Songs of Experience

Please read Jason’s post on our new Carrboro Athletics Club blog:

http://carrboroac.com/2007/07/31/accountability/

Bold.

I went under the house last month and found my childhood “memory box” swimming in mildew. After we four children moved out of my parents’ home, my mother gave us each a cardboard box filled with report cards, art work, school pictures, letters from camp, family photos, newspaper clippings, etc.. One per child. Jeff, Julie, Joan, John.

My box traveled with me from college to my first apartment, to Charlotte to teach, to Durham and a house full of runners, to a storage unit, then back to Chapel Hill for graduate school and more running … but I never actually opened this box marked, “childhood” until my first daughter was curious: “What were you like as a kid, Mommy?” I showed her my straight-A’s and told her that McDonald’s once gave out cheeseburgers for every A on a report card. I showed her the science fiction story I wrote in 4th grade titled, “Trapped in Lamaracus” where the main characters enter a machine with two doors marked “life” or “death.” (oooh, deep). I showed her a photo of my first love, Dale Busby, and lots and lots of pictures of my life-long love … running. I was sad to see the mold taking over this shot of me with Carlton Frazier – fastest 400m man in the state, 1980. Carlton was my idea of what a great runner should look like … unbelievably smooth, graceful, like a god. Carlton was talent; I was grit. He ran 47.36 and I never broke 60.

But I could be counted on to run my rock-steady 62 on the 2nd leg of the mile relay. My senior year we got 4th at state with Angela Boyce, me, Lisa Blakeney, and my other track hero, Sandra Carter. Here we are – fuzzy in the photo, but oh-so-clear in my memory – holding the stick for East Meck.

I wonder what these gals are up to now? Do they remember me? Are pictures of our relay team growing moldy in their basements? Lately, time is playing tricks on me. Last week I had the baton in my hand for a 400m at age 45 … some, 27 years after this photo was taken … and my 64-second relay split wasn’t that far-off my high school best … just two little seconds …yet almost a billion seconds have passed since the state meet in 1980 (851,472,000 seconds if I did the math right) and I feel like I am swimming in mildew.

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TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)

Yes, star crossed in pleasure the stream flows on by
Yes, as we’re sated in leisure, we watch it fly

And time waits for no one, and it won’t wait for me
And time waits for no one, and it won’t wait for me

Time can tear down a building or destroy a woman’s face
Hours are like diamonds, don’t let them waste

Time waits for no one, no favors has he
Time waits for no one, and he won’t wait for me

Men, they build towers to their passing yes, to their fame everlasting
Here he comes chopping and reaping, hear him laugh at their cheating

And time waits for no man, and it won’t wait for me
Yes, time waits for no one, and it won’t wait for me

Drink in your summer, gather your corn
The dreams of the night time will vanish by dawn

And time waits for no one, and it won’t wait for me
And time waits for no one, and it won’t wait for me

No no no, not for me….

I just returned from the USCAA National Corporate Cup Relays where I competed for Dave’s company, AT&T, in the “wife” category. You can run for a given company as an employee, a retiree, an alum, or – new this year – as a spouse. Because of an elaborate scoring system, and a labyrinthian age/sex classification method of handicapping, my 45 year-old female self was a bonafide ringer in this competition. heh heh.

On the first day, I ran the 400 leg of a DMR that had to have at least one woman, and someone over 40 – ME, on both counts. My earnest 63.8 second quarter didn’t really HELP us … but it didn’t hurt us either (which was the point of burying me on that leg). AT&T placed 3rd and we got to shake hands with celebrity presenter, Steve Scott, on the awards’ stand. Next up was a mile in some crazy distance relay, called the Pyramid Relay, with 5 people … mile, 800, 800, mile, 2-mile (?) … I think that’s the order. The best part of this race was that Dave and I were on the same team. I loved hearing my husband’s encouragement as I was struggling to hang on to a hard pace:

On day two, Dave and I both ran the 10k road race which is scored like a cross-country meet – lowest score wins. My first place in the 45 age group (thus, scoring just one point) packed as much punch as the #1 finisher overall. It’s actually harder to do well if you are young and fast. heh heh, again. 70+ year-old Ironman Roger is AT&T’s ringer on the roads. I loved being out there cruising around the reservoir early in the morning with just a few die-hard spectators … teammates offering support, between sips of coffee … knowing each of our efforts mattered more than our finish in the pecking order. I loved knowing the dance wasn’t dependent on the audience. AT&T needed my 1 point and I was happy to do my part.

“Did the dance stop because there were no witnesses?
No, the dance wasn’t dependent on an audience;
it had to be performed, not because of acclaim, but because of need.”

from 37 Days<

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with suggestions for what makes a good team. I am sure my talks will go fine, now that my brain is percolating with your ideas. One thing no one mentioned was how important knowing each other on a team is. This is important in all successful relationships. To know someone well, both parties need to be vulnerable: the knower and the knowee (not a real word, I “know”). I am currently in a quandary trying to get to know someone in the team of my family. I am trying to figure my middle daughter out, whom I jokingly refer to as “Silent Bob,” What is she thinking?

Her face is so open but she plays everything else close to the vest. Rosie is the poem I still can’t understand, but I will read and re-read her until I do.

Poet, Carl Sandburg writes:

“Once a little girl showed to a friend a poem she had written: ‘Why didn’t you make it longer?’ asked the friend. ‘I could have,’ she answered, ‘but then it wouldn’t have been a poem.’ She meant she left something in the air for the reader of the poem to linger over, as any of us do over a rose or a sunset or a face.”

I will be giving two talks this summer … one to a college XC team in High Point, NC and one to a boardroom of top clients for AT&T (where Dave works).
Both groups have given me carte blanche to speak on whatever I want, so I thought I’d ponder what makes a great team.

If anyone out there still reads this blog, please chime in … what do you think makes a great team?

(If I quote one of your ideas in my talks, I will give full credit!)

*

“As years pass and experience writes new records in our mind life, we go back to some works of art we rejected in the early days and find values we missed. Work, love, laughter, pain, death, put impressions on us as time passes, and we brood over what has happened, praying it may be an exalted brooding. Out of songs and scars and the mystery of personal development, we may get eyes that pick out intentions we had not seen before in people, in art, in books and poetry. Naturally, too, the reverse happens. What we register to at one period of life, what we find gay and full of fine nourishment at one time, we may find later has lost interest for us. A few masterpieces last across the years. We usually discard some. A few masterpieces are enough. Why this is so we do not know. For each individual his new acquisitions and old discards are different.” – Carl Sandburg

I just read an essay in the June 11, New Yorker magazine by Roger Angell (one of my favorite living authors) on summer movies. It has me thinking about good summer reads, so I dusted off my old copy of Nine Stories by JD Salinger – possibly the best collection of short stories EVER written – maybe even the best book ever. I realize it is a cliche to say one loves Salinger, but I do. And re-reading him as a mother, at age 45, is beyond magical. All the children in his stories are no longer the painful, pitiful, angst-ridden versions of the grown-up reader (me), but simply …beautifully, perfectly, innocently .. children.

My children, all children. I love them!

Once again, thank you, JD.