Ain't No Mountain High Enough

I met an amazing teenager (in this case not an oxymoron) the other day.  Someone that I know is going far in this world. Somebody who has already impacted thousands of people in our community and across the country.  A girl I want to be like when I grow up.

Her name is Liindsay Jones, and she is an honor student, musician, singer, dancer, recipient of the Prudential Spirit Award, and honorary youth chairperson for the American Cancer Society. 

Oh yeah, Lindsay, at age 15, also is a 10-year cancer survivor of a very rare form of cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma.  But, Lindsay doesn’t let the cancer define her, she defines the cancer to any group or person that will pay attention.

To meet Lindsay is to be inspired.  She is surrounded by positive energy and she engulfs you in that same spirit. Her gentle responses of “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir” serve to show that despite the challenges she has faced, her mother and father never let the cancer usurp their positive parenting and they never let Lindsay forget that she was a child and daughter first and a cancer survivor second.

When Lindsay speaks, the crowd listens enthralled. And when she sings she brings a crowd to tears. While her voice is not booming, its power cannot be denied. Her message comes through clearly to all who listen: there are no excuses not to achieve your dreams. NONE.

At one month shy of her fourth birthday, Lindsay was diagnosed with a cancer that up until that time had only been seen in teenage boys.  She couldn’t spell it and could barely say it. But, she soon learned what it meant.  She stayed in Children’s Hospital almost the entire fourth year of her life fighting for her life. 

Her days at Children’s consisted of radiation for breakfast, chemo for lunch and love for dinner and beyond. This young child only asked for one thing during that time…to be allowed to attend church. But, it took almost a year for that wish to be granted and now she does so regularly and eagerly.

Lindsay and her parents were given very little hope by her doctors that she would survive. However, they didn’t succumb to that belief and they prove those same docs wrong every day.  Not only did she survive, but she kicked her cancer to the curb and now challenges others to do the same.

Today, Lindsay is a vibrant teenager who attends Madison County High School. She is involved in the band, 4-HClub, takes all advanced classes, sings, dances and…exhausts me! She is also Honorary Youth Chair for the American Cancer Society’s 2012 Relay for Life that will be held in John Hunt Park in May. 

And that’s how I met Lindsay the first time.  She came into the room leading her mother and I couldn’t help but watch her make her way to me with such poise and confidence for such a young person. She stuck her small hand out firmly and said “Hi, I’m Lindsay. It is so nice to meet you.”  She went on to tell me her goal was to be a doctor and to help others facing cancer.

During our second volunteer meeting she wowed the crowd with her story and her song:

“There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be a uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb…”

With nary a dry eye in the house, I had to follow her on the stage that night and me, who is rarely at a loss for words, could only say to that room full of stunned volunteers “Wow…Wow.”

Afterwards, Lindsay thanked me. With her small, soft hand gently holding on to mine, she thanked me for allowing her to help make a difference.

Lindsay did not survive her ordeal entirely unscathed. She lost her eyesight during her battle with cancer. But, Lindsay sees more clearly than any adult I have ever met. During this month of November, I give thanks for Lindsay and the vision she has given me.

Harvard, Yale or Hairdressing School?

When you don't know quite what to do, do what rich people do. I have yet to meet any adults who are wealthy and have three kids who say: 'Harvard, Yale or hairdressing school?' – Geoffrey Canada, President/CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone.

Education has long been a passion of mine. Maybe it’s in my genetic make-up. Jews have been murdered, persecuted, raped and enslaved for more than 2,000 years. (My great-grandmother witnessed her mother’s head being loped off during a Pogrom in Russia and quickly high-tailed it to the nearest ship heading to the United States to make a better life for herself. She was 12.) Yet, somehow we always managed to survive and prevail in any culture we lived. 

Usually within one generation of arriving to any country, Jewish immigrants developed thriving and successful communities.  They became educators, bankers, business owners and town leaders before they were chased out and forced to start over again.  I attribute their success to the long held value placed on education and the support of the village to help raise the children. 

My family is a perfect example of that philosophy. My grandfather emigrated from Austria as a young child of four. As an adult, he bought his own textile store and saw his children grow up to be educators and business owners. In my own household, while money was scarce, there was never a doubt that my brothers and I were going to college and that is the same message I raised my children believing. 

Before graduating from high school, I attended 13 schools in three different states. I went to some of the poorest and wealthiest schools in the communities I lived. And I can say unequivocally that schools with a higher percentage of poor students did not have the same advantages as the others.

Last month, I had the privilege of attending a luncheon hosted by the Village of Promise that featured Geoffrey Canada, a world renown, education reformer. His message was simple: while you can’t save everyone, you can save someone and we all have an obligation to make the attempt.

Canada’s story is amazing.  In the 1990’s, he started trying to end generational poverty in Harlem by carving out 17 square blocks and providing extensive support services to the children and families that lived there starting pre-birth. 

During the next 20 years, that number grew to 100 blocks and 17,000 children. Today, 87 percent of his eighth grade students are at grade level in math, higher than any other public school in New York. He didn’t let naysayers stop him. He didn’t let his lack of money stop him. He let his vision and his heart guide him. And that is what we have to do in our own community today.

Canada says that what drove him was his belief that there was no “Superman” that was going to come and save him or his neighborhood. That it was up to him and the Harlem community to save themselves.

The Village of Promise is taking that same message to Huntsville residents. They brought Canada to town to encourage our community to stop blaming each other and begin tackling our own generational poverty. 

It is a fact that it is difficult to learn on an empty stomach with a body that aches. It’s harder yet, when you don’t have the basic tools or a positive role model to show you how to succeed.

"If you have a school where kids are behind and they're in school the same number of days that other kids are in school ... why would we expect these kids to ever catch up? They have never caught up anywhere in America. We've got to rethink schools, but no one wants to do that. You know what we do instead of rethink schools? We fire superintendents," Canada told the Huntsville crowd from which he heard a chorus of “amens”.

Huntsville has an opportunity to save its children and its educational system. But, first we must realize that it is our responsibility to do so. It is much cheaper to educate and train our future workforce than it is to support a growing prison population. And that, too, is a fact.

A Perfect 6 Beats 8 Most Nights

Running more than 190 miles in the mountains of northern Georgia over two days with 11 other women (plus two more female navigators and two male drivers) leaves a lot of time for thinking (and questioning your sanity). While I owned only 23 of those miles myself, I reached a lot of conclusions during a beautiful, Fall weekend, a midnight run with coyotes and 36 hours in a van with my new best friends.

First, I am not alone. My experiences, while uniquely mine, are not all that different from the women running beside me. Chances are we are both suffering from mother-induced attention deficit disorder (MADD). This malady tends to strike mothers around the time their babies start walking and they are forced to begin multi-tasking like nobody’s business. It is no longer just enough to cook dinner. This simple task now requires stirring boiling pots with one hand while keeping young toddlers away from the hot stove with the right foot and at the same time paying rapt attention as the spouse recounts a terrifying tale of Parkway driving (because you care, you really do) with one ear.  

It manifests itself as an inability to stay focused on almost any task. For example, I was asked to find a group of our runners in the hotel where we were meeting for our final Southern Odyssey relay team meeting (the above mentioned running extravaganza). While looking for them, I spotted a coffee station with hot chocolate and began making myself a cup. With hot chocolate in hand, I went up to my room to get a pair of socks I needed and was returning to my starting point, when I ran into the group I was supposed to be looking for but had completely forgotten to find…MADD. 

Secondly, apparently I am not the only woman who is not crazy about camping. Our 12 woman running team (aptly named the Southern Bells—yes, B-E-L-L-S), consisted of one woman who had never bared her bottom in the great outdoors—much to the surprise of the other 11 women on the team. This was a lesson on being careful of what you say out loud. While on our mountain adventure, one of our minor exchange points did not have indoor plumbing and (you guessed it) this would be the one stop where our “I don’t do the woods” runner had to become one with nature. I have never seen such a look of accomplishment on anyone’s face as hers when she appeared back from her little “hike”. Although, even in her 30s, she was a little worried about what her mother would think (she was the “Southern” part of our Bells).

But, I could relate. My idea of camping out, as I often tell my family and friends, is a Holiday Inn by the woods. That is as primitive as I want to get and occasionally even that is a little too basic for me. “What do you mean you don’t have hair dryers in the room?!” I asked the desk clerk during a recent hotel stay. I like my cookies at check-in and my bed turned down at night. As a mother of three children and one dog, it’s the only time I get pampered!

During the 36 hours spent alongside these 11 women, I also learned that I am not the only one who doesn’t sleep at night. In fact, I don’t know many women who do. Ironically, a recent study showed that women who get more than six hours of sleep a night die earlier than those who get a perfect six. It turns out it doesn’t pay to be an eight or better when it comes to sleep. Well, that makes me and all my fellow moms catnap better at night! 

It seems that once women start waking up every two hours for midnight feedings, our bodies don’t readjust to sleeping soundly through the night. And now, once the mind sees a sliver of wakefulness, it goes into full awake mode. One of my fellow Bells keeps a notebook by her bedside to write down the great ideas she conjures up during her nocturnal churning. I have written many of my columns during the wee hours of the morning as I lay sleepless in Huntsville. And my restless nights are the reason I became a morning runner. I was up so I might as well run. Why not?!

I also learned that I am not the only woman who can’t (or won’t) read a map. My husband, like most men, is a map guy. He gives me directions by drawing a very detailed picture of where I need to be. I, on the other hand, give my directions in complete sentences as in “turn right at the four way stop by the store with the pretty pink dress in the window.” Most women get this. I laughed out loud when our female navigator turned to our male driver and asked him to change the Garmin out of map mode because she couldn’t follow where to go.  He did the male equivalent of rolling his eyes and did as he was asked. We never got lost after this strategic move.

We 12 Bells had many things in common and just as many differences. There were probably 12 different religions represented and just as many political views. Our ages ran the gamut from early 20’s to late 50’s. The older women (of which I was one), offered the young(er) runners wisdom gained from many tough life runs. Things like: real women do get epidurals during childbirth and “crying like a girl” is something to be proud of not a shameful thing to hide.

We each value our families whether they consist of our parents, husband, animals and children or just animals. We measure the worth of our friends by the deeds they do rather than the amount of money in their bank account. 

While completing our weekend journey, we cheered loudly for each completed run with as many different types of bells as we had personalities (hence our name) and celebrated the accomplishments of all runners not just our own team members. We understood that it wasn’t about how fast or far we ran but rather that we finished (no matter how many other runners passed us). 

And lastly, I saw that women don’t leave other women behind or alone.  When the going got tough, we ran together because we are women and that’s just the way we roll.

An Ending by any other Name…

Sometimes and end is really a beginning and sometimes, well, it really is an end.  This year, my husband will be facing an end to something that has been a part of his life for 42 years, since the age of seven when he swung his first bat. This year, our constant hocking of Boston butts, coupon books, field signs and program ads for our sons’ athletic teams will be no more. And during the next 12 months, our ball will do its final metamorphism and turn itself into a college student—destination still TBD. 

We became sports parents 17 years ago when my oldest began his career as an indoor soccer player. I’ll never forget showing up with my snazzily, uniformed son in tow to his first game at 9:00 am just as the schedule said to find the game already in progress (my husband, never a soccer enthusiast, was in a deer stand and left this first season for me to handle). What the coach (and my husband) forgot to tell this first time, sports mom was that players needed to be there 30 minutes before game time. Who knew?! I never made that mistake again. From that first soccer season, we slide right into basketball and then into t-ball and then football and then…to this year, our last season for it all.

It was not always easy juggling two children in never ending sport events and then adding the dancer several years later. We relied on our village and then some. And I won’t say that we have not at times forgotten one of the kids at the ball field. However, I can say they were never left for long (someone always found them and brought them home). 

I met some of my dearest friends while sweating bullets at a ball field or huddling around the only source of heat in the football stands. We planned everything together from birthday parties to funerals on those fields and we made enough memories to last a few lifetimes. We laughed, cried and railed against the mean girls who grew up to meaner women, all while watching the kids throw balls—in every size and shape.

Consequently, as my youngest son swaggers up to the plate during this last year of summer ball, I cannot help but remember the first time he eagerly ran onto the field as a precocious four year-old, confident in his ability to keep up with the much older kids on the team. He held his own that first year with those boys and their parents, quietly focused on the game and tuning out all of the rowdy parental shouting -- most of which came from the coaches’ bench. From that day to this, he has maintained that focus and during every plate appearance and every football down, he has continued to give his best attempt sometimes with good results and other times, not.

We still laugh about the time he was on the pitcher’s mound during one of his first t-ball games and the coach could be heard yelling “Logan! LO-gan! LOGAN! LOGAN DID YOU HEAR ME?!” To which my son quietly replied with all the maturity his four-year old voice could muster, “I heard you the first time.”  The coach never yelled at him again. 

I watched him learn to channel his anger into positive action. Disappointment in one plate appearance often results in a key hit during the next one. I have seen him learn to accept the fact that he has bad games and to blame no one but himself. Athletics have taught him how to lead his team through his actions and how to work with others to succeed. It has also taught him that winning is a team sport as is losing.

Our sporting adventures also educated my husband about some things such as, you cannot swing the bat for them and you cannot teach heart. He learned this lesson painfully.  When my son was seven, my husband was drafted to coach his team. My husband was not one of those crazy coaches who yelled obscenities at the fledgling ballplayers, but then neither was he one with much patience for slackers and, let’s face it, most seven-year olds are slackers (or dirt diggers as we often called them)! 

My husband’s coaching philosophy was simple: repetition, repetition, repetition (and there was nothing that bored the kids more than doing the same thing over and over and over again). Of course, there was no one he was harder on than his own son and typically, there was no one who ignored his direction more than said son. There were many tense trips home after ballgames that season with me trying to fill the silence with jokes that fell flat. Needless to say, that was his first and last year to coach any of our sons’ teams. And everyone was much happier for it. Of course, today that season is one we remember with much fondness (like childbirth, you quickly forget the pain).

For years, I have written about the trials and tribulations of being a working mom with active children. This is the last year I will be able to write those articles and experience those adventures. It is ending and there is no denying that fact. I am not really sure how I feel about that. I am not really sure what my (our) life will be like without an athletic event to work our schedules around. However, what I am sure about is my husband and I will find something to do with all of our new spare time and my hope is we will find things to do together -- that this will be our new beginning and not just an ending to a very long season.

Aging Gratefully

“I’m turning 39 tomorrow.  Is there anything worse?” read the Facebook post from Connie I-Can’t-Remember-How-I-know-Her.  I added Connie as one of my friends during the first few frenzied days of being on Facebook.  You know that time when you are just so excited that anyone wants to be your friend that you are accepting everyone!  Since then, I have become much more judicious in my friend acceptance.  Once, even going so far as to explain to one request I was getting ready to ignore why I was not accepting her onto my friend list (yes, she had done something THAT bad).  

There are times now when I go through my friend list and “clean out my friend closet” which is simply the act of purging “friends” whose face I can’t remember and whose status comments make absolutely no sense to me.  But, through all of this, somehow Connie How-Do-I-Know-You, made it through my friend filters and so I reread her post “I’m turning 39 tomorrow.  Is there anything worse?” and I contemplated my response.

There IS something traumatic about approaching a new decade of life.  It is a time for reflection and introspection.  I remember turning 10 and thinking that now that I was in the double digits I was truly a big girl and I could no longer cry when I scraped a knee or otherwise hurt myself.  Little did I know that those tween/teen years would bring raging hormones and menstrual cramps that would bring me to my knees.  Nor did I anticipate the inverse relationship of bigger boobs and a shorter attention span (well on anything unrelated to boys).  Those years brought acne and braces, anorexia and PMS. My lifelong struggle with insomnia also began brought on at this age by insecurities about my new body and my new self.  

And then I entered my twenties—the “Me” decade.  Ah, the joy of being 21 (the last birthday we truly look forward to). Suddenly, I was on my own.  During this decade, my body went from pubescent to womanly.  My health issues changed from regulating my menstrual cycle to understanding the intricacies of my body.  I learned that dieting didn’t work for me but changing my lifestyle did.  I could no longer eat pizza at 2:00 a.m. and maintain a healthy weight.  In fact, I could no longer eat pizza at anytime.  I introduced myself to jazzercise and aerobic, step classes and kick boxing.  I tried body building and weight training and finally learned to amuse myself on a stationary bike.  After two children and two miscarriages, I learned how to balance being a mom, an employee and a loving (most of the time) wife.  I also learned that most of my friends and co-workers were on a drug called Prozac. Most frustrating of all, I still had PMS and my sleepless nights were now brought on by crying babies and their night terrors.

While I didn’t have a hard time turning 30, 30 and a half was a wretch.  I suddenly realized that I was getting older and that there was no turning back.  I learned that my body wasn’t my own and that the laws of gravity apply to all things. And, oh yeah, the rhythm method of birth control DOESN’T WORK! After three children, my focus became maintaining a healthy lifestyle for me AND my family.  No more soft drinks in our house and no more fried foods for anyone.  Gone was the red meat and in its place were chicken, fish and beans.  From whole milk to skim and low-fat galore, our kitchen was filled with healthy eating choices.  However, I have since been told that had I looked under beds (including my own), I could have found any number of candy wrappers and soda cans.  And suddenly, this decade brought concerns about cancer – breast, skin, colon and brain. And still PMS continued as did my insomnia.  But, somehow, I made it through relatively unscathed (still no Prozac).

Forty snuck up on me.  One day I was 39 and minding my own business and the next…BAM! A surprise birthday welcomed the new decade.  Many a comment has been made about how “40 is the new 30”.  My husband even compared me to a fine wine (he said I was just getting better with age).  I told him I felt like a block of cheese-- sharp and moldy. Regardless, this new age was upon me and so were new health issues.  It takes a little longer to get out of bed –when my feet hit the floor, my knees pop and my back sometimes grumbles.  I also realized that the creaking I hear at night is not the bed but rather my bones.  My metabolism seemed to know the moment the clock rang in 40 and immediately slowed down.  No longer do my three-mile runs keep the weight off.  I now have to double my mileage to maintain the same weight which allows me to make good use of my sleeplessness and hit the road at 4:00 a.m. for a brisk morning run.  

My “always been so low” blood pressure snuck up to normal and beyond and suddenly my heart palpitates at the most inconvenient times.  In fact, Prozac is looking more like an option as are Lexapro and Wellbutrin.   

My friends and I are beginning to face entry into our “pre-menopausal” period.  This, I am told, is when you just begin to dread the hot flashes, the loss of your best “friend” and the hair on your legs which is now growing on your chin! PMS turns even more violent and the few hours of uninterrupted sleep entirely disappear as does any pretense of good temper.  Good times, I’ve been told, good times. 

I have not yet faced 50 and beyond.  But, what I know is that I will age gracefully because there is no other option.  I will not be a Joan Rivers whose face is so tight when she smiles her ears move.  I won’t use Botox which will relieve my face of most of its expression (yes, even my most effective glare that can stop a child or a wayward co-worker from doing evil from 20 paces).  I will embrace my fine lines (while I continue to invest in and use a very good moisturizer) with the understanding that I earned each of those lines, darn it! I know that I can’t compete with the body of a 19 year-old.  But, neither can she compare in knowledge or confidence to me. I tell my husband to go ahead and look, but we both know that there are just some things he can’t afford.

So to Connie You’re-Going-To-Be-Deleted-From-My-Friend-List, I wrote this response. “There is something worse than turning 39—and that is not making it past 38.”