Vomit in the Mail

When I came home from the office the other day, Recon was so excited to see me he danced around my legs twice, jumped up to lick my face, then promptly ran away and threw up under the ironing board...twice. I cleaned it up good-naturedly and told him I was happy to see him, too...and that I was grateful he licked my face BEFORE he threw up, instead of after.

In my silly, inarticulate eagerness to tell my loved ones exactly how grateful I am for their generosity, I feel like Recon - SO excited to get my point across, it all comes out in a huge wet mass of word vomit. This is probably some of the most awkward-sounding writing I've ever done, but at the same time, it's some of the most gratifying.

As I said briefly a couple of posts ago, Mom was, of course, the one who taught me the art of the thank you note. She said it wasn't supposed to be like a dutiful and perfunctory form letter, it was supposed to make the person doing the giving feel as good as you did when you did the receiving. "Don't be embarrassing about it or they won't think you mean it," she said. "Just be honest and tell them how you feel."

Since I wrote those first early thank you notes for Christmas and birthday gifts, and holiday money sent in the mail by various relatives, real mail - the unsolicited kind sent from someone who loves you (as opposed to bills and junk) - has become something of a rare commodity. But I think it's all the more meaningful for its rarity. It's been such a treat for me to come home to amazing gifts of money and encouragement in the mail the past month and a half (and to have them turn up in my email inbox during an otherwise nasty day at the office), it's an honor and a privilege to send some of that love back through the mail. Even if it's love in the form of word vomit.

Mom would scold me for the timeliness - or lack thereof - though. Sometimes I get into a rhythm and I'm able to get out four or five cards in a day. Other days, it's more like one...or I'm not in the mood and don't send any. But I also consider it an incredible gift that I've been unable to catch up on these notes - for every one I send, I add three new people to my list.

Still overwhelmed and amazed by you all.

A Few Words About The Most Amazing Friends and Family, Ever.

The Thanksgiving after Hanna's engagement to The Ninja, Dad sat the rest of us down, in true Jacob Marley fashion, to discuss his Vision of Christmases Yet To Come.

"As you guys get older and get married and especially after you have kids," he explained, "you'll discover that Christmas turns into a logistical nightmare. Everyone wants to see you within that same 4-5 hour window, so they can watch the kids open presents and stuff. So I'm going to make it easy on you by surrendering now. Instead of fighting to see everyone at the same time on Christmas Day, I'm staking out Christmas Eve. We can open family presents then and have dinner together, and then you can be free to do whatever else with whomever on the actual day. Your mother and I will go to the beach. Those of you who are free are more than welcome to join us."

To me, unmarried and childless with no real threats in either direction but a love for the beach almost as fierce as my hatred for winter, and a job (for KU) that let me travel between Christmas and New Year's, this was fantastic news. And for a couple of years, it worked out perfectly - we celebrated as a family Christmas Eve, then the rest of us would leave for the beach and Hanna would see to her in-law obligations in town. Then Mom's condition started getting worse and real life started getting in the way, and the Hodges Christmas Vacation, Dauphin Island Edition, was no more. 

Those last few family Christmases at Dauphin Island were, in fact, the last time my family traveled as a family. I see my family often, sure, but I miss the trips. So many good memories were made during those trips. So when Dad announced, shortly after my acceptance to Team Run2Remember, that he would come to NYC for marathon weekend, I was thrilled and my nerves about accepting such an enormous undertaking immediately began to recede. When he said he'd use his plethora of Southwest frequent flyer miles to buy a ticket for whomever of my siblings cared to join (duh - all of them!), the misgivings totally vanished and I started to get excited about another Hodges family vacation. The idea of a trip without Mom makes me sad, but the idea of a trip in her honor is the next best thing I could have hoped for.

So then, when some of my family's longest-time friends, Beth and Shane Coughlin and Tom and Gayle Baddeley, made plans to come join the party, it was icing on the cake. My best friend from high school, Megan, rearranged her plans to visit her boyfriend in NYC over marathon weekend so she could see me run, and the first friend I ever had, Elizabeth Baddeley, a grad student at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, is going to make me my first-ever race signs. And of course, Brian, the one who's seen the blood(y toenails), sweat (with the heat wave, a whole bunch), and tears behind each and every training run, will be making the trip with me and probably wishing he could run it, too. This, on top of the enormous outpouring of love and generosity I've received in response to my request for donations, has me thinking perhaps I was too pessimistic in my initial goal-setting for both running time AND fundraising. Two months out, I'm running better than I ever have, and at the moment, I'm sitting on a cool $5075 in donations - a mere $925 away from my goal of $6000.

Not bad for someone who's uncomfortable asking for money, right? Perhaps I'm warming up.

The other incredible thing about the donations I've been receiving is that although my fundraising has been immensely personal and geared mostly towards the people who know and love Mom and Grandma the best and most, 14% of my donations came from people who've never even MET Mom or Grandma and wanted to show their support for me and for the end of Alzheimer's Disease, and of those donations, 46% are from people who haven't even known me a year. (I even received a very surprising $25 online donation from someone I've never actually met!) I'm trying to come up with a good way to incorporate the names of all my donors - all my heroes - onto the back of my shirt. They carried me to the starting line; it would be my honor to carry their names on my back for the million or so spectators in New York City to respect and admire.

Seriously. Mom and Grandma would be proud. Of me, yes, but especially of all of you.

And in case anyone was wondering, it WAS Mom who schooled me in the fine art of a good thank you note. "It shouldn't be a form letter, it should come from your heart."

I received this photo (among others) along with a generous donation from Joe and Joanne Cox, Mom and Dad's roommates in Paris in 1976, when Dad was taking an international law class. This was also the trip they met my godfather, Uncle Jimmy (in the tie). Click to enlarge.

The city hasn't changed much...and I still have the most beautiful mom ever. :)

Gratitude

If I had a dollar for every blog with a version of the "Sorry I haven't written anything in such a long time" post as the most recent entry, I'd be able to meet my fundraising goal right here and now. I told myself that I wasn't going to do that here, ever. So much for that. I started out strong with seven posts in a row, then let a week go by without saying a thing.

Here's why: In the past, my blogs were written pretty much for me and a handful of friends who occasionally stumbled their way onto my site during a lull in the workday. So, despite the suspicion voiced in my first post that people might actually read this one, I've still been surprised at all the people who've not only clicked on the links I've thrown out there, but actually read what I had to write. The writer in me is, if not ecstatic, then quietly satisfied at this broad circulation. My messages, such as they are, are getting out. I don't have any delusions that this is going to have some kind of positive ripple effect on humanity as a whole, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to give people a glimpse of what it feels like to go through something like this. After all, as my page constantly reminds us, every 69 seconds, someone develops Alzheimer's. Odds are...

But the person who, for ten years, had no idea how to respond to what was happening to my mother, was too afraid to ask questions, and then, confronted with the facts, preferred to keep her feelings mostly to herself, her family, and a select few friends? That person is totally fucking terrified. The urge to take all of this and bury it in the deepest possible digital hell under the most secure lock and key I can afford (not much) still reigns supreme, and I have to beat it into submission every time I hit "publish" on something that's made me cry to write. I still kind of shrivel up at the thought of some of the people in the office ever finding this, like the judgmental, two-faced old witch who tried to get me in trouble for wearing running shoes instead of heels to the office because of my plantar's fasciitis (I had a doctor's note for that). But I continue to put the link out there publicly in the hopes that everyone who's reading this is doing it for a good reason.

And then, I don't really know what my family is thinking, either. I don't want to be a David Sedaris; I want them to feel comfortable talking to me without having to preface their feelings with a, "Don't you DARE go writing about this." It's a deeply personal situation and this is all personal writing. I don't know what Max, Alex, Hanna, and Dad are sharing with others and keeping to themselves. Aside from what they've said, I don't want to speculate on how any of them feel. I want them to read this if it helps them understand things in any way, or if it helps inspire them to let their feelings out themselves, but I really, REALLY don't want to make them uncomfortable and I'm kind of terrified that's what it's going to do. Everyone who's read my fundraising page said it's made them cry; as a result, I'm not so sure I want my family to read it. If I ever go deleting anything, it's because a family member has asked me to...but I carved out a pretty big piece of my heart to write that one, and I don't think I can go through trying to write that again.

Readership aside, there's a lot of writing and development that goes on behind the scenes of every post. I have a list of ideas for future entries that I keep with me at all times (stored safely in my iPhone) and while I'm open to suggestions if anyone wants to ask me any questions, it seems that by the time I hit publish, the post is as different from the original idea as a newborn baby is from an implanted embryo. Even after I've published things, the perfectionist in me still finds things I want to go back and clarify, re-write, or omit altogether. I change my metaphors and my wording like crazy because I don't want to repeat myself, get comfortable with my subject matter, or spout clichés about what it means to live with dementia (unless I'm ripping them to pieces) - ever. That last post, believe it or not, actually started out as a rant against everyone who hinted at (without actually coming out and SAYING) that 4:30 was an unrealistic NYC Marathon goal. I had it about 7/8 of the way finished, saved it...and then couldn't pick up the pieces and keep writing when I revisited it. So after a few days of frustration with the ol' blogstipation issue, that's what came out. It was like I was expecting a boy and instead gave birth to an alligator.

The only criteria (aside from not totally butchering the English language) I have when I begin a post is that I have to be honest...because otherwise, what's the point of writing and why on earth would I expect you to read? Unfortunately, this honesty is sometimes at odds with the cause, as I realized yesterday when I was rereading yesterday's post. Maybe saying things like, "Sometimes a cure for dementia feels like someone ELSE's goddamn cause, because ours is already lost" or (on my donation page), "If I were a more religious person, I could fill that emptiness with my faith in God and my belief he has a plan for everyone...but I'm not" aren't great things to say when I haven't even raised my first $1000 yet. (And maybe I shouldn't swear so much.) I really wish I could fake sunshine and rainbows and hope and tell you how great everything is...but then you'd totally lose faith with me.

If you take nothing else away from this post, know this - the fact that anyone who has known and loved my mother is able to get up out of bed and go about their daily lives is a HUGE testament to hope and strength and love and everything great about this cause. Everyone who tells me they're touched by what I've written, every donation I've received, even the pepper spray that a coworker brought me after reading my Watchdogs post - all of those things remind me exactly why I'm doing this and who I'm doing this for. And guess who's been running stronger than ever lately?

You people are awesome. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.