Father Of The Year

Read this, and watch the video at the end; let it put some perspective into our lives.

[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in Marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester , Mass. , 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an Institution.''

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the Engineering Department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way,'' Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain.''

"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his Head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that.''

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks.''

That day changed Rick's life. "Dad,'' he typed, "when we were running, It felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

"No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few Years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the Qualifying Time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii . It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

"No question about it,'' Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century.''

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago.'' So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

"The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''

And the video is below....

So Now What?

I have to admit that having the kids more or less move out has left me with an empty spot in my blogability. It's rather shameful, and rather humbling. I'd like to think that my mind and my life are made up of more than just the sum of wretched moments given to me by a wicked redhead and My Son The Penis. Is that insulting? I guess it is, but it's how I've come to see him when he's with her. When he's on his own, he does show bits of the old kid, the one I used to know. But it's hard to find him, and harder to keep him there.

So right now I'm stuck in "finding me" mode. Of course this is what teenagers marooned in various stages of angst generally do, but since I've spent my entire life 'doing' for children, suddenly I find I'm sitting here without any, and I have no clue what my next move should be. Everything in me screams, "GET IN THE CAR AND GET THEE HENCE TO THE UNIVERSITY! HIS ROOM WILL NEED CLEANING!" Of course I didn't clean it when he was at home, but I want him to make a good impression on his roommates and THEIR mothers! I'm sure you all understand.

What do I do now?

This is the common denominator of stay-at-home mothers. Some are decidedly better at this than others, having been the queens of home-made muffins with icing, personalized cookies, and pencil boxes decorated with dyed macaroni and sequins. Those mothers are ALWAYS the organizers of the carpools, and the room moms. I hated them. Sorry. Hey, it's not like I didn't pull my weight. But there was something so ... holier-than-thou about them; about the way they looked when they realized that YOUR cupcakes had come from Safeway ... screw you, Betty Crocker.

Don't get me wrong. I did my fair share. There were the homemade cookies, homemade meals, and I never missed a performance of anything my kids did. Sometimes it meant I was speeding from one event to another in the same evening to make sure I got it all in. Sometimes, I found myself doing it for three. But it was what I knew, and what I loved.

Through their teenage years, I was more involved. I didn't just GO to their events, I took part. I coached. Every one of my kids benefitted from my knowledge in some way. Their dad didn't. He was busy developing his social life after our divorce. Amazing how that works, isn't it? One parent makes the kids a priority, one makes his life his priority. Anyway, we scrimped, we saved, we did without, but all the kids managed to get all of what they needed throughout their early teenage years. One kid got training at a high level, with a bunch of expensive equipment that we couldn't afford. He still thanks me for it.

It's not so difficult to afford now, and it's only one kid. I stayed with it through high school, and in extracurricular activities. I'm that kind of parent. But the time is fast running out when I'll have anything to do with him in any real way. And I'm very concerned about what I'll look FORWARD to.

You see, I'm one of those people. I live my life looking forward to things. If it's Monday, I'm looking foward to Tuesday, which is game day. If it's Tuesday night, I'm looking forwad to Thursday, which is practice day. If it's Thursday, I'm looking forward to Friday, which is the beginning of the weekend. Why don't we just live for the day? Why don't we live in the existence we have? Aren't we sinning in some way by refusing to relish the day, the time, we have in front of us? Ya, I know. But I need to be reprogrammed.

My life has been made up of crisis after crisis revolving around the LRHM and our family. Suddenly, that's been set on a back burner, and I have to get the hell up and find a life. Since I still haven't really got any friends here, this is decidedly difficult. Once sports are finished, it's more difficult.

My last child is gone, and I am ashamed of how much the LRHM had taken over my life; I'm terrified of where my life is going to go now. It's too much to expect my husband to entertain me: he has his own life, and his job. This is something I need to deal with on my own. But holy shit, I sure have no clue where this going. And I'm surely open to suggestions.

Time Marches On: Cut It's Legs Off!

Sunday marked the passing of another milestone in our lives: we took our youngest son off to college, like thousands of other parents around the state. We left very early so that we'd be near the front of the line for his room assignment, since they were short on beds and had moved them three to a room. In earlier tours, we'd noticed that some poor unfortunate was going to have a top bunk that nearly guaranteed it's occupant banging his head on the ceiling each and every time his alarm went off in the morning.

We were lucky and were #11 in line! Since nearly 1000 kids were going to check into the housing units we were heading into, we were pretty happy. After two hours of sitting outside, we discovered that we were indeed the first to get into his room, and he could happily peruse the room and decide what bed, desk and armoir he wanted. So far, so good. He took a different top bunk, which was about a foot lower than the "high" top bunk, so he could use his game system on top of an armoir, as well as watch a tv sitting up there (priorities man, priorities). Then he sat at a desk with a great, large window, overlooking quite a bit of green space and into the windows of other dorms. This turned out to be QUITE a bonus later on when one of the co-eds decided she should dance in front of this window in a skimpy tank top and exceedingly short shorts. The boy just sat and ... sat. And sat. He LOVES college life!

Having three boys move into this room meant for two is quite the exercise in logistics. I know how boys live. It's all very neat and tidy, because their MOTHERS moved them in! But they're slobs and they spread themselves over every square inch they're given. I have NO clue how this is going to work out. I feel certain that within a week, none of them will be able to find any of their clothing. But my son's X-box will be safe on top of his armoir ...

It's very quiet at home now. This should be a good thing, right? Well, it is, I suppose. Except the LRHM isn't going quietly into this good night; she's decided that she should make sure she's still involved in my life. How, you ask? Well, she takes nasty, barely-veiled shots at me through my son's MySpace page which drives me absolutely NUTS. Keep in mind, I'm nuts already. Talk about driving me to distraction. I have told him that he needs to tell her to cease and desist, but it doesn't appear to be having much effect. What I can't figure out is that on the weekend, she's going to come to my home and want to come in. Hmmmm ... how's THIS going to work? Shall I simply go head-to-head with her? Ugh, I don't know. Dr. Know says I should let it go, that I'm the adult and it's my responsibility to de-escalate this. Well, I'd get way more satisfaction out of beating her into something resembling mashed potatoes.

Anyway, my nest is empty. My house is a mess (ya, I'll clean it next week) and I don't know what to do with myself. Motivation is scarce. Sitting seems good. Maybe I'll do more of that.

Bo

Fear and Loathing in Beverly Hills

I'm scared.

There's been a stormfront brewing for days, and it's finally hit land. I wasn't sure what it was, at first. As always, there's the unenviable task of trying to figure out what it was: bipolar episode, or borderline episode. There's no ambiguity left. I'm in the throws of a borderline rage like nothing I've experienced in many, many months, and I'm scared shitless. Normally it's an irritant, that's for certain. And I can choose to deal with it medically, or I can try to ignore it and allow it to run it's course while trying to moderate my behaviour on my own. Needless to say, that's not going to work this time.

Why the change? What's different this time? I have no clue. I only know that the intensity is so very different. This is like the ones I had last year, where my entire body is engulfed in anger; not at anyone in particular, and not because of anything that anyone's done. It's just THERE. That's the biggest frustration of all, I think. There's no REASON, dammit. There's no fucking REASON. And I don't know what to do with it.

It started with an irritation with others on the road. Granted, that's an easy thing to be annoyed with where I live. But where most people are bothered and get over it, I'm coming up with scenarios in my head that involve their personal retribution. Sitting in my vehicle, as I'm being cut off in traffic, as people take my life in their hands, I'm flipping them the bird, and screaming epithets at them in words that never once left my mother's mouth~streams of words that would make my father blush on his worst day. The utter folly of this is that it simply fuels the rage that's already coursing through the boiling red-hot blood in my veins. I kid you not. I'm positively seething. It's amazing that I can restrain myself enough not to follow then into parking lots and explain to them precisely why they shouldn't be on the roads at all.

From there, it's grown to where even being at home by myself isn't working. Rather than a low-level anxiety that I usually have, it's sky-rocketed to the top of my brain, much like filling a water balloon~you just keep adding water, and you KNOW it's going to go. You just don't know when. And the icing on the cake is that I AM medicating. And the medicating isn't working. Holy shit, am I in trouble.

Over the past several days, I've been taking the proper medication for this problem as soon as I wake up. Then I take it again in the afternoon. At first it helped. Now it's not. What do you do when your medication doesn't fucking work? Yesterday, I took it at 11am because my hands were shaking so wretchedly in agitation. By 12:15, I had to take it again. That finally took the edge off it. By 9:30, though, I was out of control.

Let me define, "out of control". It's nearly killing me, but I'm not going off. I don't want to go off. I can't. Everything in me wants to freak out. I desperately need to scream and rant and rage. I want to throw things, and break things. I want to kick and punch and holler until I have no energy left to do anything except cry. There are no safe people, and there are no safe animals. Nothing is beyond the scope of this incredible anger: there is crystal sitting on my living room table that would look spectacular as it flies through the front windows. I want to make eye contact with my husband and tell him, "THIS IS YOUR FAULT". But of course, it's not. So I can't. And it stays in. All tightly leashed ... and held with the strength of a string of thread that could go at any minute.

What's making this worse? Very little. A conversation with my son that sounded as if he was defensive and irritated with me, leaving ME defensive and saddened. And when that happens, it's all multiplied by 100. I have so little contact with him, as he doesn't live here. Now he's angry with me, I'm angry with me. Immediate self-hatred and loathing. Two of my very familiar buddies.

A promised night that didn't happen quite the way I expected it to, pushed the rage to a point so high that I had to leave the room to avoid losing control entirely. Things can escalate so swiftly. I'm quite honestly not sure where the strength is to keep it in. And I don't know if it will last. It needs to.

This morning while we were driving, my husband reminded me to put on my seatbelt; in a moment unlike anything I've ever experienced, my entire body was suffused with a rage from the tip of my toes to the top of my head. It spread like an electric shock, leaving me shaking. A new height in lows. I was quiet, though. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

That's my way of dealing with it right now: just shut up. To the outsider, it would look as if I'm giving the silent treatment, and I suppose in some ways I am. But mostly, I'm trying to keep everyone around me safe, by virtue of shutting the fuck up. Because if I speak, I'm not entirely sure what's going to start pouring out.

Never before have I been so desperate for Dr. Know. I hate that little prick, and I need him like never before. I don't have anything else to help me, and surely HE could do something ... couldn't he?