Graduation Day

It seems nearly impossible, but today is the last day of kindergarten for Ally and Ty. It sounds cliche, I know, but it truly does seem like yesterday we were agonizing over whether to put them into separate classrooms, getting them ready for their first bus ride, etc, and now, we are an hour from first grade. Even Ally, somehow wise beyond her years at 6, noted over breakfast that it felt like only a few days since the bus picked her up for the first time last fall.

This has been such a cool year for them. They have learned to make friends, play and learn separately from one another, which is a big deal for twins. You can't really understand unless you have a matched pair, but they become very dependent on each other for everything. They are so alike in so many ways that they tend to be on the same page pretty much all the time. And at first, I think it was a bit of a harsh reality for them to realize that not everyone at school would automatically be on the same wavelength with them. But they adjusted quickly, and to look at them now, I am just amazed at how well and how quickly they integrate themselves into social situations. And while they have made lots of new friends, they might be closer to each other than they ever have been. Absence may indeed make the heart grow fonder.

This year has been good for Lauren and I, too. Coming into the 2009 t-ball season, we really hadn't made too many connections in our town. We had a great circle of friends from before we moved here, and honestly didn't go out of our way to involve ourselves locally. But we met some really cool families over baseball last spring, met a bunch more through kindergarten and expanded again with baseball this year. Turns out you really can't put a cap on your friend list, and that's a good thing.

So, by my watch, Ally and Ty's kindergarten careers just came to a close. On to first grade. Full days at school. Hard to believe that it goes by as fast as it does.

Motivation

Kind of proud of myself today. Since March, I have dropped 16 pounds, worked out at least four days a week, run a personal record half marathon and have consumed less than a 12 pack of beer. Why the fitness charge? Proper motivation.

There are lots of sources of motivation to do lots of different things. Some people find religion, some people find a cause, and some people get it from the people around them. And that's where I fit in.

I started paying attention to my fitness level a couple of years ago. My grandfather passed away when I was 35, and I didn't own a decent suit, so I went to get fitted and was shocked to find that I was in need of 38" waist pants. My whole adult life had been in the 32-34" range, so this came as a big surprise. Things sneak up on you like that. A couple of pounds a year since college isn't much until you realize its been 15 years since college. Anyway, that spring and summer I started working it off, and dropped from 220 to about 180. Good stuff.

But a funny thing happened over the last couple of years. I'm not really sure why I was motivated to lose that weight -- I just started running with Lauren and it came off, but somehow I lost my way over the past year or two, and this winter, tipped the scales back up close to 200 again. I had hoped to be in the best shape of my life at 40, and instead, had done a full 180 back to my old ways. I don't know why it happened, and it took me quite a while to get it turned around this time, but I'm moving in the right direction again.

And this time, I don't think there will be another case of scale-creep. I've got the right motivation now, and I know why I am doing it. The first reason is easy. I live in a household where I could wake up on a Sunday morning, knock out 100 crunches and 100 push ups, run 6 miles and feel like a slacker. Because I know that later that day, I'll ask Lauren about her workout, and realize that I basically accomplished her "cool down". Not that she would ever put it that way, but being married to someone who has essentially transformed herself into an elite athlete at 40 gives you a new sense of self-awareness. I guess I want to keep up.

The second reason is the big one though. I just watched my dad travel through hell and back to put his cancer into remission (more on that journey soon). And his doctors hammered him. Like no one I've ever seen. Days after days of treatments to stop the disease. And do you know why he could take all that at 65? Because they told him right up front he was strong enough to handle it. And not only did he handle it, but he took it with a smile. He told them to bring it on and make him whole. And every day in the hospital, he did 40-something laps around the nurse's station, because they had that measured out to a mile and told him the walk would be good for him. If he could do that, how hard can it be for me to get out of my chair and run a few unencumbered miles?

I'm good at math. And I've always liked statistics. And my odds are not the kind you might bet on in Vegas. My family tree has lost a lot of branches to cancer. My family tree has a lot of scarred bark from those that were strong enough to beat it. And I need to look no farther than my parents to see two that have been strong enough to fight and win. If my number gets called, I'm going to be the guy they say is strong enough to fight. And if my number doesn't get called, then I'm going to be the guy who honored everyone else who has been through this by doing everything I could to prevent it. I get to keep my dad. And I have an awesome young family who needs to keep theirs. I can't ask for a clearer sign than that.

If you are reading this, I'm going to keep calling you for donations to support our Team in Training events. And I'm hoping that you'll help fight not only with donations but by finding the proper motivation to keep yourself as healthy as you can be, too. I need all of you to stick around for a long time with me.

Tales of a Forty Year Old Nothing

"You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely."
~Author Unknown

I had meant to write this before launching over the hill, but, as with everything else in my world, a few weeks late will have to cut it. I am now a month into my forties. Crazy. I still remember looking at Aiko when I was twenty-five and not being able to fathom the idea that forty was close enough that she might still be with me when I hit it. Sadly, she came up a few years short of our shared goal... happily, I made it. There have probably been a few too many nights of excess, a few too many yard sales in the woods, and a general lack of any real "growing up" over those fifteen years, but I do think there has been at least a bit of a maturing process along the way.

"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing."
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

I have not quit playing, and I don't intend to. If I say so myself, I can still rip up a bump run as well as most skiers I encounter, but then at the same time, I look at the kids in the terrain park and think we are doing two completely different activities. When I was their age, a spread eagle or a backscratcher was a crazy cool trick from a jump. No one was throwing backflips. Snowboarding was a fringe sport that had just been invented, and now Sean White is competing in the Olympics and winning gold after throwing a 'double McTwist 1260'. Nuts. Lauren has been passing on a lot of tips from the instructors at Smuggs this year. Their word for guys like me? Old School.

I can still play Tuesday night hoops, still finish a century ride and will be splitting a marathon with Lauren in May. I hit more live concerts now than I ever did in my twenties... I'm still playing, right?

"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul."
~Samuel Ullman

So, here is where things get a little interesting. I look back at myself at 18 or 20. My goals in life were nothing but material goods. I wanted to make loads of cash and spend it on stuff. College was a good experience in that it broadened my horizons past that vision, but still, I graduated from a school that urged me to get a job in the professional sector immediately after graduation. No taking a year to see the world. No Peace Corps. No backpacking trip to Alaska. I think that year at 22 is probably my only serious regret... you have your whole life to work, but if you grow into kids and a mortgage and two cars like most do, your window to live out of a backpack is a small one.

Somewhere along the way I realized that my ideals for financial security weren't so misguided, as that is the nature of our society. The misguided part were the goals I was trying to achieve by working. Driving a BMW doesn't necessarily mean you've accomplished something in life that can't be achieved in a Dodge. I realize now, however, that my ability to earn a decent living allows me to spend the time doing the things that really do matter. Spending time with family and friends. Doing volunteer work. Donating to charities. Those are the things that bring you real happiness. And I guess that as I look back over the time since college, meeting the right girl and starting a family together has really changed my priorities, and in a really good way. We're not getting rich, per se, but we're doing alright. And much more than I understood twenty years ago, I know exactly what I am working to achieve. I think that building that set of priorities and ideals has a lot to do with the fact that I still feel like a pretty young forty.

"The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time..."
- James Taylor

That's the hardest part. I know where my priorities are and what I want to achieve, and yet still get bogged down in the details that don't really matter. I don't mind getting older, but I do seem to worry a lot about how quickly the time passes. Could my kids really be six years old? Have I known Lauren for a decade now? Those are good things, but I remember the beginnings of those relationships as if they were yesterday, not years ago. And I hate the thought of waking up ten years from now and writing about turning fifty without feeling like I took it all in. So, that's the balancing point. I need to work hard enough to get where we can all relax and enjoy life, without missing out on relaxing and enjoying life in the meantime. Tough to do. When I figure it out, I'll let you know.

Serendipity

I work pretty hard at my job. It takes some long hours, but for the most part, I'm happy with it, and enjoy being challenged personally and professionally. There are times when the demands of my role find me sitting on a conference call in the middle of the night, and while I really don't mind it, there have been times when a moment of frustration left me thinking, 'what are we doing talking about this at midnight?'. A crashed mail server is not life or death, and on a couple of occasions I have stopped and thought, 'we're not saving lives here -- we're not curing cancer...'. We get through it though. Such are the demands of my professional life.

A couple of months ago, I signed on for a personal challenge. I partnered on it with Lauren, put in a lot of hours and effort, and took myself in a direction I'd never been to at work. And a few days ago, I found myself working at midnight again, but for the first time, I was staying up late to cure cancer. And it felt amazing.

Lauren has run with a group called Team in Training for the past several years. The TNT folks are amazing -- they run, hike, bike and swim through endurance challenges, all while raising money and awareness for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. As both of our families have been touched by cancer, it has always been a good fit. She likes the challenges, and it is a cause we can get behind. We have never been on the front lines fund raising, though. We've supported other people's efforts, but the timing hasn't been right for us to throw ourselves into the commitment it takes to raise several thousand dollars. For some reason though, we finally felt the call to officially join the fight against blood cancers in October, and Lauren signed up to raise money in anticipation of participating in a spring triathlon.

Lauren signed up and agreed to raise $3000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Then we thought, 'how are we going to do that?'. We knew we didn't have the bandwidth to do this a little bit at a time for the next six months. We needed a big bang approach. We decided to host a party and silent auction for New Year's Eve. In mid-November, we booked a restaurant and began the process of inviting friends.

Around this same time, my dad was going through some tests, as he'd been not quite feeling like himself since returning from our Disney trip a few weeks earlier. We were somewhat concerned about the nature of those tests, but since he has always been an extremely healthy guy, we believed him when he said not to worry. It was nothing.

Except that it wasn't nothing. On the day before Thanksgiving we learned that my active, non-smoking, barely drinking, eating-right dad had been diagnosed with a form of non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Stunned doesn't really begin to cover our reaction. Just like that, we learned first-hand about how awful and non-discriminatory these diseases are. That weekend we went through the shock, and then started processing, and by Sunday had gotten our collective minds to a point where we were ready to help him fight. And that Monday he got a pretty promising prognosis (although one that will require a daunting journey over the next six months). But we knew that with the right treatment, the right attitude and a whole lot of support, he could put it into remission.

I thought of the New Year's Eve event we were planning. What cruel irony.

But then I thought a little more. I thought about all of the amazing people at TNT and LLS who have been raising money and awareness for research into these types of illnesses for years. And I thought maybe things happen for a reason. Maybe Lauren and I had decided to be active fund raisers this year because we would need it to help us cope. I realized we owed a debt of gratitude to those who came before us. To those that had researched for so long. To those that created the medicines that would save my dad's life. And we owed someone else who doesn't even have cancer yet, but will find out five years from now that they do. And that person will be happy to learn that someone cared enough to wage this battle and help to fund five more years of research.

It became very clear to me on the morning of December 1 that our New Year's Eve party had to be a success. We had to hit our goal, had to pour ourselves into it, and quite frankly, had to lean on our friends for help. At that point, I think we'd only sold a handful of tickets... lots of interest, but no sales. I sent an impassioned note to our friends, asking shamelessly for their support. And, in no uncertain terms, the support came. It came in a way that moves both of us to tears when we think about it. It is humbling. And it reinforces everything that we both know to be true about how good people can be. Our friends created a wave of support and good karma that literally carried my family through the most difficult month we have ever endured, and for that, I am eternally grateful. Once in awhile, we think about moving from Vermont. Not because we don't like it, but because we think it might be fun to experience something different. Maybe Colorado or Wyoming. Some bigger hills and bigger snowfalls. We're still young, the kids are young and there is a big world out there for us to experience. But proximity to our family and to the greatest collection of friends two people could ever hope to have keeps us rooted. I'm not sure we could ever leave.

In hindsight, hosting a fund raising event the week after Christmas may not have been the best idea. It is a difficult time to ask for money. And yet, literally everyone we know stepped up. Initially, I thought we could sell 80 tickets... maybe 100 if we got some help. We sold over 130. People who could not attend the event still bought tickets and made donations. We asked for silent auction donations. Not a single friend declined. Instead, they asked how much we could use. We received an auction item from a friend in Connecticut who has met my dad only once. We received handmade jewelry and gift certificates for services. Someone asked their parents to make a donation to our efforts in lieu of buying them any Christmas presents. Our friend's daughter sold sixteen tickets by herself. You just can't make this stuff up. Then, we asked the same people who had purchased tickets and donated auction items to step up and bid on those items. And they did. And when the dust settled on January 1, we had eclipsed our goal by over $1000.

When we started this, it was a chance to work together to support a great cause. In the middle, it became personal. And in the end, my word had shifted from irony to serendipity. Somehow we knew in advance we had to do this, and the success we enjoyed was overwhelming. It has helped us, and it has helped my parents, who have always encouraged our family to give back whenever you can. It absolutely paid us back far more than the time we invested. I don't think I can allow this to be a one-shot deal. Plans are already underway for a different type of event next year. Bigger and better. Stay tuned.

A friend of mine recently told me that a major life event is like a magnifying glass that exposes ones true self. Lauren and I have stared through that glass a lot over the past six weeks, and I am thrilled to say that our friends are exactly who we thought they were. Maybe more, if that were possible. Our deepest thanks to all of you.