We aren’t meant to live out the regrets of our elders.

We’re paving a trail of our own.

So don’t let them fill your chest with sand.

Let us not utter words of their normalcy.

Or carry the weight of their expectations on our hearts.

They will watch us flow through this ethereal existence.

Unscathed from fear; we do as we please.

Because God knew what he was doing, when he collided you into me.

Hello, old friend, it’s been awhile,

We haven’t spoken since that day.

I’ve long forgotten your genial smile,

And let’s be honest, it’s better that way.

I made my peace and shed some tears,

Accepted that all things have to end.

But after some distance and several years,

You found me once more as a different friend.

I thought I was wearing sufficient disguise,

Purging mementos to make my life pure.

But ghosts are persistent when artifice dies,

I was so confident; I was so sure.

I thought that it could be different this time,

There was room in my soul, and I left it ajar.

Should there be consequence? Was there a crime?

I think you can’t help it, it’s just who you are.

I thought you were older, so maybe you could

Be a light in the dark and a similar strange.

You said that you promised, and swore that you would,

But ghosts aren’t alive, and so you’ll never change.

Maybe I missed you, invited you here,

Or summoned the person I wished you could be.

I forgot the fangs and forgot the fear,

I forgot that it felt kind of good to be free.

Everyone is an exorcist after the fact.

Once you know it’s a ghost, of course you can see.

They say “cut them off, amputate and extract,”

But I can’t, when you already did that to me.

My postmortem’s course has concluded its run,

It’s not about me, you have ghosts of your own.

Of your countless promises, make and keep one:

Haunt other hearts, and just leave mine alone.

To whom it may concern,

I’ve started many letters like this over the years. Some of them have included a last will and testament, some of them words of maudlin and saccharine kindness to overcome the bitterness I might impolitely leave in my wake. I’m writing this to nobody in particular, to everyone, to the beginning and the end of everything. I want my reason to walk away to be exonerated, blessed, purged with sage on a brisk and overbright dawn.

That won’t happen. This is a punishing effort, necromancy without knowledge. We’re trying to raise the dead here, because I’ve grieved my parents hundreds of times. This is just the most recent, and maybe the most final, barring that most final of goodbyes.

I just finished a longform essay by Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist I admire, called “Notes on Grief,” in which she details mourning the loss of her father in 2020. I mourned with her as I read; I cried at times for the picture of uncomplicated affection she crafted for her reader. This author has a gift for painting poignancy in plain speech, hurling an equation at the page that detonates profound simplicity. I felt like I cried for different reasons, because my parents are alive, and I’ve incessantly practiced being a grey rock, intentionally uncomplicating my affection.

Is this how I want to spend the last years of my parents’ lives? It’s not, but it’s the way I spent the first years of mine. I’m like the scorpion who asked for a ride across a river from a toad, only to sting the toad, drown us both, and blithely explain that it was inevitably “in my nature.”

No, wait. That’s the story I’ve been told since I was eleven years old, when I became unlovable, difficult, unstable, embarrassing. I envied smaller people, I envied happier people, and when I crushed myself inward in every attempt to disappear, I was ashamed that I couldn’t. A stronger person could, surely; I was just crazy enough to be unlovable, and just sane enough to be impure, manipulative, worthy of reproach and contempt.

My sister, for the record, is crazy too. She’s passed the severity test, though; she’s crazy enough to have acceptance, care, the ability to live with her parents at the age of 26, drink and do drugs, and openly explore her sexuality as a woman under their roof. Allowances are made for this beautiful hurricane, whose temper and tantrums are just part of her dimensional personality and mustn’t be suppressed. She’s an adult, after all. She’s delicate, after all. Her wellness should never, ever be taken for granted, because what if we lose her?

I’m looking behind me, some kind of lost. I’m bewildered that it took this to get here, in therapy with a mediator, after I committed the cardinal sin of standing up for myself and my family when every fiber in my heart knew what it would cost to set a boundary. I know that I’m a person of relatively low value in this world; people would rather dismiss me than fight for a relationship with me. I am, after all, impure, manipulative, and worthy of reproach and contempt. I’m the worst kind of person, and I can’t seem to disappear after all this time. There are children now; there is a husband who loves me more than I deserve. It would be inconsiderate.

I was homeless at twenty one. I was evicted from my parents’ house after an entire lifetime of homeschooling and one disastrous year at a conservative private college because of a concern that I would corrupt my younger sister by reading Cosmopolitan magazine and having sex with a pushy, pressuring boyfriend. Arrangements to stay with my grandmother quickly lapsed as I went from one abusive relationship to another. My ex pressured me into performing sex acts on camera to make money for “us”, but he’d helped me pack up my things and move them from my parents’ house when no one else would, so how could I say no?

Wolves feasted on me in a world I wasn’t prepared for because my parents took my wellness for granted.

Throughout my life the most empowering act I’ve realized I’m capable of is walking away. Walking away is hard. Walking away is painful. Walking away is trying to have dignity and strength, in spite of being unlovable, impure, manipulative, and worthy of reproach and contempt. I’m both old enough to fend for myself, and young and stupid enough to not be worthy of dignity and strength, in my parents’ eyes.

My daughter was photographed and distributed in a vulnerable situation, crying and nude. My mother has called me crazy and mocked me when I was compromised in similar positions. My love for my daughter is uncomplicated affection; it hurts me to know that she has already been used as a prop for someone else’s weaponized shame and guilt. It all comes back to me, because whether or not I engage, I’m the epicenter of ALL that is impure, manipulative, and worthy of reproach and contempt. I deserve it, and I can’t be forgiven until I pay for it.

I don’t want my daughter, or any of my children, to pay for it. I want them to grow up confident, secure, and whole. I don’t want them to comply when they are subjected to guilt, and shame, and exposure because they were inconvenient and unpredictable to a trusted adult in their lives.

I can do my job. I can be a trusted adult and act in my children’s best interests. We are here, today, because you mixed up actions and reactions. Leaving was a reaction to the way you deal with children, and maybe also the parents you still view as children.

I can forgive the past. I can’t abide patterns. I love you, and grieve you, but through my pain, I want to love my daughter, and show her that she is pure, well-intentioned, and worthy of love and grace. She’s four, after all. She’s new. She’s sinless.

How dare you make her feel like she’s not. How dare you frame my family’s reaction to your action as a catalyst. How dare you frame me, once again for an audience, as impure, manipulative, and worthy of reproach and contempt?

It was the night before my son’s graduation from college. His fraternity, the second oldest at the university, had invited the parents to their house for an evening of merriment and revelry. My husband, my mother and I all ventured into the lovely old house with a bit of trepidation. He had lived there for two and a half years. We knew what to expect inside.

I mean, the house was well over one hundred years old and had housed some 25 young men every year for at least 100 of them. A house in such disrepair, they were in the midst of raising money to do a massive renovation. (They were successful!) A house that had a party every Saturday and a thorough cleaning before house meetings every Wednesday. (I never understood that delay...)

And we were going to spend time in the basement. A basement on which one fraternity brother had done an experiment earlier that year. Taking a sample of basement sludge after a normal Saturday night, he brought it to his professor’s lab. Some two weeks later, the professor said don't tell me where you got that from, but it is hazardous.

A basement that smelled like Clorox with a hint of I am going to be ill.

I guess all of that was in my mind as we entered the house and walked down the rickety stairs. My mother stayed on the stairs (in her mind, a little fresh air could be felt there, ha, and she still had a perfect view of the main room.) There were several offshoots from the main, and every room had a ping pong table.

All of those thoughts evaporated when I was persuaded to play ping pong.Or, rather, beer pong.

For the first time in my life.

It was a tournament: mother and son against mother and son. My son was the reining champion in the house. I, as I mentioned, had never played.

I got a crash course and the rules were slightly modified: I was allowed to not drink the beer on a missed shot (not a fan) and the boys were allowed to make us mothers feel better by not drinking the beer in the cups in which balls that had bounced on the wet floor were hit. (Vomit.) They kept cups on the side for the drinking. Lol.

Something you should know about me: I laugh a lot. Loudly. Also, when it comes to sports, I can be very competitive. And, when I play (or watch) sports, I scream alot. :-)

By the end of our match, all the players from other rooms had stopped their games to watch ours.

This picture was taken by another parent. An amateur photographer, that night, he took some of the best action shots I’ve ever seen. This is my favorite.

As you may be able to tell from my expression, my son and I won. And then he and my husband went on to also win in the dad/son tournament. And my husband and I both had the same winning shot. :-)

If I were to guess, I would say my thoughts then were very similar to the ones evoked every time I look at the picture: I have never had so much fun.

Is chivalry dead?

I think one must first define what one means by chivalry.

Do you mean the chivalry of the fighter whose most important job was to fight for his lord/king/country?

Or, religious chivalry, whose aim was to serve God and protect the innocent?

Or, courtly love chivalry where one's duty was to one's lady? (Interestingly, this aspect grew out of the Middle Ages' veneration of the Virgin Mary - ordinary women were actually disparaged then, with the exception, perhaps, of aristocratic women.)

Did chivalry ever actually exist - beyond the pages of European poets and troubadours? Christian tomes? Books of courtesy that allowed the rising bourgeois class to imitate aristocratic manners? Did it live outside the minds of romantic young European girls (in manors and castles) who dreamed of armor clad knights falling to their knees before them, whispering words of love? Or romantic young European boys (in manors and castles) who dreamed of bravely slaying enemies while garbed in spine crunching armor with a bit of lace from a lovely lady tucked into the sleeve? (Outside the manors and castles there was little time for dreaming.)

Did the average, the ordinary, the non-aristocratic European woman or man (read: peasant) actually ever experience any of these personally? (Remember: at that time and place there were three classes: the nobles, the religious, and the peasants/serfs-the majority.)

Probably not.

However, if we think of "chivalry" simply as a series of qualities codified and literarily associated with European medieval knights (whether or not the average blood and bones sort lived up to said qualities), that is, "...courage, honor, courtesy, justice, and a readiness to help the weak," then yes, it probably exists in the same proportions that it did then - all over the world. Or even more so given that, on the whole, women are in a better place than they were then (depending on one's economic status and location on the globe, of course). And it is not merely one class of men on one continent who might aspire to be courageous, honorable, courteous, just and kind to the weak. Nor is it just men who can be any and all of these things. Or who fail to exhbit even one.

I am happy to say that in a world that often makes me sad, I have had the joy of knowing many men and women who endeavor to be or to embody several or all of these characteristics.

If you ponder the people you know or have met, I suspect you have encountered at least one chivalrous person.

It might even be you.

Fallen angels, it’s written, can’t shed tears,

Wandering, sullen, for long, lonely years.

Grieving’s for mortals, and reasons to weep,

When all of life’s hardships are solemn and steep.

No longer an angel, you could say I fell,

Gravity gripped me; I stopped short of Hell.

Heaven’s forgotten, eroded by time,

I’ve forgotten His love, I’ve forgotten my crime.

When I fell, it was through blackest night,

Scorched by the swift Borealic lights.

My fiery feet streaked a splintering tail,

I named myself Icarus when my wings failed.

I named myself Pain, on the shattered ground,

I named myself Pity when I was found.

I named myself Hunger, when my pangs were worst,

And when I was parched, I named myself Thirst.

I named myself Wander, with no purpose planned,

I named myself Beggar, outstretching my hand.

I named myself Swan, for my lingering grace,

I named myself Crow, for my charred, ruined face.

My name was Tempted. I found a dropped pack,

My name became Honor when I gave it back.

The owner was flustered, I thought that he’d chide

But he smiled and thanked me; I named myself Pride.

I built a house, named it Home, found a wife,

A human celestial; I named us both Life.

I laughed at her wit and I named myself Mirth,

I named myself Father, for our child’s birth.

I named myself Mortal, but it failed to take,

I named myself Grief for my wretched mistake.

I buried them both side-by-side on a hill,

I named myself Grateful, and think of them, still.

Time soothed my scars, took the limp from my lame,

Meanwhile, I stole for myself many names.

They helped me remember where I had once flown,

And I cried a river, when I was alone.

Wind heard. He came, and I spared him a glance,

As he whispered to me of a second chance.

“Return your names properly, quiet what clings,

If you wish to be granted a new set of wings.”

I turned my face skyward, and thought of the stars,

I thought of the heat, and I thought of the scars.

I thought of the hand and the heart, and the love

Casting me from all I had known, up above.

No longer wandering, hollow inside,

I know of Temptation, and I know of Pride.

I know that on new wings I might never fly,

But I’ll never again be forbidden to cry.

Wind didn’t argue. I think that he’d known,

Long before coming, he’d fly back alone.

One stubborn enough to be cast out at all

Probably would double down, on a fall.

My name was Peace, and my name was Tranquil.

My name was Poem, and then it was Quill.

I returned what I’d borrowed, like fish to the sea,

But I took one, and kept it: I named myself Free.

The auditorium was nearly full. Pretty soon, Pen to the Paper will have to move to a much, much larger location. Dare I say, a football stadium? No. Don’t get too ahead of yourself…

The audience sat in silence, looking at the dark figure on the stage.

It has begun. Colored lights began dancing on the stage, smoke began pouring over the stage. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” an unfamiliar voice called through a microphone. “WELCOME TO THE WINNER ANNOUNCEMENT FOR PEN TO THE PAPER 3!!!”

The auditorium went dark. The smoke in the room cleared.

A light was turned on, and everyone in the audience gasped as they looked on the unfamiliar man on stage. His bright red hair seemed to glow under the stage lights.

“BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”

“GET OFF THE STAGE!”

“WHERE’S CALEB AT!?”

“I regret to inform you, but Caleb was unable to make it tonight… he’s in the hospital recovering from a trash compactor incident. My name is George, and I’ll be your host tonight.”

“Will he be okay? Will he ever be able to host again?” several audience members asked.

“Yes, he’ll be back. Though, from what I have heard, he may be a little… square.”

The sound of someone vomiting could be heard resonating throughout the auditorium.

“Yeah, it’s bad. On the bright side, he has vowed to never be late to starting this challenge again.

“Now, on with the show. The winner of the competition is--”

“HEY! WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND STARTS WITH THE WINNER!?”

George laughed nervously. “Oh, sorry. I’m new to this hosting thing. In third we have A Ride for Two by Sanjana S. In second we have--”

“Dude, are you even trying?” a man in the front asked.

“What did I do wrong now?”

“Why are they in third? Why are they so high? What did he like about that entry specifically?”

“Oh, let me check my notes… A Ride for Two is beautiful and he liked it a lot.”

“BOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

“GET OFF THE STAGE!!”

Tomatoes began flying towards the stage, sending George flying out of the auditorium.

The crowd fell silent. “What now?” someone asked.

“Maybe check his notes?” someone else offered.

Just as they came to this conclusion, they heard a noise from behind the curtains.

A box walked onto stage, picked up the notes and the microphone, and then walked back into the spotlight.

“Hey, guys! I made it!”

Everyone looked in horror at their favorite person in the world. I had been turned into a cube with arms, legs, and a face.

“If you don’t know, it’s me: Caleb.”

“Are you okay?”

“Not at all. I hurt in every way imaginable. But I deserved it, so,” I said. “Now, who’s ready for the announcement of the winner?”

The crowd cheered.

“In third place, we have Sanjana’s A Ride for Two. I loved this poem. It was beautiful, and the story it told was just lovely.

“In second, we have GLD’s outstanding Nature and Me. I absolutely loved how he compared nature to himself and to his emotions. It was incredible, and, if you haven’t already, I suggest that you read it.

“In first, we have blackbrain with THIS CLOUD, THAT CLOUD. In this, he sits down at a park and watches the clouds. He says this cloud looks like this, and that cloud looks like this. Towards the end, I will not lie, he almost had me in tears. One of his comparisons was very… sad. It was a pleasant read. I really, really enjoyed reading it.

“Now for some honorable mentions. Bring It Down by Raemares was lovely. Just so you guys know: mobile is the worst. She had it formatted in the loveliest way, and, due to me being on mobile, I had no idea how to read it until I logged onto a computer.

″The White Spot by Buzz54 was very touching. As someone who was unable to see his grandfather when he was in a diabetic coma, this touched me deeply. I thought I was going to lose him, and yet, I was too young to visit him.

“Last, but not least, for our honorable mentions we have Defy the Odds. Your works never cease to amaze me, nightscribbler. I loved your poem.

“Thank you, everyone, for coming out tonight!”

The audience cheered and congratulated the winners.

I began my walk off stage. On my way, I slipped on a tomato.

“Uhm, guys,” I said as I began struggling to get to my feet. “Can you help me up?”

I was young

so were you

my heart was full

of feelings blue;

I loved you

dear, so much

so true; my love

you never knew;

you left me

soon, I felt

the ache, the pain

asleep, awake;

decades passed,

seemed only

a day, but I

cried, lost my way;

you were far,

I felt you

near; my darling

my soul sincere;

the years flew

the feelings

grew, no goodbye

ever, for we two.

I haven’t lived at home with my mom in over 30 years. I’ve been married nearly 29 years, I am the mother of an adult child…and yet I still call my mother when I get home from being out somewhere. It’s a small thing that will save her a sleepless night imagining all the ways I might be dead.

It’s not unusual for me to receive a frantic call about an accident on a highway I may have driven once – “Honey, I heard there was an accident on Route 9. I know you drive that way sometimes…Are you okay?”

“Um, yes, Mom. I’m at work.”

“Oh. Right. Okay, darling. Talk to you later!”

Or perhaps a tornado touched down in a town…in a nearby state.

“Honey, they just said on the news that a tornado touched down in Pennsylvania. You’re not going out, right?”

“No, we’re in for the evening. We’re fine, though. I think it was 500 miles from here….”

And forget if I am taking her out somewhere and she’s waiting for me to pick her up. I can never be late lest I arrive to find her in a heap, weeping at the foot of a police officer painstakingly explaining that her daughter is late and must be lying dead in a car wreck somewhere. Every Single Time I arrive at her home she says, “Thank God! I was worried something happened to you.”

All this to say, it should come as no surprise that I have inherited the morbidly active, fear-inducing breath-constricting imagination of my mother. Indeed, I suspect mine is her imagination to the tenth power. She should be calm and worry-free for her child, me, is a docile, security-seeking, rule following being who will almost always choose the safe avenue and eschew the dangerous side streets. I drive the speed limit and stay in the right lane. I am not inclined to seek adventure. Danger gives me hives.

I, however, gave birth to the wide-eyed, curious child who refused to walk until he could run full speed downhill into traffic. This child became the young man who jumped out of planes repeatedly – once was not enough – in order to obtain his skydiving license; who went to Thailand to swim with whale sharks while getting his scuba license; who, when his dad said, Let’s go trekking, went online to buy plane tickets to Nepal.

They went to Nepal. They called me from Mt. Everest to ask me to Google what was the worst thing that could happen if you got altitude sickness (you DIE), because their guide had it and they were trying to decide if they should continue WITHOUT him to their final destination (Everest Base Camp) despite EVERYONE’S warning that that was not a good idea in any way. Is it at all surprising that when I did not hear from them after that, and my calls went straight to voice mail the next day…and the day after that…and the day after that…that I KNEW they had decided to continue, that they had gotten lost, that they had gotten altitude sickness, that one or both of them had fallen off a cliff and was lying somewhere dead and unreachable while the other suffered alive, cold, full of guilt and wondering how in the world he would tell me the other was dead? (Spoiler alert: They did not die.)

On day four, I dialed their number every half an hour and listened to the operator tell me they could not be reached. (I screamed and cried, knowing they were unreachable because they were freezing to death lying under 20 feet of snow due to an avalanche.) At 5 am, it finally rang. My husband picked up. I burst into tears. The phone, he said, had frozen. But they were fine now. They had climbed up and down, had the best beer of their lives at the bottom and my son was unavailable because he was getting a massage. I accused him of lying and hiding the truth that my son was unconscious or dead. He assured me he was fine and promised to have him call after his massage.

What an adventure we had, he said. He had tried to convince my son that they should give up and try again another time, but he lost that argument. (Not sure how hard he tried to win it.) They left the guide behind and continued their ascent. They walked 12-14 hours a day because they had a plane to catch (they hadn’t scheduled enough days to actually make the journey in a normal time frame). They started leaving baggage behind at different inns in an effort to make the going easier…as they both got a touchof altitude sickness (my son in the head, my husband in the lungs.) Oh, but it was so exciting to see snow leopard prints although they never saw the actual leopard (THANK GOD) and it was so cool when they were eyed by some mountain goat-like creature that, judging from the picture they took, wondered exactly why they were on his mountain.

And why was the goat confused? Because they had made their own path away from the Everest Base Camp path to some other mountain. So…they scaled the side of the mountain (ROPES? WHAT ROPES??!!) to get back to the right path they could see…across the abyss. Eventually, they reached Everest Base Camp. And passed it by, thinking it couldn’t possibly be it. Too mundane. Must be that place up there. (Base Camp 1). Note: Most climbers spend 4-8 WEEKS at Everest Base Camp (at 17,598 feet) to acclimatize to the altitude. Base Camp 1 is at 19,000 feet.

You can’t be here! Some employee screeched at them. Clearly, they did not belong: You need a reservation, a license, oxygen, tents, food…once you get that high. More likely than not you also have a GUIDE, a group, a Sherpa. My son and my husband had the clothes on their backs and each other. I’m sure the employee thought they were out of their minds. (Don’t you? I did.) You must go back! He screamed. They rested a few minutes so my husband could try to breathe and then they started the eternal descent. Since my son’s head was exploding, they had to walk down some 10 hours until his head stopped throbbing.

They didn’t die, but they did do so many of the things I had imagined. Is it any wonder I always presume the worst?

All of the above is merely backstory. What you need to know before reading the real story.

My son competes in Ironmen competitions. He has completed two full events at Lake Placid, New York (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, and a 26.2-mile run). Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is a marathon after a 112-mile bike. And a 2.4-mile swim. He has completed six half Ironman competitions (1.2 mile-swim, 56-mile bike, and a 13.1-mile run).

I, like you, think he is leaning towards nuts, but I do find it motivating to see so many people, some as old as 75, challenging themselves to do something that is physically and mentally very difficult. It is a great achievement and though I often start the race thinking, oh, maybe I could do this, I always end up with, but why would I deliberately force myself to endure so much pain? My 5K at the gym three times a week is plenty hard.

So, one weekend last June, my husband and I went to see my son participate in a half Ironman competition in Connecticut. He had done this particular course before and had done a lot of training and other events in the meantime, so he expected to see significant improvement from his performance a year earlier.

The day started with heavy fog. You couldn’t see more than 50 meters in the water. First, they delayed the start. Then they shortened the swim and delayed the start again to give the officials time to remake the swim course. This was exciting because it meant he could swim full out for 750 meters, get a fast time and start the bike less tired than normal. It was great.

His transition time was one of his best and then he was off on the bike. We used the tracking device on our phone to keep abreast of his progress while we had breakfast. It stopped tracking him at mile 29. When we thought he should be finishing within half an hour or so, we went to the bike finish to await his arrival.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

My husband started getting nervous. “He should be here.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “Perhaps he had more difficulty on the climbs than he anticipated.”

We waited.

My husband went to the event officials and asked if his bike was back in transition, just in case we had missed him returning.

Nope. And his running shoes were there, waiting for him. “Just go watch the race. He’ll show up,” the less than sympathetic man said.

After some 2 hours pass the time we expected him, my husband had questioned the officials again (they radioed others along the route and no one had any news about bib 313), the on-site police officers, firemen and medical representatives. No reports about bib 313.

We figured, if he had fallen or had a flat tire, someone would have noticed. Therefore, he must be in a port-a-potty, sick, unconscious and alone with no one aware of his dilemma. Alternatively, he had lost control near the lake we had seen on our drive across the bike course the previous day, and fallen in, unable to do anything to help himself because his shoes were clipped into the bike. Or, he lost control and skidded into nearby woods, crashed into a tree knocking himself unconscious and was laying, bleeding somewhere where no one could see him.

I stood alone trying desperately to remain calm and not cry, while watching the crowd dwindle as rider after rider rolled in.

My husband ran around the park trying to get someone to look for our son or tell us what might have happened.

Had he been able to ask the returning athletes, however, they would have said, oh yeah, I saw him. That’s the guy RUNNING WITH HIS BIKE.

What?

Well, it turns out near mile 28, he got what he thought was a flat tire, but when he went to change the inner tube, he realized it was a damaged tire, not the inner tube. He rode on the flat to the aid station.

“Do you have a tire? he asked.

“No,” they said.

“Can I leave the bike here and just run?” he asked.

“No,” they said. “You have to keep the bike with you.”

“Can I run with the bike?” he asked.

“I guess so,” they said.

And so, he started to run. Barefoot. With his bicycle.

Other riders offered him food and drink as they passed by. He just asked that if they saw bike tech, let them know he needed help.

One guy offered him socks since his, by that time, were all torn up.

He stopped at two more aid stations for hydration – no bike tech to be found – and kept running.

A spectator saw him running and called his wife who was a few miles up the path and asked her to bring out a pair of running shoes for a guy who was running barefoot with his bike.

She did.

That was mile 46.

At mile 50, after running almost 22 miles, he happened upon bike tech. They had a tire. They replaced his (took the Good Samaritan’s running shoes) and he biked the last six miles. He came in smiling at me. I have never been so happy to see that smile.

Then, he sped through transition, put on his running shoes, and ran the 13.1 mile run course.

With blisters the size of walnuts on his feet.

He finished the race in 7 hours and 23 minutes: two and a half hours longer than he anticipated. But really, in the grand scheme of things, he can’t complain (I can): He finished.

The slogan of Ironman is “Anything is possible.” I often think my son lives that phrase (frequently to my chagrin, it’s true.) In a recent blog post, he wrote: “My love [of Ironman] stems from my desire to push myself both physically and mentally, to prove to myself and those around me that limits do not exist, that impossible is just an excuse, and that we can achieve great things, the greatest things, if only we have the courage to find our fire, burn off the cold and light up the dark.”

Oh.

And so, I bite my tongue, pray a lot, and (try to) hide my ever-present anxiety and (over) active imagination as I watch him light up the world around him...and give thanks to be a part of that world.