Author: Josh

We all slept in. My eyes were the first to pop open at 7:00 a.m. I’m in the throes of training for the NYC Marathon, so I needed to get some miles in. I got dressed and snuck out for a run. I hit a route that I was somewhat familiar with, which included the Carriage Trail and some of downtown Charleston. I got back to our rental house, showered, and sat on the back patio with my laptop, listened to the sad songs that a dad listens to when he’s soon going to be leaving his firstborn daughter 1,300 miles away for college. I also jotted down some things that I need to talk to her about at some point before we say our goodbyes.

It’s so hard to write those notes. They weren’t as profound as I’d wanted them to be. But they are some things that I need to tell her. I had to remind myself that I’ll still be able to talk to her, so if there’s ever any advice, wisdom, or cheesy dad jokes that need imparting, I’ll still be able to do that. Maybe they won’t be able to occur in person, but that’s okay. I’ve learned that life is rarely scripted.

Elise had to work. We didn’t get out of the house until almost 2:00 p.m. We’d yet to go to a grocery store so our in-house sustenance consisted of a couple bananas, a peach, and whatever painfully sour candies the girls had procured at Buc-ee’s during our travels. We were all hangry at this point. Elise and Maly were at one of those mother-daughter stressed-out impasses regarding the logistics and economics of maximizing a 20% school supply discount at Target.

We tried to go to the local pizza joint in South Hills but they’d already closed for the lunch serving. We decided to drive over to the Southridge shopping area so we’d be in proximity of Target and other big box stores and find something to eat. Statistics have proven that four hangry people can’t decide on where to eat, so we went to Taco Bell.

Then we spent a few hours and a few hundred dollars between Target and Hobby Lobby. Ordinarily I’d be opinionated and crotchety about Hobby Lobby already having Christmas decorations out in mid-August, but on this occasion I found it very comforting. Mara and I found ourselves separated together and we got ourselves caught up in figuring out what kinds of candies we wanted to make for Christmas this year while trying to remember the flavors of taffy we’d made last year. We got excited about the idea of also making chocolates. And we took turns smelling the fall-scented candles. Scents like “Crimson Leaves” and “Buttery Pumpkin” and “Spiced Cider.”

We drove back to our rental house to get some rest. Everyone went to their respective places in the house. The next thing I remember, I was waking up on the couch and hour and a half later and my mouth was dried open. I had enough time to get up, put my shoes on, shake my brain back to consciousness and then we piled into the rental van to go meet the other families for dinner at Olive Garden. The girls decided on Olive Garden because we were a big party and we all wanted to be able to sit together.

Anika and Caitlyn are sophomore transfers and roomates. Maly and Jazz are incoming freshman roommates. All four girls are on the lacrosse team. Anika is from Rochester. The other three girls are Texans. Anika belongs to Dave and Liz. Caitlyn belongs to Tim. Jazz belongs to Bridget. We’ve all known each other through previous lacrosse games and tournaments or from orientation weekend three weeks ago. We’ve all become fast friends.

Dinner was fun and nice. It’s good to have Dave and Tim. This isn’t their first rodeo, so they’ve helped in providing me with some girl dad advice, confidence, and reassurance.

We got home late. Elise did a few loads of laundry. Maly and I sat at the dining room table and did our respective things on our respective laptops. I don’t remember what I was doing. Maly was already doing college stuff. She was in her zone; like she was already on her own, taking care of things that need to be taken care of.

Elise, Mara and I found ourselves in the basement, playing foosball on the table with two missing rods. We made it work though.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was just Elise, Mara, and me down there playing together. And I guess that’s how it’s going to be for a while. There was a lot of laughing, and that was reassuring.

Day 2 started in Memphis. Hotel breakfast of eggs and sausage from chafing dishes, and make-your-own waffles.

We hit the road around 9:00 a.m. and contended with some decent rain for the first hour, and more contending with the semis. The damn semis. One in the right lane is going 58 miles per hour. The one behind it decides to pass at 59 miles per hour. It’s an exercise in waiting on semis to pass each other to clear the left lane.

We made it to Nashville at 12:30 p.m. We drove through the Bellmont University and Vanderbilt campuses, a quick bite at Hattie B’s Hot Chicken, and then Elise, Mara and I did a quick tour of the perimeter of the Parthenon. At that point the girls were tapped out, so Elise and I had to stop and check out the outside of Tennessee’s capitol building. Then we had to go see the Grand Old Opry. I’d say not much of tourist spot unless you’re actually going to the Grand Old Opry. One last stop at the local used sports outfitter to get an extra lacrosse stick for Maly.

Then we were off again. North on 65 up into Kentucky through Bowling Green and a stop at Buc-ee’s in Smiths Grove because the kids have to stop anytime there’s a Buc-ee’s. The landscape wasn’t much unlike all of Arkansas and most of Tennessee until we hooked it east onto the Bluegrass Parkway in Elizabethtown. I’ve now been through the majority of the states in our nation and Kentucky has the most beautiful farm and ranch lands in my opinion. Rolling hills, that Kentucky bluegrass, huge horse ranches with beautiful homes, acreage, and fences. We made it to Lexington at dusk and stopped to get gas and Elise and I traded off piloting. Then it was mostly dark, quiet and fast highway miles through eastern Kentucky and into West Virginia. We could barely make out the silhouettes of the Appalachian range.

We didn’t get to Charleston until around 11:00 p.m. and it was quick to bed for everyone. I think Elise and I were a little too road weary to have our emotions from having made it to our final destination take their toll.

We made it though. Relatively uneventful and unscathed by the road. I neglected to look at the tripometer when we got out of our rental van. I think we hit 1,350 miles with 24 hours of driving time. That included a few hours and quite some miles in Nashville.

We’re in Memphis. The goal was Nashville, but we didn’t leave the house until after noon yesterday. No one was in a hurry. We were all avoiding the inevitable.

We’re on the roadtrip, a rental van packed to the gils, to take Maly to Charleston West Virginia to start college. Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia. School starts on August 19th. Our plan was always to leave on August 13th. I’ve been dreading August 13th as much as my own death. Two days to make the drive. We’d arrive on Wednesday. We’d have Thursday to ourselves to do whatever we wanted to do. Probably shop for things Maly might need or want for school. Friday is the day we move her into her dorm room.

Our flight home is very early on Sunday morning. She begins her college career at 9:00 a.m. on Monday morning. We’ll hug and kiss her and wish her all the best on Saturday night. It’s a parent’s nightmare that I guess had always been a dark spot in my brain since I became a parent, but never formulated a plan of how I would deal with it. I still don’t have a plan. I know there will be tears. A lot of them. There have already been a lot of them. There are right now as I write this.

We were rushed but in no hurry Tuesday morning. Maly’s friends Hanna and Lydia came over early Tuesday to say their goodbyes. Hanna came over to say goodbye again. I’d gone for a run early. I had my share moments getting choked up. I kept running. It kept my mind on task. I got home and decided to water the lawn one last time before we’d be gone for a week. I was drenched in sweat and figured I’d take care of the yard before getting showered and cleaned up to start our road trip. I remember the flood of thoughts. The one that made 80 million daggers drive through my heart was this was the last morning my baby is going to wake up in her bed in this house. In the room that’s been hers since we brought her home from the hospital 6,573 days ago. I threw the water house down and the tears and ugly cried ensued. I quietly stormed into the house at 7 a.m. and went straight to Maly’s room. I silently pushed open her door, leaned against her closet wall and watched her sleep. Like I’d done a thousand times before, especially when she was a baby.

The memories flooded.

It was a tough morning. We were all up and about, going about our separate agendas to get ready. Elise was packing her things, Maly’s college things, and handling the logistics of our friend taking care of our animals, and pretty much all of the other home and family things. I cleaned. And hid and cried between my self-assigned cleaning duties.

I spent some time lying in bed with her and we talked. I recounted the stories of when she learned to ride a scooter. And how we used to go get the mail together every day. When she learned to ride her bike. All the miles we put on the sidewalk racing Plasma Cars down our street. I rendered advice on staying on top of her responsibilities as school. Chipping away and not letting things pile up or getting behind. And making sure she talked to her professors. All things she already knows and has been successful in doing. As I think back on it now, I wasn’t really giving her advice, but admiring and acknowledging how well she’s done in her young adult life already. Reminding her that she’s on the right path.

I measured her one last time in the garage. The same spot on the piece of baseboard that I screwed into the garage wall when she was 3-years-old. Back and heels against the the board. I drew the line. She and I looked at it and she found it baffling how much she’d grown since she started middle school. I put my hand with the pencil in it on top of her head and marked the spot. I used the t-square to draw the straight line. The same way I’ve done it for 15 years. I marked it with “8/13/24.” This day I’ve been dreading.

The inevitable finally came around noon and we found ourselves taking the last of the things that were coming with us out to the rental van that was parked facing the street on our driveway. I stood in the dining room and watched as Maly said goodbye to Blue in the office. That’s when I saw and heard that she was crying. It was hard. So damn hard. That scene is etched into my mind now. Selfishly I’m happy that I have that memory etched into my mind. It’s from a scene in the office where I spend most of my daylight hours during the work week. Right behind my office chair, and right where Blue rests where she spends most of her daylight hours during the work week.

The first day of the road trip was relatively uneventful. I-35 to south of Dallas. 20 up to 30, over Lake Ray Hubbard and east onward through Sulphur Springs, Mt. Pleasant, and then Texarkana. All of 30 through Arkansas was mostly a blur other than the semis and change in landscape. The tall pine trees. I love the tall pine trees.

We stopped in Little Rock for dinner at Flyway Brewing. We shared two baked pretzels, the Flyway pickle plate, and gumbo cheese fries. Elise had a beer. The girls and I had the root beer that they make in-house.

Two more hours on the road and we made it into Memphis. We checked in to the Country Inn & Suites and it reminded me of all of the hotels at which we’d stay for lacrosse tournaments. More memories. Things of the past that I probably should’ve reveled more in when they were happening.

The memory that I’ll always cherish though, and I’m so glad I put my book down and reveled in this one. Elise and me in our bed. The girls in theirs next to us. Elise had the TV off and told the girls put their phones away. Mara turned on her phone’s flashlight and started making shadow puppets on the ceiling. I turned on my watch’s flashlight and joined in the shadow puppet show. We were horrible with our shadow puppets, but we all took our turns.

Our shadow puppet show probably lasted only 15 minutes, but those were 15 damn good minutes. To have all of us be together. To hear all of my girls laughing. As much as my heart is breaking, my heart is so full.

I’ve been noodling over building some kind of water feature in the backyard for a lot of years now. Since I had a couple weeks off before starting a new job, I figured now was about as good a time as any to finally tackle this project.

It started off with a lot of design research and figuring out where I wanted to put the thing. A backyard water feature can quickly start taking up a lot of real estate. It was when I stumbled across a YouTube video of this square concrete bubbler design when I really became motivated.

I was ready to spend many hundreds of dollars to make a fairly rudimentary outside water feature. My total damage was $109.88, and that included everything. I used nothing that was lying around the house or the garage.

I admittedly got a little eager and tried transporting the fountain before it was fully cured. I tried transporting it from the garage to the backyard on a kids scooter. It fell at cracked at two corners. I was able to set it upright and it’s functional, but I don’t think it’s long for this world as I’ll have to move it for any cleaning and maintenance.

Today she graduates from high school. I don’t know why but I’ve been a bit of a wreck in my head and heart for the past couple weeks. It’s a time to be happy and celebrate for her, but I greedily want time to pause and allow me to stay an arms length away.

A chapter in her life is done. Soon a new chapter will begin.

I took this photo of her five short years ago when the four of us were on Mt. Ranier. In usual form she and I were up ahead. She was ahead of me, unaware of what was before her. I knew it when I took this photo that it would soon represent her life. She’d be going off, on her own, into some vast unknown.

Part of me quietly hoped that day would never come. But I knew it would. I still hope that I’ll hear her say, “Cool! Dad, come look at this!” I might not. But I really hope I do.

The Bowie Women’s Lacrosse team had their last game late on Wednesday night against Dripping Springs. The girls lost 13-3, but they showed up and played with a vengeance. They all looked and played really well. They played like a team. It just wasn’t in the cards for a win.

This was also the last game as high school athletes for Maly, Ava, Bianca, Charlotte, Liv, and Nadia.

It’s been a wild and unexpected ride. For Maly it’s been tough because she was part of the “rebuilding” of the high school girls lacrosse program. When she started playing in 7th grade, the high school teams were dominating the league. She started high school during COVID and just filling the roster was a daunting task. Bowie never had a winning season during her high school lacrosse career. She played varsity all four years, was captain her junior year, led the team in most stats, and definitely wins for most yellow cards.

It’s been exciting to watch and I’m beyond proud of her for her years as a Lady Bulldawg lacrosse midfielder. Next we’ll get to watch her soar as a Golden Eagle.

I’ll often say or write things like “I mainly run for my mental health” or “I’ll think about everything and nothing when I’m running.”

I do run for my mental health. It’s my “me” time. I don’t think I can quantify the mental health benefits other than I haven’t killed anyone or myself (not that I’ve been to that point), I’m generally happy, and I can take life’s lumps.

I’ve decided that the whole “I think about everything and nothing” is a misnomer. Maybe even a bit of lie that I’ve been telling myself and others to convince us all that I’ll enter some kind of flow state of meditative introspection where I deeply ponder and find solutions to all of my problems and experience the ascension that comes from learning my singular purpose.

However, in coming to this conclusion, I realized that I do, in fact, think about everything and nothing, and experience that ascension. I’ve thought about that misnomer and how, more often than not, I’m thinking more about the “nothing.” Not once have I come back from a run and have had life all figured out. Running hasn’t directly taught or inspired me to be “successful,” or a better husband, father, friend, or human. I can’t remember a time while out on a run that I solved a specific problem, be it with a relationship or something at work. Sometimes I’ll set out on a run with a very specific problem in mind, with the hope and thought that the solution will come to me after I get some oxygen and a jolt of endorphins sent to my brain. If I’m being honest, it just doesn’t happen.

What running teaches me is to survive. To live in the moment. Right now. Every foot strike. Ten feet ahead. One minute ahead. One mile ahead. Three hours ahead. 20 miles ahead, and everything in between, in fleeting but extremely conscious and aware moments. What I’ve realized is that I do enter into a flow state. But I’m not focused on or solving family or financial or social or work problems. I’m focused on right here, right now. Every stride could be met with a misstep.

I thought about going on and on and writing about using all five senses. About how I’ll often hear rustling in the woods if I’m out on the trails, and I experience a heightened sense of awareness because that noise could be a rattlesnake, or a mentally unstable homeless person strung out on meth who’s wielding a machete, or how it’s usually just a squirrel.

I guess my whole point is that I do think about everything and nothing. Everything is right now, in this very moment. And it has nothing to do what happened a mile back or five ahead. Running imitates life.

This past Sunday I raced the 47th annual Austin American-Statesman Capitol 10k. The Cap10k is the largest 10k in Texas, and one of the largest in the nation. The Cap10k holds a place in my heart for a couple reasons. 1) it’s the hometown race and 2) in 2014, the year after I’d started running, it was going to be my first race.

I’d only run Cap10k once before in 2016. Since then, I’d gotten into marathons and half marathons, and often times, the Boston Marathon was the same weekend as the Cap10k and we’d be up in Boston. In 2019 the Cap10k was canceled because of an amazing thunderstorm that rolled in that morning. I was ready to race that morning, so I ran my own Cap30k around the neighborhood in the thunderstorm. The 2020 and 2021 races were canceled because of COVID.

I qualified for this year’s Boston Marathon my a large margin, but we’re not going to Boston this week because prom is on Saturday, and Maly’s 18th birthday is on Marathon Monday. So I decided I’d sign up for our hometown 10k this year. I didn’t write out a training plan for myself for the race, but I trained for it. I did some hill workouts, and a lot of interval workouts; some on my own, and some with the Run Texas Track Club. I threw in a hard tempo late in the block to see if I could sustain a pace that might bring a sub-37-minute time.

I changed my race plan to sub-38 the week of the race, thinking that goal should be achievable, and if I could get somewhere around 37:30, that could probably get me a spot on the podium in my age division.

I was wrong. I was basing my 37:30 on the two years’ prior results. My age division showed up this year and dropped the hammer. I knew who two of my competitors were, and we were all lined up at the very front, and I tried to stay tucked in behind them when the gun went off, but they charged strong up the hills and I lost sight of them both before the 5k split. I held out hope though, thinking they might be first and second, and I could secure a 3rd place spot, but there were two other guys in the field that were up ahead and put me in 5th place.

It was fun race. Everyone charged out hot in the first mile. I knew I couldn’t keep that pace, so I dialed it back but stayed strong and settled into my race pace when the hills hit us after the first mile. I was damn near gassed at mile 4, but knew I had a flat remainder of the course, and there was no one near me, and I didn’t want anyone to pass me that late in the race, so I just gutted it out and told myself to hang on for 12 more minutes.

I PR’d the 10k in 37:17 (previous PR of 37:22).

I had a bit of a moment on Sunday afternoon. But first, a confession. I think the girls are old enough now to know that I am the Easter Bunny.

For the past 15 years the girls have gotten up and gone to church on Easter morning. This year they went to Easter vigil on Saturday night. It was my understanding that I was to plant my butt on the couch, watch Netflix, and pack little plastic eggs with candy. And I did a damn good job of doing just that.

I woke up early on Easter morning. The girls were all sleeping. I don’t recall what all I did, but 10:30 crept up and the girls were all finally dragging out of bed. I thought maybe they were going to go to church at 11. That’s when I learned that they weren’t going to church on Easter. They’d already done the church stuff at the Saturday night vigil.

And no eggs had been hidden. It was a break in the 15 year tradition for Maly, and the 9 year tradition for Mara.

Maly had to go to work at 1 p.m. So I snuck out and hid eggs for Mara during broad daylight, while she’s camped out on her phone in the living room. When I was done hiding them, she was able to hunt for Easter eggs.

And then I went out and hid a bunch more eggs for Maly for her to hunt when she got home from work that evening.

And that’s when I had my bit of a moment. I was by myself in the backyard. It was quiet. It was peaceful. And then it just hit me. This was going to be our last Easter with Maly living at the house.

I wouldn’t say Easter’s a huge deal or cause for much celebration in our house. It’s a tradition though. And it’s a sign of spring here. Things are blooming and everything is new and green. And Maly was born the day before Easter in 2006.

She made me a dad. She made me the Easter Bunny.

So I had my moment. I stifled it a bit, but I didn’t hide it. I lost a little spring in my step as I hid the last of the eggs. It’s just sad coming to terms with there being a lot more “lasts” in life nowadays.

“Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that’s impossible, but it’s too bad anyway.”

– Holden Caulfield

Bowie vs. LASA varsity lacrosse. It was a tough and close game the whole night, but the girls maintained the advantage for most of the game, and came out ahead with an 11-10 victory.