Raising a Girl

I found out I was going to be the mother of a girl on the day of her birth in the summer of 2009.  Chris delivered the news to me while I lay on the operating table.  I was already queasy from being awake during surgery, but this news brought more uneasiness.  Girls are complicated, dramatic, and sensitive.  How on earth was I going to raise a daughter having not yet mastered the girly skills myself? 

As you can expect, I fell in love with my daughter immediately.  She was perfect and I was so excited to be her mom.  I loved cuddling her and dressing her in cute outfits.  We’d go for walks in the neighborhood and everyone would smile at us.  She was a happy girl and seemed to embrace life as a very young child. 

Now, at the age of four, I am still excited to be her mom.  She is brilliant, mischievous, curious, and beautiful.  Also at the age of four, her mental capacity is exploding.  What I wouldn’t give to see how her mind works!  She puzzles things out, like easy words.  She seems to understand death now, though she didn’t earlier this year when she attended her first funeral.  She is also becoming receptive to social influences.  She’s picking up a lot of behaviors from her peers, both good, bad, and ridiculous.  “G, why did you wear your winter coat and hat all day at Pre-K?”  “Because Jojo did.”  Sure.  That makes sense. 

My daughter is fast-approaching an age when it’s hard to be a girl.  I know.  I’ve lived it.  And it’s not pretty.  Right now, she’ll wrap herself in blankets and say she’s a princess.  She’ll beam because in her own eyes, she’s gorgeous.  Not too far from now, though, doubt will creep in.  Her confidence will wane as she spends even more time with her peers.  The thought of this causes me grief.  

I wish my daughter could keep the confidence of early youth always.  I hope she always knows that she’s smart and beautiful, caring and fun.  The best way I know to teach her confidence is to model it.  It’s not always genuine for me, but I’m sure trying. 

I would love to hear your ideas of how to teach or inspire confidence.   

Two Days til Chicago

In preparation for the marathon, I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember everything I can about running these ridiculous races.  Sure, I’ve done a few of these monsters before, but not recently.  I haven’t run any shorter races in quite a while, actually.  I opted not to run the Urban Wildland Half this summer because my heart wasn’t in it.  I didn’t have the fire back then that I do now.   But here we are, two days out, and this is what I know:

·         I will not sleep on Saturday night.  That’s a given.

·         Chris will be at my side from the expo on Saturday until he drops me off at the start corral on Sunday.  He will diffuse much of my crazy and he will smile the whole way through.   

·         My nerves are going to peak at about the time I leave the hotel on Sunday morning. 

·         Affirmations in the mirror go a long way, even if it’s in the porta-potty.  I now swear by this. 

·         My emotions, whatever they are, will explode in the minutes before the start.  They will then run the gamut over the following four hours. 

·         People make all the difference in the world.  They are life-lines in the game of running.  I’m thinking of Bruce and Victor waiting for me at the bus stop in Ashland, so we could all ride up to the start together.  I’m thinking of Mitch and his horn blaring at mile 17 of Twin Cities, pulling me in and pushing me onward.  I’m thinking of that woman who got me through a lot of early and middle miles at Whistlestop.  I never did get her name, but I owe her a lot.  I’m thinking of Taya and Alina who kept me company on a 15-miler when I missed the Club’s long run. I’m thinking of Susan, my pace buddy, who helped me get my speed back.  I’m thinking of Coach Red and his rambling emails of support.  He may be more invested in my success than I am.  I’m thinking of all the runners and supporters on Facebook who have provided me endless encouragement and entertainment.  I know some phenomenal people.  I bet I’ll meet even more in the next few days.

·         Conserving every bit of energy makes a difference over 26 miles.  Carrying gloves instead of wearing them spends too much.  Waving at spectators spends too much. 

·         At some point in the high teens, I will want to quit.  Something is going to hurt bad and maybe even make me hobble.  I will work through this. 

·         My mental state will break down more quickly than my physical state.  This amazes me at every race.  I always start out excited and ambitious, ready to take on the world.  Eventually, the tired takes over.  It renders me incapable of figuring out splits or any level of higher order thinking.  It turns me into a zombie.  Often, it makes me hate everything and everyone.  This is when it’s critical to have a positive mantra to repeat. 

·         It is possible to run one second faster per mile.  I will do this. 

·         I will cross the finish line and, if I left everything on the course, I will feel very sick.  At the same time, I will be distracted by my medal and my pride.  I will be grateful to be done. 

·         Chris will be waiting for me at the finish line, eager to take care of me. 

·         When the nausea fades, I will relish the marathon soreness I will feel.  It’s a soreness that’s earned and even appreciated.  It’s a badge of honor.

·         Sometime on Sunday evening, I will decide which race will be my Boston qualifier next year.      

Four Days til Chicago

I’m sitting in Kenosha with an entire day ahead of me.   In my regular life of Go! Go! Go!, it’s a bit unsettling to have this much time and nowhere to be.  Nothing to think about but marathon:  What will the weather be like?  What pace should I try?  Will the crowd be awe-inspiring or claustrophobic?  Is it possible to perform well in an enormous field?  How will I handle the hours of pre-race waiting in Grant Park?

I’ve been thinking about the race two different ways.  On one hand, it’s just a race.  I will run Chicago and I will finish it.  And much of it will be fun.  Getting to this point has been no small feat.  The training season has been packed full of emotion for me.  I can’t tell you how many Monday night runs this spring and summer were met with crippling guilt.  Or how many post-run highs were deflated by not seeing Baby before he went to sleep.  In the end, I know I made the right choices.  I have no regrets.  Still, this has been a new layer of training that I haven’t dealt with before.  And in light of that, a finish would be a big win. 

On the other hand, I feel like I have something to prove.  I managed to step away from the drama in the last several weeks and my training took off.  The peak of which was a steamy Monday night in mid-September.  Susan and I ran 5 miles at sub-marathon pace in 95 degree heat and 150 percent humidity.  We. Nailed. It.  I felt like a warrior after that.  Completely invincible.  I can do anything now.  I can run half mile repeats and continue to cross that line at the exact right second.  What a rush!

Admittedly, I’m chasing the ghost of my 32-year old self, a version of me that had 2 non-stop years of top-quality training behind her.  My 34-year old self has been training sporadically, sleeping a lot less, and juggling a lot more.  It’s not a fair fight by any means.  But I still have the same drive.  I still have the same ultimate goal.  And I know the difference a few seconds can make.

Bring it, Chicago.  I’ll be the underdog. 

The Still Point

I heard an interview of writer Emily Rapp on the radio back in March.  She was talking about her book, The Still Point of the Turning World.  You can read a review of it here.  The book was about her son, Ronan, who at nine months was diagnosed with Tay Sachs disease.  Tay Sachs is a fatal genetic disorder and its victims usually don’t live past the age of three.  As a mother of an eight-month old at the time, I was drawn to this story.  I immediately requested the book from the library and greedily dove in when I finally got my hands on it. 

Turns out I didn’t care much for the book.  I desperately wanted to hear about this mother’s personal accounts.  What did her son’s regression look like?  How did she care for her child while carrying such a heavy load of grief?  How did their world change?  She wrote about that minimally.  More often, she applied the situation to pieces of literature, like Shelley’s Frankenstein and other works by C.S. Lewis.  Even her title is taken from a T.S. Eliot poem.  The book reminded me of an advanced college essay.  I’m sure it was beautifully written for those who appreciate comparative literature.  I, however, am not a literary type.  I write stream-of-consciousness blogs and say things like “Turns out.”  So I struggled with the book, staring at it as it sat on my nightstand while overdue fines compounded. 

I gave up the battle and returned the book to the library unfinished.  Still, not a day goes by when I don’t think about that story.  Not for the book itself, but for the experience it represented.  The point that forced me to open my mind was how future-oriented parenting is.  Everything we do as parents is for the betterment of our children’s future.  Everything.  We water down their juice so they don’t go crazy in 15 minutes, or so they don’t get cavities, or so they don’t get fat.  We read to them every day to improve their academic achievement.  We limit their screen time so they don’t become zombies.  Ronan wasn’t ever going to go to school.  He would never learn to read.  Everything he did gave him instant gratification and nothing more.  He lived in the moment.  He played blocks not to improve his visual-spatial skills, but because it’s fun as hell to play blocks when you’re a baby. 

I think about this idea a lot.  The idea of now instead of years from now.  It’s really hard to get my head around parenting without considering the future.  When I watch cartoons with my daughter at bedtime instead of reading books to her, the guilt threatens.  But I’ve decided that it’s okay.  It’s how we live in the moment.  And it’s fun as hell to watch cartoons curled up in a blanket with my little girl.  

A Different Kind of Training

It’s time to start training again.  After a year plagued with pregnancy, broken bones, and relocation, it is time to get back to it.  I haven’t trained . . . I mean really trained . . . in about 18 months and Chicago Marathon is looming a mere 4 months down the road.  Sure I’ve been running.  Occasionally.  But right now, I need to train.  Consistently.  Maintaining consistency is the hardest part of running these days. 

For the past couple of months, my runs have been placeholders.  I show up at club and go for a run, but don’t always do the workout.  I’m trying to keep up the routine of running, even if I’m not doing all the work.  On Thursday mornings, the alarm goes off at 4 a.m. so I can get a run in before Chris leaves for work.  I both love and hate these early morning runs.  4 a.m. frigging sucks.  But after peeling myself out of bed, it’s not so bad.  5 minutes into the run, I’m in a good place.  Getting back home at 7 a.m. with 8 miles under my belt is pure elation.  It makes for a very good day. 

What I learned in my placeholder runs is that everything needs to be planned if running is going to fit into my life.  I've found 3 very specific times in my week that work for running:  Monday night with the club, Thursdays crazy early, and Saturday morning with the club again for longer miles.  I have reasons that conflict with every other time you might suggest.  Go ahead.  Test me.  When I say everything has to be planned, I am not kidding.  On Mondays, I bring my running clothes to work, I bring an extra snack to fuel up before club, I bring an extra set of bottles with my breast pump because yes, I am still a nursing mother.  If I drop the ball on Monday morning, there goes my Monday night run and I’m out of luck until Thursday.  Same holds true if I stay up late on Wednesday nights.  4 a.m. comes awfully quick. 

It’s been about two weeks since I’ve been out on a run.  I’ve been tied up with packing and moving.  (On a side note, if you can avoid moving when you have small children, I recommend it. We can’t keep up with Daughter’s pace of unpacking and Son puts everything he can reach into his mouth!  Bad combination.)  Up until that point, I was doing a fairly good job juggling work, kids, and running.  The monkey wrench of moving tripped me up, though.  Something had to fall and it wasn’t going to be my awesome job or my loving family.  Now that we’re a little settled in our new digs, I’m ready to start fresh again.  Chicago Marathon is coming up and I’m eager to take on this challenge.  However, training will look very different this time around than it did for my previous 3 marathons.  Training is more than running.  Every decision I can make to improve my performance at Chicago will be weighed carefully.  Little things qualify for training, like how much water I drink.  Choosing to skip dessert – that’s training.  Getting to bed a decent hour, getting the dishes washed and keeping the house clean to make life easier on the rest of my family when I’m out running, being present when I’m with my kids to alleviate the inevitable guilt I feel while I’m away.  This is all training.  It’s a new kind of training.  I haven’t perfected it yet.  It’s pretty damn hard, really.  But it’s still the beginning.  I want all these things in my life and I’m ready to try.  What else is there to do? 

I didn’t run a single step today.  But I did fill up my water bottle 6 times.  I got a 3 minute ab workout in before work.  I skipped dessert.  I did the dishes.  I got a good amount of walking in.  I gave Daughter a bath and had great conversations with her.  I crawled around with Son on the floor and giggled with him.  Add it all up and it was a very good day of training.  

Battles Won & Lost

When I taught summer camps at Como Zoo in 2003, I befriended one of the interns.  Rachel and I became fast friends and were a good match in our young single days.  We did all kinds of girly things together:  movies, shopping, dinners out.  I’d say our most successful outing was a Bruce Springsteen concert.  He was performing a one man show at the Northrup Auditorium.  To this day, it’s still the best show I’ve ever seen . . . by leaps and bounds.   

Rachel dated Ross for the whole time we have been friends.  They married in 2004 and danced their first dance to The Luckiest by Ben Folds.   It was a beautiful celebration.  As they started their new life together, they met the challenges of making ends meet.  Rachel was in graduate school and worked as much as she could.  Ross worked second shift and got home in the wee hours of the morning.  The time they had to spend together was extremely limited.  Even so, they made it work and they were very happy in their relationship.  The little time they could spend together was treasured.

Rachel and Ross

In January 2011, at the age of 35, Ross was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.   It was right at the time that this happy couple was planning to start a family.  As cancer does, it ebbed and flowed.  It got bad and then it got a lot better.   Cancer is such a trickster.  It gives the false hope of overcoming the disease and then it strikes back even worse.  It’s a horror story that you can never escape once you’re afflicted.   Even in remission, it changes the way you live and it always makes you wonder if, how, and when it’s going to attack next. 

Ross was in remission for a while.   He suffered bone loss from his treatments that would be a permanent hardship in his life, but the disease itself was gone.  Or so we thought.  Last fall, things got bad again and the recommended course of action was a bone marrow transplant.  Thankfully a match was found and Ross received the transplant in January.  As of today, he’s been in the hospital for over two months in preparation for the transplant and then recovering from it.  During that time, Rachel had medical issues of her own that required surgical attention.  The stress in their life was compounding.  You can imagine getting by on one income and accumulating infinite medical bills.  To add to that, Rachel recently started a new job and has not yet worked there long enough to be eligible for FMLA time off.   Not only was her husband critically ill, but she had to keep working to maintain the medical benefits. 

Hanging out at the hospital

Then last week happened.  Last week, Ross was admitted to the ICU because his kidneys were failing and he wasn’t breathing well.  He was put on a ventilator and started dialysis, all while trying to replenish his white blood cell count.  It got really bad and Rachel thought she might lose Ross.  We all thought she might.  Here is a post she shared with close friends: 

Day 3 ICU: Ross will have dialysis again today. His weight was 240lbs (normally 185lbs) He was able to get his weight down to 230 with dialysis. The extra weight off will make breathing a little better and hopefully help lungs overall too. He is using 65% oxygen which is better than the 100% he was using on Monday. He had a feeding tube put in yesterday so he can get better nutrition. He is on an anti-viral for a virus that is still in his bone marrow. There are 5 different teams of doctors working on him, and overall the gist is that the Primary is the BMT- his cells need to work on growing (which is hard- his white blood cells are not getting higher, they are getting lower) and beating this disease, and helping his body function and the Secondary is his lungs and kidneys. He has a extremely rough, tough, ugly road ahead of him. These past few and next few days will ultimately determine his survival, which is scary as hell. He cannot talk due to the intubation, and only opens his eyes for a few seconds a couple times a day. (he is on pain meds to help sedate him) This is something no one can prepare you for. I am fearful of losing my beloved at any second, yet am creating ITunes lists to play for him in the room, praying, watching Hulu tv, sleeping in a chair in his room every night and staying by his side. Please pray and support us! Sincerely, Rachel

Ross fighting as hard as ever

As of today, Ross is improving.  He had several days of uncertainty followed by a boom in his white blood cell growth.  His tube was removed and Ross continues to recover and even communicate with his wife and family. 

My way of supporting them is sharing their story with you.  You can read about Ross and Rachel’s journey at their caring bridge site:  http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/rossproctor/journal/2/createdAt/asc

If you’re inclined to help them out, here is a donation page:

http://www.giveforward.com/teamrossletskickcancer

I can say now that I’m confident in Ross’s survival.  He has a long, long journey of recovery ahead of him, but Rachel and Ross are fighters.  They will do everything possible to get back to a normal life. 

    

I wish I could say the same for my uncle.  As I type, my uncle is losing his battle with cancer back in Kenosha.   Last Friday, the nurses gave him a day or two to live.  He received his last rights from the priest and has had friends and neighbors stopping in to say goodbye.  He’s holding on longer than we all expected, but he won’t make it long enough to see another spring.  Like so many before him, he is going through the last dance of cancer. 

I thought of my uncle on my run last weekend.  I came upon the Mississippi River and I wondered if he was alive still.  There is bound to be some lag between when it happens and when I find out about it since I’m not there.  Crossing the river felt momentous and I thought maybe he had crossed over as well.  But that wasn’t the case.   I keep expecting that I will just know when it happens . . . that the air will shift or an image of him will flare through my conscience. 

The night before my Aunt Silvanna died, a woman that was identical to her in shape, voice, and mannerisms visited my work.  The resemblance was unbelievable.  I talked to her for a long time – mostly because she reminded me of the healthy version of Silvanna.  The Silvanna of my youth.    

While I keep waiting to feel Uncle’s passing, I don’t want him to go.  I already miss him.  I hope he finds peace in his last few hours.  With everything I have, I wish him peace.   

Bob's Grandview

There’s this bar in Kenosha on 39^th Avenue.  It’s a real dive bar that is classic Kenosha and it’s one of my favorite places in town.  The physical bar takes up 90% of the establishment.  They serve Old Style in a can for dirt cheap.  It makes me very happy. 

I love this bar because it’s where my cousins get together whenever we’re all in town.  It doesn’t happen too often, but for family weddings and that sort of thing, we pack the place.  It’s good fun to spend time with my cousins.  It reminds me of my youth and I laugh more with them then I do in any other group of people. 

We were introduced to the bar by my uncle.  Back when I was little, Grandma & Grandpa’s was the gathering place for my 12 aunts and uncles, my 15 cousins, and my immediate family.  Uncle used to leave Grandma & Grandpa’s house a little early on Friday nights so he could go out to the bar.  I couldn’t imagine what kind of place he would be going to when I was a grade-schooler.  Bars were a mystery back then.  And drinking was something my extended family rarely did. 

Since he has a son who is exactly my age, Uncle experienced first-hand most of my major youth events:  CCD classes, first communion, birthday parties, working at church festivals, 9^th grade dance, high school football, graduation, and tons more.  When I came of age, he welcomed me into the splendor of Bob’s Grandview.  I didn’t have the know-it-all to appreciate its dive-y-ness as a 21 year old college student.  But now I take comfort in its coziness and familiarity.  It feels a bit like home. 

I want to thank my uncle for introducing me to the finer things:  Good company.  Cheap beer.  The voicing of opinions.  He won’t be joining me on my next trip to Bob’s.  But his legacy will live on in my heart.   Always.