The Generations

(When Runner’s World cut me loose as a columnist in 2004, I wasn’t ready to stop magazine work. This year I post the continuing columns from Marathon & Beyond. Much of that material now appears in the book Miles to Go.)

2007. If we’re lucky and live long enough, we look in the mirror each morning and see a parent’s face staring back at us. I see my dad’s, more in the mannerisms than the features that he willed to me. I see an older version of him, since he never reached my current age.

Dad didn’t live long enough to see his children become parents. He died at just 54, which seems more youthful to me each year.

He never met my first serious girlfriend. I lived on the West Coast and he was in Iowa when Janet and I became a couple. She never met him, and we couldn’t afford two plane tickets to his funeral.

When we became engaged soon after that service, I told my mom, “I’m sorry we weren’t able to tell him.” She assured me, “He knew this was coming.”

Dad missed many of the events that a parent should experience during a full lifespan: the weddings, the announcement “you’re going to be a grandpa!” the baby’s arrival, the first steps and first words, the babysitting, the school, the games, the concerts, the graduation, the dating and (if really lucky) the start of yet another generation.         

I’ve experienced what Dad missed: my wedding and those of my two sisters, the births of my three children (and their growing up and all that goes with it), plus two children for Emily and three (gained by marriage) for Anne. I later divorced, remarried and became stepdad to Barbara’s son Chris Hazen.

Chris, my son Eric and daughter Sarah married in consecutive years of the early 2000s. Chris and Cindy gave us two granddaughters, Paige and Shaye, then Sarah and Mark the first “Henderson” grandson, Noah.

In January 2007, I wrote newborn Noah Samuel Friesen a letter that he might or might not read someday. (Readers will always have that power over writers.) It read in part:

Dear Noah: You’re less than two weeks old as I write this. Your weight just crept above the minimum requirement for winning your release from the hospital. You have moved home with parents who already had shown, even more than most mothers and fathers do, how much they wanted you.

You are a “miracle child.” Every new child is a miracle, of course, but you even more so. Every child is lucky to be here, but that’s especially true for you.

Without huge assists from medical science – before conception, then again late in pregnancy, through delivery and beyond – we never would have known you. You were a slow starter on your path into this world, then a fast finisher.

You weren’t due until Valentine’s Day. Thank you for letting us all fall in love with you six weeks early.

Later. With his early passing, my dad was also spared the premature death of his first child, my brother Mike. He outlasted our mother by less than a year as both died in 2004.

Dad didn’t have to suffer (as Mom did) through the heartaches of two grandchildren, plus an adopted granddaughter, born with handicaps. He didn’t live to see the failure of my first marriage.

Sarah and Eric divorced, but both have found new life partners. Leslie lives in a group home with her second family of sorts.

Dad’s three great-grandchildren – we don’t use the word “step” – grow and thrive. At this writing, Paige is almost 16, Shaye is 14, Noah is 12. All live in our home state of Oregon.

The girls are in Eugene after spending seven years in their mother’s native Hong Kong. Paige competes in track, and Shaye excels in ballet. They are fluent in two Chinese dialects as well as English.

Noah’s mom and dad share custody in the Portland area, and he was too young when they split up to remember them as a couple. He’s a natural triathlete with swimming, biking and running among his favorite outdoor activities.

(Photo: All my grandkids –Paige, Shaye and Noah.)

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. The titles: Going Far, Home Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Miles to Go, Pacesetters, Running With Class, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, Starting Lines, and This Runner’s World, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]