It’s Friday! We made it 🙌 I don’t have a particular question or topic in mind today, so I thought I’d open up the floor. What’s on your mind?
Have a question? Or a thought to share?
Something cool/funny/sad/exciting/etc. that happened this week?
Any accomplishments or goals you reached, running-related or not?
(This may be a huge mistake… 🤣 we’ll see!) — Terrell
It’s been a bit of a crazy week on several fronts. But the most significant thing that happened this week was our third daughter (of four) left the nest. She had stayed in town for college since I teach there, as all my children have (free tuition for faculty and staff at a well-regarded private school in this economy? No brainer), so we got to delay the departure by a few years. But she’s off to grad school, starting a doctorate in Audiology, and while I’m excited for her, I’ve been sad for a couple of weeks knowing it was coming.
When she was born, she had some health issues that put her in the NICU for two weeks (they took her from the hospital nursery to the children’s hospital nearby a day after her birth). For a day or two we didn’t know if she would make it. We had people all over the world praying for her and us and had been sending email updates to that prayer chain.
Anyway, while looking on my laptop for a letter I wanted to resend to my daughter, I came across all these updates we sent to the email chain back then, archived in a folder I didn’t even realize was there. I had not read these in many years (she’s 22 now!). They are a 15-day chronicle of fear, trauma, hesitant happiness at her incremental recovery, and ultimately pure joy when I was able to hold her for the first time, and when we took her home because she was healthy.
So there I was in my office, reading through these updates, tears streaming down my face as I remembered the trauma and the powerful emotions from the first days of her life. I sent these to her to read, because I’m not sure we ever shared these daily updates with her, and I reminded her of how much she means to us and how proud we are of her.
And yes I’m holding back tears just typing this all out. Honestly it’s hard to think back to those days and not get emotional. There are songs I hear that we listened to on those daily drives to the children’s hospital that I can’t hear now without crying.
So that’s been my week. Thanks for letting me share this overly personal item!