I wanted to tell somebody, but there was nobody to tell. Though I was elbow-to-elbow with some 40,000 people, I was alone. There was no one to tell my story, no one who a cared to hear it. In front of me sat 13.1 miles of running, a race for which I’d been planning, training, and worrying for six months. That night in Las Vegas, in the middle of a chaotic near-riotous crowd, I had never run more than 12 miles without stopping. Now I was fighting against a tide of spectators, lost runners, and confused organizers in an attempt to get into my starting corral. It wasn’t what I’d planned. Then again, nothing had been going to plan in the past week. Everything had been chaos, and nothing had ended well.

***

My dad died eight days earlier of a sudden and unexpected heart attack, the kind they called The Widow-Maker, the kind for which there is nothing the best doctors can do. One minute everything is fine, and the next moment everyone has to face the reality that nothing will ever again be the same. I was in China when it happened, flew to my childhood hometown over the next 24 hours, and decided along the way that the half marathon that meant so much to me the day before meant absolutely nothing now. At that moment, I was fairly sure that nothing had meaning. I quit the race a week before it started.

I would never have gone to Las Vegas for the race had my wife, mother, and brother not told me to go. My wife said I needed to. My mom said my dad would’ve wanted me to. My brother told me he’d already found me a plane ticket. He took me to a sports store to pick up supplies. Twenty-four hours later, in the middle of the worst emotional turmoil of my life, I set out to put my body through something it had never endured.

Now I feared I wouldn’t even get to run. The race organizer’s infrastructure had fallen apart. The Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon Series is an organization with a great reputation, but this night, it fell apart under the weight of its own success. Getting to the starting line felt like getting to a water trough in the middle of a natural disaster—every man for himself as 60-year-old women throw elbows, 20-something young women weep, and everyone looks on the edge of panic.

I made it just as the gun sounded and looked around to see no one I knew. Everyone looked ahead at the 13.1 miles up and down the Las Vegas Strip, and no one wanted to hear what I felt so desperate to say to someone.

To get to that starting line, I’d leaned on some of my best friends, I’d absorbed everything my volunteer coach had taught me, and I’d taken more personal training time away from family than I had for anything in years.

Now I was alone. And running.

***

What does a novice runner say about the experience of running his first half marathon? There is no wisdom, no great story of overcoming every runner for a first place finish. It’s a personal journey with a sure beginning and unsure end. Any part of the story I told would mean nothing to longtime runners, and bore people who don’t put themselves through the training.

And yet, the story played out as I ran and wept for the first three miles. I stayed at the Excalibur and MGM with my dad. He had taught me to play poker. The first time he bought me a beer, I was 20 years old and standing on the lip of the Grand Canyon during a Vegas trip. One time, during one of his frequent moments of frugality, he convinced our entire family to walk from the Excalibur to Circus Circus on a June afternoon. It was a story of woe we told for the next 18 years, including on the day of Dad’s funeral.

Now I was running, past the dancing Bellagio fountains, past Paris where Dad had once made a special trip to pick up a gift for my mom, past Bally’s where I stayed on my first non-Dad Vegas trip, past the Venetian that didn’t even exist when Dad first took me to Vegas, and, yes, on past Circus Circus where one of several anti-frugality family mutinies once took place.

As I left the strip and headed toward the darkness of downtown, a streetlamp above my head blinked out. And, of course, I thought of my dad.

***

I felt fine for the first ten miles, which was unexpected. After a week in China and a week in Missouri, my body had already started to de-train. So, I expected some sort of early, horrible collapse—my IT band seizing up, dehydration stroke, or, allowing myself a moment of sad morbidity, a heart attack.

At the ten-mile mark, after making it all the way down the Strip, all the way down the road to downtown Las Vegas, around the scary streets, and back up to the Strip, my mind gave me the first “no-go” in the ongoing mind/body “go, no-go” conversation. All around me were warriors—tatted-up punk chicks, a man with one leg, a man nearing 80 years old—all facing forward and…most importantly…still running.

I thought about having to admit to my family and friends that, after everything, I’d given up. There is something very easy about acquiescing. When the hurt finds new claws, the temptation to speed up the end is stronger than I’d ever thought it would be. I imagined having to say I’d succumbed to the pain, sat down on a curb, and waited for death or a police officer to take me away. I imagined it just long enough for my mind to stop thinking about how bad I hurt. I looked up and realized I was still running and had never stopped.

I threw my brother’s empty hand-bottle on the curb, found a hydration station for a drink, and energy pack for some calories. With all of them making their way to the right place in my body, I started to feel better. It happened just about the time I saw a police officer blocking traffic. It was the man I imagined dragging me into an ambulance or paddy wagon. He looked up—likely as confused as he had been all night—as I pointed a finger at him and said, “Thank you.”

With a couple miles left to go in the race, I flash my dad's initials (yes, a pre-race Sharpie project) to a curbside photographer

With a mile left in the race, I ripped my headphones out of my ear, and per the advice of a friend who treats 13.1 miles like a warm-up, threw a few high-fives to the spectators on the rail. The fives came back in kind, and for a great moment in front of the Excalibur, I let myself smile. I let myself realize that I was reaching a moment that wasn’t just validation for six months of training, that wasn’t just a tick on some must-do list, that wasn’t just among the best things I’ve ever done with my friends.

It was also a celebration of a man who had made me, who had taught me the value of not giving up, who had first taken me to Vegas, who had told me to forget everything I thought everyone wanted me to be and to instead be myself. With every step of the last mile, I was celebrating my dad’s life in a way a funeral never could.

I tried to hold it, but with half a mile to go, my brain sent down a gigantic “no-go” that made me think I was going to fall over. I had cried for the first few miles of the race, but that had been expected. Now, I felt like I didn’t even have the energy to cry. I had expected the finish line to appear as soon as I passed the Excalibur, and it wasn’t there. My body was listening to the “no-go,” and I felt myself slowing down. For a moment, I thought I would have no choice but to stop.

And then I locked eyes with a tall Iowan on the rail. It was a friend, and around him were a dozen other dear friends who had braved the cold, the wind, and the mist to see my friends and me finish. I pointed at them, and they screamed. They chanted my nickname as I passed. I shot my fists in the air. I never figured out where in the field of 40,000 I finished, but when those folks chanted my name, I might as well have been in first place.

I left them behind me and realized, despite the crowd, I was alone. It was just the finish line and me.

***

I have no question that I did everything my body could. The moment I crossed the finish line and stopped running, I could barely stand. In the crush of people forcing their way out of the finishers’ corral, I stumbled and nearly fell into my fellow runners. I found my way to the edge of the corral and put my head between my knees. I tried to call my wife, but the cell towers were just as overwhelmed as the race course.

When I felt sure I wasn’t going to pass out, I stood up and re-joined the crowd between two women. One was older than me—maybe 45—and the other was a young Asian woman. I turned to them both, because I had to tell somebody before it was really over.

“I know you don’t know me,” I said, “but I need to tell someone this. My dad was very proud that I was running this race. He died last weekend, and I did this for him.”

There, surrounded by thousands of people we didn’t know, the two women and I cried together for my dad, for me, and for everything the past 13.1 miles had meant.

I’d like to say that’s where the story ends, where I came to grips with losing my dad, where I achieved all I wanted to achieve. But, in truth, I’ve already mapped out at least four races I’m running this year. And, no matter how much you may see me smile and how much joy I force into my voice, I am so far from accepting my dad’s death that I wonder sometimes if it isn’t going to feel this bad forever.

But, if I’ve learned anything from running over the past year, it’s that I’m stronger than I thought I was. I’ve learned that when my fickle mind tells me to quit, I have to count on my body to keep moving on its own. Or, in other words, I have to count on my heart.

Whatever hurts may never go away completely, but if I just keep running, I can live with the pain, and sometimes it doesn’t hurt as bad. And, no matter what, I can make it to the finish. Because at the finish, there are friends, there are smiles, there is reason, and there is celebration. And that, as near as I can tell, is what life is all about.

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My son found a .30-06 rifle in my dad’s closet. It was unloaded, unclean, and unused for decades. Though mildly unnerving for all of us, my boy was in no danger. Mom always insisted the ammo stay far away from the gun. There were a lot of reasons for that, but they make the story too long. Nevertheless, it was PaPa’s gun, a long one, one that could kill from several hundred yards away.

I know there was a time my dad hunted, but I don’t remember it well. I come partly from country people. My mother’s side of the family hunted for whatever animals they could put in a deep freeze or on the dinner table. I’d say there are few people I know today who have eaten more venison than I ate before I was ten years old. I’ve eaten lots of other things, too, but those also make the story too long.

Hunters—those who are killing for food—don’t particularly worry me. Most things I eat have to be killed, and most of those animals aren’t put down so humanely as a good hunter would do it. The process of getting food from pasture to plate is rarely a pretty one, so who am I to speak ill of a man who takes the killing into his own hands? That is to say, I understand people who hunt for food just about as much as I don’t understand people who hunt purely for the sport of tracking and killing something. It’s a contradiction with which I’ve grown fairly comfortable. If anything, I’ve learned a lot in the past 12 months about judging not.

I don’t know what turned my dad from a hunter into the man he became. I don’t know why he kept the gun for so many years. I only know that over the last decade of his life, Dad’s days revolved around bucks, does, and fawns, but the only gun he picked up was my grandpa’s old Italian FA Gradoga .25 pistol, and that was only to lock it away where almost no one could get to it.

No, in Dad’s final years, he lived near a lake. It was less than five minutes from his house. The park around the lake closed at dusk, but Dad would sneak in if the ranger tried to lock up before dad got a chance to look for deer. Some nights, the animals would come out by the dozens and watch my dad and mom creep along the road in my dad’s truck. Dad and Mom would count them and report to us on how many they had seen. People who ate supper with my parents were routinely pulled along for a dinnertime deer run. Some people spend their retirement sinking into an easy chair with a tumbler of bourbon. Some people spend it getting leather-skinned in Florida. Dad spent his precious few years of retirement looking for deer he’d never even consider shooting with that old thirty-aught-six.

A snap of a couple of deer taken with my Dad a few years ago

***

In the jetwash of a personal tragedy, there is a compulsion to assign meaning to every niggling little detail of a life lost. More so, there is a somewhat guilty comfort in finding meaning in things that would leave other people shaking their heads and saying, “Bless his heart.” It’s like the feeling I get when I buy a new car. Suddenly it seems like everyone on the road is driving the same vehicle I just purchased. Those other cars were always there, but now I notice.

I am a searcher. I fight against my existentialist leanings and let myself get torn to shreds by the greater search for meaning and purpose. In fact, it’s probably no secret that most of what I write is my vain attempt make some sense of senselessness.

It’s happened a lot over the last six weeks that I shook my head at myself, wondering how I can tell people things that have happened without seemingly like a lost, loony soul. Like, after a couple of weeks, I decided to start my old man’s truck. The odometer read 99,998, and I just sat there looking at it thinking about how it had to mean something.

While often I find the search for meaning to be missing some vital cog, I try not to begrudge myself or others for it. It’s something like hunting an animal. The search for meaning should end in the nourishment of the body, not a trophy.

This search, as you’re aware or can imagine, becomes much like breathing when you lose someone you love. Everyone feels the loss in their own way, and everyone experiences those loony moments alone.

But then sometimes, you’re not alone.

Apart from the still poorly-explained fascination with deer, Dad also had a fairly strong feeling about exterior outdoor illumination. To say he had some Clark Griswold in him really gives Griswold more credit than he deserved. My childhood holidays should’ve been spent behind a pair of prescription-strength sunglasses. In Dad’s later years, he grew more conservative in his holiday set-ups, but his love for the suburban sport of holiday lighting never faded. In recent years, he reveled in taking my kids to see a display in my hometown. It spanned three homes, had several hundred thousand lights, and danced to Trans-Siberian Orchestra music that played right over the FM radio. Even naysayers had to admire the set-up.

This year was our first Christmas as a family without Dad there to drive the kids around looking at lights. I had to be encouraged to take a spot behind the wheel of PaPa’s truck and drive us to that house where traffic backed up around the corner. I sat there as the line of cars inched along. My younger son screamed with excitement. I sat with tears in my eyes.

When it was finally our turn to sit for a moment in front of the display, I turned off the headlights. We watched, wept, and smiled at the ridiculousness of it all. The car in front of ours decided to move on, so I let off the brakes and pulled up to fill in the gap. I sat right behind a pick-up truck, the brake lights of which lit up its license plate.

It read “Pa-Paw.”

That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.

***

When I started to get worried that something might be wrong with my dad, I texted my wife from China and asked her to check on my folks. I didn’t know until much later that she was in a shop called Kudzu at the time. I didn’t know she was about to pick up a collection of decorative ornaments and plates with painted deer on them. She had picked them out and was getting ready to buy them for my dad. He died at almost the exact same time.

Over the next five weeks, we told that story a lot as my wife parceled out the ornaments and plates to a few of our family members. Rather, she told the story. I could never make it come out of my throat.

One recent Saturday night, my dad’s beloved extended family held a Christmas party. He loved the annual event as much as he loved the dozens of people who would show up for it. On the way there, my wife, children, mother and I went on a deer run. On the hill sat an entire family of them. As we went home–five of us in my Dad’s truck–my wife spotted five sets of deer eyes on the ridge. We stopped and let the moment be.

And so, the holidays went, each of us finding ways to cope, each of us having minor breakdowns, or what we came to just call, “rough patches” and “bad days.” We endured Christmas Eve—my Dad’s birthday—as much as we celebrated it. We made Christmas as happy as we could. The void was palpable, the old trope about a feeling an itch on the missing limb. Everything happened, and I was there, but it was like I was watching rather than feeling myself live.

By and by, my kids had to get back to South Carolina for school. I had to get ready for a long work trip. I had to leave my mom, my brother, and the rest of my family to struggle against the void. Though I put off leaving more than once, it never felt right to go. But it had to happen, and so it did.

When Dad drove the 800 miles to see my family, he had a rule about where he would take a break. “Stop in Cookeville,” he’d lecture. “That’s where you stop.”

I didn’t intend to stop in Cookeville. I intended to drive until either the car or I ran out of gas. But the kids were hungry, I was getting restless, and it was dinnertime. There were four of us in Dad’s truck, and none of us was comfortable. So, I relented, and just as I did, I looked into the highway median.

There, on the tree line, stood four deer.

I smiled as I had when I saw the “Pa-Paw” license plate. Because I told my mom I would call her when we hit Cookeville, I dialed her up and told her the story of seeing the deer.

“That’s funny,” she said. And then she told me why.

I’d stayed with my mom almost every night for the month after my dad died. My wife and kids were there for about half of that time. When we left last Thursday morning, it was an unspoken transfer of the emotional deed to the home.

Mom blew us a kiss, walked back through her kitchen, and stood at the windows overlooking her back yard. She had stood there for just a couple of minutes, finally alone in the house, when her eyes settled on the figure in the light of dawn.

It was a single deer alone on a December morning.

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My dad was born in Texas on Christmas Eve 1946.

He was a child with no privilege, a post-war baby, the son of a decorated Navy man, the son of a boxer who would fight for the sake of fighting, the son of a gambler who would gamble for the sake of gambling. Grandpa–a minister, sign-painter, and factory worker–had the name “Ruby” tattooed on his arm.

Ruby Pike was a dustbowl child with red hair and a cloudy, blind eye. She read every word of every book she handled, and then she read again to mark out the words she found offensive. Ruby had many sons, but my father was the only one she called “June.” June meant “junior,” though Dad was never officially such. He was simply one of a litter of children who lacked indoor plumbing, who shared bathwater with his brothers and sisters, and who, in the face of every obstacle poverty would present, overcame.

Dad died almost exactly one month short of his 65th birthday. Only his parents, a brother who died in childhood, and a brother who died recently preceded him in death.

I am my father’s first son, one of two children who are completely different and blessedly the same. I am the one who trades in words, yet I can’t find the ones to tell you how important my dad was. To tell you his story might take me the rest of my life. I want so badly for everyone to know him, but every time I sit down to write, every word feels in inadequate. As I struggle to find a way to find the tie that binds everything together, I’m left on Christmas Eve with this lesson my father taught. He never said it aloud. He never wrote it down. He simply lived it.

Work as hard as you can to achieve all you can.

Give all you can to help others achieve all they can.

Love all you can to help others learn to love as much as they can.

On this Christmas Eve, on what would’v been my dad’s 65th birthday, I look to that lesson as the story of how we–a people, a country, a family–should live.

Happy Birthday, Dad. I wish you were here to tell me I’m telling it right.

Dad and his family, Christmas 2010

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For those who knew my dad or our family, this will be published in our local paper Tuesday morning. I’m posting it here for family and friends around the country who may not be here to see it. Many thanks to everyone who has already reached out. Though time hasn’t allowed us to respond, your support means more to our family than we can express. –Brad

***

John H. Willis

John Willis, Grayton Beach, 2010

A lover of games and an avid golfer, Willis spent some of his happiest moments in friendly competition with the people he loved. Though he earned a reputation for thriftiness, he leaves behind a legacy of generosity that knew no bounds. A man of quick wit, hearty laughter, and genuine empathy, Willis leaves behind countless family members and friends who admired his drive and spirit.

He is survived by his wife of 41 years, Jo Ann; son Brad and his wife Michelle; son Jeff and his wife Cindy; four adored grandsons; a mother-in-law he loved like his own mother, Ann; a treasured family of brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews; and a wide circle of friends he held dear.

The family will receive visitors Tuesday, November 29 from 5-7pm in the Chapel of the Klingner-Cope Family Funeral Home at Rivermonte, 4500 S. Lone Pine Rd., Springfield, MO, 65804 (417-887-1929). Graveside services will be held Wednesday November 30 at 11am at Rivermonte Memorial Gardens at the same address.

Donations in John Willis’ memory can be made to Boys and Girls Town of Missouri online at bgtm.org (Southwest Missouri/Springfield Jim D. Morris Campus), by mail at 1212 W. Lombard, Springfield, Missouri 65806, or by phone (417-865-1646).

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A few years ago, I looked down a sidewalk at my local zoo to see my father leaning over to smell the blossoms in front of him. He was alone and not affecting any sort of illustration of a peaceful man. He was living in that moment and that moment alone. He had literally stopped to smell the flowers. He was a man at peace. After a full lifetime of chasing dreams and making them real, he had slowed down to enjoy all that he had earned. He had cheated death in 2003 and lived through an experience most people would not. From then on, he laughed from his gut, expressed love with ease, and settled into a real life he deserved.

I am as far away from him as I’ve ever been tonight. It’s three in the morning in Macau. I’m getting ready to pack so I can go home and tell my dad one last time that I love him. I love him for being the man who worked so hard to make my life what it is. I love him even more for taking the last eight years to be the man who slowed down to smell the flowers.

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I could not have been more naked.

Six months ago, I stood behind an open car door. It was the only thing blocking my man-parts from an entire grass-field-turned-parking-lot full of people on a warm, spring afternoon. I was muddy, sweaty, and naked. In public.

“Woah!” said an unsuspecting passer-by, a friend but not one that should’ve seen me in the buff. “I did not need to see that.”

I covered myself and dressed in clean clothes. I probably should’ve been more embarrassed, but I wasn’t. The constant and frustrating fount of self-loathing had dried up and been replaced by something akin to peace. Very naked, blowin’ in the wind peace.

A few minutes later I was dressed, sipping on a beer, and laughing with my brother and two good friends. We’d just completed the Greenville Mud Run, approximately four miles of mud pits, tall obstacles, and trail running. We weren’t the fastest team, but we never planned to be. We set a goal. We beat it. We got naked and drank beer. It’s pretty much the story of man’s evolution from beginning to end.

Pre-naked after the Mud Run

Long about the second beer, Chuck and Blood started chatting about this half marathon they were planning to run. In Las Vegas. On my 38th birthday. At night. Down the Vegas Strip.

“No,” I said. Because at that moment, on that military base just a few minutes removed from flashing a parking lot full of innocents, I’d run as far as I had run in one stretch in my life. These guys were asking me to tack 9.1 miles onto the distance and somehow make my body ready to do it in seven months.

Indeed, I said, “No.”

Right before I said, “Maybe.”

* * *

In August of 2010, I couldn’t run a mile without stopping for a breath, but I had foolishly promised myself I would complete a 5k (3.1 miles) race before the end of the year. I undertook the popular “Couch to 5k” program, completed it, and ran the race on Halloween weekend. I’d only hoped to finish in less than 30 minutes. I crossed the finish line at 27:36. I figured that would probably be the last the road would see of my feet.

Not too many days passed before I’d been convinced to run another 5k. This one was on the morning of my 37th birthday. It was cold. My friends laughed at me as I high-stepped across the college campus lawn to warm up. I hit the finish line at 27:16.

There was my buddy Blood cooling off after taking second in his age group with a 22:17 time. My wife wasn’t far behind me. She won her age group. G-Rob, in the midst of a huge self-improvement program, came in eight minutes ahead of where he had finished five weeks earlier. We felt somehow accomplished in spite of the fact the 21-year-old winner of the race came in at 16:39. In any case, that night we ate like kings and celebrated until the wee hours.

Happy birthday 2010

The holidays came and went, I spent some time on the road, and I fell out of shape. I tried another race with my wife in mid-January but found myself struggling to the point that I was sure I was finished with running. It was yet another six-month-long pastime I’d engaged and let fall by the wayside. The problem was that I’d agreed to do the Mud Run with my brother and friends in late April. What’s more, I’d signed up for a trail run in early February.

Even two days before the 6k trail run, I was waffling on whether I would go. My wife and I didn’t have a babysitter. Snow was threatening. Our dog had just come out of surgery. The night before the race, it stormed for hours. The morning of the race, it was near-freezing. The hilly trails were covered in ankle-deep puddles. It was miserable.

Of all the things my parents instilled in me, the two I’ve carried as both trophies and burdens are the imperatives that I finish what I start, and I keep my promises.

My wife and I drove out to the trail and ran into a woman we’ve known for a decade. Fun Amy. Fun Amy who had beaten breast cancer and swam the Florida Keys. Fun Amy who was out there with everybody to run on that miserable morning. Fun Amy who would go on to fight cancer again in the coming months. An inspiration in every wry smile. Fun Amy.

Midway through the race during what was, for me, a tough uphill climb, I found a button in myself that I didn’t know existed. It was a button made of pure pride. I could press it to make the only voice in my head become one that screamed, “You will not give up.”

The water in the puddles was frigid. The mud was slippery. The hills and switchbacks were tough. I wasn’t the fastest runner that day by a long shot, but I don’t know if there was a person out there who felt more accomplished.

* * *

By the time the endorphins from the Mud Run had worn off, G-Rob had told Blood he was going to run the Vegas half marathon with him. Free from post-race euphoria, I continued to demur. Six months seemed like precious little time to turn my body into one that could run 13.1 miles and do it at a pace in which I would be proud. That understood, saying no meant that my buddies would be spending my birthday in Las Vegas while I sat home and thought of what might have been.

It was around that time that an old writer friend of mine offered to coach me as he had coached Blood for a 2010 half. He was planning to run the Vegas race, too. It would be have to be a remote coaching, but if I was in all the way, he would do it.

Dan is a runner, blogger, writer, journalist, and climber who lives in Colorado. He manages a busy family life, his work as a columnist, and his non-stop training all at the same time. Like my friend Colin, an ultra runner and all around good guy, Dan was a source of inspiration. I wanted to do what he and Colin could do and do it with the joy they seemed to share. Now Dan was offering to help me out.

The last weekend in May, with the encouragement of my friends and new coach, I started working to get in shape for the Las Vegas Rock and Roll Half Marathon. That race is now 27 days away.

* * *

If you had walked in my bathroom yesterday morning, you would’ve found a 37-year-old man slathering cocoa butter on his nipples and inner thighs. His eyes bloodshot, his hair a mess, his aging body a horrifying reflection in the mirror, this man was lubricated for war. On many Sunday mornings in the past two decades, the man would’ve been shaking off the cobwebs of an indiscrete night, one spent in a dark bar or smoky poker room. On this Sunday morning, I was emerging from a good night’s rest and going out to run ten miles before the morning got too late. I barely know myself anymore. That’s probably a good thing.

Over the past five months, I’ve had to face myself in the mirror a lot. Some days, it was great. I ran two more 5k races and cut two minutes off my personal best. On the morning September 11th, having never run more than seven miles, I went out and ran 9.11 while reflecting on the 10th anniversary. A couple of weeks ago, I collapsed in the middle of a trail during the seventh mile of a run when my knee seized up on me. After stretching it out in front of people running by me, I got up and ran another four miles back to my car. I’ve run fast. I’ve run slow. I’ve run far. I’ve done it alone, and I’ve done it with some of my best friends.

Some days I didn’t like who was looking back at me. It’s that part that forced me to sit down and write this. Some days I struggled through what felt like impossible runs. On a couple of occasions, I gave up. On other occasions, I didn’t give up, but didn’t do as well as I hoped, and I let that weigh on me for too long. Like training for a race, forcing my brain to avoid self-sabotage is a long process. Sometimes I win, sometimes I don’t. Every day I go for a run, I’m surprised at what I can do, and surprised at what I can’t. For me, life isn’t much different.

But I know this: in 27 days, I’m going to be standing with 40,000 other people about to set out on the same personal journey. Among those people will be five or six of the people I hold most dear in my life. Every one of them will be rooting for me as I am rooting for them. I have my goals and will do everything in my power to meet them. Whatever happens after the gun will come from my heart, and whatever happens at the finish line will be proof that I am 13.1 miles and a step closer to being who I want to be. In the end, running a half marathon won’t have been the biggest struggle for me. The hardest part will have been believing in myself enough to do it. I’m finally to the point that I believe, and I’m not ashamed to tell you, it’s a bigger relief than I can say.

* * *

I won’t pretend to know much about running. Hell, I won’t pretend to know anything about running. I hesitate to call myself a runner until I reach some greater understanding of what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. However, I suspect this much is true: after years of hiding everything behind clothes, under hats, behind shower curtains, anyone in true pursuit of running must embrace laying himself naked in front of everybody. Those who give themselves over to the pure pain, the pure joy, and the purse sense of accomplishment cannot be ashamed. To run, sweat, and limp, to scream, gasp, and cry, to accomplish something you once thought impossible through only your own hard work and to do it all in front of the world, that is something you can only do if you are comfortable enough to stand naked in front of the world and say, “This is who I am, and this is what I’ve done.”

Scraps of Sunday's ten miler

Other posts from Rapid Eye Reality:

• Naked swordfights, pitbulls, and pregnancy
• I know who I am!

The boy had just finished his homework in the playroom of our house. We were alone when he broke into song…a song a seven-year-old boy probably shouldn’t be singing. After I heard it, I pulled out my phone to record it for posterity (aka before Verizon snags it for its next ad campaign).

I get to live with this kid.

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If you have been a reader of Rapid Eye Reality for a while, you know that once a year I release a story that doesn’t really fit in these pages. It’s my Halloween gift to those of you who are good enough to come back here after ten years of silliness. I’ve done true stories (2008), pulp horror (2009), and straight-up genre stuff (2010). This year, I’ve gone in a different direction again.

This little tradition started about four years ago and continues today. If you’re just tuning in, here’s what I’ve put out over the past few years.

I’m not going to throw a label on this year’s story. I’m as proud of it as my self-loathing allows, and it was a story that needed written. I hope you enjoy it enough to pass it on to your friends. The story page doesn’t allow for comments, but I’d love to hear what you have to say about it in the comments of this post.

Finally…how do I put this? Well, this story isn’t for kids. Or adults. Or really, anybody who has any sort of sensitivity to unchecked profanity, drug use, and, as the cable networks used to call it, adult themes. So, if you won’t be comfortable reading something that will probably offend you, it might just be best to back away now so as not to spend your day uncomfortably. That goes for you, too, Mom, or really anybody who might not like to think about this story coming out of my brain. You folks go read this. It’s happy.

With that preamble, this is the part where I throw out the story and then run and hide behind a curtain. Thanks again for reading, and happy Halloween, y’all. I call this…

Other posts from Rapid Eye Reality:

• A Halloween story
• Halloween story 2010
• Shameless Happy Plug

The backfield tackle was the kind in which the quarterback is hit, hit again, and finally collapses under the weight of blockers, tacklers, and the inevitability of yet another sack. Less than two minutes remained in the game when the QB went down. His team was losing 14-0, and face was the only thing he had left to save.

One by one, the referee pulled the bodies from the pile. Limber, bendy seven-year-old bodies unfolded from the mess and reformed themselves like a modern version of Stretch Armstrong. One by one they took their place in the respective huddles. Finally, only one boy was left on the ground, the defensive end that had shot the gap and plowed into the quarterback’s thighs at top speed. The boy half-stood from his spot on the dewy midfield grass and then dropped to his knees. He hung his head as the referees put a hand on his shoulder.

I didn’t have to look closer to know who it was. It was #13, the Eastside Dolphins right-side defensive end, a seven-year-old bullet who doubles as my son. After three months of practice, games, and tackles, he was down for the first time.

In the waning moments of his final game, he wasn’t getting up.

* * *

When my boy asked me if he could play football this year, I didn’t think twice before saying yes. Of the many things we share, the NFL halftimes we spend in the back yard throwing the ball are some of the happiest of the year. Though I like a great many sports, football is the only game for which I’ll make appointments to watch. It’s an important part of our family’s entertainment dynamic. In fact, as I type this, my entire crew is sitting in front of a 50” television watching the Steelers dismantle the Cardinals.

And so, we bought the best helmet, shoulder pads, and cleats we could find. We found a team that would have us and settled into three-times-a-week practices under the direction of a locally-famous former high school and college football star. Before the end of the first practice, the boy had gotten the coaches’ attention as a quick, tough, passionate kid.

The boy has been playing sports since he could first walk. He’s played soccer, swam, and played tee-ball as competitively as a kid can. Through all of it, my travel schedule has kept me from being a regular part of practices and games. This year, I was able to stay home for most of the past couple of months. It meant I could go to every practice and game the kid played. Three times a week, I put my computer, phone, and outside life on hold and went to a football field to watch my kid play. They were the most relaxing moments I’d spend in any given week.

I won’t deny the excitement I felt when watching my son explode off the defensive line and into a quarterback’s chest, or the pride that swelled when my kid encouraged his teammates or helped up a hurt opponent. He looked good in a set of shoulder pads. He looked right with sweat running down his face. My little boy looked like a big boy, and I loved it.

* * *

No fewer than three people for whom I have a great deal of respect as friends, parents, and intelligent men sent me private e-mails when they heard of my son’s new pastime. Each note was respectful, measured, and polite, but carried the same message: what in the hell are you thinking?

All three messages spoke of recent science that shows just how dangerous a game football can be. They spoke of concussions, their long-term effects, and what they could mean for the boy who is the personification of joy. Had I considered it all?

I had. My wife and I talked about it. Our decision wasn’t made lightly, but it wasn’t difficult. Nearly all sports carry with them a certain amount of injury risk, and at 55 pounds, the boys on the termite team aren’t going to threaten injury any more than a hard game of soccer. Is it dangerous? Sure. Is it any more dangerous than most sports kids play? Probably not at this level.

As I responded to each of my friends, I checked myself for obvious signs of self-delusion. I played football for six years as a kid and teenager, though never very well. I loved the culture and the game but never had the required athleticism or talent to do much on the field. Somehow I ended up with a kid who shows natural ability in every athletic endeavor he undertakes. I wondered if I wasn’t trying to recapture something I could never grasp.

I needed no more than to see my kid whip off his helmet on a hot day. Sweat rolled down his dirty face. He smiled. He was as happy as he’d been in any sport I’d seen him play. I was forcing him into nothing. Left to his own devices, he would be playing with or without my permission.

So, as I told my friends, for now, I think my boy is safe, and if he should show a desire or aptitude to play at a higher level, we’ll have to have a serious discussion about the inherent dangers in the game.

Now, several dozen practices, eight games, and a hundred hits later, my kid was finally not springing back to his feet. He was the kid with the referee standing over him, under the lights, 25 yards and a world away from me.

* * *

I searched the sideline where my wife stood with our other son. She was looking at me with the same half-lost look. Barely any time had passed, but in that parental eternity was a moment in which a father wonders if he’d made the wrong decision to let his son play. There was enough time to shudder at the thought that something bad had actually happened. There was enough time to experience the worst thing about being a parent: fear.

His back was to me as he stood. Finally, he turned and let himself be led to the sideline. His face was covered in grass and sweat. His lip quivered, but didn’t give in to the tears. As best as he could tell me, a helmet hit him in the side of the neck as he went down. He hurt, but he was fine. Within moments he was begging his coach to get back into the game. Just as quickly, I let slip from my mind the fear that had barged in.

The Dolphins won their last game. It happened under the lights on a high school field. When it was over, my son thanked each of his coaches for their efforts and sought out teammates to say, “Good game.” Finally, we corralled him and walked in the dark behind the stadium on the way to the car. I heard a sniffle and a hitch in my son’s chest. I looked down to see tears welling up in his eyes.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m just…” he said. “I’m just so proud of myself, and I’m sad the season is over.”

I will never force my son to play any sport. I will never put him in serious danger. I will never make him live a life just so I can live it. I will always tell him the truth and try to help him make the right decisions that will keep him as safe as possible. The only thing I insist he do—even if he doesn’t want to–is be proud of himself.

And he did that on his own.

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• South Carolina UFOs