On back-to-back marathons, unconventional birthday celebrations, and the questionable utility of breasts (vol. xxvii, no. 10)

Dear Family,

Now that all my children are grown and two¹ of them are writing their own monthly missives, it at times occurs to me to wonder what I’m supposed to keep writing about every month.

But then I remember that, while many of these letters make at least passing reference to my children’s (and wife’s) existence, I mostly write about myself. So, as long as I’m still alive (and reasonably ambulatory) my children’s desire to write their own story shouldn’t create too big a problem for me.

Crystal (& Taylor)

But before we get to me, let’s talk about Crystal, who celebrated a birthday this month. In an earlier time, it was considered impolite to ask or reveal a lady’s age. I think those days are pretty much over, but just to be safe, I will not reveal it here. I’ll only say that Crystal celebrated her birthday with a cake from the new Filipino bakery in Wheaton and by going for a 53-mile bike ride. (She actually rode 54 miles because she took a wrong turn somewhere, but she only needed to go 53, if you know what I mean.)

She rode solo, but I found her on her way home and shot a little video with about five miles to go.

She arrived home a short time later and collapsed in our un-raked front yard. Emily Eskelsen happened to be over and took this picture:

The celebratory ride came one day after Crystal and my two local sisters-in-law went to see the Taylor Swift movie, thereby reducing the family members who haven’t seen it to just Ari and me. (I suspect it will stay that way.)

I don’t have any pictures of Crystal’s movie experience, but Grace sent a 3-minute video of her singing along (loudly) to Love Story at a movie theater in Buena Vista. I won’t share that here, but I will share a 7-second video of Hannah disrupting a showing of it at Provo Towne Centre (where she watched it with Sophie).

Five Days in Utah

I began the month in classic father-of-the-year style, by electing to be out of town for the 24th birthday of our one child who actually lives with us. Ari, who has had quite a month — which will get considerable ink both below and in Ari’s own letter, didn’t seem to mind.

I skipped Ari’s birthday in order to be in Utah for the St. George Marathon on October 7th (a date that will obviously live in infamy for reasons having nothing to do with my performance at the race).

I flew to Salt Lake on Tuesday, October 3rd, in part to give myself a few days to acclimate to the altitude, but mostly in the hope of spending a little time with Hannah (who lives in Orem) and Sophie (at BYU).

The three of us plus Emma had dinner together on Tuesday, which was fun for me. On Wednesday, I needed to get a lot of actual work done. Not wanting to spend the day cooped up in my room at the Residence Inn Provo North, I migrated over to campus and set up shop in the Wilkinson Center — in a little nook tucked between the bookstore and the Cougareat.

Ah, memories.

I’d been there for about an hour and half (and gotten maybe 45 minutes’ worth of work done) when I heard, approaching me from behind, a deep voice bellowing, “TIMOTHY…BERTRAM…WILLIS!” I didn’t even have to look up to know it was George Higgins, a recently returned missionary and one of “my” young men I’ve worked with in various capacities since he was 12. So that was fun. I understand George is now an officer of the new campus “Maryland Club” of which Sophie was recently elected president.

A short time later, while I was waiting for my order at Chick-fil-A² I heard my name called again from across the dining area. It was my nephew Peter. We chatted for a few minutes — and then again a couple hours later when we crossed paths in the library.

That night, Peter, his brother Alex, Sophie and I had dinner at Brick Oven, just south of campus.

Ah, memories.

I visited Hannah again on Thursday and helped her walk the dogs (I’ve honestly lost count of how many animals live with Hannah and Emma — it’s at least two dogs and three cats in a reasonably spacious three-bedroom apartment) before beginning my journey south to St. George.

Two things attracted me to the St. George Marathon. One was the course, which, with 2,600 feet of net elevation drop, I expected to be easy. (I was wrong about this.) The other was my many Cedar City running relatives who I anticipated would be willing to support me in the endeavor. (About this I could not have been more right.)

No fewer than three Corry homes were offered to me, and I wound up spending Thursday and Friday night at my cousin Jake’s house. I spent most of Friday in St. George picking up my race packet, walking through the St. George Temple open house, eating lots of Olive Garden pasta and breadsticks, and visiting my old friend Colby Jenkins, who recently launched a bid for Congress.

I drove the marathon course (backwards) from St. George up to the start line in a small town called Central, 26 miles away. The population of Central, according to the internet, is 940, which seems high to me.

From Central I drove back to Jake’s place in Cedar City. A few miles outside of Central, I started seeing signs for the Mountain Meadows Massacre site, which I knew was around there somewhere but had never visited. I felt like I should stop, and so I pulled into the empty parking lot and wandered around for a little while, reflecting on what could cause seemingly ordinary people to do such horrible things. My mind then turned to my own foibles and wicked tendencies, and I wondered how different I really am from those people. It’s unpleasant to think about, and so I didn’t for very long.

Race Day

It was on race day (Saturday) that my Corry cousins really came through for me.

Owing to the microscopic and remote nature of Central and the fact that there’s really just one road in and out of there, the only approved way to get to the start line from St. George was by bus. Because ferrying several thousand runners takes time, I was expected to board my assigned bus in St. George at 4 a.m. and then huddle around makeshift bonfires in freezing-cold Central for 2+ hours until the race started at 7:00.

Suffice it to say, there was no way in hell I wanted to do that.

Fortunately, the bus requirement didn’t apply to people staying in Cedar City, which provides access to Central from above the start line (as opposed to driving up the closed course from St. George below). All I needed was somebody willing to wake up at 5:15 a.m. and drive me the hour from Cedar City down to Central (and then let me sit in his warm truck until race time).

Enter Jake Corry, who for some reason seemed happy to do it. Thanks, Jake!

Then, all I needed was someone willing to pick me up at the finish line in St. George and drive me the hour back to Cedar City. Jake originally said he would do that, too. But then a member of his ward died (Jake’s the bishop) and the funeral was scheduled for Saturday morning.

So I got a text from my cousin Mark Corry (the stake president) saying he’d be picking me up at the finish in St. George since Jake would be tied up with the funeral in Cedar. A short time after that, my cousin Robert Corry (ex-bishop, current ward music dude — not unlike myself) texted me that Mark was really too busy to make the trip down, and so he (Robert) would pick me up.

Robert asked how fast I was planning to run so as to appropriately gauge his arrival time. I told him I was shooting for 3:45.

This turned out to be wildly optimistic.

I usually set three goals before a marathon: a starting-line goal, a backup goal, and an “if things go completely sideways” goal. My starting-line goal was 3:45, which is consistent with the marathon pace (8:34 min/mile) I’d been training toward all summer. My backup goal was to beat my marathon PR (3 hours and 54 minutes). And my emergency goal was just to finish in under 4 hours.

In hindsight, I probably should have spaced those out a little more.

The course famously finishes 2,600 feet lower than it begins, but hidden in the course profile are a number of non-trivial uphill portions, including most of miles 7 through 11. It was somewhere on mile 7 that I knew my starting-line goal wasn’t going to happen. By the halfway point, I knew my backup goal was unlikely. And when I started struggling on a series of hills around mile 18, I could feel my emergency goal slipping away as well.

I was told by well-meaning bystanders on three consecutive hills that it was “all downhill after this one.”

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

All I could think about was Robert Corry waiting at the finish line, looking at his watch, shaking his head, and wondering, “Where is this loser?”

Fortunately, when we caught sight of each other about a half-mile from the finish line, he was smiling and cheered me in.

In the end, I stumbled across the finish line in 4 hours and 6 minutes — good enough for 1,649th place out of 3,905 overall finishers (84th out of 192 men in my age group) — the very picture of mediocrity.

Anyway, there are things I would do differently if I had it to do over again, but nobody cares about that and I don’t feel like writing about it anyway.

Robert drove me back to Cedar where I showered, changed, said good-bye to Jake, and started back north.

I stopped in Provo on Saturday afternoon to spend a little more time with Sophie, which was fun for me. We hung out until around dinner time, when she had to go off to some sort of service project — playing with foster children or something, as I recall.

I spent Saturday night at a hotel by the airport. I’m sure any number of Salt Lake area relatives would have been happy to put me up. But I was tired of imposing on people, and with a 7 a.m. flight, I wanted to be as close to the airport as possible.

As often happens, I found myself awake at 4 a.m. without the benefit of an alarm. I got up, showered, returned my rental car and slowly made my way through Salt Lake’s beautiful, shiny new (to me) airport. It felt a little like walking into the future. They have power outlets at all the seats (which in itself isn’t all that unusual — what made it unusual was that they all seemed to actually work). The airport layout is clearly designed for the express purpose of punishing travelers who fly any airline other than Delta by making them walk out to Concourse B, which is practically in Idaho. This presents an interesting dilemma for people who find flying Delta to be its own unique kind of punishment.

The flight home was uneventful. Crystal picked me up at the airport and all was right with the world again.

Ari’s Surgery

A forthcoming letter from Ari will likely tell you all about the procedure they underwent on October 11th. I will endeavor not to steal too much of their thunder, but inasmuch as it fell to me to drive them to and from the hospital, here is how it went from my perspective.

I had never been inside the George Washington University Hospital despite having walked past it literally hundreds of times as a GW graduate student in the late 1990s. (Hannah probably does not remember my bringing her to class once a few months after she was born.)

I associate GW Hospital with two events — one of which actually happened. In addition to being the hospital where real-life President Ronald Reagan was taken after he was shot outside the Washington Hilton in 1981 (I was in 3rd grade and remember it well), GW is also where fictional President Josiah Bartlet was taken after he was shot (just outside the office building where I currently work in Rosslyn, Virginia) in 2000.

Both presidents survived, thanks no doubt to the talented team of professionals (real and made-up) at GW. Reagan went on to win the Cold War, while Bartlet went on to make three more outstanding seasons (followed by two mediocre seasons and one garbage season) of The West Wing.

All this is to say is that I had great confidence in the care Ari would receive at GW.

Ari checked in and we were given similar bracelets, presumably to prove to everybody that we belonged there.

We waited around for a while, as one does at the hospital, and were eventually brought up to the pre-op area where Ari was prepped for surgery.

The surgeon came in, did some stuff, asked a million questions, and explained that he would be performing a bilateral mastectomy.

Ari can explain better than I why they felt this surgery was necessary. They can (and likely will) point out where I’m wrong, but here’s how I think about it. I don’t claim to understand the full range of utility that women derive from having breasts. But, in addition to the obvious, practical reason why literally all female mammals have them,³ I am given to understand that they play a role in female sexuality and, for many women, contribute to their sense of femininity.

Or so I’m told. Breasts may confer other benefits beyond these realms. I have no idea.

In addition to being “non-binary” (a concept I still struggle to get my head around), 24-year-old Ari describes themself as “asexual” and “aromantic.” Consequently, if I am correct in my above understanding about the benefits of having breasts, then Ari’s were serving only to:

1. Make them a slower runner;
2. Make chest-trapping a soccer ball problematic, and;
3. Dramatically increase their risk of developing breast cancer, which runs in our family.

Ari would probably add that their breasts were a source of emotional distress as they convey a degree of femininity outwardly that Ari does not feel inwardly. This is the part I understand least, but no matter.

If I were compelled to lug something around that was causing me a bunch of grief while delivering no benefit, then I’d want to get rid of it, too (especially if insurance would pay for me to get rid of it, which in this case it did).

So they wheeled Ari into the operating room and I went to the office. (As I mentioned earlier, I work in Rosslyn — conveniently, one Metro stop away from GW.)

The surgeon called me three hours later to tell me the procedure had been successful. I came back to find a slightly spacey but very content-looking Ari.

Recovery has had its ups and downs, but I’ll let Ari tell you about that whenever they get around to it. The outpouring of support from our church family has been overwhelming. More than two weeks on, we’re still working our way through some of the gift baskets. (Even the sister missionaries brought flowers.) We have a pretty great ward.

Baltimore Marathon — Team James

Seven days after the St. George Marathon, I perhaps unwisely had scheduled myself to push my new friend James in the Baltimore Marathon.

It wasn’t has hard as it might sound. Even though I now have a medal saying I completed the 2023 Baltimore Marathon, I really only ran the second half of it.

A team of three Athletes Serving Athletes Wingmen pushed James through the first half of the marathon before handing him off to Scott, Dave, and me, who took turns pushing him through the final 13+ miles.

Scott, Dave, and I switched off every mile. So I’d push James for a mile, then run alongside him for two miles, then push for a mile….easy peasy.

It turns out there are few things more fun than running the second half of a marathon when you don’t have to run the first half. We probably overtook a thousand other runners! It was awesome listening to James sweet-talk all the ladies as we went by. “How you doin’” is is favorite pick-up line, and I probably heard him drop it a couple hundred times.

It was rainy and a little on the chilly side, which was harder on James than it was on those of us who got to push him, but it was great fun!

The run was basically two hours of uninterrupted bliss. People cheered for James at literally every turn, and you can’t help but be buoyed by that. At most races, I have to sift through dozens of photos to find one in which I’m smiling. At races where I’m pushing an ASA athlete, it’s hard to find a photo in which I’m not.

It’s one of the most thoroughly enjoyable things I do.

Grace

At the risk of short-changing my youngest child, she seems to be living her best life at SVU. She came home for a visit on the weekend I ran the St. George Marathon, so I missed most of that, alas. But I’m looking forward to seeing much more of her in November.

Grace is clearly enjoying the fall colors of the Blue Ridge Mountains that surround campus and was delighted by Bonnie Cordon’s appointment this month as the new president of the university. She’s a big fan of Sister Cordon’s, who sounds like a pretty great get. I’m happy for Grace, even though the departure of my friend as the acting president means I’ll no longer have access to his rock-star parking when I visit campus.

Maybe I’ll try parking there anyway. I’ve never met Bonnie, but I can’t imagine she’d have me towed.

Love,
Tim

1. Three if you include Grace’s Finsta account, subtitled “The Famlet (graces version),” which delights me to no end
2. The Cougareat has changed a great deal since my time at BYU. Now, unlike then, you can get Chick-fil-A, Papa Johns, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, … and caffeinated soda.
3. Though, according to the internet, humans are the only mammals whose breasts become permanently enlarged after puberty. Did you know that? I didn’t.