Running with Dad

Part 1:  Running (an essay I wrote in college)

The loudest noise is the sound of my own breathing. I kick against the rocks in my way. 

“There’s Mrs. Gordon’s house,” my dad points out as he jogs backwards so I can keep up with him. We grow silent as we pass the house where a boy shot and killed his father in the backyard.

“Was his dad mean to him?” I ask, my voice rising and falling with the cadence of my labored strides. 

“Depends on who you ask,” my dad answers. 

He is now jogging in circles around me. The sun slips under a blanket of pink sky, giving one last burst of blazing orange as it surrenders to the night. Numerous unasked questions linger in the air and swarm around our faces, mingling with the gnats. Why don’t I ever return Byron’s phone calls? Why am I so carefree about my future? Call your guidance counselor at school and find a job for when you graduate in the spring, I know he longs to say. Give Byron a chance.

I can hear the fabric of my ragged shorts from sixth-grade intramural basketball rubbing together as I jog, feeling the effects of a summer full of chocolate and not enough exercise. Our dog pants along beside us as we coast down a hill. 

“It’s all downhill now for half a mile,” Dad consoles me as I try not to let my legs run away and leave my body in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the hill.  He shouldn’t have said that because now I have an excuse to slow down to a walk because half a mile sounds too far to keep running after the last two miles. 

He looks at me, wanting to say something more. Are you being treated well at work? Are you scared about paying back your loans? How is your spirit, your soul?

He settles with a safe question, “How are your shoes holding up?”

I smile. He’s still taking care of me after 21 years. I’ll bet when he looks at me, he still sees my chubby cheeks and scraped knees from childhood. I’ll bet he sees a little girl jogging beside him, trying to keep up and please her daddy.   

“I may need new ones,” I answer. If he’s offering, I’m taking. There’s no sense in wasting a perfectly good offer for new shoes, no matter how old I am. 

“I’ll take a look at your old ones when we get back home,” Dad offers. “You may need to alternate your running shoes with your everyday Adidas in order to give them time to elasticize and air out.”

We make a connection as we talk about our favorite brands of shoes and what has worked for us and what has come up short. I feel like I can read his mind, what he really wants to say. I’m proud of you. I miss you when you’re gone, but I know that you’re in God’s hands even though you don’t fit into mine like you once did. I know you’ve grown up now, but you’ll always be my little girl.

“Try to finish each run strong. Change your pace a little bit, pull your knees up farther,” he instructs.

We run into our driveway, eager to take showers and filled with pride that we have accomplished something. Instead of watching TV, I’ve spent time with my dad and have exercised. He hugs me and thanks me for running with him. No, Dad, thank you.

Part 2:  Basketball (a snapshot from high school)

It only takes a moment to go back to those nights in my mind. I am once again a teenager with long, permed hair, wearing a basketball uniform, and sometimes I’m celebrating making a great shot. Other times, I am agonizing over a lost game. But always, I’m riding home in our little Honda CRX, Dad at the wheel, backpack slung into the hatchback. 

It’s dark. The day has been long and eventful. We have a ways to go before we’re home. I am tired, yet a bit hyped up from the game. And Dad – Dad always pulls a bag of peanut M&Ms out and sets them in the console between us. And we ride, often in silence, the only sound the crunching of M&Ms as we chew. Sometimes Golden Oldies play lightly on the radio. 

This becomes our thing. Enjoying the hoopla of a game, the hours and hours of practice, the stress of tough competition, and then cooling down with a bag of peanut M&Ms. There are big things to come, and the time of youth is fleeting. But for this hour, we are content with the simplicity of companionable silence and the sweetness of chocolate.

Fast-forward a decade, and Dad is getting ready to walk me down the aisle. It’s my last moment of sharing his last name. He’s about to give me away to the new man in my life. I am excited but terrified that I will trip and fall down the aisle. So he takes my arm in his.

But wait. He is stopping. He reaches into the little pocket in his tuxedo. He pulls out a single peanut M&M and offers it to me. To anyone else, this may have appeared strange, but to us, it was merely the next step in our father/daughter dance. See, he wasn’t just handing me a peanut covered in chocolate and drenched in a colorful candy shell. 

My dad was giving me away in marriage. He knew marriage would be an adventure, with happy times and hard times. The M&M was his commission to me. It said, “I’m here for you. It may look different now than it has thus far, but remember that you are known and you are loved.” These sentiments from my dad would help me in the years to come, where I learned – and am still in the process of learning – the ins and outs of life.

Part 3:  Life (my dad’s philosophy)

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve learned a bit about my dad. He’s athletic and always moving. He instilled a love of activity in each of us four kids from the beginning. He would take us outside to play family softball games while Mom finished making dinner on hot summer nights. He taught us all to fish from the pond and to cut grass, to try new things. 

Once we were all a bit older, he took up running. And by running, I mean marathons. 26.2 miles. And he ran 50 marathons. He ran 26.2 miles 50 times. On purpose. (Not to mention all the miles of practice he ran in-between the actual marathons.) He also ran numerous half marathons and shorter races. 

He never really ran to compete with anyone else. Dad’s goal was to beat his own time, to be a little better this time than the last. Dad’s goal has been to remain faithful to his God, to his family, to his commitments. To run his race well, whether it was an actual marathon or this race we call life. 

Whenever I think of a faithful man, I think of my father. Proverbs 3:3-4 tell us:  Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man.

They say girls marry men like their fathers, and in my case, this is true. My husband has been a faithful and loving husband and father as well. Currently, he is having business meetings with our teenage daughter, who is about to open her own Etsy shop. He is lending his support and expertise as she works on her business plan. He wants to make sure she is well equipped to follow her dreams and live a life of purpose.

I know I’m terribly late to post a Father’s Day tribute, but I think an encouraging word is always timely. And I thought of both my own father and my husband when I read this quote:  Life does not consist in achieving your goals but in fulfilling your promises (Dale Ralph Davis).

In a world obsessed with achievement, what really stands out are men and women who fulfill their promises. May we live in such a way that this can be said of us.