Ellie's cancer world has often pinned my head sideways into the wall and held it there just painfully long enough to know fear can be ever present if it is allowed to do so. My senses have hardened as a result and this plight shows itself in an overwhelming fashion that I must tackle these Me vs the World challenges at every turn on many days. Even now, 16 months off treatment, where her blood work has become so routinely good that we don't even see the oncologist or nurse practitioner regularly. They say, "oh, we'll call you if we see anything" Great. Please do that. I won't be waiting by the phone. Actually NO. Don't call. Don't ever call. We're good now. Right?! Don't call. Let me keep on this path. Don't call.
I still feel like there is a burden to bear of a battle to be had somewhere and perhaps every where on a daily basis. I don't know if that is a bad thing. It could be. The World wins a lot and it tires me totally and completely on some days. I have accepted it is what it is. I fight the good fight in any given soccer game from my uncomfy stance on the sideline rocking back and forth shifting my weight between each foot for equal increments of time. Game results inevitably turn into a virtual inner soliloquy of "If we could have just...what if we tried to.....If we hadn't done this....next time we without a doubt will have to..." The transcript of a match will ultimately lead to the next step despite the World playing a bit unfair sometimes. I hate losing. The World's dominant presence in the Bay Area real estate market is an unfortunate example. We sold our condo in a lightning quick 11 days last September and began what is now a house hunt entering its seventh month. Complete pest infested, tear down homes are above 900K. Asking prices are a sly game to generate interest that incite unreal bidding wars. Our fifth house of choice to put an offer in on during our 7 month journey (just last week) garnered 30 other offers of which we were found to be 6th by price....and the home sold for 400K over asking. HOLY SH*T. The World likes to win. (Look Ma! We made the Top Ten!!! Whooooo.....yes, I smell sarcasm there too) Ahhhhhh, I want what any father wants I suppose. 3 Bed/2 Bath and a deserved space where T & E can grow up. I KNOW, I KNOW. He deserves it as much as I do, I know that. I do wonder if he fears the phone ringing like I do...and if he has no idea what I am talking about, perhaps he could back off on his last 40K and let me have the half fixer upper in the quiet neighborhood at my max price?! But I also am fully aware that's not likely his path. We survived 3 years of chemotherapy, we can survive a 7th month of house hunting, perhaps an 8th too. :) We crave 'easy' but I think we thrive more with hard. Or at least shape our next chosen path from picking up the pieces.
One of the first people I met when I moved to the Bay Area in 1998 after my days at UCLA were complete was a fellow soccer coach named Wes Marks. After our first season of coaching teams in different age groups, we were asked to do a team together the following spring and then never really separated after that. He was a neighborhood guy. Here I was trying to get my career going and earn money for ME because I was so emphatic on how nice it was to NOT be living off of $600 per month in college (ok, real talk now....I still cherish my budget is a wee bit higher now) and Wes just kept talking about making an impact for the sake of the community. He opened a local pizza place where teams could hang their pictures on the wall, play a couple games of pinball, and run around the joint while still in full regalia of shin guards, soccer cleats, and half muddy socks. He saw us a stewards tasked with not only building that environment with our team but enriching it. Our crowning moment.....was a game for the ages. After 150+ High School Varsity soccer victories in 17 years and a handful of combined CIF based league/section titles wedged in there somewhere, I will tell you unequivocally, this little U14 AYSO tournament game will forever be a top career highlight. My path from college kid to aspiring adult went through the Miller School field that day.
It was a 0-0 game at half. Every kid had to play three quarters, per rules. Fine, we got this. We sacrificed our third quarter lineup in hopes we could hold them off and then drop the proverbial hammer in the 4th with the return of several key players from their quarter off. (Since when do we play quarters in soccer anyways???? What?!?! oh nevermind...) Our twin towers, can't for the life of me remember their last names, but first names were Henry and Ryan. Both kids found the net with dramatic goals in the game's final 10 minutes of play. The final whistle sounded and Parents started leaping into the air like Mary Lou had just hit a perfect 10 for the first time in history. Babies were being thrown and here I had thought the 1996 UCLA double OT victory against u$c was the greatest game of my life to date?! Kidding about the babies, of course, but yes in that moment, Wes and I were part of something very special. I remember that like it were yesterday, now 15 years later.
After the game was over, Wes and I did what any championship coaches do to celebrate....we went to the pub. HA! He was never much of a touchy feely kinda guy around me. That's fine, of course, because men don't hug.....or so was the case when I was 23. We had our pint and went over the play by play still in disbelief of how it played out. He told me the architecture of the substitution plan was all me. Perhaps, but he was the firm yet nurturing voice that let the weaker players feel good about their contribution while they sat the fourth quarter. As we left the pub, we said good bye and he gave me a hug. How did I get here? I don't know but that day was a good day.
We would go silent with one another over the summers in between seasons. I was working and coaching at higher levels and he had his restaurant. He joined me for a couple years during my first high school Varsity stint at Cupertino in 2002 but it was getting tougher to hang out with life getting busier. In July of 2004, he called me on the phone while I was driving south on Hwy 280 through Sunnyvale and Cupertino. We hadn't spoken in a while. I wanted to know if he was up for returning for a fourth season next winter, it was time to start getting some planning going, etc. We talked business for a few seconds, but as is my silly custom, I was rushing off to some evening meeting. We agreed to meet the next day for lunch and chat some more about the coaching stuff. He was always unsure if he wanted to do another season. He'd been saying it for the past three years....haha....I just needed to convince him. We'd talk tomorrow. I was a split second from hanging up the phone and he says "Well wait a minute..." I was 100 yards from the De Anza Blvd Exit, where the Apple Computer empire stands today. "How are you? I mean apart from soccer?" Caught me a bit off guard. The guy who doesn't like to hug. I'm good, Wes. Things are going really well. How are YOU? Are you still enjoying yourself? He told me the restaurant way of life might be ending soon. He was possibly ready for something else and gave me a 90 second version of his plan to buy some land outside of California. We would talk tomorrow, we were going to meet for lunch.
Tomorrow came and I wish to God it never had. Why did I not stay on the phone longer? Screw the stupid meeting. No, unfortunately, the phone rang the next day. I was in my company's windowless lab as I had been for five years to that point working at my liquid chromatograph generating data for who knows what reason. Certainly nothing important. The caller asked if I had heard or seen Wes today. No, I am meeting him later for lunch. Something's happened. What? WHAT? I call his cell phone. No answer. I head to his restaurant about as fast as I had driven in my life. My path was starting to change. There is a note on the door. Call his brother. I drove to the post office parking lot nearby, parked and called. Hey, its Jeff, where's Wes....we are supposed to have lunch? Heart defect, aortic tear, aneurysm, blah blah blah. I don't remember anything after those first few words. No No No NO NO NO NO. Wes was gone. 34 years old and gone. How did I get here?
7 months later during the subsequent season at Cupertino HS, we won the first league title for the school's soccer program in 16 years. One particular game against Los Altos at our field was late in the season. It wasn't a title deciding game but it typified the magic in the atmosphere that year. We were tied 1-1 and pushing for a win against a team who was much better than us that day. A driven ball from my midfielder 45 yards out caught a gust of wind, sailed over the keeper's head, dipped and then bounced into the goal to seal a very unlikely 2-1 win in the last few minutes. My good friend was there that day and it was time for me to move on. I said goodbye to my 5 year pharmaceutical startup company job two months later, put my acceptance letters to Stanford and Univ of North Carolina Teaching Master's programs side by side and convinced my girlfriend Polly it was time to try something new and head east for an adventure. And she and I officially started our new path of taking on the World together.
We celebrated our 8th Wedding Anniversary last weekend with a getaway of sorts over the hill to Half Moon Bay. A driving rainstorm the entire time we were there, ironically alot like our wedding day in 2007 on the top of Nob Hill in the city. That's good luck, right?! The World may win more than we do, but I've never stopped being thankful for the path that took me to her and the continued struggles we face with the privilege of doing it together. I owe much of that to the lessons Wes taught me. Thank you, my friend. There aren't many weeks that go by where I don't think of how you helped bring me to this path today.
And I've learned a restless heart is not to be ignored. In Mass a couple weeks ago, I listened to a Seminarian tell us the story of how he gave up all his worldly possessions, left his girlfriend, and committed himself to the priesthood....all because he could not escape a restless heart. As if the dude was put in that church on that very day just for me to hear those very words. No no, 'm not heading to the cloth. But it eases the tension and fear of an unknown tomorrow. You want to pin my head against the wall and hold it there, you go ahead and try. Tell me I can't do it. Go ahead.
I'm still really at that bus stop, going somewhere. The music blaring in my ears makes the surroundings tolerable. We are products of choices we make on the paths we know not how we got on in the first place.....except perhaps from a simple but persistent restless heartbeat.
Ellie is all smiles right now. She and Timmy ride horses twice a week, play beginning keyboard, shoot baskets outside, still have these elaborate schemes with dolls and pretend trips to various locations around the house. Timmy puts full lego sets for 10 year olds together entirely on his own. The little dude is a 5 year old engineering genius....who fancies himself most when given the opportunity to dress up in his construction worker outfit, goggle and all. Tomorrow, the three of us will venture to the soccer field and start their next five week long Sunday clinics. I will say nothing but sit and watch them work with their own coaches. I'm bringing my ipod and earbuds and I will ponder post cancer treatment parent life - How did I get here? We're gonna get that house....and I'm going to keep trying to convince myself life's path is smoother when the phone is unplugged altogether. Let's take a chance. Let's do it.
#love4ellie
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P.S. Polly and I finally brought ourselves to watch the Series Finale on demand of our beloved show "Parenthood" tonight, knowing full well it would cause some tears. And it did. The various plots over six seasons have had a funny way of intertwining with our own lives. Go Figure. In the end tonight, the dichotomy of life and death found its way to be present for the Braverman Family as they uneasily said goodbye to their patriarch (Carig T Nelson's character) while breathing fresh air on a baseball field with the entire family together, supposedly in San Francisco. In the midst of the final couple music montages was a Sara Watkins song that spoke to me.
For You, Wes.
"You and Me"
by Sara Watkins
I remember the night
I remember the sound
I remember the light
When the moon came
'round
The night flowers
bloomed
The air so sweet
I remember you
I remember me
Central Valley
sunshine
Run out of town
Make your head all
funny
So you stick around
Dusty roads
Make dirty feet
I remember you
I remember me
I remember the night
I remember the sound
I remember the light
When the moon came
'round
The night flowers
bloomed
The air so sweet
I remember you
I remember me
Wish I knew you now
Like I knew you then
For hours I just sit
at your feet
And listen
When I want
To feel free
I remember you
I remember me
I remember the night
I remember the sound
I remember the light
When the moon came
'round
The night flowers
bloomed
The air so sweet
I remember you
I remember me
