52 Weeks
It is the second Sunday in January, 2021, and I run a familiar path down a straight, narrow lane. On my right, loblolly pines reach up into the clear blue sky as the sun stabs at the darkness between the neat rows of trees. On my left, the green soccer fields are eager for use after the long pandemic winter. My gray dog runs alongside me, his nails clacking against the macadam.
I am forty-five minutes late when I run I past the place where it happened, 52 weeks ago today, the second Sunday in January, the day my son learned to fly.
“Dreams are for the young.”
Throughout my life, I always knew, and could only ever envision, two roles for my life: writer and father, not necessarily in that order. Some years ago, I confided this to a therapist. She asked me how I was going to earn a living. I said, “That part never worried me. I’m a hard worker. I can find a job.” She advised me that since writing wasn’t earning a living, I needed to find a new purpose.
To me, writing was never about money or earning a living. Writing is a creative endeavor that can earn money, but doesn’t guarantee it. However, I struggled with this idea of a purpose. It had been years since my book was published, and the sequel lay still and incomplete in my head. Maybe this was a sign. Maybe it was time to move on from youthful dreams.
A little voice in my head started talking. “Get a job,” it said. “Dreams are for the young.”
I started working full time. I focused on my family, my kids, my marriage, my home. In my free time, I volunteered in the community. Writing took a back seat to the rest of my life.
At the end of every day, my energy was sapped. Any writing I did was confined to my journal, and to a little monthly copywriting work. “One day,” I said to myself, “when I have time…” How many great works have been lost to that cop-out?
Then came the second Sunday in January, 2020. Having already given up on one dream, being a parent was all I had left. When my son flew over the top of that gold minivan, everything about my life fell apart.
“I was a failure.”
As a parent, you have one job, really. On the days when parenting is at its worst, when the kids are most whiny, when you’ve lost your temper over spilled milk, when they have cried and you have cried, and there are hugs, and when the sun sets you fall into a chair and don’t want to move, and you ask your ten-year-old to make you a drink — on those days, you go to sleep knowing, at least, that your children have survived another day. You’ve accomplished the one job of every parent: keep the kids safe.
In my head I knew there was nothing I could have done to prevent it from happening. The boy, the bike, the crunch, the cry. It was out of my control.
But still, on that Sunday, 52 weeks ago, I felt like a failure. I was a failure at writing, and now I was a failure at parenting.
I have never been one to give up. I’ve run for 33 hours, have completed 16 marathons, four 100-mile races, and innumerable other races. In every race I’ve ever run, there has come a moment when I felt like I couldn’t go on. When I felt like taking even one more step was too much to handle, when I was ready to throw in the towel and call it quits. In the moment, it felt like the darkness would envelop me, swallow me. There have been times when I wanted the darkness to swallow me.
And in every instance I have soldiered on. Persevered. I take time, I recover, and then I get to my feet and I go on. It’s what we all do, in one way or another, whether we like it or not. We go on.
Time is a salve. Bones heal. Muscles regain their strength. The soul moves beyond the tragedy and the universe opens a door. Time offers palliation, perspective, and providence.
The accident may have been a blessing, in a strange, surreal way. My son was immobilized in a cast with a broken leg, and we both stayed home, he to heal his leg, me to heal my soul. We learned how to play video games together. We built Lego projects, painted, and watched a lot of television. I slowed down. I processed. I wrote about the accident, and then I stopped writing. Not to give up on the dream, but to give myself the space to find the dream again.
Six weeks after the accident, he went back to school, I went back to work, and life seemed to be returning to normal.
Two weeks later, the world came to a screeching halt. Everyone — everyone — went home, and those weeks my son and I spent watching TV and playing video games became a warm-up for the rest of 2020.
It took me some time to realize that I did not fail my son 52 weeks ago. What happened to him was out of my control, just as what happened to the world was out of my control. It turns out that parenting is not about what harm you can prevent befalling your children. Parenting is about helping them up when the gold minivans of life knock them down.
Slowly, I have found my way back to writing. Words are returning. Youthful dreams are not just for the young; they are for all ages. If anything, as I get older, I have come to realize that dreams are more important than ever, and that one of my jobs as a parent is to be the example for my son, to show him that he can do anything he sets his mind to. He only has to remember to never give up.
