Out with the old, In with the new.....

A new year is always confusing for me as I'm always reflective about what the last year brought to me and

what the new year will bring in lieu.  As I began my morning with the hopes for a run today, I begin to lace up

 my new running shoes that my lovely wife gave to me for Christmas.   My new shoes lay next to the pair that

they replaced, the stark contrast of their condition striking me as similar to my apprehension of the new year.

The first thing I noticed was that my new shoes were white, shiny and brilliant in color.  They are not marred

with dirt, mud, grayed from months of running in snow, mud, rain and flood waters. Such is the approach of

the new year our hopes, our dreams shiny and brilliant, yet to be put through the obstacles that we will face,

the lack of a job, some unexpected tragedy, or perhaps money issues that will little by little gray the brilliant

colors that we imagined not so long before.  I also notice in closer inspection the that the heels of my shoes

are not the same.    My new shoes have a full tread, while my older pair has a significant amount of tread that

has eroded away with each step I took in them.  I will no doubt be the same one year from now.  The

constant movement in life that cannot be avoided will wear away another year on me like everyone else,

leaving lines etched in my face, perhaps eroding my hairline, but most certainly it will weaken me with age the

 inevitable mark that no man can overcome or outrun.  My older shoes also appear to be shorter in length

then my newer ones.  An illusion as both are the same model and size, yet it reminds me that past years seem

to have gone by so quickly, time marching on faster and faster, ever decreasing circles at ever increasing

speeds seeming to short change me as if the promise of a new year is replaced by the realization that it is gone

as another approaches.

Please don't get me wrong, I love my old shoes as I have loved my life.  They hold many memories both good

and bad for me.  They remind me of days where I felt 16 again, alive and young living in the moment and the

moment was glorious.  Of days where each step was a struggle, the next more painful than the step before an

agonizing journey that in the end strengthened me physically, emotionally and mentally.  They bring back

scenes to my mind of misty mornings on the river, raging flood waters surrounding our city and the indomitable

 spirit of man to overcome such adversity.  My shoes like the years have carried me there and these things I

cherish greatly.  Yet, I am humbled as I finish tying my new shoes.  There is such promise in them as there is

promise in a new year.  Each step they take me brings me to an unknown journey, perhaps to a place I've

never been, seen or imagined existed for me.  They most certainly will carry me through the mud, snow,

water, good weather, bad weather and I will certainly get out of them what I put into them.  I suppose life and

 the next year is certainly like that, I will get out of it what I put into it.  Run on my friends, it's the glory of a

new year.

Christmas Day...

Here I sit in my living room, TBS repeatedly broadcasting "A Christmas Story" in the background, a holiday

tradition at my house.  We never watch the whole movie at once, just bits and pieces of each movie till we've

finally watched the whole movie at the end of the day.  It seems this morning that many of my friends have

been out of bed early and are stirring about checking their facebook and expressing their heartfelt wishes for a

wonderful Christmas for me and my family.  I look past the beautiful tree that my wife and her daughters so

carefully adorned through our picture windows and see the ground covered in snow.  A rare white Christmas

for us in Tennessee.  I sip a cup of coffee coaxing my body slowly to get ready for the day.  Sarah and I will

open presents later, we have already celebrated with our blended family, each similarly excited about their

gifts. Xbox, flips, makeup and clothes were gifts that were exchanged.  No Official Red Ryder Carbine-


Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle adorns the tree as we worry about eye safety and that of 


the small animals that scurry around our backyard.  Biscuit lays quietly on his bed near the door already 


having made his early morning patrol around the yard ensuring that we are safe inside the house and Black 


Bart is kept at bay.  Later we will share a meal with one of our friends and their two grown boys, it will be a 


great time as we both enjoy each others company very much.  There will be no Chinese Turkey to adorn our 


table and no songs with "bows of frowee ralalala" will be sung.  I will of course suit up and run later today 


battling the wind and cold as I do most days now.  This evening I imagine we'll have a glass of wine settle 


together on the couch and if  I've done well with the gifts perhaps I'll get one more "gift" before the day is 


completed.   I hope so. Tomorrow will come soon enough after and we'll only have 364 more days to get 


ready for Christmas again.   I hope your Christmas is so wonderful today that you'll start counting the days till 


next and if you aren't worried about eye safety that a "Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-


Shot Range Model Air Rifle" finds it's way under your tree.   You never know when they'll spot grizzly bears 


near Pulaski's Hardware store......

One of those people....

It happened on Thursday afternoon.  We have had bad weather here in Nashville for the past several weeks and this last week it's been bitter cold with snow and ice.  The realization struck me in the oddest fashion, it was the cows.  They were staring at me.  Six of them to be exact, all grazing on the side of a hill, fence separating us by less than 2 feet and I could see in their gaze that I had "become one of those people".  

It all started about 4 years ago.  I was as they say, sick and tired and being sick and tired.  I got up one day and looked in the mirror and didn't recognize the man that looked back at me.  I weighed a whopping 250 lbs and couldn't walk to my car without wheezing.  This coming from a man whose family drops dead of heart attacks at about the age I was currently.  So, I decided that I was going to run my way into health.  I bought a pair of shoes and off I went.  I used the Michael White method of running.  Run as far as you can, puke, repeat.  I wouldn't recommend that method but that's just  how I did it.  Funny thing it got easier and I ran farther each week.  At some point I noticed my belly and face started getting thinner and I didn't sound like Darth Vader after walking up the stairs.  I've long held the theory that runners start out with the purpose of just staying in shape, but slowly all the jarring that accompanies running causes small hemorrhages in the brain which in turn makes a runner think, "Wow I think I'd like to run 26.2 miles."  Alas I was no different.  I did start with a half-marathon though, I ran it in 2:47.  Then off to the Marine Corps Marathon for my first.  It was glorious.  I cannot explain nor will I try on why it was glorious but trust me I consider one of my greatest accomplishments in my life.  I won't bore you anymore with the grand details but I've run a total of 5 marathons now, along with a handful of half-marathons, several 10K's and when I want to be totally embarrassed by other men my age I've done a dozen or so 5k's.  What makes me on of "those people" though is my desire, no my obsessive need to run.  I use to be able to run on a treadmill but now I call it the dreadmill and if at all possible I run outside.  If at all possible means I actually still have both my legs and a heartbeat.  

Which brings us back to the present.  Thursday was bitter cold in Nashville, not as cold as Tuesday when I ran just 3 miles.  It was a balmy 9 degrees that day.  I ran at Centennial Park and the ducks were walking on the pond as it had frozen over.  I passed just one other runner and other than that it was me and the ducks.  I stopped running when my teeth starting hurting from the cold air I was breathing in that day.  Thursday was different.  It was raining, cold (around 31 degrees) and I went for a six miler.  The wind was around 10-15 miles an hour and I ran the trail by the river.  The trail goes right by a pasture and the cows had moved to the backside of a hill to move out of the wind and graze to stay as warm as possible.  As I passed them it was then I realized they were staring at me and I was "one of those people".  You know, one of those runners when you are passing in your car you look at your passenger and say, "look at that fool he's out running in 9 degree weather is he crazy?"  or you tell your co-workers  "Do you know what I saw today?"  "Some idiot was out running this morning when it was nine degrees!"  

I would always nod my head when someone said that, thinking what an idiot, who does things like that?  I bet if they passed cows they would stare at them like they were crazy.  Funny it's the same look Sarah gives me when I walk out the door for a run.  It's the same look the cows gave me last week.  

Footnote:  I am proud to say that since 2007 I have run approximately 3,000 miles.  That's over 6 million footsteps, approximately 15 pairs of running shoes and 2 lost toenails.  

I'll be home for Christmas....

I'll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams

Listen to the words of this song next time you hear it and bear in mind that it was written for the servicemen and women serving in World War II.  A song to encourage and remind them that coming home was just around the corner maybe by Christmas….

His name was Ford McKenzie.  He was 18 when he joined the army and left that backwoods town in south Mississippi.  His father saw him off to the bus stop and in an encouraging but humorous send off he gave his son a homemade “sling shot” to help protect him against the German army.  He was no soft city boy going off to war, he volunteered for a new unit, they called them paratroopers promising they would jump out of airplanes behind enemy lines. They eventually became known as the 82^nd Airborne.  Their training was tough.  Their original camp was near Currahee, a mountainous area in Georgia that had an especially challenging three mile run up a mountain that now is encompassed in the Appalachian forests.   He saw combat almost his entire time in the Army.  He jumped out of a plane on D-day in Normandy, behind enemy lines like they promised winning two bronze medals, a silver star, was wounded twice and still served out the entire war.  With your permission I'll jump ahead and paint you a scene. 

It’s December 25^th, 1944.  Ford is in Bastogne, France.  The newspapers back home have started calling his unit the Battered Bastards of Bastogne because it's 83,000 of us against 250,000 of them.  The Germans are desperate because they know if they lose this one it’s over for them, yet your Commanding officer has refused to give up.  His reply when asked to surrender by a German delegation is “Nuts!”  Its bone rattling cold, the kind of cold that makes you think your teeth will shatter into a million pieces if you don’t get warm and they don’t stop chattering.  You haven’t had a hot meal in week’s maybe even months when you have anything to eat at all.  Your boots and uniforms have holes in them and the snow seeps into those holes like the sand of a beach seeps into your shoes. As a bonus you can’t build a fire to stay warm or crawl out of your foxhole as you are more than likely to be shot by an enemy sniper.  You have run out of most supplies and have no idea when new supplies are coming.  What you do have is Ford McKenzie in your unit.  On Christmas morning, Ford and a buddy crawled out of their fox hole, stealing silently through the woods with his sling shot.  That’s right his sling shot, carried for 4 years, all the way from Mississippi to France.  They eventually catch up with a chicken spotted earlier that morning which inexplicably had somehow escaped the local farmer’s pot.  Ford is as good with his sling shot as he is with his rifle and soon the bird is in hand.  Now imagine what a feast the two of you could have with this bird.  Incredible!  It would probably last you and your one buddy for several meals, but that is not how it works for these soldiers, these band of brothers.  The chicken is shared.  A small fire is risked in a foxhole.  A squad of men gathered in rag tag gear laughing, sharing a cigarette amoung them, a piece of chicken and the memories of past Christmas’ with their loved ones.  I’d like to imagine that someone may have even quietly murmured a song:

I'll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams.

I wonder now when you hear that song again if you’ll listen to the words more closely trying to imagine sitting in a foxhole with 6 or 7 buddies, huddled for warmth, claiming this is the best meal they’ve ever had, missing their families far away and yet still celebrating the peace of Christmas.  I hope you do.  Then I hope you’ll put aside all the glitz, glitter and clutter; gather your family, your friends, or your loved ones and share a simple meal celebrating the peace of Christmas.  It might just end up being the best meal you’ve ever had…..

Footnote:

Ford McKenzie made it back home eventually living in Franklin Parrish, Louisiana the rest of his life.  I’ve never met a better man. He always treated me like a hero because I served a relatively peaceful stint in the Marine Corps.   He passed several years ago living to be 79.  He never spoke of the war except once.  Ford can be seen on film at the D-day Museum in New Orleans telling this story, sharing a brief moment of a hero’s journey.  I hope someday you’ll visit this great tribute to our servicemen and women.