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 5th 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. 11th cancerversary, 3rd day at work at Goodwill Central Texas where I am now the outreach coordinator. It was HR the 1st day and tour and meet people the 2nd day and try to absorb lots of information the 3rd 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 7th 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 1st or 2nd 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.
