Passing the baton…

“..a good education and sound bringing up is of the first,

middle and last importance, and I declare it to be

most instrumental and conducive to virtue

and happiness.”

Plutarch, Plutarch’s Morals

As the runner turns the corner giving it his all, another waits in the tiny 22 yard (20m) passing zone.  Timing and total focus is everything as the receiving sprinter charges forward expecting the baton to be placed smoothly into his open hand.  If all goes well, both racers will be at top speed as the transfer happens in full stride…safely within the zone. 

The thing about the passing zone track is this:  If you stand and look at it, it seems a more than an adequate space within which to hand off and receive the baton.  If you are running the race, however, it is exceedingly short and passes “…in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…”

There is little more beautiful to watch in track and field than runners seamlessly exchanging a baton.  It happens quickly, one runner spent…the other heading off, full tilt, on their leg of the race.  If done correctly the team of runners appears to be one, and before you know it the race is over. 

The exchange means everything…races are won or lost in the passing of the baton.

She was home…

We had a wonderful weekend together.  Mariah is in the last rotation of medical school, and as providence would have it, she is working on a Navajo Indian Reservation in New Mexico, a scant six and a half hour drive from Tucson.  At the end of her first week she hopped in the car and came home.

We played, hiked, lifted weights, and as is our custom, simply enjoyed each other’s company.  Busy or not…it really didn’t matter…proximity – that’s what counted. 

It is like that with close friends and family, isn’t it?  As it turns out, we are fortunate to be family and close friends.

This trip, however, was more than just a few days together; it was the weekend before the date of my sister’s death.  Wednesday was coming…we knew it, but said little to each other about it…we didn’t need to.

Wednesday, February twelve…

The Facebook post was short and thoughtfully written.  A photo accompanied the note.  One face brightly smiling, the other unfocused with little resemblance to the sparkling young woman.  Not that many years earlier, the vacant staring woman’s eyes also sparkled as the younger woman; looking at one of those pictures there would be little doubt they were mother and daughter.  When together there was NO doubt they were mother and daughter.

“Two years ago today I lost my mother and best friend to early-onset Alzheimer's disease. She was my person, and not a day goes by that I am not influenced by the things she taught me. Mama, your death was not in vain. We will figure out how to end this terrible disease, I promise. I love you to the sky and down.”

“I love you to the sky and down….” – words resonating through the decades of my life.  When I read the last line of that post, I did not hear Mariah’s voice, or her mother’s – my sister Nancy – from whom she learned this loving expression.  I heard the voice of my mother who inoculated her children with this phrase again and again and again and again.  I remember as a child looking up at the clouds and thinking, “That is a really long way!  How do you get up there? How do you get down?”  Even then I suspected there was no end to the sky, and I surely knew there was no end to my mother’s love.

A successful race indeed…

Reading Mariah’s words also reminded how much life is like that relay race.  It’s all about the exchanges, isn’t it?  If we have purpose in life, it is to pass along what we have learned to our children and others with whom we share proximity in those ever so brief exchange zones of life. 

I thought about a mother afraid she did not have what it took to raise this child.  I watched as she practiced the exchange with her daughter in the big moments and the small that came and went.  I watched as Nancy ended her journey in the most unpredictable of ways.  What seemed a leisurely pace in youth became blazingly fast as she finished her course.

The baton?  She slipped it lovingly and firmly into her daughter’s hand so deliberately, so smoothly, so thoughtfully at just the right moment that the transition was flawless…one runner finished her leg of the race as the other sped forward into life.

Yes indeed…“There is little more beautiful to watch…” in life “…than runners seamlessly exchanging a baton.”

 - ted