Why I am doing Ironman Louisville 2020

           Why I am doing IMLOU 2020    

            My back and neck still hurt from the accident that I was in for Ironman 2019 but, with a lot of stretching, I think that I can overcome my injuries.  My right hand suffers from a malady that a specialist termed “Thor’s Hand.”  The tendons in my hand have tightened up to the point where I cannot open my hand all of the way and it is permanently cupped.  My toenails are bent and misshapen.  My shoulder never recovered from the bike wreck that I was in ten years ago.  The “Achilles Tendon” in both of my legs have tightened up and require a lot of stretching and, like other men of a certain age; I have continual troubles with my knees, hip, and ankles.  In spite of all of these aches and pains, I have decided to do the Ironman again in 2020.  If I am going to give the race another throw then I need a good reason as to why I should spend the time and energy to try it again.  This blog entry is an attempt to give those reasons.

            “I regret that you could not have suffered longer,” said the race director of an ultra-marathon when one of the runners quit earlier than expected.  This line has some resonance for me in that I quit the IMLOU 2019 race early because I felt like that I didn’t have a chance to finish it.  There was a sense of resignation after my bike wreck on the first loop of the race; it was the final nail in the coffin.  After searching my feelings, and really digging deep as to why I wasn’t even angry at the triathlete who cut me off and made me take a horrible spill, the only answer that I could come up with is that I felt like I never had a chance at a medal.  To paraphrase another line from that same race director, “triathletes don’t quit the race because they can’t go on.  They quit the race when they realize that they cannot finish.”  The first reason as to why I am participating in IMLOU is that I have some unfinished business.    

            A student of mine, who I taught twenty years ago, ran into me at the grocery store.  She looked me up and down before saying, “You haven’t changed a bit.  Do you take supplements or something?”  Susan wasn’t trying to be nice; she really wanted to know my secret for staying young.  When I am asked that question, my pat answer is, “I work out twice a day, every day, because I am training for an Ironman.”  When I weighed myself yesterday, I found that I weigh about ten pounds less than when I was in high school, and I wasn’t overweight in high school.  The second reason why I do the Ironman is that the training keeps me young and in incredible shape.

            The third reason why I do the Ironman is that it fills a huge hole in my life.  The children have left the house and are establishing their careers.  Tracey, my wife for over thirty years, leaves the house for work before 6:00 am and usually doesn’t get home until 6:00 pm, so I don’t see her much throughout the week.    My career has become unfulfilling and I view my time at the office as a time to rest between training sessions.  I get up at 3:30 and run eight miles, or bike nineteen miles, before work.  After work, I either swim a mile and a half or lift weights.  If I had a more demanding job then I would have to give up my two-a-day training days.  Unless I change jobs, I have a lot of time on my hands and may as well use that time to train.

            My final reason for participating in my twelfth Ironman Louisville is I am not feeling burned out at all.  My training days, especially doing the long bike rides on the Ironman route, contain some of my happiest hours.  I feel calm and at peace while on the bike.  Besides, if I didn’t spend my time training then I would probably sit in front of the television to drink beer and eat chips.  Father Time is not my friend and if I was to stop training now, at the age of 58, then I would not be able to start it up again.  I must try to finish the race while I am still young enough to do it because there will soon be a time when I cannot hope to participate in such a grueling race.  

            I hope that this blog entry has inspired you to find new and personal reasons for participating in triathlon.           

St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Thomas, and the B.V.I

Norwegian “Epic” Vacation

            Our first port of call was Barbados and our guide for the bus trip was Janelle, who was born and raised on the island and who was very proud of her heritage.  She made it a priority to point out the beautiful spots on Barbados, which is only 23 miles long and 14 miles wide, but Janelle couldn’t look past the fact that her island has a high cost of living and high taxes and bad roads.  Our tour included a full circumference of the island where we saw an array of unfinished houses and poverty.  On the other side of the coin, we saw St. James Church, whose origins date back to the 1600s, and Rhiana’s house on Shady Lane.  Rhiana is a native and she has donated a lot of money to the local hospital so that it could purchase medical equipment.  At the end of our tour, Janelle gave Tracey and me a big hug, something that no other tour guide has ever done, and she was such a positive person that I hugged her back because I was grateful to have a guide who had such a boisterous personality.
            On New Year’s Day, we walked around Castries, St. Lucia, because we didn’t want to take another bus trip.  Everything was closed for the holiday but there was a church service on the small island so Tracey and I went to listen to the preacher for a while.  We left the service early and made our way over to the only restaurant that was open and it was a Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Since we are both lifelong Kentuckians, we got a kick out of clinking our KFC glasses together in St. Lucia, an incongruous spectacle because they were paper cups and we were in the middle of the Caribbean.
            The next island on our itinerary was St. Kitts and we spent most of our time in that port milling around in Independence Square, waiting for the Carnival Parade to begin.  Since we were in the Caribbean, where time is an abstract and flexible idea, the start time for the parade kept being postponed, so we walked around the square and saw the Anglican and Catholic cathedrals.  A British couple that we ran into said that they also skipped the bus tour, preferring to “amble about.  But since we have become older our path to amble has become greatly constricted.”  We enjoyed talking to the Brits while we waited for the parade to begin but when it started to rain, we decided to cut bait and make our way back to the ship.
            Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which hit the Caribbean in 2017, cast a dark cloud over everything in Tortola, British Virgin Islands.  For example, the sugar factory closed because much of the building was damaged and management couldn’t find enough of the parts of the machinery to make the works run again.  We visited the botanical gardens and the lady at the front desk said, in broken English, “I lost my roof.  Everyone lost roof.  Some rebuilt.  Most did not.”  She looked so sad as she looked around the bay and pointed out all of the abandoned houses.  Tortola saw 90% destruction of all of the standing buildings by the hurricanes.  Even the botanical gardens didn’t get away unscathed; a Banyan tree had been uprooted.  These trees are very expensive and the woman said, “I can’t bear to get rid of it,” but she couldn’t afford to hire a crane to put it back in place.  The Banyan tree lay derelict and, much like the abandoned houses, will remain in place until decay turns it into an unrecognizable relic.
            Our final port of call was St. Thomas and we began our day at “Coral World Ocean Park” where Tracey got to hold a star fish, a sea urchin, and a sea cucumber at the “touching pool.”  In the aviary, a lorikeet named Pi stood on Tracey’s arm and drank nectar from a small cup that she held in her hand.  Our driver for the day was Cat, who got his nickname because his eyes were copper in color, similar to a cat’s eye.  He drove us to “Coral World” and waited for us outside of the park.  Since Tracey and I share a dream of her working for the U.S. Attorney’s office in St. Croix and us buying a condo in St. Thomas.  She could commute to work via the local ferry and my only job would be to drive her to the port at the beginning of the day and take her back home at the end of the day.  Cat drove us to a couple of condominium complexes while he told us his life story.  He has lived in St. Thomas for all of his seventy years and, when he was in college, he had a scholarship to play baseball.  Cat’s only ambition was to vacation in Puerto Rico, but he “has to find a honey” to go with him.  Just as with Janelle, Cat had a delicious Caribbean accent and all of his anecdotes were punctuated with an uproarious laugh.  He was a character.  It is always the people that you meet while on vacation, and not the places that you go, who always make the trip interesting and memorable.           

    

Book 3 Chapter 2 Section 5: Childhood Vacations

Book 3 Chapter 2 Section 5: Vacations 

The best times, for the Frazier children, were the family vacations.  My father liked to get everyone up at middle of the night, after strapping our luggage onto the top of the car, and then drive like a maniac for twelve to eighteen hours.  He didn’t like to stop, even if one of the kids was sick, and there was puke on the side of the car where one of us had barfed after rolling down the window.  The remains of the throw up would stay on the door until the trip was over and Mom could take it up to be washed.  The car smelled like the inside of someone’s stomach until it was thoroughly cleaned.  If Dad needed to rest, he took a power nap while Mom drove, or the whole family sat in silence in a hot car and waited for him to finish sleeping.  

Yet once we arrived at our destination, our trips were the highlight of my childhood.  The happiest that I ever saw my father was as he was driving down the road and whistling to whatever song happened to be playing on the radio.  To this day, I cannot hear “King of the Road” without thoughts of my father singing along to that tune in the car.  My mother acted as navigator and supplied my father with candy and gum.  She told me that she didn’t see what a big deal the family vacations were but for me, they were the one time where we all shared happy memories of being together.  The family alternated between visiting Dads’ family in Minnesota, Moms’ family in Vermont, and Florida when Moms’ mother moved to the sunshine state.

My fathers’ parents lived in a small house just outside of Minneapolis.  His mother loved seeing her grandchildren and served us peanut butter and honey sandwiches.  The kids slept on a floor in the basement because there were not enough bedrooms to house everyone.  The kids didn’t mind, though, because the house didn’t have air conditioning and the tiles on the basement floor remained cool all year long.  The Frazier kids made fast friends out of the neighborhood kids.  There was a lake within a short walking distance and all four kids loved to swim, so they went every day, even when the only other person at the lake was the lifeguard.  One time, it was so cold that the lifeguard on duty tried to hide from the Frazier’s in a lifeboat so that he wouldn’t have to sit in the chair, but the kids quickly saw through that scheme and yelled at him until he came out from the boat to do his job.

There was a creek on the way to the lake, and the kids were sometimes sidetracked, especially if they saw the neighborhood kids playing in the stream.  The banks of the creek were made of clay and the Frazier kids scraped some of it away and made pots or animals with the clay.  Eventually, the sidewalk that led up to their grandparents’ house became littered with the kids creations, but Grandma and Grandpa got a kick out of the artistry.  At other times the kids played games in the alley behind their grandparents’ house or walked up to the store to get candy: it was all very exciting and life in Minneapolis seemed like an extension of their lives in Louisville, only better.

Grandmother Arlene Strachan was from my mother’s side of the family, and she lived in Florida because her sister, Evelyn, moved down there with her husband, Bill.  They both retired early and bought a nice house with a pool in the back.  While the adults drank their toddies, the children played bartender by serving drinks, and otherwise swam away the afternoons.  Uncle Bill held watermelon-eating contests and gave each kid a penny for each of the seeds that we spit out onto his sidewalk.  We were so proud that we could earn up to a dollar just for spitting seeds.  

About a mile from Evelyn’s house was the Ocean Ranch, or the hotel that the Fraziers stayed at while in Pompano Beach.  When we weren’t at Aunt Evelyn’s, we spent our days building sandcastles, searching for seashells, playing shuffleboard, or taking the brand new canvas rafts into the ocean  When the kids felt adventurous, we walked down to the pier to watch the men fishing and cleaning their catch.  However, the best part of the hotel was that they provided a director to keep the children occupied and she came up with all sorts of games to play with us.  “I see something that you don’t see, and the color is …” was a great game or she challenged us to putt-putt golf.  The kids really wanted to win the competition because we were awarded with a free milkshake if we came in first place.  In addition, when the kids got hungry, there was a hotel restaurant on the premises.  The kids could order whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it.  We never got their fill of strawberry shakes and cheeseburgers.  It was pure heaven for our entire time on the beach. 

Our other vacation spot was Vermont.  Grandmother Strachan moved there to be closer to my Aunt Blair and her husband, Bob.  The kids spent their days playing with the farm animals and swimming in the pond.  Our cousin Heather showed us how to bareback ride sheep, cows, and horses.  In addition, Bob and Blair sponsored several family reunions there and my only memory of some of my extended family members, like Aunt Leonie and the whole Sander’s family, came from these reunions.  The place was full of characters: Jed who had a cool Jeep and who was a devoted bachelor, Blair’s friend Connie who invited the kids over and served us freshly made chocolate shakes, and old man Archie who worked the farm by driving the tractor used for bailing hay.

Vermont seemed to me to be the ideal place to spend our childhood because it had farms, forests, and family.  The best times were when we all sat out on the Hall’s front lawn and watched the cars drive.  The adults drank their cocktails and the kids had their cousins to play with.  There was much joy in Vermont, Minneapolis, and Florida and our vacations provided a respite from our daily life in Louisville.   

Robert Armbruster's Eulogy (November 25, 2019)

     On the day that we buried my father-in-law, my wife handled herself with such grace and composure that she was almost regal.  We arrived early at the funeral home to prepare ourselves for what we knew was going to be one of the hardest days of our lives.  Tracey decided that she alone would give the eulogy, without the help of a preacher, or even another family member, and she knocked it out of the park.
    “Bob Armbruster was a man of contradictions,” she began with what was surely going to be a tear jerker.  “He was the last founding member of the McMahan Fire Department,” and one of her earliest memories was watching her grandfather, or “Pops” as he was known to the other firefighters, smoking a cigar and rolling the coins that had been collected by McMahan for The Crusade for Children.  Meanwhile, there was a picture of her father, or “Bobby” as he was known throughout the firehouse, with a three year old Tracey slung over one shoulder, and a bucket full of coins for The Crusade in his hand.  This picture hung on the walls of the firehouse for years because it captured the spirit of the generosity of the time and money that the firemen had dedicated to the Crusade over the years.
      The contradiction comes from when Grandpa had cancer when he was still in his fifties and the firehouse gave him an award for his years of service.  Grandpa beat the cancer but thought that the firehouse was writing him off by giving him that reward, so he quit McMahan to begin thirty more years of service, this time he volunteered for the German American Club.  He still loved the firehouse, continuing to listen to the scanner at night and keeping firefighter memorabilia around the house, but he was too stubborn to go back to his old friends at McMahan.
    Another contradiction was that Grandpa was an extremely private person.  When his wife died he decided to continue to live by himself at their patio home.  Bob was set in his ways and didn’t like change, but when an ice storm hit Louisville and knocked out the power to his daughter’s house, he “opened his small home to my family of five.  We ended up staying for a whole week, and it was cramped in that little two bedroom home, but Dad never complained while his daughter and grandchildren lived with him and never brought up the incident again.”  It is with this spirit of generosity that Bob Armbruster will be remembered.
    One final contradiction was Bob’s complicated relationship with money.  According to Tracey, her father would drive twenty miles out of his way to find a gas station with lower prices so that he could save a couple of dollars to fill up his tank.  He did not like to spend money needlessly.  And yet, if a friend was in need and asked Bob for a dime, “My father would give his friend his last nickel.  And then he would ask four other people to give his friend a nickel so that he would have a quarter and would no longer be in need.”  Also, he gave his grandchildren a monetary gift at Christmas every year to ensure that they would not want for anything.  The money was spent on their education, their cars, vacations, and other things that they otherwise would not be able to afford.  Every time they bought something with Grandpa’s help, they were sure to say thank you to him, and it is those three grandchildren who are the legacy of Bob Armbruster.
    At the end of the eulogy, Tracey grabbed her father’s old fireman’s helmet from the pedestal that was situated next to the coffin, held it close to her heart, and allowed herself to take a moment to cry.
    After the funeral, an old firetruck led the procession to the cemetery.  Only it wasn’t just any firetruck.  Bob had written the grant which supplied the money for the firetruck, McMahan’s first, and it was commonly referred to as the old milk truck because it was painted white and it the volunteers used to serve ice cream out of it at picnics.  Grandpa was laid to rest next to his wife in a crypt which the two used to call their “condo for eternity.”  Situated next to them are their longtime friends, the Waldrons, and while they were alive the two couples used to joke that they saw the afterlife as one big long party together.  Grandpa was not a particularly religious man, so that thought that he could spend forever playing cards and enjoying the company of his wife and friends, is not a bad way to spend the rest of time.
   

Book 3 Chapter 7 Section 5:God, the Devil, and the Warden

         God, the Devil, and the Warden
          The greatest ordeal of Andy’s life, he claimed, occurred while his mother was being committed to the nursing home.  Andy knew that his mother had gone crazy, and that the nursing home staff was close to ejecting her from the facility and sending her to a psych hospital, but he was busy with his own problems.  He was on his way to talk to God and he wasn’t planning to come back from the visit.  He was sentenced to time in jail while his mother had been committed, and his crime was possession of marijuana.  It was while he was in jail that Andy decided that he was going on a hunger strike.  “Either I am going to find my purpose in this life, or I am going to die,” he said to himself.
            Andy didn't tell anyone about his hunger strike while he was incarcerated.  On the first day of the strike he was awakened by the guards who were ordered to take him to his Parole Board meeting.  They tried to feed him breakfast, but Andy refused, preferring to pace in his cell until transport came to get him.  The guards made him shower, dressed him, handcuffed him, and then escorted him to the meeting.  The Parole Board was friendly, but uncommitted towards him.  It was a quick meeting and when it was over the guards made him take off his civilian clothes and then re-dressed Andy in an anti-suicide smock, commonly referred to by the prisoners as a “turtle suit.”  He fought putting the suit on, so the guards tasered him.  As he was rolled into the suit, Andy thought that if he kept fasting then it would take about twenty days to become comatose.  If he could resist any nourishment, then in about forty days he would become a martyr.  Then, for reasons that had never been explained to him, the guards redressed Andy back into his civilian clothes and then put him on a bus.  He was being removed from the jail and he was on his way to prison.
           Prison might be a welcome relief.  After all, there was nothing that he wanted to eat and no one who he wanted to see.  There was no car that he wanted to own or any house that he could imagine living in.  He was done.  So why not have the government pay for his room and board while he stewed in prison.  If his hunger strike worked and he died in prison, Andy hoped that one of the lawyers in the family would sue for wrongful death.  He laughed at his own joke; suing a for-profit prison to take away their profit.  All that he had to do was to not eat for forty days.
          The act of starving yourself is deemed suicidal by the prison system and the warden responded to Andy’s suicidal tendencies by putting him in solitary confinement.  The warden refused his counselor’s request to send Andy to a psych facility by saying, “We do not pass along our problems to other units.”  Andy was left to starve himself in a small cell.  As the days went by and the fast continued, all Andy wanted to do was sleep. Meanwhile, his body began to wither from the lack of nourishment as it began to feed off itself.  After the first two weeks of the fast, when there is no fat left to burn, the body begins eating away at the muscles and vital organs for energy.  When this happened to Andy, he became delusional and he began to hallucinate.
          He had a dream where he was ushered into the darkness but saw light at the center of his field of vision.  As his eyes cleared, he could no longer see the dark, and he knew that he was in God’s presence, and the Almighty was angry with him.  “Why are you here?” God said in a tone that marked his disappointment in his acolyte.  “I left you in good stead.”  In return, Andy became testy with God.  He stood up, in his hallucination, and said, “I did what you told me to do.”  He was angry at God.  “I never asked you for anything!”  This was true.  In all his days in solitary confinement, and even in his years of trying to find his purpose in life, Andy prayed the rosary, but he didn’t ask for any favors.  God, wanting to end this altercation, stated “You stand accused of living a wasted life.”  Then, suddenly, from somewhere behind him, Andy heard Satan laughing, saying, “I told you that you should have put a comma there.”  It was a joke by Satan because there are no commas in Hebrew.  God laughed too, and said, “I got you,” and then a band of angels appeared to usher Andy out through the Pearly Gates.  He woke up in his cell, crying.
           Meanwhile, the warden decided that Andy’s case was beyond what his prison was equipped for and reversed his decision about keeping Andy in his prison.  Andy was ordered to be moved to the psychiatric hospital.  If he wouldn’t eat, then a tube would be inserted into his nose for forced feeding.  The guards put Andy in a strait jacket so that his arms were strapped down to his side.  Then they put an anklet on him and, at the end of the anklet, there was a wire that was attached to a taser, just in case Andy decided to get violent.  The other inmates looked at Andy, as he was being dragged from his cell to transport, with a mixture of fear and amazement.  Here was the half-starved crazy man that they had heard so much about, and he was literally being carried away by the guards.  The inmates gave him plenty of room to pass once they saw his scraggy beard, his arms strapped to his side, and a taser attached to his leg.  Andy looked like the prophet that he always wanted to be; his eyes burning as if they were on fire and his face racked with intensity.  In reality, however, no religious would be in a strait jacket and no prophet would be carried away by guards.
        And then Andy decided that his ordeal was over.  His intent was self-harm with the goal of killing himself.  But Andy had seen the face of God and that alone was enough for him to end his hunger strike after twenty-one days.  The driver of the bus that was to take Andy to the asylum found his prisoner sitting in the holding area eating the lunch that had been offered to him.  “Andy Clark?” said the driver who had to take role before putting the prisoners on the bus.  “That’s me,” said Andy, lifting his head from the plate.  He couldn’t use his arms to eat the sandwich because they were still strapped down in the straight jacket.  The driver was confused.  “It says here that you are on a hunger strike.”  Andy replied, “Was!  I was on a hunger strike but am not anymore.  Can I have that other sandwich if no one else is going to eat it?”  Starving himself was an act of pure defiance but Andy had thought that he had taken it about as far as he could.  He was a control freak and the ordeal would be over only when Andy said that it was over.
         After the hunger strike it took a couple of days before Andy could have a bowel movement, and when he did his shit had turned black; and that was about all that he had to show for his trip to crazy town and his showdown with God, the Devil, and the warden.

Finding Inner Peace.

Inner Peace

The movies do a good job of illustrating what it must be like to reach a moment of serendipity.  In “The Bridge at Toko Ri” William Holden braced himself for the upcoming battle by facing the wind and letting the breeze hit him hard while he was standing at the front of an aircraft carrier.  Kevin Costner let go of the reins of his horse and was galloping, with his eyes closed and long hair flying, in front of the enemy lines in “Dances with Wolves.”  In the movie “Deliverance,” and the book that it was based on, a man’s last thoughts as he was shooting the rapids of a backwoods river was, “I am free!”  These are just three examples of men reaching an epiphany, or a moment of peace, right before they thought that they were going to die.  Yet I am alive, and intend to remain so for a few more decades, so I need to find a way to achieve inner peace while I live.

Sometimes I step out of the front door of our school building after a long day spent in a dark and cold classroom; I’ll feel the sun on my face, and the breeze in my hair, and I’ll feel free.  It is a brief sensation, and I have to take a moment to acknowledge it, so that I can appreciate it.  Sometimes peace comes without effort, like when I am coasting down a huge hill on my bike, or running on a track.  At other times, I have to actively search for peace while letting my troubles wash around me. After closing my eyes, I work to block out any negative thoughts and memories, and live in the moment.  This moment has happened on vacation while sitting on top of the double decker bus in Times Square, or crossing the bridge to South Beach, or standing in front of the boat in Biscayne Bay, and by sitting on the bench at Wynnewood while the rest of the family walked around to look at the art.

Jack London once said, “You can’t wait for inspiration to come to you.  You have to hunt it down with a club.”  The same thing can be said for inner peace in that you have to go looking for it.  One of the ways that I force myself to slow down is to drive my car on extended road trips.  While in the car, I know that no matter what I do I won’t be able to get to my destination quickly, so I settle in for a long ride and allow my mind to wander.  The constant drone of the car propelling itself down the road can block out all distractions, and the vibrations that my vehicle emits have a calming effect.  To ensure that I am comfortable on a long ride I sit on a soft pillow, and then stuff a second pillow at the small of my back, next to my lumbar, to avoid back pain.  In effect, I become locked into position into my seat, just like the drivers at the Indianapolis 500.  I like to drive through the night because when it is dark out, and there is little traffic on the road, I can I work myself into a trance.  Before I know it, the hours have flown by and through concentrated thought; I have exhausted myself mentally and physically.  Finally, at the end of a long road trip, I park the car, and unbundle myself from my seat.  My whole body creaks and groans as I stretch while I get used to standing on my legs again.  I feel completely satisfied.

Crossword puzzles are a good way for me to slow myself down.  Everything in today’s society comes so fast and easy but there is no way to work crossword puzzles quickly.  I have to set aside an hour and a half for concentrated thought if I hope to finish one.  Meanwhile, just when I thought that I knew a lot of information on a variety of topics, working a crossword humbles me by reminding me of how much I don’t know.  They are a good tool for learning new things but, if I am to get anything out of it, I have to have the self-discipline to look up the words that I don’t know.  Also, I find it immensely satisfying to fill in all of the blocks of the puzzle.  I always use a red pen as a stark contrast to the black and white newspaper, so by the time that I am done the paper looks as though it has been bloodied from my efforts to finish the puzzle.  The intellectual challenge affords me the luxury of forgetting myself for a while.

  A permanent peace is impossible to maintain so I have to satisfy myself with a brief respite from the thoughts that constantly plague me.  A strenuous work out helps.  Alcohol can provide temporary relief. A long bike with Broadway musicals blaring into my earbuds can take me away.    The movies can distract me as well, but only if it a good one; if it is not then I cannot concentrate on the film and my mind goes back to whatever it was that had been troubling me.  Aside from these ideas, I’ll snatch a few moments of peace from where ever I can find it.  If I can’t find a way to rest my brain then I become impatient and my temper is likely to flare up, just like in the old days, and that wouldn’t be good for any of my relations with anyone.

To give up on inner peace is to give up on happiness.  It is worth the effort so I do things that I never thought that I was capable to calm myself down.  For example, I attend the ballet so that I can concentrate on the beauty of dance.  In the moment, the ballerinas represent the best of humanity and I admire them for the precision of their dance and their athleticism.  The plot or drama is unimportant to me as all I want to see are the dancers in their beautiful white dresses.  The pride in the faces of the individual dancers, and the synchronicity of the company when they dance as a group, can uplift my whole day and gives me something to reflect on for the following weeks.  Life can be bleak, and humanity is sometimes selfish, but to share some time in the same room with the best of us is well worth the effort.  

Inner peace has always been elusive for me; a goal to strive for but to never win permanently.  Yet to give up on inner peace is to give up on hope and happiness; to fall back on the self-destructive behaviors of my youth.  It is tempting to stoke the hot coals of my past, which are now dormant below the ash, and allow my old anxieties and insecurities to flame up.  But I refuse to take that step backwards so I continue to fight against depression and for happiness.  The struggle is worth the effort.  Before I can be a good teacher, a good father, and a good friend, I have to be at peace with myself and that is why inner peace is so important to me.

Book 3 Chapter 5 Section 1: A Boy and his Dog

             Book 3, Chapter 5, Section 1 "Twin Oaks Drive"

            “Stay!”  Jeff yelled at his dog, Sonya.  “We can’t start the game until I get on the other side of this fence.”  As long as Jeff could remember, he had played “Hide and Go Seek” with his dog.  There was an estate behind the row of houses, and across the street, from where the Frazier family lived.  The owners held a huge lot of land and, while Jeff was growing up, he and Sonya would go up the woods to explore the only forested area of their neighborhood.  As he became older, Jeff explored his way to the fence that bordered the acreage that belonged to the Humphreys with the secondary streets in the suburb.  Jeff held onto Sonya’s leash until he was ready and then he yelled, “GO!”  Flinging himself over the fence, so that Sonya could not follow him, Jeff searched for a good hiding spot.  Meanwhile, since the dog couldn’t jump over the five foot fence, she had to go all of the way around the barrier.  That run only took a minute or two but it gave Jeff the lead time needed to find a suitable hiding spot.  There was a church yard across the street and the open space allowed Jeff to run from Sonya and gave him a chance to duck under a picnic table or slide into some bushes.  The best hiding spot was up an old pine tree because the dog didn’t think to look up to find Jeff.  If she didn’t find her quarry within a few minutes then she would give up and start to make her way back home.  Once he saw his dog retreating, Jeff yelled, “SONYA!” and the dog straightened up, picked up her ears, and then resume the search.  Yelling always gave away Jeff’s position so, by that point, the game was up.  If Sonya didn’t find Jeff after the first clue then he would continue to yell at her every few minutes. Finally, after a few rounds, boy and dog tired of playing “Hide and Go Seek” and they retreated into the twenty acre woods for the long walk home.             

            They spent hours alone together in the woods.  It was just a few acres of undeveloped land but they imagined themselves to be in a forest.  Sonya and Jeff roamed the woods together, wasting away the carefree days of his boyhood.  When they became tired of retracing the foot paths of the wood then they explored the creek that the Humphrey’s land bordered on.  A heavily trafficked road stood threatening on the high ridge on the far side of the creek, and beyond it the boy and dog were no longer safe, so they never ventured beyond the creek.  Jeff followed the edge of the water until he reached the viaduct, which marked the furthest point of his travels, and he searched for minnows and turned over rocks to find crawdads along the way.  Only after hours of exploring, when the boy and his best friend became tired, did they make their way back to their house on Trinity Hills Lane.  Sometimes they were both caked with muck after trudging through the knee deep mud on the banks of the creek.  It was a simple job to take the garden hose to Sonya to wash her off, but it was not so quick and easy to get the mud off of Jeff’s shoes and pants.  They were permanently stained but Jeff wore that as a badge of honor, along with the stickers and the tics that attached themselves to him, as a demonstration of his toughness and independence. 

            Over time, Jeff came to memorize all parts of the woods; the best tress to climb, the foot trails, and where to hide in case there were any shadowy figures in the distance.  Wanting to claim a small part of the woods for his very own, he dug a big hole, large enough to lay down in and no one could see him until they were right on top of the hole.  His intention was to dig out enough dirt so that he could sit in the hole without anyone seeing him and then camouflage the whole area so he could completely disappear. In his innocence, Jeff thought that the mere act of digging a hole would give him ownership of a small part of the woods, but he lost interest in the project and, over time, the hole filled in until there was no trace of it any more. 

            Jeff’s best days growing up were the days that he spent away from the house and it wasn’t because of his love of nature.  Mostly, he was doing my best to just stay out of the way.  He didn’t have any close friends even then because he was a loner and an outsider.  Defensive and thin skinned around his peers, the boy could relax and lose himself in the solitary remoteness of the woods.  It was the only place where he could find peace in his pre-adolescence years and he felt free in the midst of overgrowth in the forest.  If anyone else from the neighborhood happened into the woods, Jeff hid behind a tree or some bushes so that he didn’t have to share his space with them.