36 hours. But when I put my shoes on in the morning to run, or when I let thoughts that aren't particularly positive block out my blessings, or most especially when I look at a calendar and all but see the pages blowing movie-like away, I remember those 24:37 minutes on a beautiful fall day in Arkansas. A day my son and I held our hands high above our heads and, together, crossed the finish line. Just like the marathoners do.

Circling back & dancing (however clumsily) forward

My father died on July 23, 2012. It was a Monday, and for awhile thereafter, we tapped out time's rhythm by that day: One week since Daddy died. Two weeks. Five. Eight. 

As the multiples of seven slipped through our fingers and into the fog surrounding us, we began measuring by a certain day of the month: September 23. December 23. January 23. May 23.

We have watched the calendar pages blow away like they would in an old black-and-white movie, marking off the milestones that make up our lives without him: his birthday and each of ours; every full moon, every season, every holiday (Father's Day was especially hard). 

And now, somehow, it's been a year since Dad died, which could as easily be two days or three weeks or 10 years or 20. I don't want my father to be dead at all, and I certainly don't want him to have been dead for a year. 

So what happens the day after a year has passed? When I see a man pull a white handkerchief out of his pocket, will it take me a second more to remember that Daddy used to always carry one? Will I smell chili and not immediately think of the pots of it (and the mess) he'd make while we in Colorado? Do I forget the words to "The Creation of Sam McGee," a major player in his poetry repertoire?

Maybe I just become a veteran, a longstanding member of that club none of us wants to join, the one made up of shell-shocked children whose parents' deaths have made them inextricably adults.

His death made me feel vulnerable, but also invincible. So to be honest, I think part of me believes that once the calendar page flips over, we'll no longer be under the comforting quilt that wraps around our shoulders and protects us from anything bad. 

I can forget to wear sunscreen and I won't get sunburned. I can eat as much peanut butter as I want and not gain weight. Storm clouds may gather while I'm running, but I know they won't release their torrents until I'm home safely.

I lost my father, I alternately whisper or scream from under the cloth; isn't that enough?

This popped into my head last week, when I was desperate because I didn't know where my son was. Charlie said he was going to Tom Thumb to get a can of tuna, and then (because I wasn't in the mood to cook) pick up dinner at a nearby restaurant. He'd skipped the part telling me that he'd do those things after volleyball, which I'd forgotten that he plays on Thursday nights. I only knew he'd been gone more than an hour, and that the grocery store is five minutes away.

Before he called, I paced the sidewalk, willing the comfort quilt not to slip as I looked up at the stars and thought, "No no no no no. My dad died and that's more than plenty."

My father taught me how to ride a bike and how to drive a car, how to take a refrigerator of seemingly disparate leftovers and turn them into a culinary work of art. He taught me to love coconut, and that crying is OK, and that being tone deaf should not stop anyone from belting out Christmas carols.

He taught me to be kind, to cherish my brothers and sisters, to pick up dropped items with my toes. (He tried to teach me to dance, and to believe more completely in myself, and that airplane turbulence is nothing to fear, but those continue to be works in progress).

He didn't teach me how not to miss him. And as awful as parts of this year have been, as many paper towels and shoulders I've soaked with my tears, I'm realizing -- in miniscule doses -- maybe that isn't knowledge I'd want imparted. I will always miss him. And for that gift, I am eternally grateful.