Surrounded by Wonder Women

This picture is from the Disney Princess 5K last weekend. That's me as Peter Pan, my daughter-in-law is the blonde in the back of the group and the two with the golden Ws on their chests, are my wife Glenda and my granddaughter Maeve.   My granddaughter had declared that Wonder Woman was a Princess (albeit from a different fictional universe) and she wanted to dress as that...and that her Gigi should dress as that too. So I made the outfits and set out to run/walk a 5k surrounded by Wonder Women.

But being surrounded by Wonder Women is also a kind of a metaphor for my life, which has always contained strong, competent women who do sometimes unexpected things. My paternal grandmother was a formidable business woman in an era where women did not often rise to leadership positions.  She was a force to be reckoned with. She also taught me some important lessons.  One of the most important was at the end of a hard day to ask yourself "what was the best thing that happened today." This is a trick that she used on me when I was an angsty teenager...and it actually can help you find the good in things.

My maternal grandmother was an artist.  She was many other things too, as you will learn.  But one of the incredible Wonder Woman things about her was that she went off from a tiny rural community in Iowa to Chicago to study commercial art when she was just a teenager in the late 1920's (17 or 18, as I recall).  She was a diminutive woman...maybe 5 feet tall if she stretched, but to me she was mighty, both in her bravery as a youngster and as an example of creatively reinventing yourself through your life.  At 19 she married my grandfather and raised her family back in the small town she came from.  She continued to paint, and many of her paintings hang in my home. In her late 40s she was widowed under tragic circumstances. After several months she reinvented herself by going to nursing school.  Sort of unheard of in a woman of her age at the time.  And she went from Charlotte, to the pediatric nurse "Charlie."  When she retired she discovered travel and went all over the US and Europe.

At 87, my mother is a complete Wonder Woman.  Though she is slowing down in recent years she still babysits with Great Grandchildren (both my grandchildren and my brother's). She still holds a very part time job.  She married my father when she was only 17 and after just 3 months of courtship.  My parents, I am convinced, loved each other and loved us and were partners in work and in play.  I remember after my dad passed, my mom saying that she missed her playmate.  But the hardcore wonderful thing about her was that she never stopped playing.  She continued to travel and to learn and to have fun.  I am proud to say something almost no one can....last September I went Whitewater rafting with my 87-year-old mother....and I had a blast.

My daughter Melanie is hardcore in her own way, though she struggles.  But rather than write about her here...I invite you to read an earlier blog about how she started us running. 

Even my sister-in-law, Beverly,  is Wonder Woman.  She has always been the one to turn to when you need help, but you don't even know what you need. She is so good at seeing what needs to be done and doing it. And she too is re-inventing herself after retirement.  At last count she had lost nearly 90 pounds and was doing the work to get fit and healthy.

My son also married a Wonder Woman. Aurora is smart and talented. She does all kinds of wonderful things to enrich the lives of her equally Wonder Woman daughters Maeve (the sporty one) and Ellie (the dancer). 

And of course there is my wife Glenda.  Don't tell her, because I don't want her head to get too big...but she is my hero.  She's smart and funny. She's a kick ass programmer and a hardcore runner. And I know what my mom meant when she said she'd married her playmate. We've had our moments to be sure...but we've also had a wonderful share of adventures and celebrations.

So I'm grateful to have all these wonderful women around as friends and family and role models.  I'm not sure I've discovered my super powers yet.  But I'm glad just to be along for the ride.

Sometimes there are reasons

I'm usually a very even tempered and optimistic individual, but there are certain things that drive me completely bananas.

Some of these things have to do with athletics and "motivation."  I am self aware enough to know that that the things that make me craziest are those that play on my insecurities and guilt.  Let me provide a few examples:

I have belonged to a number of running and triathlon training groups over the years.  When I started in each group it was fine that I was all about doing 5ks and 10ks and maybe the odd half marathon.  And I was always told that if I only wanted to do sprint tris, that was cool.  Yet in nearly every case it was assumed that eventually I would want to be a "real" runner or triathlete and do marathons or Ironman, etc.   I have done a marathon. I got injured training for my second one, and decided that both the time required to come back from injury and the sheer time it took to train for a marathon at my pace made it not impossible, but unreasonable, to do another.

And don't get me started on Ironman.  I have never wanted to do an Ironman...and I don't need to do one to be a triathlete.  I love the fun and challenge of a relay, a super sprint or a sprint...and the training for them is reasonable.  I swim, bike and run...I am a triathlete.

So I  hold  onto this to help me deal with the peer pressure:

 

The other, tougher example is illustrated by this meme, posted on several of my athletic friends' posts over the last months

This, if you will pardon me for saying so, is horse hockey. Or at the least very simplistic drivel.  It is along the same lines as "you can do anything you put your mind to." It suggests that somehow if things, very real and  sometimes difficult things, get in the way...then you do not want it enough.  Or you aren't digging deep enough, or you don't care enough. This plays strongly into my sense of guilt, of not being good enough or trying hard enough. And then I have to remember that this may motivate the people posting it, even though I find it does the opposite for me. 

I have to remind myself that by rights I probably should not be physically able to do what I do as well as I do.  I was born with a hip problem and a turned in foot. Fortunately my parents had these corrected in a time when that did not always happen, so although they are not perfect, they are perfect enough.  I also have spinal stenosis to a degree that once upon a time an orthopedist told me I should not expect to walk half a mile without pain.  I have since done over a hundred 5Ks and numerous other races, including my one and only marathon.  

But the other thing is that I have more than one priority in my life...and sometimes one of them blows up or needs more attention and attending to that is a REASON to reassess my goals and set more reasonable ones.  It is not an excuse.  And sometimes those other priorities like work and a sometimes complicated family situation cause me to dig deep, suck it up and use all the energy I possess just to get through them. 

And sometimes when I reassess, my goals change for a reason (not an excuse).  I skipped the Disney 10K this weekend, because after the 5k with my wife, my daughter in law and my granddaughter (which was hot and sticky and tiring), I could see that by choosing to do the 10K as well, I would be short- changing my granddaughters and myself. I could meet my goal and miss my family time. I think I made the right choice.

What do you do with a "useless degree?"

When I started college, some 110 years ago now...give or take a few, I was sure what I wanted to be...an analytical chemist. UM, but wait....all these years later I've been a lot of things but never that. That's because a chemistry major became an education major, then a sociology major and finally a Theater major, with a Sociology minor (3 credits shy of a math minor...only student teaching lacking for secondary education).  That I think is the beauty (and to some. the curse) of a liberal arts education.  It makes me very sad that lack of emphasis of the well-rounded liberal arts aspect of college these days.  There is still some element most places...but it seems that the attitude these days is that it is all about the $$$...and who can blame anyone, student debt is out of hand.  But I digress.

I like to joke that my Theater Arts degree and $3 would get me a latte at Starbucks...and looked at one way, that's true enough.  But the things I gained from that degree and my time at Upper Iowa University have stayed with me life long in interesting and, I think, life enhancing ways. (Yes there was some bad stuff, and yes that stuck with me too...but that's far less important now than it was then)

There's the proof.  I was a theater geek.  There are several people in this article I'm still connected to...and I am in the upper right photo...the be-robed philosophy master with the ridiculously long wavy hair.

So what did I learn from a theater degree that still serves me 40 years later as a professor and as a human being?  From acting I learned presence and poise in front of people (vital as a prof).  I learned to listen and hear the cues before reacting and speaking.  I learned that every performance no matter how familiar is different...that if you are doing it right, you are not performing (or lecturing or whatever) at people, you are creating an experience with them and that you can learn and grow as much from the experience as you hope your audience does.  I will not deny the appeal in the acting part of my degree of "being someone else" for at least a little while.  Partly, I will admit, because teenage angst lead me to want to be other than myself sometimes. But one of the things you can learn from that if you approach acting that way (and not everyone does), is the trick of being able to take someone else's viewpoint, while still holding on to your own.  I guess I'd say it honed a sort of empathy I already had, and it has been invaluable over the years.

I love learning the history of theater, and the theory.  I even taught Introduction to Theater for UIU at the Madison Center for awhile.  I learned  to look at the characters and to see that I did not aspire to the part of the star (though where else but theater could I have been, for a brief moment the glamorous Judith Bliss, English stage star?), but rather the dramatic foil, the behind the scenes character that ever so subtly makes thing happen.  This position appealed to me (still does) in theater and in life.

By learning stagecraft and doing some assistant directing I learned what details might be important in creating an illusion and what might not.  My passion in this area was costume...something that has obviously stuck with me as evidenced by the costume photos below (and many more posted yearly).

I learned how all the parts, actors, directors, backstage, audience etc.  come together to make meaning of a performance.  Academically it is no surprise that when I wrote my dissertation "Information Behavior and Meaning Making in Virtual Play Spaces: A Case Study of City of Heroes" that my meaning-making framework came directly from social dramaturgy, with roots in theater and sociology.

I learned the joy of creating and the joy of making people happy (or sometimes making them think more deeply or feel something important).  And these things are still important to me today.  So, useless degree?  Financially maybe.  But in terms of the person I now am and hope to continue to be...very much the opposite.

Lace up to Keep Up

I see so many "motivational" posts about running and athletics that say things like "PR or ER" or “Unless You Puke, Faint or Die, Keep Going!”  And I'll be honest....they turn me off completely!  Do I really want to choose something like that to do in my spare time? These things used to make me kind of upset...I'd think: Really?  Don't you have enough pain and struggle in your real life?  No one is paying you to do this!  I mean I'm OK with "Go Big or Go Home"  as long as go home is a legitimate option.

But then again, I also said that running...workouts outside, etc. were something I would NEVER DO.  "I'm the world's greatest indoors person!" I would declare. A lot of things enter into my feelings about extreme challenge...and some of these things also entered into me getting started doing something I'd NEVER DO and keeping at it for 11 years and counting. Let me tell you a story....

Once upon a time there was a girl named Melanie (she's my daughter).  She was a challenge, as many teenagers are. When I remarried and moved to Texas for graduate school, she decided to go live with her father. And all was well until one August day when I was pulled out of class and told "Melanie has been in an accident..."  A lot of the rest of that day and the days that followed (20 years ago now) was a blur.  But the result was that Mel, who had been hit as a pedestrian outside the crosswalk, was (and is) a T-12 paraplegic. I don't want to dwell on her struggles here, but I don't want to make light of the struggle it has been for her or for me (that's where all my "dig deep and keep going" goes), but it is not the point of this story either.

At some point, about a year after her accident we moved Melanie to Texas to live with us.  At the time, understand, both Glenda and I were probably 60-75 pounds heavier and never DREAMED of running. We had joined a gym, but were pretty haphazard about it.  Then Melanie met LeeAnn, a girl about her age, also in a wheelchair who had been working out with Blaze Track Club in Austin, TX (a club for mobility impaired athletes) and she challenged Mel to try a 5K.

We had taken Melanie to our gym to help build her ab muscles (very important to a paraplegic) and by chance her personal trainer was a former eastern European weight lifter name Emil Iankov. The man was straight out of central casting, accent and all.  They began to talk and Emil told Melanie, "If you choose to take this challenge, I will do it with you," definitely out of his comfort zone too. He further said, "I will not push you, but I will not ride on your lap either." They agreed that they would try the Teddy Bear 5K and they would try to finish in under an hour. In Melanie's apartment still hangs a picture of the them crossing that finish line...arms pumped in triumph with the time of 58 minutes and change showing in the background.

But it didn't end there.  Glenda and I went to watch.  We'd never thought of watching a 5K before.  Glenda was particularly inspired by it...and soon she was running and doing triathlon. Melanie continued to race and work out.  And me...well let's say I was a late bloomer...but finally for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was having something to talk about with my run obsessed family at dinner... I decided to try it too. And the rest as they say, is history...sort of.

Melanie has, in recent years, had a number of significant health challenges and is trying to get back to racing.  Sadly, at the moment she has had to bow out of what would have been her first Disney race due to a pressure sore.  Her health has presented a lot of challenges for all of us...enough that I run, race, workout absolutely for fitness and fun...not to  PR or ER.  I like a challenge...I just don't need to kill myself over it (none of which means I don't dig deep or work hard...).  And we all stand ready to do that first Disney race when she is ready. And while the happily ever after at the end of this story is still TBD, Glenda and I are so glad that a girl in a wheelchair taught us to run.

 

Glenda Mel and I early in our running careers.

 

Melanie, with me running in the background in her most recent race about a year ago.

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Welcome to Square Peg

Have you ever heard the expression "trying to fit a square peg in a round hole?"  I've often felt like that square peg trying to fit into a round world of round holes.

I've had several blogs before and they have served their purposes.  But now is a time of adjustment for me.  I am preparing to retire and exploring what I want to do from there. I have many interests, chief among them spreading the idea, both personally and academically that play is for adults too.  It is not only a nice thing, but a mandatory one in this serious (and sometimes seriously flawed and scary world).  What others sometimes find trivial, I find important...square peg!

So you will see things here (both serious and trivial) about the importance of fun and play.  I am a runner (like a turtle in peanut butter...but still...) and one of the ways I play is by running in costume.  So you can expect to see that here.

I have a wife, a daughter (with some extra challenges on her plate) and son who is married and has two lovely daughters.  You might see things here about any of them, especially as I transition away from work to spending more time on family.  Speaking of family, I also still have my mother.  At 87 she still babysits my grandkids. I went whitewater rafting with her last September.  She is well and truly a bad a** and a fabulous example of how to get older without totally losing your sense of fun and wonder.

I have an etsy shop full of both whimsical and practical things...my best sellers are sweaters for Beanie Boo dolls (nothing fun about that). It is called Mimi's Folly and is linked here.

You will hear about my role as a Skirt Sports Ambassador, which is a new and fun venture for me this  year. Of course any other fun ventures that arise, like races, trips and who knows what else may show up here as well.

If you really want to know more about my academic life or my running..you can click here and go exploring.

Let me leave you with one of my favorite bits of philosophy...from that great philosopher Jimmy Fallon.