Saturday, February 8, 2020
My seven-year-old, Mika, has a Friday night sleepover with one of her friends most weeks. Last night was a sleepover night. These family friends moved into our neighborhood the week before I started chemotherapy the first time and have been one of the pillars of my cancer support system since they moved in. The many sleepovers are like mini vacations for Mika. Their relatives live across the street, so we had already met them before they moved in. Our new friends consist of a mom and a girl a year older than Mika.
The mom likes to run and is participating in one road race each month this year. I am pretty sure she is a better woman than I. I loved to run and ran in road races in high school, but I was a fair-weather runner. I never ran in the winter. The idea of running in 30-degree weather chills me to the bone. My friend, however, is not temperature wimpy like me and is running in a road race today. Today is around 45 degrees and sunny so it is a nice day to run, and my friend dropped Mika off on her way to the race early this morning.
Running is one of the activities I really miss since I became paralyzed. I ran the mile and two-mile races in track each spring. When I was a sophomore, my tiny high school had a foreign-exchange student from Finland who was a phenomenal long-distance runner and we had a cross country team in the fall that year. I was the only girl on the team. Apparently, running three or more miles in a race was not an appealing prospect to the other girls in my school.
The next two years the track coaches formed a road race team in the fall. We would run long distance like we did for cross country each day after school, but we would compete in area 5K and 10K races on Saturdays instead of cross country meets at other schools. We paid the entrance fees for the races and the coaches drove us to the races. We were not an official school activity, so the coaches may have been donating their time those two years to keep the seven or eight of us long distance runners happy.
I remember when the track coaches advised us to buy Nike running shoes because they were light weight and well cushioned. I was from a poor family and only worked in summer because the year-around, after-school jobs had already been taken by older students. The $26 including shipping was a fortune to me. The shoe was awesome and well worth the money. Now many Nike running shoes are $100 or more and are out of many teenager’s reach, and probably not as well made as mine were.
As I sit here and feel nostalgic about the simplicity of my childhood, I wonder if my children will ever feel their lives were ever not complicated. My son might remember a simple childhood, but my older daughter, Megan, has been glued to a mobile phone since middle school. A cell phone is the reason I cannot die until Mika is grown. I do not want her chained to a mobile phone until after she graduates high school and do not plan to let her have one. I can look at her sad, blue eyes when she begs and say no; her dad cannot.
Megan never got comfortable talking to people on the phone to make appointments until she was 22, and part of the reason was that she was usually texting people. I want to make sure Mika develops people skills and learns to observe her surrounding before she has her humanity sucked away by a mobile phone. The desktop computer is plenty soul sucking enough, at least it does not go anywhere with us.
My piece of advice to you is to let yourself feel nostalgic occasionally. I had a good childhood and if I could move to a town with a population of 500 with a great library and public pool in my situation, I would. Since that is a change I am unable to make, I can focus on making the life we have left together as uncomplicated as possible so my children may have simpler times to remember fondly.
Until next time,
Susanne
Please check out my GoFundMe page.
My seven-year-old, Mika, has a Friday night sleepover with one of her friends most weeks. Last night was a sleepover night. These family friends moved into our neighborhood the week before I started chemotherapy the first time and have been one of the pillars of my cancer support system since they moved in. The many sleepovers are like mini vacations for Mika. Their relatives live across the street, so we had already met them before they moved in. Our new friends consist of a mom and a girl a year older than Mika.
The mom likes to run and is participating in one road race each month this year. I am pretty sure she is a better woman than I. I loved to run and ran in road races in high school, but I was a fair-weather runner. I never ran in the winter. The idea of running in 30-degree weather chills me to the bone. My friend, however, is not temperature wimpy like me and is running in a road race today. Today is around 45 degrees and sunny so it is a nice day to run, and my friend dropped Mika off on her way to the race early this morning.
Running is one of the activities I really miss since I became paralyzed. I ran the mile and two-mile races in track each spring. When I was a sophomore, my tiny high school had a foreign-exchange student from Finland who was a phenomenal long-distance runner and we had a cross country team in the fall that year. I was the only girl on the team. Apparently, running three or more miles in a race was not an appealing prospect to the other girls in my school.
The next two years the track coaches formed a road race team in the fall. We would run long distance like we did for cross country each day after school, but we would compete in area 5K and 10K races on Saturdays instead of cross country meets at other schools. We paid the entrance fees for the races and the coaches drove us to the races. We were not an official school activity, so the coaches may have been donating their time those two years to keep the seven or eight of us long distance runners happy.
I remember when the track coaches advised us to buy Nike running shoes because they were light weight and well cushioned. I was from a poor family and only worked in summer because the year-around, after-school jobs had already been taken by older students. The $26 including shipping was a fortune to me. The shoe was awesome and well worth the money. Now many Nike running shoes are $100 or more and are out of many teenager’s reach, and probably not as well made as mine were.
As I sit here and feel nostalgic about the simplicity of my childhood, I wonder if my children will ever feel their lives were ever not complicated. My son might remember a simple childhood, but my older daughter, Megan, has been glued to a mobile phone since middle school. A cell phone is the reason I cannot die until Mika is grown. I do not want her chained to a mobile phone until after she graduates high school and do not plan to let her have one. I can look at her sad, blue eyes when she begs and say no; her dad cannot.
Megan never got comfortable talking to people on the phone to make appointments until she was 22, and part of the reason was that she was usually texting people. I want to make sure Mika develops people skills and learns to observe her surrounding before she has her humanity sucked away by a mobile phone. The desktop computer is plenty soul sucking enough, at least it does not go anywhere with us.
My piece of advice to you is to let yourself feel nostalgic occasionally. I had a good childhood and if I could move to a town with a population of 500 with a great library and public pool in my situation, I would. Since that is a change I am unable to make, I can focus on making the life we have left together as uncomplicated as possible so my children may have simpler times to remember fondly.
Until next time,
Susanne
Please check out my GoFundMe page.