Dear Dad

Hello everyone...is anyone out there? Hello...is this thing on?!?

Well, anyway, welcome to May, which is better known as National Bike Month. And just in time, things are really beginning to heat up out there. Yesterday was downright hot (is it too early to start complaining?).

Now, the increase in temperature is directly related to the number of miles cycled. However, the number of miles cycled is inversely related to the quality of writing in this blog. Therefore, as the weather gets warmer, you should expect a significant decline in the quality of writing.

I know what you are thinking..."the quality of writing in this blog was already very poor."

But here's the thing: I don't care.

I also don't care that this is apparently a blog about cycling. Because I'm here today to share a few things that are somewhat unrelated to cycling. I say "somewhat unrelated" because in fact they are related in that doing them results in less cycling...or something like that. Everything is ultimately related to cycling in some way, we all know that. So now we can move on.

Raised Garden Beds

This past weekend was spent mostly building raised garden beds. Because cyclists need to eat carbs, and apparently vegetables are a good source of carbs. Similar to white bread.

I am beginning to get a little skeptical that we will be successful in growing any vegetables, though. This is because the kids seem to love playing in their newly constructed dirt-boxes (pictured below).

The neighbors think they look great, so I guess it's a success either way. At least that's what they told me.

Dear Dad

Moving on to what was originally the main topic of this post...my Dad. For those of you who may not know, my Dad has Frontotemporal Dementia. And if you don't know what that is...below is an article from 2014 that we found recently that I thought was helpful, and accurately portrays the behavior of someone with this disease.

Here is the article: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/a-lesser-known-dementia-that-steals-personality/282661/

It's a fairly long read, so I don't anticipate most of you to read it all. Here are a few snippets:

It took many months, and some Internet research, for the family to get a diagnosis. Her mother’s change in behavior was caused by a little-known disease called frontotemporal dementia, a neurological disorder centered in the frontal lobe of the brain, the part responsible for our behavior and emotions. While Alzheimer’s usually affects older people, and is detected as a person begins to lose memory, frontotemporal dementia causes people to lose their personalities first, and usually hits in the prime of their lives — the 30s, 40s, and 50s.

Frontotemporal dementia patients with the greatest deterioration in the “affiliation network,” (involved in motivating a person to connect with others and generating rewarding feelings during social interactions) exhibited the most severe social and emotional detachment, and patients with the greatest damage to the “aversion network” (involved in detecting and avoiding untrustworthy or threatening individuals) became more willing to trust strangers, and in some cases gave away private personal information despite negative consequences.

There are moments now when all Nicole can do is laugh at how simultaneously tragic and hilarious her mother’s illness is. She sees absurdity in situations that her mother can no longer grasp. Lately, Kathy has been obsessed with opening people’s mailboxes. “We keep telling her it’s a federal offense,” said Nicole.

Then, Kathy will open another. 

“Mom what is that?” 

“Federal offense,” she will reply in a monotone. “Federal offense.” 

Oddly enough, Dad did the exact same thing - opening mail boxes while he was out on a walk or bike ride. Or there was the time I took him out to Subway and he asked the lady in line next to us if she worked out, then asked where she lived, and then told her that Clay (who's Clay?) went to Notre Dame. Then there was the time, I think it was for Mom's birthday a while back that we went out to Texas Corral, that on his way back from the bathroom he sat down in a booth with a younger couple and refused to leave. That is, until my lovely and creative wife said, "Hey Dad, we have cookies at home if you want to go get some!" And upon hearing that, he popped right up out of the booth and we were on our way.

As the article points out, these are laughable memories that are simultaneously tragic and hilarious. It's been a couple years, at least, since those memories. And it's hard to believe that it's probably been close to 10 years since the whole thing started, when we started noticing differences in Dad's behavior. Sometimes, it's difficult to remember back to when Dad was "normal."

So anyway, my beautiful wife sent me this newsletter recently, and the paragraph below really stuck out to me, and spurred on all these thoughts:

Beloved author and professor, Dr. Howard Hendricks, once asked his grown children what they remembered most fondly from their childhood. Was it the vacations they took or the trips to theme parks or the zoo? "No," they answered. It was when Dad got on the floor and wrestled with them. That's the way children think. It is especially the way boys think. The most meaningful activities in the family are often those simple interactions that build lasting connections between generations. 

Now, here's the thing - my brother, Caleb, has always had an impeccable memory. He seems to remember every detail of our childhood(s), vacations, family outings, etc. I shall submit to you one example: We had arrived under the cover of darkness to a cabin in TN that we had previously rented with our Uncle & Aunt & cousins. The adults were struggling to locate the cabin on the mountain road, so much so that my Dad and Uncle had gotten out of the car and were searching for any signs of the road / driveway leading to the cabin. This is when Caleb chimes in from the back of the car, saying something like, "Isn't it just right over there?" Pointing off into the distance...It's also important to note that it had been at least a year or two since our prior visit. Nevertheless, Caleb was of course correct, and totally saved the day.

Then there's me...I'm a pretty simple guy, with a more average (ok...below average) memory. But that's why that paragraph above really stuck out to me, because here is what I remember most about Dad: I remember him laying on the floor when we were kids so we could climb and jump over him, I remember him chasing us around the house and wrestling, I remember him taking us out as a family almost every Saturday for lunch, I remember watching Notre Dame games and playing catch for hours, I remember him coaching my basketball team in high school, and I remember that he hand wrote letters to us every week in college - often with newspaper clippings from the local paper, and $10, always $10. Yes, that's right, a hand written letter, every week from 2005-2009.

There are also great memories from our childhood vacations. Like the time Dad was calling out waves when we were boogie boarding (yes, it's a thing...) saying, "Here it comes, babe-oh!" However, he grossly miss timed one wave and all he got out was "Here it comes, b!#$%#%!!" (Gurgle, gurgle...)

But, as the article points out, it's those simple - daily, regular, weekly - interactions that I remember most. And I think the reason I enjoy doing the same things with my kids, and why it comes naturally for me, is because of Dad.

So, other than ripping at your heart strings with this incredibly serious post on a mostly non-serious "cycling" blog, I guess I've just been thinking a lot about that lately and wanted to write down those memories before I forget.

And mostly, I just want to say - thanks, Dad. We love you.

Clay