06.17.18

What’s authentic...the authentic reality of a situation.This word we use so casually. The feeling some people crave. This idea we skirt around hoping to avoid ourselves indefinitely...even though it’s happening every waking minute of every day. Your life. This precious thing. This miracle. This extended moment. Breathing, eating, sleeping, laughing, loving, hurting, learning, getting knocked down and getting back up. The music. The moments. The wind combing the pines far above. The rush of a cold creek and the crackle of a fire, staring listlessly at the flames, offering a word or two, looking back up at the stars.
This whole thing was nothing more than idea that got stuck in my head...that suddenly propelled one foot in front of the other. A reclamation as much as a tribute, a five-month ‘thank you’ to a mother who had shown me the value of authenticity at a young age. Living on a hill overlooking the Verde Valley in northern Arizona. The endless distractions of the outside world versus our home on half an acre. A wood stove burning through winter. Books on adventures great and small. The men and women who ventured and explored and loved this land and lands beyond that I dreamt of in the back room we built, lying on the forest green carpet of my room just reading and dreaming. I owe that capacity to her.
The bicycles. The drum kits. The books. The detritus of teenage experiments everywhere. The old stereo in the living room. Fifth Dimension. Beatles. Roberta Flack. Vivaldi. Bread. John Denver.
The whole time you’re waiting for something more. Compulsively longing for something you’re too young to understand under the soft gaze and gentle hand of a mother.
Years later...sitting next to her at the table, watching her too exhausted to open her eyes while she tries to eat...finishing her salad, helping her to the couch just to lay down. To watch this all occur within a period of months. Holding back tears the entire time. From a routine checkup to chemotherapy to failed marrow transplants...from the healthiest woman you knew to the weight loss, the hair loss, the loss of everything just months before retirement.
And yet here I am, a week off the trail in Sedona surrounded by friends and relatives, surrounded by love and endless cards and gifts from people who she inspired through a very innocent sort of authenticity. I go through old pictures...boxes of history dating as far back as the marriage photos of grandparents and faded snapshots of great aunts and second cousins gone long before I knew them...and there’s this young woman, this kid, with long blonde hair and a chipped front tooth and eyes like you’ve never seen. There’s something different about this human and I can’t stop looking because I can’t believe this is my mom. I see the toughness yes. The conviction, the beauty, but something else. A magnetism. A quality. It’s because I suddenly recognize this quality that I understand something. A puzzle piece lies down in my mind and years of missing narrative appear like missing chapters in a long book. And I hold her hand while she lies on the couch after beating me in scrabble one last time. She whispers ‘Did we miss anything important? Did we talk about everything? I pause and say ‘I just want you to know how grateful I am.’
This feeling of gratitude overwhelms me on the trail daily. Sometimes I wonder ‘how did I actually get such an authentic loving human for a mother?’ Did I deserve her? How do I begin to honor her life? She said ‘why were you grateful?’ And I paused again and said simply: ‘because you cared.’