Letdowns

Tags

Blogging, Faith, Fate, Friendship, Marathon training and running, Parenting, Tennis, Women's and men's professional tennis tours

Dear Readers,

Have you ever completed a marathon or the equivalent thereof, like finishing a long absorbing book or tennis match, a school year, watching a major tournament from start to finish, finally writing a poem that you’ve had in your head for years, closing out a commitment for an organization or cause as a volunteer? Anything where you’ve invested a decent of amount of heart, soul, and sometimes muscle? And then …

I’ve seen and experienced this first hand.

With Wimbledon on the near horizon, I remember dozens of matches where a player out of nowhere would play the match of his or her life and then show up on court the next day a completely different player. It happened very recently at the men’s final of the French Open. Stan Wawrinka, who had beaten Andy Murray a few days before in five grueling sets, looked a little lost against Rafael Nadal. It seemed like he was just going through the motions.

When I lived in Baltimore, I trained for marathons with an amazing group of women who were far more talented as runners than I. To use a running term, I frequently drafted off them to conserve energy I needed as we ran miles and solved the world’s problems, often before 7 a.m.! My training partners were smart about gearing up for a big race and then gently coming down from the high of finishing it. Usually, the day or two after a marathon, we would start a bit later, sometimes even after the sun had risen, and slowly jog a few conversational miles.

My writing this blog for a year coincides with the start and finish of my fiscal year at my job where, as a fundraiser, I’m quietly gearing up for a last surge in June to reach goals. I’m almost there!

Starting this blog was a goal I held since my daughter was born. It took me six years to overcome my internal hesitation (in German, literally overcome my internal pig dog!). Once I did, I was surprised how much I looked forward to writing every day. It became a habit I embraced. Poems I wanted to write, people I wanted to thank, causes I wanted to raise awareness about, whimsical thoughts I wanted to explore — I found I could do all that and more with the blog. I even made new friends who followed the blog!

So as I near the end my fiscal year and blogging every day except weekends and holidays for 12 months, I think about my wonderful marathon friends in Baltimore, how they would approach a gentle, intelligent way to restart, reboot, redefine the next miles after a marathon. I would like to dedicate this post to them, particularly Anne, Linell, Laura, Linda, and Heidi. I miss them and I hope we will all run together in Hawaii some day!

Angels Among Us: Dr. Alberto Costa and Friends who Create Level Playing Fields

Tags

Advocacy, Alberto Costa, Blogging, Down syndrome, Early Education, Education, Faith, Family, Fate, German language, Gratitude, Iowa, Living in Hawaii, Marathon training and running, Peace and non-violence, Pediatrics, Philanthropy, Quakerism, Trisomy 21

My posts have an Iowa theme this week.

Before my family and I moved to Hawaii three years ago, we had returned to the United States after living in Germany with our baby daughter. We were looking for a permanent home, a safe haven for two dads with their first child. Having lived in community before, an opportunity to work for and reside at a Quaker boarding school and farm in Iowa with gentle rolling hills and gentle, intelligent Quakers seemed to me like just the right ticket to make it back to America.

And even given those circumstances, a ticket to a world full of unknowns.

What would my new job, a new state where none of us had lived before, new pediatricians, new neighbors and community be like? Ben and I would be coming back into the American language and customs and traditions after living pretty much like most native German speakers would during our time in Europe.

We switched languages although I continued (and continue) to speak to our daughter in German. We had started to make inroads in Germany with a promising network of friends, but now we sought connections in the United States.

I’m pretty good at cold writing and calling people. I like reaching out, finding common ground. My husband does, too, but he is more reserved. A Harvard-educated linguist, he devours complex medical texts. We make a good team. I find articles with information I think could be helpful for our daughter, and he reads them after I do and gives me his take. Then we decide if there is a next step.

One of those articles was in The New York Times about a doctor, Alberto Costa, whose life and work changed completely soon after his only child was born 22 years ago.

A physician and neuroscientist, Dr. Costa’s joy that my husband and I met 15 years later when our own daughter came into the world was accompanied by the realization that the marathon of parenthood had suddenly turned into an ultramarathon.

Facing the knowledge that his baby girl had been born with three copies of all or most of the genes on the 21st chromosome, instead of the usual two, Dr. Costa entered a brave new world of disbelief mixed in perhaps with a little grief and urgency.

Dr. Costa’s dreams for his daughter Tyche, like ours for Ellen, now rested on a marathon course filled will all kinds of potential detours and questions. Would their future hold limitless potential? Would they be able to freely and boldly pursue careers, meaningful relationships, compete with other girls their age, navigate social pressures, deal with conflicting messages about how they should act and who they should be? What about their confidence? What about their vulnerability?

I only know that the first time I held my daughter, those questions remained but I felt a new calling: to be my daughter’s advocate, to help her acquire every tool possible for her life toolkit, to go outside my comfort zones at times if she were able to benefit from my doing so.

Reading the Times article about Dr. Costa and Tyche on a cold morning in Iowa, about his decision that after Tyche’s birth he would devote himself to the study of Down syndrome, I realized I needed to see if he were interested in a friendship with our family.

I found an email address for him and sent him a few words about Ellen and her picture. I mentioned that like his daughter, Ellen would be described as “high functioning,” although, truth be told, I much prefer “high achieving.” Why? I don’t always think of myself as high functioning! But I always hope to achieve a little something each day!

I thanked Dr. Costa for his research and offered my modest support for his goals to improving the quality of life of persons with an extra chromosome.

He wrote back! He described his hope that children of our daughters’ generations would gain from his research.

Time passes. My family moved to Hawaii. A few years after we had settled into life here, I began this blog. I wrote Dr. Costa again.

Here is part of his return message:

It is good to hear from you after such a long time.

We have made significant progress … and have learned quite a bit more about the specifics of the biology behind some of the cognitive and other brain issues in persons with DS.

Dr. Costa is raising funds for his research at Case Western Reserve University. Here is the link to his profile and work. I know he may well make the path my daughter follows in her life a little or a lot smoother.

Ben and I feel blessed for all the people we have met since Ellen was born who have gone out of their way to help clear her path, to give her a chance at having equal footing in the marathons she will face.

They sure don’t have to, but we will be forever grateful for the time and love they have given our family.

Do Happy Endings Really Happen?

Tags

Being Gay, Blogging, Civil Rights, Faith, Family, Fate, French Open, Gratitude, Marathon training and running, Margaret Court, Women's and men's professional tennis tours

Yesterday I wrote about my family being featured in a national promotion for diversity and inclusivity. Life is definitely a marathon, but it sure is nice when all the miles invested in training make the vicissitudes of the course a little easier to navigate. If my family’s story can help others along not only in preparing for the unexpected, but also in enjoying the highs and lows of any marathon, then I can pay forward all the times when a little encouragement has gone a long way for me.

I also wrote about tennis legend Margaret Court and her decades-long mission to deny gay men and women the right to marry and have children together. Margaret has ramped up her vitriol considerably during the French Open, currently in its second week. The woman whom Margaret has gone after directly for years, fellow West Australian Casey Dellacqua, has reached the semi-finals of the women’s doubles. Wouldn’t it make a great happy ending if Casey won the tournament with her playing partner Ashleigh Barty? It would be her first Grand Slam victory.

What about you, Dear Readers? Do you believe in happy endings? Would you like to share any on this blog?

 

Hans Christian Andersen and Big Macs

Tags

Angels, Being Gay, Blogging, Bullying, Civil Rights, Community, Faith, Family, Fate, Friendship, Growing up gay, Hans Christian Andersen, Marathon training and running, Philanthropy, Poetry, Quakerism, Writing

Getting hit by a Big Mac is no fun, even when you’re hungry.

It’s happened to me twice, most recently two days ago. Fortunately, both times it was the burger, not the Big Mack truck.

My first close encounter of the unexpected kind with a Big Mac was when I was 14. The latest was … well, suffice it to say I’m decades away from being 14.

On Tuesday evening I was walking to the YMCA. A truck with three passengers kept honking at me. When I stopped for a traffic light, the truck rounded the curve, the guys shouted “Faggot,” and soon I felt a Big Mac they had thrown land on my chest. Fortunately, it was without ketchup.

It brought back memories.

At age 14 I walked two miles home rather than take the bus and endure the avalanche of “Faggot!” jeers. At least when the bus passed me walking, the shouts from the bus lasted mere seconds. You would have thought the kids who rode the bus would have gotten tired of saying it over and over, or that the bus driver would intervene, but it didn’t happen.

One day a few passengers on the bus shouted my name. I turned around and plunk, a Big Mac that was thrown at me landed squarely in my sternum and stayed there for a few seconds as my sternum is pretty indented.

Eventually, I found ways to walk home that were different from the bus route. I loved the walks. I would dream of a day when I would have friends my age who didn’t just like me if I did their homework or practiced tennis with them when they couldn’t find someone else. I dreamt of having a girlfriend or sometimes even a boyfriend. I composed poems in my head that I couldn’t wait to write down. I imagined what it would be like to live in Germany.

And I thought of Hans Christian Andersen.

Hans considered himself ugly all his life, a self-image that no doubt inspired his writing The Ugly Duckling. His personal heartache may well have spurred his desire to reach people through his written words. Perhaps he felt this was his best chance to escape loneliness.

To this day, I struggle to understand the cruelty of people. Growing up, I had a few explanations why it was directed at me: I was gay, had a severely indented sternum that made me hunch a bit, and a face that my mother would say I would “grow into some day.”

I compensated by writing poems, lots of them. By the time I graduated from high school, I had won a dozen national awards. I willed myself to be an athlete. With my doctors’ reassurance about my sternum, I’ve completed 18 marathons. As for the face, well, I briefly tried modeling and even appeared in a few sweater ads. I could tell pretty quickly, though, that it wasn’t my calling.

I think what fate has called me for is surviving Big Macs. And learning life lessons for my daughter. And being a friend.

If you are out there reading this blog and have gone through stretches of self-doubt, I’m rooting for you. If you have felt ugly, know you are not. If you are struggling to prove yourself, stop now and celebrate who you are. Embrace your talents and gifts. Others will too. It might take a while, but eventually they will. Ask whoever you consider your angels to be to help you. They will, perhaps not quite the way you would expect, but they will come through. Be good to yourself. And never stop loving even when others are cruel. You are not alone. I may know you or not, but I believe in you.

 

The Importance of Showing Up!

Tags

Civil Rights, Clay Courts, Community, Faith, Family, French Open, Marathon training and running, Presidential election, Women's and men's professional tennis tours

Yesterday, as Donald and Melania Trump continued to try to show the world that they had passed qualifying rounds with their first major trip abroad as the First Couple, veterans were grinding through matches on outside courts in Paris to make it into the main draw at the French Open.

At least one of the Trumps, according to news reports, has trained extensively for being on the world stage. Melania has gone to great lengths to instruct her staff how to pack suitcases with designer clothes so that she and her husband look the part for every stop on their trip. She has also been trained in protocol when she steps on a new court — I’m sorry, I meant steps into a visit with a world leader.

Meanwhile, tennis pros who are not household names and who usually do not have staff to pack their suitcases or rackets are embracing the crowds in Paris who show up for the qualifying rounds. For the pros, unlike Donald Trump, size doesn’t matter. They are grateful that loyal fans who find their way to remote courts appreciate the skill and determination needed to compete.

One of the pros is celebrating her 20th anniversary of playing at the French Open. Virginie Razzano has dropped considerably in the rankings, and at 34, her legs are not nearly as fresh as they were when she first appeared at Roland-Garros decades ago. But she still loves her sport and loves to compete. She still wants to show up.

I want to run 20 marathons. I have two more to go. My legs feel a lot heavier than when I ran my personal best, a 3:40 about 10 years ago. At the time, I hoped to go even faster. I never did, but it turned out the city where I ran a 3:40 was where my daughter was born three years later, so that marathon will always be my favorite.

This year, my husband and I will do a marathon together — his first and my 19th. I’m more excited for him than I am for me! We don’t need to be the fastest, best trained, or best dressed. The elation of working hard to be out there and finishing together will be more than enough!

 

Maria’s Return

Tags

Clay Courts, Faith, Marathon training and running, Maria Sharapova, Tennis

After serving a 15-month suspension for using a performance-enhancing — and illegal substance — Maria Sharapova will return tomorrow to the women’s professional tennis circuit.

With the French Open on the near horizon and the clay court season officially underway, Maria’s reentry would have been a big story even before Serena Williams’ stunning announcement last week that she is taking a sabbatical from the tour because she is pregnant.

Maria has won five major championships, including two French Opens. Ever since winning Wimbledon as a teenager, she has been ranked among the very top female athletes in tournament and endorsement income.

Truth be told, I have never thought a great deal about Maria. Her style of play — hard baseline drives with very few forays to the net, huge grunts every time she swings her racket, and what to me seems like a perpetual scowl — have never really appealed to me. I admire her determination, but now it appears she was also determined to win with a little extra help.

I’ve wondered why. Maria has earned enough in her life on and off the court to purchase a small country. She is smart, a world-class athlete, and many sponsors, before and even after she failed her blood test for stimulants, have paid her millions to endorse their products.

Competing at any level in sports can be grueling, even for weekend warriors like the author of this blog. When I played in men’s tennis leagues, I put in hours of practice and had to psych myself up a great deal to compete against many guys whom I viewed as friends.

To this day, as I begin training for my 19th marathon, I ask for a lot of patience from my family. My lifelong love of sports has brought many personal rewards and lovely medals, but I have never taken home a check after a club tournament or a race!

There are many places on looping marathon courses where one could step over to the other side and shave off a great deal of time before the finish line. Along with that comes the risk of being caught. I competed once in a prestigious race in Virginia that was partly run on winding roads through beautiful residential areas. One of the competitors looked around, grinned, and cut a significant corner! Fellow runners called out in dismay. I was not one of them, and I had no interest in finding out what happened to the runner. I only know when all I want to do sometimes during a marathon is sit down on a nice bench, or I cramp up after a race or cry tears of exhaustion and exhilaration when I’ve completed all 26.2 miles, I also know that I’ve earned my finisher’s medal. I would not want it any other way.

Yesterday at school a student sang “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” I’m sure Maria Sharapova does not need my tears nor anyone else’s. But I wonder if she ever wakes up at night wishing she had tried to win entirely on her own.

Friday Picture Post: Education and Marathons

Tags

Childraising, Community, Early Education, Faith, Family, Mainstreaming, Marathon training and running, Trisomy 21

Seventeen hours ago my husband and I sat at a long table with Ellen’s classroom teacher and other experts who support her at her school where she is mainstreamed. Team Ellen is preparing for second grade!

I came in to the meeting optimistic, but when your child is born with an extra chromosome, to some degree you always hold your breath.

All credit to my husband, Ellen’s teachers, counselors, and, of course, Ellen. Education and raising children are marathons, not sprints. Every mile covered is an achievement knowing that you need to conserve your energy while you are putting out a lot of energy!

Ellen needs to embrace math to keep pace with it in second grade, and we will train every day so it becomes as exciting for her as the subjects we heard she is right on board with: reading, writing, science, and social studies.

The other good news from her teacher: Ellen is proud, engaged, and respected by her classmates. Not a bad foundation for the distance ahead! We’ll make sure adding and subtracting the miles become as fun for her as running them and the foundation is firm enough to hold her even with all its twists and turns.

Holding Her Ground

Tags

Advocacy, Being Gay, Community, Faith, Kathrine Switzer, Marathon training and running, Presidential election, Six Degrees of Separation, Tennis

I was all set to write about the first major clay court event of the tennis season for men, the Monte Carlo Masters.

After all, I love tennis, especially on clay courts, and it’s time to switch gears and themes for this blog as lately tennis has gotten short shrift!

But I forgot today is also the Boston Marathon and the 50th anniversary of Kathrine Switzer becoming the first woman officially to enter what for long-distance runners is the equivalent of Wimbledon.

Kathrine was not supposed to enter, and the Boston Marathon director tried to grab her race bib and pull her off the course.

She escaped him, though, and today, at age 70, she finished her 40th marathon, nine of which have been in Boston.

Her courage also launched a lifelong career as a champion of long-distance running for women. She organized races, became an author, TV commentator, and a celebrity.

Not bad for someone whose college coach told her that marathons were too long a distance for “fragile women.”

In the interest of Six Degrees of Separation, Kathrine studied journalism at Syracuse University as did the author of this blog.

When I became a serious runner, I was in my 30s. I joined a gay running group in Baltimore because I was having no luck with the dating scene. Having made the major decision to come out of the closet, I hit all kinds of roadblocks trying to meet someone!

As always, sports came to the rescue. I heard about the Baltimore Frontrunners and after my first training run of five miles with the group, I suddenly had many new friends!

A couple years and marathons later, though, I started running with the Baltimore Pacemakers. As far as I know, I was the only openly gay guy, but friends are friends, and I became a good runner.

I’m relieved we live in an age where Kathrine would no longer be pulled off a marathon course because she is a woman, nor would any openly gay person. At least I hope we won’t regress as a nation. Sports transcends boundaries and differences, be they gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age.

I’m thrilled for Kathrine. The Boston Marathon will retire her original bib number in her honor. Fifty years ago, she ran like she deserved to be invited to the party. She refused to be thrown out. She held her ground, and now that ground, all 26.2 miles, has been completed by millions of women.

 

Parakeets in Bonn and Honolulu

Tags

Blogging, Bonn, Community, Faith, Family, Living in Hawaii, Marathon training and running, Parakeets, Parenting, Seinfeld, Six Degrees of Separation, Tennis, Writing

Dear Readers,

Your response to my post yesterday is humbling! Even though I loved reading almanacs when I was young, and can recite finals scores of Wimbledon finals from decades ago, I try not to be too attached to statistics about my blog.

But yesterday my readership took off, and comments about the post touched my heart and made me grateful for spilling my heart and words on a computer screen day in and day out. In fact, today is my 200th post!

I’m writing it for my family and for you, dear readers, whom I now consider my extended family. You come from all over the world. Some of you have been friends for many years, others I am just getting to know. Some of you are fellow writers, others are artists, parents, teachers, food connoisseurs, runners, tennis players, people of faith. What a great community we have formed!

Today’s post may be a prelude to a poem in the near future, but for now its form will be prose. As some readers of this blog know, I’m a huge believer in Six Degrees of Separation. If all living things and everything else in this world are six or fewer steps away from each other, parakeets in Bonn and Honolulu prove that even with two oceans between them, the world is pretty small!

I first saw them in Bonn when we were living in the former capital of West Germany. Ellen, who is now almost seven years old, was just a baby and I was the stay-at-home parent except when I ran along the Rhine river. I was new to parenting, something I had looked forward to all my life and then — gasp, it was much harder than I ever could have imagined! My husband, our glorious daughter, marathon training, and parakeets helped me keep my faith.

I remember clocking mile after lonely mile in cold weather in Bonn, past beautiful homes and parks, hoping to meet fellow runners, crossing bridges full of hope, taking in the expanse of the city, and meeting parakeets!

They are abundant in Bonn, and quite nimble. I never had a Hitchcock moment, but they are pretty fearless and plentiful. Their calls and colors brightened up Bonn. Distance runners make friends of all kinds as they put in the time to train. Believe me, after 20 miles, I’ve even smiled at familiar trees as I deny exhaustion!

In contrast to Bonn, Honolulu has plenty of sunshine, bright colors, and an Aloha Spirit that can warm the heart. Not to make generalizations, especially as someone who has been in tune with his German heritage all his life, but it would be hard to imagine walking up a steep hill in Germany to my home carrying a pizza, as I once did in Honolulu, and receiving many smiles, friendly greetings, and calls of “Hey, friend, it smells good. Invite me the next time!”

But the parakeets in Honolulu, of which there are many in our neighborhood, speak the same cheerful language as their counterparts in Bonn (without the German accents!).  They are gregarious and beautiful, they shriek full of glee, they are smart and refuse to be caged, and just like in Bonn, they keep me company!

 

 

 

Product Placement

Tags

Gay parenting, Growing up gay, Kellyanne Conway, Marathon training and running, Parenting, Presidential election, Trisomy 21

I have to take a deep breath or two every time Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump’s top adviser, appears on TV. If I make it past a few minutes, I reach for the mute button and often need to recover.

Yesterday, though, words spoken by Kellyanne held my attention longer than usual to the point of disbelief. Hawking the First Daughter’s clothing line during a news interview defies conventional logic. It also may have violated a federal ethics law.

I read articles about Kellyanne’s infomercial to make sure my mind was intact.

In reading the articles, though, I also glanced at other readers’ “comments.” Both men and women took issue not only with Kellyanne’s words, but also her appearance. In many instances, a line was crossed.

Think what you may about Kellyanne for shilling Ivanka’s products, but Kellyanne was dressed professionally.

If a man had promoted Trump products, would viewers or readers weigh in on his hair, his waist size, his clothes, his face?

I used to be told frequently when I was growing up by well-meaning friends of my parents and even my own family members how to dress, move my hands, even how to control my facial expressions so that I “wouldn’t appear gay.” Truth be told, even after I came out of the closet, several guys I first dated talked to me about being “a little chunky.” Back then, I carried 160 pounds on my 6-foot frame.

In breathing a huge sigh of relief about no longer having to worry about “appearing gay,” I then became a little self-conscious about my weight. I decided to lose a few pounds by spending a half hour every evening on a track close to where I lived. Soon I got hooked on distance running. I haven’t weighed more than 150 pounds since I first started visiting the track.

I was also told by a straight man that now that I had come out of the closet, I would have to look, sound and perform better than straight men to advance my career.

By the time I met my husband, I had run five of my 18 marathons. I’m lucky I’m married to someone who loves me no matter what size I am or if my hair isn’t perfect (which it usually is not), or even if I have a birth defect (pectus excavatum to be precise).

My readers know what is coming next: my daughter, born with an extra chromosome, is gorgeous and always will be. In the years ahead, I will help her shrug off comments that may come her way about how she looks.

To say I’m not a Kellyanne Conway fan is an understatement, but she’s worked hard to be where she is today. It was claimed by the White House Press Secretary that she was counseled yesterday. I hope any counseling she receives will be about her words only.