Be Careful

Yesterday (Sunday) morning, as I got up to leave after a visit with my mom, she instinctively said "be careful."

As I walked out of NHC Place on my way to pick up JP and drive to Bowling Green for a soccer tournament, I marveled at how much those two words meant to me.

Be careful.

So many, many times, as I left our house to go to school, to work at Walmart, to go out with my friends, to drive to Knoxville for college or law school or to return to my house after a visit, my mom always said the same thing as I walked out the door.

Be careful.

No matter how many times I told her, in later years, that I was 30, 35, 40, etc. years old and she didn't need to tell me to "be careful," she always said it anyway.  She would laugh and shake her head and say to me, "You're my son.  I'm always going to tell you to be careful.  Always."

Sometimes it mildly annoyed me, mostly when I was younger and dumber.  As I grew older and began to realize I wasn't actually 10 feet tall and bullet proof - as I began to develop a sense of my own mortality - I found those two words to be endearing.  With them came a sameness that was comforting, perhaps with the realization that no matter how much in my life changed, my mother would always love me and always be thinking about me.

Be careful.

Those two words meant that I mattered.  They meant that to someone, always, I would be one of the most important people in their lives.  Those two words were proof that my mom loved me unconditionally.  They meant I could count on her support, above anyone else's, when times were good and in times of turbulence.  They meant her love was a constant in my life, ever present.

Yesterday, those two words meant a little something different.  They meant my mom is still my mom.  This terrible, terrible disease - Alzheimer's - has ravaged her body and mind and continues to steal from her every single day.  And yet, for just a moment - a sliver of time - she was instinctively still my mom.  Her unconditional love that has supported and sustained me for 52 + years is still there, somewhere, in her mind and in her heart, maybe in her very soul.

She's wheelchair bound and, yesterday, as she dozed off and on while I read her poetry from the latest  issue of the New Yorker as we sat together in the library, her love for me was as strong as it always has been and, I think always will be.

Just this morning, a colleague at a breakfast fundraiser I co-chaired and emceed asked about my mom and how she was doing.  "You look tired," she said.  "My mom's hanging in there," I replied.  "And I'm fine."

Am I putting up a bit of a facade for others?  Perhaps.  I give a lot of myself, emotionally, to my clients, to the boys I coach and to my family and, of course to my mom.  But I am fine.  I am a survivor and I have to look no further than my mom to find the strength I need to be what are who I need to be every minute of every day.

I take a little more time to myself - like now, having a quite cup of coffee at Honest Coffee Roasters, or like last night when I ran 5 miles in the neighborhood after the boys went to bed.  I'm probably a bit more reflective.  I'm nearer to tears and my emotions are a little closer to the surface, which is saying a lot because I am nothing if not a sentimentalist.  But I am fine and I will continue to be fine, if a little subdued, at times.

My mom's unconditional love sustains me.  It fuels me in ways I will never comprehend.  And it will continue to do so, I think and hope, long after she is gone in a physical sense, from this earth.

Be careful.

Two words, only two.  They mean everything to me.

    
Thanks, mom.

The Cruelest of Ironies

I haven't posted about this because, frankly, it's depressing and sad.

I'll start by mentioning that in the early early to mid-1970's, our end of the Brenthaven Drive/Devins Drive/Knox Valley Drive/Wikle Road block was a magical place.  I hadn't turned 10 yet and my sister, Tracy, was 18 months younger than me.  Our part of the subdivision - Brenthaven - was still being built out and there was woods and a creek a two minute walk from the back door of our house at 173 (later 1422) Brenthaven Drive.

It was an idyllic time of my life and, probably, all of our lives.  Summer days that seemed to last forever and summer evenings with neighborhood cookouts.  The adults sitting on someone's patio, probably drinking beer or a cocktail, and the children playing kick the can in our backyard or chasing fireflies.  It was quite literally one big happy neighborhood family.

What really made our end of the block so special was the people.  Behind our house were the Danchertsen's (Chuck and Betty, with Kim and John about our age).  Diagonally behind our house were the Gilley's (Warren, Sandra, Terri and my best friend growing up, Warren Lee); and next door to us were the Pilkington's (Evelyn and Bill).  Across the street were the Allen's (David, Carol Ann, Timmy and Heather).

Evelyn and Bill Pilkington were older and had never had children.  Consequently, they took an active interest in the lives of all of the children on the block.  They often babysat for Tim and Heather Allen.  We called them "Mommy Evelyn" and "Daddy Bill."  They were two of the nicest people I have ever known.

As time marched inexorably one in the way that it does, things inevitably changed.  The Danchertsen's moved away but stayed in touch.  The Allen's moved away and didn't stay in touch.  The fabric of the Gilley's family unit disintegrated as Terri developed severe emotional and mental problems and Warren Lee fell into a pattern of drug and alcohol abuse that ruined his life.  Sandra Gilley died from cancer.  Warren Gilley, who was a second father to me, died after a long and arduous battle with congestive heart failure.

Evelyn and Bill Pilkinton, and my mom, were the mainstays on the block.  As time passed, they were the last remaining members of the that special group of people from that innocent time in the early and mid-1970's when all of us, grownups and children alike, were young and relatively unscathed by the hardest parts of life.  Many, probably most, spring and summer afternoons after she retired, when Evelyn and Bill were in town - they wintered in Florida - my mom walked over to their patio and had a glass of wine with them.

In fact, the day I told my mom that Jude and I were pregnant with J.P., she and I were sitting at the patio table with Evelyn and Bill on a glorious spring evening.  I had forgotten that until just now.  When she realized what I was trying to tell her, my mom got flustered, then teary eyed, as Evelyn and Bill smiled and laughed.  We all hugged each other and my mom and I drove down to Tracy's church and interrupted her choir practice to tell her the news.

Now, more than a decade later, I found myself visiting my mom on a Saturday morning.  Afterwards, I walked down the hall, knocked cautiously on a door, and walked into Evelyn and Bill's room.  Bill looked emaciated as he lay in bed and smiled at me.  Evelyn got up from her cot when she saw me.  She immediately starting crying, walked toward me and fell into my arms.

"Oh, Phil, Bill's never going to be able to leave here," she said, between tears.  I held her as Bill watched bemusedly.  It was the kind of moment that momentarily takes your breath away, fraught with emotions so heavy they crush your spirit if you let them.  I hadn't seen them in a while and Tracy had prepared me that Bill didn't look good but it was still hard, very hard, to see him in such a weakened state.  And to see Evelyn so out of sorts and upset.

In later visits, Evelyn has been better.  More herself, almost cheerful.  Still, the rawness and nakedness of my first visit with them has been hard for me to shake.

So, in the cruelest of ironies, my mom and her longtime next door neighbors and close friends, Evelyn and Bill Pilkinton, are still neighbors of a sort.  This time, however, they're neighbors in an assisted living facility, one that they will probably never leave.  And my mom doesn't really know who Evelyn and Bill are, to top things off.

As my sister, Tracy, said so aptly in a text last week, "never in my wildest dreams would I have pictured it this way."

Me neither.

The Run of a Lifetime

Through a circuitous set of circumstances, I find myself having a quiet cup of coffee at Falls City Market this Monday morning as the city of Louisville wakes up and my family still sleeps.  We've spent a thoroughly enjoyable long weekend exploring the city after Hurricane Michael derailed our planned trip to the beach for Fall Break.

_____________________________________________

Saturday evening, Jude, the boys and I waited in line at Iroquois Park, 10 minutes or so outside Louisville proper, preparing to enter the Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular.  As I alternated between standing in line and throwing the Moon Ball with the boys, I slowly began to notice my surroundings.  Suddenly, it hit me.  I think I've been her before. 

And I had.

More than 20 years ago, I drove with a running friend, Vicki Spickard, to Louisville, KY, to race the Kentucky Derby Mini-Marathon.  It was a half-marathon the weekend before the Kentucky Derby and the last road race in Louisville's Triple Crown of road races.  I ran all three races that year and, somewhere in my closet at home, I have the t-shirt to prove it.  

It would have been late April or early May and I was in the best shape of my life from a running standpoint.  I was training hard, putting in a lot of mileage - probably close to 40 miles a week - and I was racing almost every weekend.  The year or so before and after that race was the apex of my competitive running career.  

I was young, brash and seeming indestructible, of course.  And, to me, running was all about getting fast, racing and setting PR's (personal records).  Now, at 52, I run for the joy of running.  To try to stay healthy and in some semblance of shape.  I run because I can and because I love to run.  It's simply who I am and what I do.

As I recall, we stayed at some friends of Vicki's, somewhere in Louisville.  It was a little cool for a spring morning.  Perfect running weather.  I felt good that morning.  I had run four or five half-marathons before including the Thanksgiving Day Half-Marathon in Atlanta w/Todd Blankenbecler two or three years in a row.  Those t-shirts are somewhere in my closet, too.

Again, I was running a lot.  I was training quite a bit in Percy Warner Park and running the  six and 11-mile loops, which are quite hilly.  I've always run hills well and I'd read an article on how to properly run downhill, of all things, in a way that didn't tire your legs out.  I also had read an article on breathing patterns that I had applied to my running.  You might say I was a running nerd.  

My goal that morning was to break 1:40:00 and set a PR at a the half-marathon distance.  I felt pretty good about my chances because I had put in the work, for sure.

I don't recall where the race started but I do recall that I quickly found myself in Iroquois Park running up and down the hills.  As other runners struggled, I smiled to myself.  Iroquois Park bore a striking resemblance to Percy Warner Park.  It was like I had trained specifically for the the race and maybe, inadvertently, I had.  I felt fantastic, like a running machine, as I ran up the hills of the park with ease and effortlessly flew down the hills as I had learned to do and, in the process, putting little or no stress or strain on my quads and hamstrings.  I passed people left and right in Iroquois Park. 

I felt like I could run forever.  And, that spring Saturday more than two decades ago, I probably could have.  

At some point just before we exited Iroquois Park and began to run back to downtown Louisville - which I recall was about half way through the race - I checked my splits on what was undoubtedly my original, Timex Ironman digital running watch.  I think I still have it somewhere.  I did double take and checked them again, doing the calculations again in my head to make sure my projected time was correct.  I was stunned to realize I could break 1:30:00 if I held my current pace of 6:40:00 miles.

I had two choice.  I could play it safe, slow down, and get my under 1:40:00 PR easily.  Or, I could stay on the gas and see just how fast I could run a half-marathon with the risk, of course, being that I could blow up and end up finishing over 1:40:00.  What to do?

It was a perfect day for running and that's how I felt.  Like a perfect runner.  Fuck it, I thought, I'm going for it.  And that's what I did.

The last half of the race is a blur but I remember checking my splits every mile and confirming I was maintaining a 6:40:00 pace.  I was flying and the miles were flying by, too.  Memory dims over time, of course, but I don't remember struggling the four or five miles of the race.  I just remember feeling strong and, well, like I could run forever.

I finished the last mile almost sprinting, or so it seemed, and crossed the finish line in 1:29:48.  I was ebullient and ecstatic, literally on top of the world.  A part of me immediately knew I was visiting running territory I wasn't likely to visit again, I think, so I savored the feeling of accomplishment.

As a runner, I run all year long - some years more than others, but always running - in search of the perfect run.  The run where everything comes together on a run of distance, usually, and I feel like I could run forever.  The running zone, I've always called.

That spring day in Louisville, KY, so many years ago, I found it.  During a race, no less, which almost never happens.

And I've been chasing the memory ever since and enjoying every step along the way.     

A Good Day

This morning, I was up at 5:30 a.m. for a 4 mile run in the neighborhood.  Listened to Matt Damon on Bill Simmon's podcast as I ran down Belmont Boulevard and across David Lipscomb's campus before dawn.  Now, I'm finishing up coffee at Frothy Monkey before heading down to see my mom.

Our day today?  J.P. has a travel soccer doubleheader starting at 11 a.m., followed by a baseball game at 3 p.m.  Joe has a baseball game at 5 p.m.  That's on the heels of a soccer game for Joe yesterday morning and a baseball doubleheader for J.P.

J.P.'s Dodgers beat the Dirtbags, our longtime rival, 16-4, so there's that.

Yesterday morning, before things got crazy, I went to see my mom.  It's so hard for me to get by her place during the work week because I'm so busy right now.  In truth, that's probably a poor excuse and it makes me feel bad, but I have been crushed last month and it continued last week.

I arrived as she was finishing breakfast.  She drank some cranberry juice I brought, then I rolled her outside to the courtyard we often visit.  She looked at one of the two issues of the New Yorker that I'd brought with me, although she never got past the table of contents.  Sometimes the innocence - her innocence - is almost childlike and I marvel at the things that interest her or amuse her.  We're blessed in that way, I suppose, in that she's not angry, mean spirited or sad.  For the most part, she's happy and blissfully unaware of anything more than what is right in front of her.

Is that sad?  Sure it is, when I think of how closely she followed sports, politics, current events and, most importantly, her children's and grandchildren's activities in what seems like a past life.  I'm trying to find the silver lining, though.  And, for me, the silver lining is that right now, at least, she is, in a word . . . content.

She smiles a lot.  Her sense of humor is intact and she laughs, still, again with a childlike innocence at the smallest things.  She interacts with the staff in the Courtyard at NHC Place and they seem to genuine like her.  As I wheeled her out yesterday, I private pay caregiver I didn't recognize spoke to her and asked how she was doing as she waved at him when we passed by his patient's table.

Back to yesterday morning.  As we sat outside, enjoying each other's company, I read her a couple of poems from this week's issue of the New Yorker.  We weren't particularly impressed with either poem.  Mostly, she just laughed at the name of one of the authors.

Truly, it was one of those intervals I wish I could have frozen in time, so I could return to it in later years, when her conditions worsens or when she's gone.  Maybe I can look back at this post and remember that Saturday morning when, for a little while at least, my mom and sat together outside and I read poetry to her.  And she listened, and smiled.  And loved me.