Barbara Gayle

Mom in full cheering regalia at the South Carolina 1/2 Ironman.

For all intents and purposes, this blog is designed to be the story of my pursuit of athletic achievement, my athletic dreams, and one chapter's omission has become glaringly obvious. Last Saturday, November 13, was the first anniversary of my mother's passing from pancreatic cancer. In so many ways, without her, I would not have had the strength, discipline, courage or sense of adventure to sink myself, wholesale, into this dream.

When I began swimming, at 12, I was the oldest new swimmer. Everyone else my age was in one of the three more advanced groups and had been swimming competitively since they were able to crawl across the pool deck.

I think most people play several sports growing up and then choose their favorite. Then, if they seem to have a knack for it they'll take it more seriously. If they have a knack for it and they're disciplined they'll think about collegiate athletics. Then, if things go well there, they'll start thinking about international competition and, finally, The Olympics. As in most things I do, I went bass ackwards. Having just started swimming around the time of the Atlanta summer games of 1996, I decided that that was what I wanted to do. I never recall having a conversation with my mom about my lofty goals, but I guess she just kinda knew.

When you are in middle school, parents are the most hideously embarrassing thing, an extreme liability in the universal pursuit of looking cool. Even having a parent take you to my private school was terrible unless they were sporting a new S-Class or S-Type or S-anything-cooler-than-my-mom's-Honda.

Our trips to school were no different than any other time, to be used effectively, with maximal educational and inspirational benefit. Around this time she was on a self-help, books on tape (our Accord didn't have a CD player) kick, and she had "a special reading" she wanted me to hear. You know, the Zig Ziglar on Selling or Suze Orman sort of thing... All I remember was the narrator talking about normal kids, who turned out to be outrageously successful in their chosen fields; Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, head engineers for Boeing, etc. The "special reading" ended with the narrator asking his rapt audience through Dolby tape technology what was meant to be a rhetorical question: "Can you see your child directing the Boston Symphony? Will your daughter be the next Diane Sawyer? Can you see your son designing the next Boeing 747?"

"YES!" my mother exclaimed from the drivers seat of our green Honda Accord at the top of her lungs in rush-hour traffic with a hearty and well intention fist pump. ...I died inside.

I think it was meant to be a segue to, what I'm sure would have been a very motivational and inspirational dialogue about my innate talent being unlocked through hard work, discipline and time management. I'm pretty sure I ended it and quickly and quietly skulked off to another harrowing day at Middle School.

Now, you as readers, are obviously endowed with the wisdom of my objective retrospect and see the incredible value of what she was doing. Congratulations. I would have loved to have seen you in middle school.

So, as most middle schoolers do, I missed the point. I didn't realize that we very easily could have bought an S-Type if my mom hadn't sent me to a school that championed education. I didn't realize that my mom was speaking from her own experiences in drive, discipline, education, hard work and success.

It's ironic that now, without her here and 13 years after that terribly embarrassing incident, I'm banking on what she wanted to say that day and the fact that she is right. I know that she was though, she already proved it.

So thanks mom, you were pretty legit.