On Ironman

Some folks will tell you that what it takes to be an Ironman is the ability to swim 2.4 miles in the open ocean, ride 112 miles on an unshaded asphalt trail in the blaring sun, and run 26.2 miles -- a full marathon -- in total darkness after you've completed the first two. All three, of course, in the same day and, in fact, in the span of 17 hours, from 7:00a to midnight. That, they say, is what it takes to be called an Ironman.

I have just returned from Kona, Hawaii, where the Ironman 2010 World Championship was held. My son was participating in the Ironman for the second time. He has had four separate cancer diagnoses, a hip and shoulder replacement, and a heart transplant.

The first time he competed (in 2009), he was pulled off the course because the 2.4-mile swim took him seven (7!) seconds too long. Not only must you complete all three events in 17 hours, each individual event is individually timed.

So my beloved son, who faces down all odds, trained and trained and trained. This time when he competed he shaved 20 minutes off of his swim time, emerged from the ocean to a cheering crowd, showered and changed, and headed off on his bike. All of this we could see. The joy was overwhelming. So was the anxiety about what still lay ahead of him.

The rest of it we didn't, couldn't, see.

He got about to mile four on his bike (with 108 miles still to go) when he gave in to wooziness, sat down by the side of the road, and waited for the dizziness to pass. As he sat there, two medics approached him. They took his vitals and found his blood pressure to be 80 over 60 (when it is usually 130 over 85). They laid him down with his feet up for ten minutes, then took his blood pressure reading again. Nothing had changed. He went prone for another five minutes, during which they debated with him about whether or not he should leave the course and give up his 2010 goal.

He didn't want to. They did want him to.

Eventually he was given no choice. He was pulled off the course. We found him in the medical tent, receiving intravenous hydration.

He is supremely disappointed. He feels he has disappointed others. He is sorry for the ruckus. He devoutly wishes the end had been different.

I think he was an Ironman before he even entered the race in 2009, and that he would go back and face it all down again in 2010 just reinforces that truth.

On Coping

Someone recently told me that "coping clocks" run out. She meant that, psychologically speaking, some of us simply can't handle anymore than we're already handling.

I know this to be untrue. All of us can handle more than we're already handling. Of course, most of us don't think so. Or we don't want to think so.

We not only can handle more, we will have to. The troubles of life are unforeseeable, but they will come -- often in downpours. And we will have no choice but to cope.

That doesn't mean we can't allow ourselves the occasional meltdown. A good cry might be evidence of terror in the clutch of darkness, but it also adds to our innate, God-given (and God-driven) ability to cope.

A friend sent me this Buddhist prayer, which he always carries with him. From now on, I'm carrying it too.

May all things be happy and at their ease. May they be joyous and live in safety. All beings, whether weak or strong -- in high, middle, and low realms of existence, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far away, born or to be born -- may all beings be happy and at their ease. Let none deceive another, or despise any being in any state; let none by anger or ill-will wish harm to another. Even as a mother watches over and protects her child, her only child, so with boundless mind should one cherish all living beings, radiating friendliness over the entire world, above, below and all around without limits; so let [us] cultivate a boundless goodwill towards the entire world, uncramped, free from ill-will or enmity.

On Worry

I have worries. I have cares. I have concerns weighing me down. Don't you? Don't we all?

I recently discovered this Chinese proverb some of my friends tell me they were raised on:  "That the birds of worry and care fly over you head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent."

I have many friends who help keep the nests at bay. I am so grateful for that.

But my mother was (and still is) a total worrier. There is nothing that doesn't worry her, including the exact time I will arrive when I travel to Florida to see her. God help us all if my plane is overdue. Not only will those waiting with her hear nothing else but her worry about it, when I arrive, I will hear it too...for the next couple of hours. If I am driving her somewhere in her neighborhood, or for that matter anyone is, we have to move to the lefthand turn lane at a certain juncture or her anxiety becomes extreme. She all but grabs the arm that is on the steering wheel. Granted, she is 91 as I write this so some of her behavior is understood. But these are recent examples of a lifetime of worrying that infected my whole family.

And what does worry get her or any of us? Fear. It gets us fear. And most times we become fearful of something that is not likely to or never will happen.

I remember once staying overnight at a girlfriend's house when I was very young. Her father was out of town, but her mother was there. At some point during the night the mother heard a sound outside the house (might have been a car driving by or an owl on patrol). Before I knew it, we girls were up too. She armed us all with heavy pots and pans, and we waited in silence by the backdoor for a long terrifying interlude. This is what my friend lived with all of the time, and in some sense, I did too.

I am the mother of a son who has been ill countless times: four separate cancer diagnoses, hip and shoulder replacement surgery, pacemaker/defibrillator surgery (several times, once because of a manufacturer recall), huge doses of chemotherapy, huge doses of radiation, a bone marrow transplant, and almost four years ago, a heart transplant. Throughout everything, I have worried about his ability to withstand it all and survive. (He did and has.) If he died, I have worried about how I would continue to live a life that didn't include him. (That hasn't happened.)

To me, this kind of anxiety, especially from a mother, is understandable. But I should do my best to keep my concern from infecting those around me. This is a goal rather than an outcome. I certainly am a long way from having perfected that part of me. But at least I know it's a good thing to try to do.

Now, I find it impossible to sweat the small stuff. If I chose to worry about the little moments of my life as well as the big, I would live in a perpetual swill of unremitting, stomach-churning, throat-constricted anxiety. To what end? It certainly wouldn't make my life longer or happier. And it wouldn't make people around me more genuinely glad to be with me.

It's a life lesson. I wish I could transmit it to my mother, but so far, on that score, I've failed.

On Segregation

For a time during my early elementary school years, I lived in Greenville, South Carolina. The Deep South had not yet been integrated. Jim Crow and segregation were alive and well in South Carolina when my family moved there from Illinois.

I once saw an African-American chain gang, dressed in horizontally-striped pajamas, their ankles yoked together by chains with a huge iron ball between every two men, laying the road in front of Summit Drive School, where I was attending third grade. Knowing what we know now, it's doubtful that all of them were actually guilty of a crime. I will never forget this abominable sight. I had never seen anything like it and hope not to ever again.

My sister and I got around Greenville by city bus. The ubiquitous "Colored to the Rear" signs were posted near the driver on every bus. This small child's eyes watched black people follow the ugly Jim Crow commandment and walk past our seats to sit in the far back of the bus. A child like me had more right to a seat than an elderly black person did. In the bus station, there were separate waiting rooms, one designated "White Only." It was brighter and, of course, cleaner. There were separate drinking fountains. The old porcelain fountains that dribbled warm water and looked like no one ever washed them were designated for those with darker skin. The new refrigerated kind just then coming into vogue specified, "White Only."

In movie theaters, I saw separate entrances. Same with restaurants. Same with department stores. At home, we were never ever allowed to use the word "colored" or, God forbid, anything even more pejorative. I continue to bless my parents for raising us to notice and decry such things. At that time, in my family, the only allowable term was "Negro" or "Negroes." To this day I still worry about giving offense through a one-word description of an entire race.

We left Greenville and moved back to the Chicago area while segregation was still in full effect. Now, I know racism existed in the North. But never did I see the shame of it the way I saw it in South Carolina. I'm grateful for our few years there. I might not have become the civil rights activist I became without that immersion.

I took my children to the Smithsonian (American History Hall) so that they could see the same despicable signs I saw as a child. I told them my stories. I wanted them to know there was such a time -- and that perhaps none of us is very far removed from it. Especially if we don't raise our children with the awareness that the USA is not always just, is not always equal, is not always "American."

We must be a hyper-vigilant society, a go-out-of-your-way respectful society, a society that seeks to imbue its newest generations with an appreciation for the wide diversity that makes us the unique country of immigrants we are. Alarmingly, what I see instead is many signs of us heading in the opposite direction.

On Christianity

I am a Christian. Not ashamed of the label -- most of the time.

Fellow Christians sometimes embarrass me. At times I want to distance myself from them. I don't want my beliefs and their behaviors to be equated in anyone's mind. This is particularly true when other professing Christians make anti-human rights part of a political cause and put it in the same category as being more American than thou; I don't believe Jesus ever, ever, not in this world or any other, would have done that. I'm talking about anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-black, anti-Muslim or any other anti-neighbor issue. "Love your neighbor as yourself..." (Mark 12:31). Such linguistic hatred I've heard spew out of some other Christians' mouths!

Being a Christian to me has nothing to do with political issues and certainly nothing at all to do with hatred. It's very simple to me. To be a Christian is to accept Jesus as God's Son, as the Messiah, as the person whose life I want to emulate, continually falling short, but (yes, can I hear a hallelujah?) Jesus taught about forgiveness. And oh, how I lean on forgiveness and God's grace! How can I not then offer the same to my neighbors, of whatever stripe? Grace is inclusive of all, not exclusive to some.

My Lord has not always been knowable to me and still, in many ways, remains unknowable. That is part of it for me: to accept that I cannot define God or always discern his will. In other words, professing Christ does not allow me to play God.

Nor does being Christian make me infallible like God. It just saves me from the punishment I deserve through the punishment Jesus took for himself on my behalf. He paid my price. Why would he do such a thing? Because I am loved more deeply than any earthly being, even those who I know love me, can love me. So is everyone. There is nothing at all special about me in this regard.

But for Republicans, Democrats, or Independents like me? Conservatives, liberals, moderates? Jesus' name has nothing to do with it. I would appreciate it if political causes were not summoned in his name unless those causes are about love and forgiveness and, most of all, grace.

On Marrying Young

I was exclusively dating the only man I would marry at 18, and I married him at 19. I gave birth to my first baby at 21. Am I glad my own children didn't choose a similar path? Yes. Am I sorry that I did? Yes and no.

We met in college. He was two years ahead of me and had graduated by the time we married; we thought this mattered. I'd just completed my undergraduate sophomore year. My parents were against it, but they didn't have much of a leg to stand on. My mother also married at age 19, after her sophomore year. The difference was she dropped out of college, and I didn't.

I lost much of my youth by making this decision. And that included doing fun things, going on fun outings, hanging out with fun people, holding fun memories of my 20s. Instead, I was trying to be a full-time student and still be the kind of wife my parents would be proud of. I made my husband breakfast every morning before he went to work and before I headed out on my long commute to the college town (I always meticulously set the table for breakfast the night before, after I had cleaned up the dinner dishes). I was driven to do wifey well.

I am happy, at this age, to have wound up with the husband I did. But what was the hurry?

For my16th birthday, just two years before I met my future husband, I had asked for money to redecorate my bedroom, which my parents accommodated. That was when I learned I had an artistic flair for decor and interior design. I was still 17 when I started college, and my mother decided she and my father needed extra money for my younger brother's orthodontia. So when I went away to college, she rented out my room to a local schoolteacher. The teacher, whose academic vacations mirrored mine, would not physically be in my room when I came home for the holidays. But all of her stuff was (mine was packed away in boxes, except for the items I carried back and forth in my suitcase).

The room I had labored over had become the most charming bedroom in the house, and someone else -- for money that did not come to me -- received the gift of using it. To my young mind, and because that room meant so much to me, I felt displaced. I felt like I had been traded in. I felt homeless.

It sounds pretty whiny when I read back over this. Many young people have gone through much, much worse (I've gone through much worse). Still, at that time it was a life-changing set of circumstances for me. I decided to get married so I could have, and keep, the rooms I wanted. But of course that hasn't been perfectly executed either. Nothing ever is. And that's where growing up comes in.

On Bosses

On average throughout my career, I have had a new boss every two years. Now, that's not how many jobs I've had (one every other year); just bosses.

The most supportive of my bosses told me I was the best teacher he had ever met in his life; he also repeated that belief, continuously, to everyone within earshot. The "worst" boss I ever had is a toss-up between two of them: the one who straight-out asked me for sex and, when I demurred, found reason to eliminate my job in the next few months (before sexism in the workplace had taken hold of a nation's conscience) or the one who loathed and hated me so much that she did everything she could to undermine me in the eyes of my colleagues and her superiors.

She came to this hatred because I once had challenged her authority, in the sense that I fundamentally disagreed with a decision she'd made. (Why do so many female bosses believe they have to be as authoritarian as the stereotypical male boss of old? Authoritative is one thing; authoritarian is quite another.) But perhaps I should have stayed quiet. Sometimes disagreeing with a boss presents you with a moral dilemma, and within your sightline there is no win-win landscape.

I've had bosses who left me alone to do my own thing, who promoted me with glowing evaluations, who told me I was in charge and then micromanaged everything I did in accomplishment of whatever project I'd been assigned, who were on their BlackBerries every time we went to lunch, who had my back until they didn't, who behaved as if they were in a competition with me, who were unthreatened by me and helped me grow, and who became lifelong, respected friends.

In other words, I've had bosses I did not want to work for and others for whom I would have done anything to help them reach their goals.

I've also been a boss. But that's easy. The trick there is to hire people smarter and more talented than you.