thanksliving, part ii.

"I am thankful, immensely, for my wife and hopeful that she and I will both still be drawing breath together decades from now and hopeful too that every now and again her hand will reach out to me or squeeze back when I reach out to take her hand in mine.

I am thankful, boundlessly, for my daughters and hopeful that they will never let what they know (or think they know) or all that they've experienced get in the way of striving for what they don't know and have yet to experience.  I am hopeful that they are never unaware of the love and faith in their abilities that their parents have for them.

I am thankful for my immediate, extended, and adopted families for shaping me, accepting me, and reshaping me anew when necessary (often) into a “me” that I too am able to accept.  I am hopeful that together we grow, flourish and continue to celebrate the myriad of ways in which we are different and the same.

I am joyfully thankful for this planet for both possessing natural, untrammeled wonders and for hosting the triumphs of civilization.  I remain cautiously hopeful that distinction and balance can be made between the two and that the failures of civilization aren't mistaken for triumphs and allowed to render nature extinct, not in my lifetime nor the lifetime of any creature that comes after.

I am thankful for hope.  Real hope.  Not sloganeering, not wouldn't-that-be-nice daydreaming, not wishful thinking without effort made toward realization.  Real hope with real effort.

I am thankful for dreams and hopeful for dreams, realized or simply sought after.

Dream on."

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Apparently, I wrote those words three years ago (thanksliving.), so this is more a recitation than a creative post.

They've never wrung truer than now.

We received confirmation today that Lily's surgery will take place on November 28, so you'd better believe that hope and gratitude are very much on my mind.

The anticipation of that procedure is going to put a whole new spin on Thanksgiving this year.  All of the nearly unthinkable unknowns drive home the need to be grateful for time shared with the people we care for most deeply.  The potential to drive out the demon that is cancer and free Lil from its possession is wonderful basis for hope.

It's all almost too much.

Almost.

It's a lot, but it's not too much.

Hope sustains and we thank you for the hope you have for Lily.

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Pull your loved ones close and make sure they know they're loved.

No assumptions.

Assumptions of that sort are recipe for regret should time slip away.

Don't wait on Hallmark for your cues.  Hallmark doesn't care if you miss any given occasion because they've got a "so sorry" card at the ready for that situation too.

Don't wait.

Give thanks today.  Give thanks every single day. 

Love.

Hope.

Dream.

love thy neighbor.

"As the years go by and I watch my children already being better versions of me, as I continue to add names to the list of people I wish lived closer, led lives that managed to overlap now and again with my own or, worse yet, were simply still living, I get better and better at being mindful of all there is to appreciate. Focus drifts for periods of time, moods darken and the weight of day-to-day existence shrouds the holding up of all the good things now and again, but few days pass without my remembering my blessings."

I wrote those words more than five years ago, as Lil and then Pipe emerged from infancy and began to show the innate kindness and sensitivity inherited from their mother as well as unveiling their own unique traits. Each new day I see more to celebrate in their emotional and intellectual growth.

I wrote those words in reflection of lost loved ones and dispersed friends. Migration from this world and across the planet has continued.

Blessings still abound and my appreciation of them has only deepened.

I cannot effectively express, at least not fully, how loved and worried-over we've felt the last few days and how much it has meant. If circumstance is equitable enough to find us in the same place again, I hope to have the chance to pull many of you close in shared embrace, look you in the eye, and tell you directly of what your gestures have meant. Depth of emotion even then will probably make me bumble and fall short on the words, but I'll get the hug right.

Thank you.

Know that your kindness is noticed and cherished. Know that we anxiously await the opportunity to pay it back and pay it forward.

Know that the love we feel is love we hope that each of you feel from us in return and from others around you.

The news in all its forms points to our differences of politics, of religion, of heritage, of social or economic status, of interests, of lifestyle, of opinion and would have us "know" that all is lost. I look to my broad circle of friends, diverse in politics, religion, heritage, social and economic status, interests, lifestyle, and opinion and choose to see not "sides" but individuals trying their best to make sense of their short existence. I KNOW all is not lost.

Doubt, anger, and frustration are human inevitabilities but they need not steer entirely our perspectives.

"Love thy neighbor as thyself." It is a biblical imperative, but, you need not espouse Christianity or any other religion to understand that in the broadest sense, this is basically a natural inclination.

A child is faced with a life-altering (at least) medical diagnosis, a family sags beneath the burden, and instinctually you want to know how you can help. You don't run through some checklist to make certain that the girl and her family are on your side. You act. In those moments, we know there are no sides. Too often we feel otherwise.

From one neighbor to another, thank you. I love you and I thank you for loving me, loving Lily, loving all of us.

We've received an abundance of support of every kind, but, if we can, we ask one more favor. We ask that you remember the rest of your literal and figurative neighbors over the likely contentious weeks ahead.

Disagree.

Debate.

But please don't let differences of opinion stand in the way of the need to care for one another. Don't let fictitious divisions become absolutes.

It's hard, but it's not as hard as we make it if we put love and human decency first.

Do glad.

beyond the stats.

The day one calendar replaces another is the day runners knee-jerkingly tally the numbers and report their statistics.

I'm a runner (I think), so here's my look back at 2014.

Mileage:  ?

Vertical Gain:  ?

Number of Summits:  ?

Finishes:  ?

Ultrarunners in particular love to tout the lessons that long-distance running doles out.  There's even a commonly held belief that the range of emotions, the physical highs and lows reached while covering 50-100 miles in a single day is nearly a condensed lifetime unto itself.

Maybe.

Or, more likely, it's just a more-than-a-normal-single-day experience.  To be fair, that's quite a lot and I don't mean to scoff so much as to maybe dial down the answers-to-everything mythos.

As an aside:  I sometimes wonder if there's an abstract math equation to prove that the degree to which a runner (or some other pick-the-sport athlete) holds up the tutorial aspects of her or his running (swimming, baseball hitting, pole vaulting, hot dog eating, etc.) is directly relative to how much he or she is ignoring or denying the factual lessons of real life.

I share those things I think I've learned through running with my children and feel quite certain that the love and respect of the outdoors that is the real impetus for my being out on the trails has impacted them and made them aware of the fact that there is magic in the natural world not equaled or matched by virtual reproductions or distractions.  After that, my favorite hobby takes a backseat to other realities in terms of bestowing wisdom (have I any). 

___________________________

Which brings me to a Target parking lot a few weeks ago.

Lily and Piper Bea had accompanied me on (for me) a brave venture into the teeth of holiday retail madness.  We had knocked out the last of our gift gathering and for the most part avoided any of the mine-mine-mine consumer conflict the mass media is all too happy to report.  Said conflict is surprisingly easy to avoid if you don't yourself feel entitled to, well, everything.

We'd walked in with smiles and we walked out with smiles, an admittedly minor miracle on my part as I tend to be all too on-the-watch for reasons to be disappointed in humanity on shopping excursions.  Shame on me for such a mindset and perhaps writing this post is yet another lesson learned.

As we steered out of our aisle and passed by the other stores in the shopping center, I noticed an elderly woman approaching a crosswalk on a motorized grocery cart.  I coasted into a stop well ahead of the crosswalk and gently waved the woman across with my biggest of neighborly smiles.

She grimaced in my direction and pulled one hand off the steering column to gesture towards the ground as though demanding me to stop.  I had already stopped.  I was stopped, smiling, and patiently waiting for her to cross.

The furrow on her brow deepened and she wagged a pointed finger at me before repeating her "slow down" gesturing.

Stunned, I felt my smile melt into a confused gape, my gentle waving turning into a frustrated shrug and a sweeping arm pleading for the woman to "cross the road already".

Exasperated, the woman shook her head accusingly from side to side and inched into the crosswalk.  As she and her cart crept by in front of our car, she continued to cast annoyed glances at me while muttering to herself.

I began to roll down my window with the intent of explaining to the woman that I had been stopped all along and had been happily intent on giving her the opportunity to cross safely.  Before I could say a word, she reached the other side, threw both of her hands in the air, and thrust them at me in a manner that made it clear I was being dismissed.

Remembering that the girls were in the backseat and recognizing that what was about to come out of my mouth was going to be something quite inappropriate, I rolled the window up and moved along.

"Girls, I just don't understand why people assume the worst.  I really do believe that, deep down, we are all good people and mean to treat each other fairly.  It's a real shame that we lose sight of that so often and that a joyous time like Christmas can actually cause us to be less nice, not nicer."

A peek in the rear view mirror revealed that my daughters were actually hanging on my words while looking curiously at the woman.

I continued spelling out how that woman had jumped to conclusions without even considering that....

just then a man stepped out in front of us waving his arms with an unmistakable urgency.

I slammed on the brakes, wondering what the hell was going on now and finding the want to escape the parking lot jumping to the top of my holiday wish list.

The man stepped to the front passenger window and I rolled it down to find out the nature of his flagging us down.

"Your headlights aren't on," came through the open window with a warmth that made me immediately appreciative and thoroughly embarrassed at my own assumptions.  My rescuer began to walk away from our vehicle, stopped, turned back to the open window and smiled a "Happy Holidays to all of you" before returning to his errand and vanishing into the store.

By the time I repositioned my dropped jaw and processed my having moments before teetered on the brink of yelling at an elderly, mobility-challenged woman who was trying to alert me to the fact that I needed to turn on my lights, there was no sign of her and any opportunity to apologize and thank her had been lost.  We drove around the parking lot for a few minutes making certain that she truly had gone.  Guiltily, I explained to the girls the mistake that I had made and asked them to forgive me for my having been so hypocritical.

"You are good, Daddy.  You are mostly nice to people."  So said my tell-it-like-it-is daughter, Piper Bea.

___________________________

Any respectable recap needs a stating of future goals, right?  I actually don't know if that's right, but let's agree that it is.

So, here goes:

2015 Goals:  Be good, be nice.  Good-er and nicer than the day and years before.  Heed every lesson not just those imparted while wearing a race bib.

Everything else'll figure itself out.  Always has, always will whether I run 1 mile or 10,000, stand atop a mountain or don't, finish every race or fail to even start a single one.

Do glad.  Be nice.  Be good for goodness sake.

do glad.

Today not tomorrow, that's what I've been saying.

So, when my wife's busy work/school schedule found her observing in an operating room for the day, babysitting options weren't available and I needed to skip out on work to watch Piper, I made the most of my time out of the office by dropping the car off for a much needed repair and heading to a nearby diner to enjoy a rare Daddy-and-daughter-and-nobody-else breakfast.

Piper Bea settled happily into her pancake, a pickle and a tall cup of chocolate milk.

I sipped coffee and listened to her tell me about whatever popped into her about-to-be-4-year old head.  Sipped, listened and smiled.  Taking full advantage of not being interrupted by her verbose big sister, Piper covered a lot of topics while we sat in our little booth-for-two.  She didn't make me swear to secrecy, but, all the same, I think I'll not share the details as it makes me feel like I alone was invited "in".

As we neared the end of our meals, the television monitor perched in the corner of the room showed the portrait of a woman celebrating her 108th birthday.  My not-what-they-once-were eyes couldn't read her name in the captioning and the sound of the TV was drowned out by our conversation and the crooning of oldies drifting from the overhead speakers...which was fine by me.

One hundred and eight years old.

Can you imagine?  You can't.  I can't.

Trying to imagine brings "today not tomorrow" right back into the discussion.  Perhaps if you make it the whole way to 108 you start believing that you'll never stop ticking and the days'll just go on and on forever.  Maybe that's the fear.

Or the hope.

Or maybe every day feels certain to be the last.

Who knows?  Not you and not me.

I silently wished that woman well and hoped that she was better able than me to make sense of the dizzying ways in which the world has evolved.

In that very same diner, two older (suddenly, mid-70's didn't seem all that old) gentlemen sat poring over a road map.  

Remember those?

I do and you do too.

But, maybe just maybe, our kids won't or at least not outside the context of museums and quaint postcards.  Of course, museums and postcards might not be long for this world either with any and all information available at our fingertips and the mail system, our modern day pony express, likely going the way of, well, the pony express.

I marvel at how much has changed in my lifetime.  Can't even begin to wrap my head around it, actually.  And, despite what my children believe, I haven't been alive all that long.

Here are a couple of the significant events that occurred in the year 1905, the year today's birthday girl was born.  The first forest fire lookout tower went into operation in Greenville, Maine.  Ty Cobb made his professional baseball debut.  A physics journal published the article that unveiled Albert Einstein's E=mc2 equation.  The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the US was founded (it wouldn't officially become the NCAA until 5 years later).

One year earlier work began on Grand Central Station, the Wright brothers took their initial flight, fingerprinting was first introduced as a way to investigate crime and the ice cream cone was invented.  The ice cream cone was invented!

CAN YOU IMAGINE?  You can't and I could drive myself mad trying to...today not yesterday, today not tomorrow.

Piper Bea and I left the diner, she with cookie in hand, and we found the car repaired and waiting for us.

As we drove home, we passed by a beautiful restored farmhouse that I recalled residing in a different location just a few years earlier.  A construction/restoration group had plucked the once ailing structure from the ground, ratcheted it up onto a wheeled platform and towed it to a new, more idyllic, perch a few miles down the road.

I CAN imagine, but only because I saw it with my very own stunned eyes.  Amazing and certainly unthinkable not all that long ago.  I'm betting an undertaking such as this would have qualified as science-fiction back in 1905.

And I'm guessing "science-fiction' was hardly a household term at the time.  I should visit a museum to find out for sure.  Or, wait, I could just ask my phone...yes, I could actually speak into my phone and just wait one second for the answer.

Geez.

I have a 50-mile race coming up on Saturday, the FebApple Frozen 50 in Maplewood, New Jersey.  It seems a daunting undertaking this early in the year, especially with sickness and subsequent inactivity not too far behind me.

However, it doesn't seem nearly so daunting when held up against waking, rising and making one's way through the day, every damn day, for 108 years.

The woman in that photo was smiling and it was a beautiful, happy-to-be-alive smile.  Could've been taken a few years ago, of course, but that hardly tarnishes the message if she was, what, 105?

And maybe it was that smile that jarred something in my holes-punched-in-it memory about the number 108.  I did a little digging (you bet I employed my phone) and discovered that it is a Harshad number, an integer that is divisible by the sum of its digits (1 + 0 + 8 = 9 and 108 divided by 9 is 12).  That's a curiosity but what I found more interesting was the fact the "Harshad" is derived from two Sanskrit words, harsa and da.  Harsa means "joy" and da means "give".

Joy giver?

Seems too good to be true for the sake of this story, but it goes a long way toward explaining that lovely smile and the unmistakable happiness I felt in seeing it.

So, 50 miles?  A hundred?  No problem.  A blink of the eye really.  A joy.

Glancing at Facebook upon arriving home, I discovered a typo in a friend's status update.  She was sharing her relief at sneaking in a run before expected freezing rain began to fall.  "So glad" was accidentally replaced with "Do glad".

DO GLAD!

I love it.

I turn 39 this year.  Piper Bea will be 4 in April and her sister turns 6 just two weeks later.  People are celebrating 108 years on this planet.

What a gift.

How could you not do glad?  You can't.  I can't.

Do glad and do it today...AND tomorrow.