The Thrill of Hope

November 5 2021 was the first cancerversary that I didn’t write anything in this blog. It’s 11 years now and I still of course remember, remember the 5^th of November but somewhere I didn’t have quite the right words. I went running of course, though its faded so much these days I’m at best a casual runner now. I had lunch with a couple of friends who were there on the first day like I do every year though both last year and this year it was through zoom. One of them often writes a card from cancer and this year, he had a funny zinger.

I kept a promise to share my soul on it. I had a good dinner and show with family about Shakespeare. Part of the reason I didn’t write anything was because I was at work, back in the workforce for the first time in the better part of a decade. 11^th cancerversary, 3^rd day at work at Goodwill Central Texas where I am now the outreach coordinator. It was HR the 1^st day and tour and meet people the 2^nd day and try to absorb lots of information the 3^rd day. It was busy and positive.

But two days later, I ran a 5k. I raced it and got lost but it is what it is. It was on a course that for my 7^th cancerversary, I ran 10 miles next to Kiana, when she was 10 years old. I had reached the median survival time and Kiana ran well above average. But this time, just a few days before, she had asked if she could run it with her friends from cross country but just have fun, not race it. I immediately said no that races were for well… racing. But it took me less than an hour to realize that was the wrong move, that I had raced next to lots of people slower than me to pace them but that running should come with joy and peace once in a while and of course if it was a healthy social connection… that was a good thing. 

Two weeks later, we ran the LaPorte by the Bay Half marathon. When Kiana and I won the Gusher Half marathon 8 and a half years back, we had already done some races behind the stroller. That would lead to a few invites over the next year and a half in various places. We were mostly only able to take the ones in Texas. The media loudness made it to where most of those races resulted in speeches, media coverage or both. However, as that wrapped up and Kiana started running more on her own two feet, I made a quiet hopeful goal, to return to all of those races to run them next to her.

Over the last 7 years as I retired the stroller, we’ve gone back and done that. A few of the races, like all things in life, did not continue but each one that did we knocked it out. Kiana placed in some of those on her own. When covid started, there was exactly one left and I hoped to do it in 2020… that didn’t quite work out. But this year, we returned there. This was a race that goes over the highest bridge in all of Texas over the ocean. 

Inspired by Kiana’s move for the run with her friend, acknowledging that while she was 1^st or 2^nd on her team for all of her cross country races, she was on the shorter training end and that I myself was more worn than I’ve ever been, we decided to just relax for it. It didn’t occur to me till we made that decision that for all of the races we’ve ever done, this would be the first relaxed one ever. On all the rest of them, I was gunning it and she was sitting in a stroller or she was gunning it and I was pacing her. 

I had a couple of surprises for her as we headed down to Houston. One of the things we chat about is that in the stroller days, I had music playing out loud for her and me… yes sometimes it went from Frozen to Bon Jovi. She maybe joking, maybe serious blames me for being deaf. But since she started running cross country, we’ve cut out the music since its not allowed on there and I’m a fan of practice the way you intend to perform. But we were less than 1 mile from the start, when I brought my phone and started playing some songs from back then and now. Hey this was not a way to help us run faster but just to enjoy our final goal race. 

There was a little girl once who ran going faster daddy faster. Now it was a young lady whose recent style choices have gotten her to die half her hair white/gray and the other half black. Throughout the course, people shouted “nice hair!” I responded to each of them, “well, thank you.” Kiana was not even slightly amused when she reminded me they weren’t talking to me. We were going at an easy pace for us but Kiana showed that her dad taught she “You kill the hills or the hills will kill you” as she sped up on the only two steep parts going to the peak of the bridge. She kept moving to the outside where the car was a few times in other sections and I kept reprimanding her till she finally shared that was because that’s the side my phone was on so I changed the music to her side. When we had about a quarter mile left I asked her if we could close it hard… I meant like speed up a little. She dropped me hard and I finished a few seconds behind her. We both shared some emotions and hugs  and exhaustion afterwards. It was and still is the longest run I’ve done in over a month but the most meaningful. 

And so the Thanksgiving break began with us hosting some of her high school friends for the first time for a fire pit, getting caught up on Doctor Who,  doing a turkey trot with some friends on the day, joining some for a feast where Kiana made her rum laced pecan pie, moving furniture around to be able to fit in a roommate who I’ve called my sister forever. Kiana had a Mexican coke during Thanksgiving so does that count as her first rum and coke? 

The break ended with a performance delayed by a year. Due to circumstances it’ll be a lower key Christmas but we still had a rescheduled show of a Christmas Carol. I didn’t realize that it was completely redone in the style of a musical with both ancient and modern music telling the story instead of just an acted out play, there was singing and dancing. There was a line that stuck out to me in “O Holy Night” that somehow never had. For a guy who has two email signatures that contain the word hope: “Hope is my 4-letter word” and “I am and always will be an optimist, the hoper of far flung hopes and the dreamer of improbable dreams,” I had missed a key line from this song, the one this entry is titled after, “The Thrill of Hope.”

For my new job, I had to write an Iram J. Leon user manual. In it I talk about hope as my 4 letter word but that for me I’d like it not merely a coping mechanism, or passive wishful thinking but rather a strategy. If nothing else, it’s a reset reality point where I can stand in the pouring rain and know the sun will shine again. 

I have made errors in life and I’ll continue to do so. I have made critical errors in the cancer journey but on those that have been on what I hope for it’s when hope has been something I’m more passive rather than strategic. It took me a decade to break 3 hours in a marathon but when I finally did so it was because what I hoped for, I worked for. It took me a shorter time than I thought it would to find a job but every job I applied that was my endgoal was one where there was only one position, not one of many. I hoped to contribute and to know they were choosing me for what I came with not just one more slot.  I hoped to return to each race but I signed us up, trained Kiana and I up for it. 

So what comes next? I don’t know right now, there’s a lot of learning and a lot of turmoil. There’s some things that still need to get cleared up and somethings that are still being rescheduled from covid. There’s still some promises to keep though with no races on the calendar, less miles to go before I sleep. But what I do want to do here and till my final day comes through is to make sure that anything, everything I chose to hope for is not merely for relief but for the thrill of hope, something that gets my weary world rejoicing. While hope has been crushed and cut at points and certainly not lived up to all I had dreamed on some occasion, Hope at its best is what has kept me wanting to live. And I want to keep living with the thrill of hope. 

Rewrite an ending or two

‘It’s not simple to say that most days I don’t recognize me

That these shoes and these apron that place and its patrons

Have taken more than I gave ‘em

It’s not easy to know I’m not anything like I used to be…

It’s not what I asked for, sometimes life just slips in through a back door

And carves out a person and makes you believe it’s all true and now I’ve got you…

If I’m honest I know I would give it all back for a chance to start over 

And rewrite an ending or two’

-She used to be mine

The 5th of November is a day I note every year because its my cancerversary. I wasn’t supposed to get to 10 but I did and now I’m at almost plus 1. But if I am honest, this is the least excited I’ve been about it or being alive on any of them. 

It isn’t just the divorce, the agreement there has been signed and while the formalities and the legalities will take time down the line once I put my signature on something, well I mean it, in this case I concede it. Four years to the date of my proposal, I was receiving a divorce settlement offer. I have shoes that are in the closet longer than that. It’s like I wouldn’t become a US citizen until I had a kid who was once cause I had to forsake other allegiances. Technicalities of whether or not other countries recognize dual citizenship are less meaningful to me than my word. 

What did I get wrong? Was it the wrong partnership in itself? That’s very plausible, our first date we realized we had a lot of great connection but the chemistry was well more amicable and there’s a word for people who get along real well but don’t have sexual chemistry; they’re called friends. But Elaine said that she could honestly say she married her best friend but you can move away from your best friend but not from true partnership right? It’s funny through this negotiation stuff in which like previously I’ll walk away with less than I would legally but feels more than fair to me. Anyway though this negotiation stuff, she said it sounds cliche but she hopes someday we’re friends.

Was I trying to hard to keep writing the script that seems to be handed to me? The guy who puts off brain surgery to run a marathon, wins one pushing a stroller, meets a girl running and sits next to her on the way to his Boston marathon and a few months later they’re dating, proposes at an obstacle course start because she can handle the messiness but then when the messiness arrives she ghosts him and his daughter at the next Boston marathon where well he’s a participant and she’s a spectator due to injury. Maybe that’s the actual script right there. 

They get married under a start line with running shoes but she hasn’t ran in a long time and we haven’t worked together most of our marriage but it should be so few dimensions? I guess that’s showing up right now. 

Where there hints all along about what I was doing wrong? Humans even subconsciously try to control the narrative; it’s quite literally why we dream. Our mind weaves a story out of memories. In the wedding, the vast majority of guests were true friends of one or both of ours. But there was a small percentage of invites who were paying back the kindness the cancer journey had given us. I could count them on one hand, maybe two but I’ll mention just one here. One of the two photographers we paid to be there was the one from the Gusher Marathon who had been kind when all the articles about me were coming out to give away the rights to her photos for free. It wasn’t until the ESPN piece that she got paid for them. I hired her as a way to pay her back. She was injured at the time and couldn’t really get good pictures and really none of the ones she took were utilized for anything and I still had no complaints, didn’t I owe her? 

The Austin Runners Club had helped me, the Ultimate Community had helped and so I went back and raised 10’s of thousands of dollars for them and non profits. I recently watched a movie called Worth about what they pay the 9/11 victims in the towers based on age, occupation etc. I guess I was trying to determine what my life was worth as I was paying this all back… I don’t know that I have a number on that but I know I’ve put far more in those bank accounts and communities than they did to my medical bills and it’s gotta be even now? 

Right now I don’t imagine myself ever running a marathon again. The bookends of mine and Elaine’s relationship at the Boston Marathon, being the cancer guy who puts off brain surgery, and the cancer guy who pushes his daughter to win one are tough labels for me. This last one wasn’t an invite, I’d qualified under the strictest time  ever required during my running career sub 3, I’d paid for my own entry. This was supposed to be where I just got to be a runner focused on a victory lap. Obviously that’s not how it worked out. The one before that was half with my daughter, the latter half with Elaine trying to correct what happened with Kiana’s mother that I often joke about in speeches that we didn’t do a single run together or run it together no wonder we broke up. Perhaps, it’s time to think of relationships as more complex than who you pace or train with. 

I’m on the job hunt and I’ve had some interviews. I’m not doing great financially but compared to how I grew up and how I was doing a year into brain cancer, I’m doing great. As I stated to a friend recently, I am broke but not poor. I may not have much liquidity but I don’t owe anyone a cent. 

But I’ve worked in the last 3 weeks as a janitor, as a security and for the first time ever 48 hours ago as a waiter. These are all on call event things, mostly because I have event stuff on my indeed resume and I think they think someone whose put together events is being searched for. I have taken almost all of them. I passed one up to handle a social media booth sponsored by (left blank on purpose), I’m not quite ready to encourage that one no matter how much I get paid. I don’t there’s any amount of money they could get me to do that. My grandpa, father of 12, words still come to me, ‘if it’s about money don’t worry about it, we don’t have any.’ I’ve been to all 3 of the venues I worked as a VIP or patron and intrigued by how people look past you or down on you when you’re in the service industry, not most people, but enough to where I’ve almost questioned my faith in humanity. But I also have gotten to be on stage and getting paid for these types of events and to be honest, I think I’m more comfortable behind the janitor’s apron or other places. Perhaps, it’s never quite having shaken imposter syndrome from being a 3rd world immigrant that somehow ends up going to college for free and traveling all over to tell stories I would tell at a bar for just putting one foot in front of the other while being a dad. Maybe I was just supposed to be in the background. But as I hear the other immigrants at some of these things, some of them undocumented and realize that they’re working much harder and much longer because they are not just broke and so grateful that they are so much further from proof, I’m not sure on which side of the equation I’m the bigger imposter. 

But I’m still learning. Kiana recently asked if she could do a race with a friend from cross country (she made regionals and qualified for a class jacket on her freshmen year!). I thought it was a bit silly to go on a social run for that much money and blew her off. It took me less than an hour after being redirected that I’ve ran with lots of people that are slower and that’s a love of the run that I didn’t develop till much later and that it didn’t have to be all about speed. I started the yes we’ll sign you up with hey I was wrong kid. About her anyway, I signed up and I intend to race it. 

But two weeks after that, we have one more race, the last one on the calendar for now perhaps indefinitely. I have been on a quest to run all the races that I ever did behind her in a stroller next to her. Some have not continued so it will be impossible to do them all. However, out of all the ones that are still standing, there is exactly one left. Like many of the ones we did it was an invite that came with a chance to speak and the details taken care of and covered by the press (https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Dad-literally-runs-for-his-life-5897512.php?t=415ce1ab12#/0). This one like Boston is one that I paid for. And neither of us is going to be racing it. This one is just for fun, for the run of it. I’m so exhausted right now that it feels like the end of my running or at least racing career. Maybe it won’t be but if it is there are worse ways to go out. 

As I process many thoughts, I’ve been listening to a song from a musical called Waitress quoted above. While the context is not at all parallel, there is a line that keeps sticking out to me and has been shouted at in my car in tears: ‘if I’m honest I’d give it all up to rewrite an ending or two.’ I don’t know what endings are still coming but I hope that one in Houston happens and as long as Kiana and I get together, I promise you it won’t be one I want to rewrite.  

Before Adam

‘The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.’ -Jack London

Jack London wrote that and while it was not from there he also wrote a book called before Adam. It’s a novel about a hominid, an early view of human evolution. Whether you believe in the genesis story or think it’s an idealized version of history where woman responds to the attention from the first man who gives it to her in new life, there is of course an alternate story. There is the idea that we’ve come from a different time with more damage and lost species along the way. 

I like both ideas, there’s a spirit of truth and humanity wanting to impose something in each. One is far more primal, that we survived because we did and those that kept surviving kept adapting to changing, hunting and gathering, sharing meadow reports and out running the tigers. The other creation story is well crafted, that we started as perfect and devolved into sin. 

I think as I struggle after receiving the divorce petition, both are showing up in my life. I am a kid who grew up very poor in a rough neighborhood and yet went to college on a full scholarship. Somewhere I’m a wine aficionado caveman… 

I look back and keep becoming aware of silly signs of where I projected too much. At our wedding, I had discs printed with our names. Elaine can not throw a disc and never cared. It’s silly but while they didn’t break the bank they weren’t cheap, why incorporate a symbol that only matters to one of you. She’s returned her ring, the one that said hope on it so hope can betray you. But I’m a man who likes symbols and I offered her a petty request that if she really did want this to break the hope engagement ring I’d gotten her and I’d accept it all as real and give her more than what a court would order. Hope gets crushed. 

Like the first time around she’ll get more than the court would order but this begs comparison but not between women but it was almost exactly a decade ago and of course it made me look back. I keep great financial records and back then due to medical debt, Kiana’s mom just having finished her masters, daycare costs and the house being underwater due to the housing bubble, I was the better part of 100k underwater. Now I’m sitting here with my mortgage paid off and while there’s very little in the checking account and cash will be tight indefinitely, the question isn’t whether or not to file bankruptcy but what to liquidate if push comes to shove.

That perspective is certainly there due to current job hunting. While figuring this out I have accepted a couple of on call event places. One is at a sporting center and the other at a concert venue. Between the two I worked 15 hours and let’s just say the hourly wage there made me miss the game wages from refereeing which had made me miss the speech wages. But there as I cleaned a bathroom another single parent is telling me how she has 4 kids and actually even though she puts in more hours she makes less per hour because she’s contracted due to not having papers. I’ve been a guest in the suites I was now checking tickets for. I’ve watched ballets, musicals, operas, comedy shows, Shakespeare plays in the venue I was now wiping sinks and toilets in. I think I’m more comfortable in the latter role. But it is interesting the way other patrons or staff treat and look the exact same person in the exact same place when he’s wearing a suit and carrying a wine glass as opposed to when he’s pushing a custodians cart and carrying a disinfectant and a garbage bag. Maybe I should take it as a hint as to where I belong that where the custodians place is called the j closet. By the way if there’s anyone here who is hoping I hope I find a better job than a janitor, I really liked it. It obviously doesn’t pay well which is my only hesitation but for those people who have ‘better’ jobs, my mom’s a cafeteria worker and my dad’s a school janitor and guess who still had to go to work during these essential worker times? I’m damn proud of them and me the guy who was making income from inspirational speeches about how I perspire, well that’s shown to be less essential. I am an arrogant bastard but I am not a proud man and I’m quite happy to clean 

It won’t go away overnight if that’s where my finances end up landing upon return to single fatherhood. There is one more season due to delays of Broadway across America that we will get to take in so there’s plenty of light in the tunnel still to sing about. But at the end of the day you get nothing for nothing. 

But even in odd times, the universe is kind enough to remind me of certain thing. If the last entry where a brain cancer survivor joining me in Boston wasn’t enough, I hadn’t seen him in 6.5 years, literally the last Boston marathon back when I was still not thinking about relationships. Between the two jobs yesterday, as I walked on the trail, I see a guy wearing a Duke shirt, those always stand out to me and while I’m there as he gets closer, I realize it’s my neurosurgeon. I shout out his name and he stops. And he apologizes for not remembering my name but remembering that I was the guy who was a good runner and a good dad. I hadn’t seen him since before several media pieces came out. It’s funny because in my favorite media piece, I say I always ask my doctors am I still fit to raise a kid and can I keep running because one is why I get through the day and the other is how. The universe is kind to me in rough circumstances and lets my bastard self know there’s a reason I’m still alive and a way to keep doing so. 

So I still haven’t given up my streak of exercise since the last entry because I have walked, or biked most days and ran two one of them but yesterday morning, I got up and ran continuously for the first time. I was hoping to do 10k but enough nuisances got into me where I walked in a little after 5. But I did it again and intend to do get back. I’m even racing a 5k this weekend though that’s more cause related. Though the truth is right now I have no desire to run arbitrary distances at arbitrary speeds… I really never did, I just wanted to race, hominid style, to hunt and gather caveman style. I appreciate and have learned to channel like the Greeks that we do it as a sport as opposed to pure survival in the wild but I think while I’ve run competitively for years for the last almost 11 it’s what’s kept me surviving and what’s kept me wild. 

Jack London wrote the above quote and it’s where I’m going to focus on right now. I have never just been trying to avoid death; I’ve been trying to hold onto living. Some of the best stories in life work out like me crashing into my neuro surgeon. Some are us trying to hard at making it seem well scripted but most of the best ones in my life happened while working hard and getting lucky. Like so many times over the last decade, I don’t know what’s next but I will do my best to use my time.

Heartbreak and Hills

A few have asked a couple of questions recently that both have the same answer. They have asked why Boston went so badly and how my marriage is going. Recently, Elaine let me know that due to a job change, while she’s already moved away to California, she’s also now moving on. She’s about as private as people get so I won’t get into too many details in regards to her take and also don’t want to speak to it but I am about as public as it gets and this is some way to think it through. 

As is well chronicled in this blog, I was very closed to romantic encounters of any seriousness after Kiana’s mom left. I’d gotten left behind shortly after cancer and turning 30 and seizures and thought well if you can get through that without a significant other what do you need that from. There were women for sure but I called them the George Clooney girls, committed to staying single. They would all get speeches about how I was happy to hang out until the next seizure or MRI and for a long long time that was exactly the pattern. 

Elaine and I developed a working relationship that grew into a dating one. I had been damaged and closed for so long that I struggled to even call her my girlfriend. In due time, I finally realized I should. We’d move in together and almost exactly 4 years ago today I proposed at the beginning of a spartan race. It was and remains the coldest obstacle race I’ve ever done, where I ran it next to her, helped her with all the obstacles she couldn’t do (next to none, maybe one or two) and kept her pace. It was great. I proposed there because I was projecting the simile of my hope that whatever the mess, no matter the challenges, we’d get through them. 

The last 18 months or so have been rough for a variety of reasons. Our relationship was never traditional by any sense as I’ve shared often. The job loss, the move, the sharing was not good for us. Still, I had enough faith in us, that we’d be looking back on the rough times at the finish line with the only medal being given to us being the journey together. 

As I look back though, I realized, from the start, I’d over projected completely unfairly. Elaine was my first real relationship since high school but at the time it started I was 36 and she was 25. The age alone should have been an indicator much less the other factors. I had grown up in a rough neighborhood where too much crime happens, lived in 9 or so places before becoming an adult, never once with a room of my own, worked full time since I was 14 at a variety of jobs to where Kiana now says I’m like Barbie. I had lived in 3 countries, had been divorced, had a kid, had had cancer for several years, had watched people die at home and in hospices. I didn’t even meet my father till I was 15 and he didn’t know I existed till then. Any of that much less the combination of it creates attachment issues. 

She is a brilliant girl, having gone to specialized schools since middle school and a high prestige school, Rice for university walking away with no debt. Her father is a PH. D in government labs, an immigrant like myself concerned with practicality and contribution. She’d grown up in the definition of middle class suburbia with both parents and a sibling.

I always thought she was out of my league. But we worked so well together, so well. There were things that showed some of the chinks in the armor that are coming to light. The first time I said I love you was when I was drunk from a beer mile (like a lot of my family, damaged hearts only show emotions when out of control) but that was also when I said, maybe we’ll get married some day after Kiana graduates high school. Elaine had said she never wanted to get married or have kids before we started dating and out of my weakness of fearing attachment and abandonment, that made it easier to have a relationship but somewhere I should have seen that someone who didn’t want kids of their own… But I over projected because for the first time in holding back not feelings but actually “feeling” itself  the loneliness was wrought. It is a genuine connection but I was trying to fix everything through one person without having given anyone a chance but that even then I realized that our connection was somewhat exempt of Kiana being part of the unit… not good. 

There was the first and only time I took her to an MRI, my own attempt to let her into my fears. I communicated so little because I’m so nervous in there about what may result. She sat in the room on her phone, presumably to fight the boredom. I did not ask nor correct what I wish would have happened that as I looked up from the mirror in there I’d be making eye contact. I hoped it would be organic and it wasn’t but it was okay right? Who could understand cancer who hadn’t really been through it? Rather than share or try to correct, I said oh this anxiety is my problem and never invited her back. 

I can think of a variety of little examples that many may consider over reaching but say something to me like shortly after I proposed she tried to join me at an attempt for a beer mile and couldn’t get the second one down and faded away. I won it and came back and said we don’t quit in this family and finished the rest of her beer and race with her. That post race picture of us finishing together is one of my favorites. There was another race she was injured and started and didn’t finish. I proposed at a start line, we got married under one in a running themed wedding but I didn’t realize that DNF’s (did not finish) were a far smaller problem for me than they were for her. For me, they aren’t an option. 

I have had chances to address some of her frustrations with me recently in counseling. I failed to do so. I felt like I was being asked to change who she’d always dated, the old adage that men marry women hoping they won’t change and they do and women marry men hoping they will change and they don’t. I should have listened better. I have now heard her too late. Like the over projection, it takes two to tango but again I was far further into adulthood, experience and life and should have known better. Still, a year in too marriage she wanted to do a Spartan Ultra, still the longest I’ve ran next to someone, to me a happy memory in that we did it together but her mindset was more on how it was going for her and she left pretty frustrated that it was a rough race with lots of failed obstacles. 

Her job loss that resulted in a move to California complicated the situation. Due to a variety of reasons, we weren’t seeing each other enough at first. She shared moments like that talking to me used to be the highlight of her day but now she wanted to be with her friends. I misheard that and shared that it was a good thing as she was at a new place that I couldn’t go to as leaving Texas would cost me custody so why not cheer for her to be happy? The times we connected there in California and in New Mexico and DC were happy moments for me but turns out I’m far simpler in happiness than the average person much less her. 

Somewhere though, she was fading and I wasn’t noticing, at least not enough. I had enough (too much) hope that the finish line was where we’d get to, come what may along the tight rope, we’d find balance.

Our most recent time together was supposed to be this past weekend in Boston. This marathon was supposed to be my favorite one with me having qualified at the last two I’d raced where she was running her own on one and a half at the other. Her father had qualified for the first time and I thought it’d be time with her family who by extension is mine like we had not long before in their hometown in Maryland. A couple of weeks out she let me know she wanted a divorce. No paperwork was getting done so somewhere I was in denial (coincidentally a river we were on together). 

I ate and slept poorly due to this heavy stressor. When I arrived in Boston, I tried to talk to her and it was mostly unproductive. We’d not see each other again after then I tried to hug her on first seeing her but there was little response and it was tough to see her without a wedding band, one that said the word hope on it. I offered for her to hang out with Kiana sometime whether it was on her own or with the three of us since it is quite possible they may never cross paths again. By sheer coincidence of crashing into them at the lobby twice, I saw her parents more. She never responded to that offer much less accepted it. Kiana was asking if I was okay and I finally told her what Elaine was asking after it was getting obvious that the woman she she’d carried flowers in for the wedding and had made drawings for was in Kiana’s own words “ghosting us.” 

I ate 1 meal in the two days before the Boston marathon as I was sick to my stomach. I shared this with a friend as we walked towards the the start line and he said try not to think about it for 26.2 miles. I tried to just focus on the run but somewhere very early on the body was breaking down as the heart was broken open. I started walking and while they say to never let them see you sweat, that’s unavoidable in a race but it will go down as the first time in a race so many people saw me cry. One kind stranger could tell something was going on and cheered out my number and said just keep going to the finish line, no matter what. With tears in my eyes and in my voice, I looked at her and said “I promise you not getting to the finish line is never an option.”

Life was kind and an old man noticed something was wrong and we shared a few blocks together but I couldn’t keep it together. An old friend who was at the wedding let me join for some but I couldn’t keep up even though he was injured. Finally, life was kind enough to where another brain cancer survivor Tom passed me and said there he is. We would run and walk together where he would shout with enthusiasm that isn’t this amazing that a 13 year brain cancer survivor and an 11 year brain cancer survivor are out here together. We’d do the rest of the race together with him regularly shouting that out. I shared this latest news with him and he reminded me how lucky we are to be alive and told me about his daughter’s college experiences and said we were sticking together till he got to meet Kiana at the finish line as I shared some of her high school ones. I couldn’t quite fully feel what he was trying to share about the beauty and joy of life. It’s against my religion to have bad days but this was one of those rare days, I was sinning. We got it done, he met Kiana and there were two responsive hugs after I got my slowest marathon ever by far done. 

What will happen now? I don’t know but hasn’t that been the theme of my life for most of the last 11 years? I had a couple of short years of reprieve with Elaine where life almost felt normal, perhaps in that desire to get back to that is where I over projected and over trusted but clearly took some things for granted and did not take proper care enough of that relationship to where she understood that it was absolutely a relationship I wanted to keep. I took full responsibility for all that, well maybe not full since relationships are a two way street but I’ll take 98%. 

In certain situations, I hear the idea that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. I do love Elaine but I have a hard time applying that idea in the context of marriage. I wish I’d figured out my over projection and magnification much earlier for everyone’s sake. How long and how the legal proceedings will go is a question that I hope is simple and easy but one never knows. Someone shared a joke with her that she repeated while we were engaged that marriage is when you love someone so much that you have to do a lot of paperwork to break up. Maybe they won’t happen at all since they haven’t even started. Elaine is oddly enough back in her childhood in a sense, a suburban neighbor working for a government lab. I am back in a similar place as to where her and I started, a single dad, with no income and brain cancer.  I’m on the job hunt. 

As Tom and I were talking running the last while of Boston, I told him there was one section there was no option to walk on and it was heartbreak hill, the infamous late hill in the game. We ran it all the way up. Right now, the guy who put off brain surgery to run a marathon, won one pushing a stroller, who hasn’t missed a day in like 3 and half years, well I am struggling to envision a desire to run again. Perhaps, it was the running themed wedding, perhaps its that I over projected the narrative that with that life this girl I started dating as we were President and Vice President of a running club, that we got married wearing running shoes, that she was a cancer in her astrological sign, thus a cancer I could embrace. I pushed too much stock into her and it’s stinging because I don’t think she was ready for that or saw that because her background is so different and so much better and I neither educated nor wanted to believe in the gaps. 

Anyway, we ran heartbreak hill and we got to the finish line. I hope I can run through this massive heartbreak and get to my finish line.

The Fighter Still Remains

 My biological father, Hector Moya Saenz, passed away last night from heart failure.

I didn’t know who he was nor meet him till I was 15; he didn’t know I existed until then. I was a typical teenager, not all that interested in a relationship with my parents at that time and it didn’t help that he was still in Mexico where I was born and I was now in Texas. Still, he tried, calling regularly through my adolescence and early adulthood but I did little more than have courtesy responses. I went out to visit him in Mexico a few times and he came him to visit me once when I was 17 and another time when I was 18, first times in his life that he had traveled more than 100 km further than he was born.

For pretty much all of my 20’s and 30’s, we rarely spoke and I haven’t seen him in person since I was in my late 20’s. I never had the courtesy to feel the need to invite him to meet Kiana or invite him to anything in my adulthood. Somehow in this quarantine I reached out to him and was shocked about how much he knew about my life and the people in it. I am connected on social media with his oldest daughter and youngest daughter, who are also still in Mexico. It turned out every time they saw each other he would borrow their phone just to see what I had posted on social media and keep track of my adventures, jokes, and escapades there. Shortly after our conversations, he created his own Facebook account for the first time and that’s when I started posting stories.

We spoke more in the last year than the previous 25. I knew even as a teenager that we were awfully similar, in looks, in personality, in that we both get far more affectionate when we’ve drank too much but in these conversations I realized some of our quirks and thoughts and instincts and things we were drawn to. I am working hard at nurturing my own child but well interactions with him made me realize the power of the nature we share.

I had scheduled a race in the mountains near my birthplace and was coming to visit him and him to cheer. I tried to get him to visit here but the logistics were complicated these days. He had chest pain last night and went to the hospital, passed out there and never woke up. I met some of his family but only know fragments of his life like that he worked for security at a bank, has 5 daughters but I am his only son, how he met my mother. He taught me how to drive in Mexico in a gigantic pick up truck on a dirt track. All of my cars have been stick shift because of that though I killed the clutch in that first truck. Even if I didn’t have a damaged brain, I didn’t respond enough to his kindness or else we’d have more memories.

He’s had health problems for a while. My last visit to him was over a decade ago because he was in the hospital. He was a boxer in younger days. He’ll be up for viewing today and buried before the weekend. So in the clearing will lay a boxer who was a fighter by his trade, no longer having to carry the reminders of the gloves that laid him down. Today my heart feels cut and I definitely feel some anger and some shame but I’ll do my best to live with some of his nature so that the fighter still remains.

Laying Mountains on Their Side

In an interview long ago, I responded to a question about mortality that I wasn’t afraid of dying, that “If I didn’t have a kid, I’d tell you all to go to tell and I’d go climb in the Grand Canyon and die when I die.” It inspired a Grand Canyon Box of the items I intended to look at before heading in, with one of the last acts before heading out there being reading the entirety of this blog through for the first time. 

I’d never been to the Grand Canyon, just heard about it in works of history and fiction, with the idea that it was one of the few things in life that when you get there, it does not disappoint. But instead of wanting to go see it as one of nature’s natural wonders, despite being a kid who had a small geological collection in middle school, I had dismissed going to take in millions of years worth of history from the school of rock. I have an actual ‘monster’ inside of my head, a cancer that may or may not eventually grow but has already had it’s own carving. The Grand Canyon was a place that I had made into a ghost and let grow. It was not natural growth but just an idea, a fear I’d let cast a shadow, never growing too much, but always lingering. I’d read an article about someone who went there before they passed from cancer with their family, of someone who went missing there and seemed to not want to be found. It was unfortunate those stories would ring louder in my head than the people who went there on vacation or on a hike and post the beauty of the place. 

Statistically speaking, I was not supposed to make 40. I’m now less than 3 months away from making 41 so I’m appreciating the old statement about that there’s lies, damn lies, and statistics. So when in early March, my friend Chris told me they were going to go run rim to rim to rim of the Grand Canyon, I signed up. My friend Mallory was going on the trip was going out there to do it twice and set an FKT (fastest known time). I invited my partner in crime Jackie who said it was right up her alley. And with about 6 weeks to prepare, I started to train. 

My friend who had done it a few times told me what he thought would be a good time to get it done in. That immediately got me to decide to not start my watch, to not care about the distance or time it took and to commit to never making that a part of the story. I’ve done plenty of races, won a few. People started suggesting this runners product or that trail product to take with me. That convinced me that I’d do it with trail mix, M&M’s, Cheetos and Oreo’s, stuff I would never do in a race. I dismissed some the basics of planning so much that someone who I love and loves me genuinely feared that maybe I was hiding my true intentions and was planning on having a last hurrah out there. That was not the case. 

I trained. I trained harder than I ever have for a race not because I wanted the time to matter but because I wanted there to be a very small if any percentage of it that I wasn’t just smiling to be going in and OUT of the Grand Canyon ALIVE. There are some steep hills in Austin, I did repeats on them 2-3 times a week, with the kid born 8/8/80 doing 8 repeats on some of the toughest hills always starting on top and finishing on top since that’s the way the Grand Canyon was going to work. I ran the longest trail training run of my life. As difficult as it sounds, I practiced eating trail mix, M&M’s, Oreo’s and Cheetos.

I put together the longest playlist of my life to put out there, with full intention to not put it on until it was getting hard or time to think whichever came first. It was about 18 hours long with songs from pre-brain cancer, post brain cancer, a gigantic percentage of which have nods in this blog if not downright plagiarizing\. I didn’t take a map believing the trail is fairly intuitive but ultimately got talked into putting one on my phone. I went in there believing in faith, hope and love and the belief that this ghost I’d made in my head, there has to come a day where I must, MUST, stop letting them scare me.

We flew out there and saw the place and I just stared and stared and stared. I felt so small, unworthy to being next to it, certainly unworthy of having had the arrogance to believe it should be so selfishly stained with me having wanted to die there, and genuinely knowing that it was my honor to step there, and the tens of thousands of steps I’d be taking across it unlike my usual runs was something more than just one foot in front of the other. 

We had an alarm set for 2:45 AM to try get to the park to start at 4:30. I woke up before that staring at the ceiling, nervous, anxious, but not at all tired. There were friends there when we got to the start who were getting their gear ready, the people I’d come with were ready to go but after a hug Jackie and a high five and fist bumps to some friend's old and new, I knew I was going on my own. I hate doing almost anything on my own, for as much as I run, it’s a tiny percentage of the time that I run alone but this one needed to be on me. 

So I ran down hill in the dark, though the friend behind me, said my hesitancy kept me going about the speed he was walking down. I ran across, questioned whether the flatness of the middle meant I’d gone the wrong way (I hadn’t). Finally, finally, as I started going up hill, I put the music on and the first song was one where the universe was kind enough to give me a hint, it was a song called “What comes next?” I started to sing, to enjoy, to take in the beauty, keeping one earbud off to hear the music in one, and the water of the river in the other. I’d passed my partner and some friends at one point. I missed the last water stop before the hill and ran out of water for the last few miles before getting to the North Rim. This made for some questioning but once I got to the top refilled and started going back down. I’d get passed and pass again on the way down with songs that I used to listen. Many songs had memories to deal with, fight again, accept my impending doom with brain cancer alternating with each other. More affection from Jackie and fist bumps with the friends like Allison, Fletcher, Mallory, Brian and the Higg’s as we crossed paths on the way up and down made it a shared experience. 

Somewhere along the heat of the day, in the bottom of the canyon, my sweat was so bad that I was having a hard time seeing from the salt continuously in my eyes. If it had been a race, I would have pushed then, gotta get this done but long before the body demanded it, the hopeful parts of my heart and brain reminded me of the purpose of this so I preemptively and purposely slowed down to look at the river and the Canyon and that flower and that lizard and those hikers. But I started thinking about life and death and LIFE and death and the more I thought the more I was able to focus on life. Death was inevitable but a few times because I’d miss the focus, I’d miss some of my life itself long before death. I remembered that race, those moments with Kiana, that kiss, that drink, that media piece, that volunteer, that funeral, those meal, that poker game, that joke, that OTHER really inappropriate joke, that friend, that ride, that trip. For about as long as it’s ever taken me to run a marathon, I thought and thought and finally when I got across the Canyon, I was done remembering. Like the iPod shuffle, the memories had come randomly but I knew as it was time to start ascending, that the past while never fully gone, the ghost of this Canyon was a being left in it.  As I shared this thought, someone reminded me the place I stopped thinking about the ghost, the place I’d focus on the future was called Phantom Ranch.

On the way up, I realized I’d shaken the ghost of the Grand Canyon but realized I still have others, though smaller ghosts to face. That’s what will come next when I get back to regular life but as I started the ascent there was a long sandy section and there really wasn’t much running after that. There was hiking with me and two guys with poles kept passing each other on different sections. There was someone telling me I’d been left a message of love, there was someone who had passed me who was struggling on the way up, there was someone helping someone else who was struggling. There were absolutely stunning, gorgeous views that I couldn’t quite realize whether it was the hike, the elevation gain, or the just the beauty that was taking my breath away. 

It was weird how they had signs that were blatantly lying when they said 4.5 miles, 3 miles and 1.5 miles till the exit because I’m sure it was longer than that with that steepness, surely they meant as the crow flies cause it sure felt further. But when I finally thought the end was near, I started to run. I was wrong; that wasn’t the end but rather than quit there I ran till the end. It felt so entirely appropriate for that to happen that between those two sections it wasn’t the sweat that blurred my vision and I couldn’t have been too dehydrated because I still got tears in my eyes. But I came out smiling. The Grand Canyon is amazing. I didn’t beat it; that’s impossible. But life and hope had been kind enough to where the ghost of it had and has not beaten me.

If you’re wondering how long it took me to get there and back... several years from the time I let it haunt me it till the time I got it done correctly. If you’re wondering where the title of this blog comes from, it’s from the name of the trails, South Kaibab and North Kaibab. Kaibab is Native American word from a mountain lying on its side and it made perfect sense to me from being in there how someone could see that canyon and describe it that way. The ghost laid on it’s side that day. I can’t imagine myself ever returning there. 

There was no medal or tshirt for this (though someone from the group had gotten us hats that said rim job on there; if you like me a week ago don’t know what that is, don’t google it). I didn’t win anything by doing this but I did lose some emotional baggage and hiked out bright angel trail, finding what I’d been waiting too long on. I saw a few more people in before my body temperature and stomach objected to rest by it.

So I didn’t go to the Grand Canyon to climb in and die but to continue to die, I went there to live. I did in fact climb in and OUT twice in one day, catching the sunrise along the way and the sunrise after the finish emphatically to enjoy more trips around the sun and more turns of the earth. I came out for the same reason I hope to get every morning, to LIVE.

 

Knife to a gun fight

 10 years ago this moment I was in a hospital bed awaiting brain surgery. I’d signed papers to donate my brain to science if something went wrong. I’d just gotten back from a trip to the Bahamas with my wife who was soon to be gone before I’d become a single dad. 

I started the day with a dream and trying to rebuild trust to life itself. Was that 10 years ago or today? Yes. I went for an 8 mile run. I had some cereal and bananas. I’m going to be folding laundry and some house work for busted pipes. I got my second covid vaccine yesterday.

I’ve genuinely given thought in the last few days of what was it all for? But I realize that when I ask that, I’m asking the meaning of life itself. And I’m still just 40 so I have to wait till I hit 42 for that one. I am a guy who was sad about events and traveling being cancelled due to medical restrictions and financial ones and now the same is a little more quite literally global. 

But here I am still standing though rarely standing still. Though there were roommates and romantic partners here upon different times, it’s just me and Kiana living in my house. I’ve got a wife and a lover but they have their own places, one literally out of state. I am still working on the most important life lesson ever, to work on the relationships I want to keep.

A massive freeze in Texas reminded me I still have solid connections and great friends all over the scale, some prebrain cancer, some post, some due to that. My life is strange but the universe is usually kind to me, perhaps a way to rebalance itself or perhaps it’s just all to wait and see if heaven or hell lets me in. 

Kiana was 4 when this surgery happened. She’s now 14 applying to 4 high schools (acceptance is at 2 out of the 2 that have provided responses). I haven’t blogged since my 10th cancerversary, found other outlets I suppose and cancer has been less relevant so I try to keep those entries to that in here. I’ve kept running, in fact I am at 1018 calendar days of continuous, topping the 1000 that I hit in my early 20’s by upping it in my late 30’s early 40’s. I notice more and more gray hair and on occasion question whether or not I’m old but generally remember that it beats the alternative. 

On my Christmas holiday, I kept the tradition of putting an ornament representing the most important event of the year. Usually that gets its own blog entry but 2020 was a strange year. Somehow the year I wasn’t supposed to get to, I think a whole lot of people will wish it had never been. The ornament was a clock, representing time management (stolen from a Doctor Who Time Lord Episode). Usually it’s because I have so many things going that I can’t figure out time, now it was the world shutting down and what to do with too much time on my hands. Like everything else, only time will tell if it was time well spent but I am genenerally happy with what I’ve dedicated my time to. 

I’m currently serving on a diversity board of a running organization and a cancer one. I’m on a general board of Marathon kids. I am helping hopefully prompt some legislation when Texas comes into play here in a couple of weeks in regards to treatment and options for cancer patients (one of them having loose restrictions towards marijuana; an odd thing for someone whose never been high).

Years ago, in a media piece, I said that if it weren’t for having a kid, I wouldn’t care about doing the medical stuff. I’d climb in and out of the Grand Canyon and just have a seizure somewhere along the way and die when I die. There’s a news article going around about someone who seems to perhaps be doing some similar disappearing act. I’ve never gone and even though there’s been a couple of opportunities, I’d made it too big of a monster under my bed. Now, because a group of runner friends are going, I am joining them and then my loving partner in crime running and ultimate connection is also coming. It will be 50 plus miles in one day. I thought I wouldn’t make it to 40 and when my time came short I’d perhaps die in that canyon. Now I am 40 and I’m going to run in and run out, run down and up, down and up and across. How’s that for a victory? It’s about as sweet and hopeful as anything I can imagine. No ribbons, no medals, no clock but it will be I hope a good time. 

When people see the scar, I joke that they should see the other guy. I’ve been listening to the Boxer to remind myself the fighter still remains but while I keep a buzz shave, I’m rarely clean cut. But I am a lover and a fighter and a dreamer and a father and a friend who tries to balance being a kid who grew up poor in a rough neighborhood and somehow went to college on a full scholarship in Napa Valley and then got slapped around by medical appointments and debt to... this. A life where even on the nights I have trouble sleeping, I am thankful to get up. A life where I have great friends even though sometimes I am very polarizing. A life where I say and hear I love you and wonder how anyone does but thankful I have it in me to return it. 

I’ve long joked that me and brain cancer got into a knife fight. I like to think I brought the gun. But I didn’t bring the knife either, that was the surgeon and perhaps cancer brought the gun and I’m still just getting away with one. 10 years later, the brain, the heart, the skull, my mind and soul still carry scars but I am ALIVE.