Four Years Later

I’m sorry that I haven’t written a blog post all week. I have had the time and as always, I have had ideas of things I wanted to write about. Maybe I just needed a little break. Late last night, I started a post and the laptop copped an attitude so I had to shut the whole computer down, losing what I had started. But not really a loss because it wasn’t much.

I rolled out of bed this morning, thinking I have to get something posted today. That’s when it dawned on me that I have been doing this for four years.

My first post, on February 28, 2010, was just a trial and I see now that I deleted it. I still need to count today as the day. What have I written about in those four years? Why tell you when I can show you.

My interview with Rat and Millie has got to be my favorite post. This post even has relevance with current events as the rat terrier was recognized at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show earlier this month. 

For some reason, my blog post which received the most views was "Are you a sea lion or a seal?"  I don't know what was so special about this particular post. I had Milwaukee Zoo as one of the labels, but I used that on other posts which didn't get nearly the traffic. One of those things I just don't understand. 

This would be one of my longer posts, but also one of the sadder ones. It always makes me cry. 

Lastly, I have been trying to find the best tribute post to my sister Pat. I have written so much about her, but I don't yet have the skill to tell her story the way it needs to be told. Someday. 

What will you be remembered for?

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

2 Timothy 4:7

If you have been following me at all, you know I ran a 5K (my first race of any kind ever) on the Fourth of July and had hoped to run in more races this summer. Today is the first annual Don Lintereur Memorial Run and I really wanted to run in it. I just couldn’t do it; I have too many other commitments this weekend.

This is what the flyer for the race says about Don.

Don was a running icon in the Tomahawk and surrounding communities whose passion was to inspire people of all ages to develop a love and commitment to the sport of running. Don passed away on Thanksgiving 2012 after a courageous battle with kidney failure, running and competing right up until his death. Don was also a well-respected Biology teacher in the Tomahawk School District for 35 years. We hope this run, in his honor, will carry on his passion for running and his commitment to the field of education. All proceeds go toward a scholarship fund established in his name to assist THS graduates pursuing the field of education.

Do you want to know who Mr. Lintereur was to me? Besides my high school Biology teacher, he was my tutor for eight weeks while I was in junior high.  

The winter that I was a seventh grader, I broke my leg sledding. My cast went from the tip of my toes to the top of my thigh. I could get around on crutches ok, but someone decided that I shouldn’t go to school for the eight weeks that the unwieldy cast would be on. I didn’t argue with whoever made that decision.

Once a week, Mr. Lintereur came out to our house to give me my assignments for the next five days and to gather up the work that I had finished.  We’d visit a little bit, an odd concept for me since I was at that age where visiting with any adult, much less a teacher, was just plain awkward. But Mr. Lintereur saw past my teen-age-ness and talked to me like a person, laughing with me and never at me.

Then one day Mom made peanut butter cookies.

Apparently, Mr. Lintereur loved peanut butter cookies. He claimed that I should eat a lot of them as some component in the peanut butter cookie had bone-healing powers. He was a Biology teacher, remember, so he must know what he was talking about.

Which meant that my mom made peanut butter cookies every week the day before Mr. Lintereur was due to come.   

Here’s the funny thing. I have known that this run in his honor was coming up, but I wasn’t thinking about it that much since I wasn’t participating. But I have had a craving for peanut butter cookies for over a week. Friday night, I finally gave in and baked a batch. It wasn’t until I was cleaning up afterwards that my mind flashbacked to all those batches of cookies in seventh grade. 

(Mr. Lintereur's obituary. How's your obituary going to look?)

It will all work out.

“Sometimes you just have to go for it and sometimes you have to wait and it sure is hard trying to decide which it is. But no matter what you do, you have to tell yourself that it’s the best decision you could make at the time. And then you go on…I don’t believe you should regret any decision you make. But that’s the way I am. Maybe I can’t admit that I’ve made a mistake. But whatever happens, it’ll work out or you make it work out.”

Somehow I had it in my head to share an Albert Einstein quote tonight. But I couldn’t decide on one and then when I found one I really liked, I couldn’t decide what to say about it. Then I thought that my sister Pat had written something similar to one of his quotes and thought I would compare the two. And by that time I was so confused and an hour had passed and I had nothing to show for it.

But as it turns out, this quotation by my sister Pat kind of fits the bill. Why do I obsess some nights about what to blog about? I mean, if it is that difficult, maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe some nights, I just don’t need to bore you with my blog. Maybe no words are better than stupid words. But whatever I write about, it is not life or death. Right? And it will all work out. 

And still not a day goes by that I don't miss her. 

Patricia Ann and Nicholas Ryan

I almost forgot it was Tuesday and didn't post a blog. When I have my act together, and my head isn't in the clouds, I try to write each blog a day or two ahead of time. That way I avoid that nine pm crunch. Speaking of crunch, I had a compulsion to bake cookies tonight so that is how I squandered part of my evening.

Now that the dust has settled and reality has set in  - in a few short months I may have my own book in my hands - I find myself wandering back to where this all really started. Sure, I always wanted to write, ever since I could write, but who was it that gave me the dream, believed in me? There was Mrs. Nocco in the six grade and Mrs. Hanson in Freshman English. 

But late at night, when I couldn't sleep, I knew I could call my sister Pat. She maybe didn't appreciate it but she did appreciate that, along with everything else we had in common, we felt the need to write. Some day, when I have a few more books under my belt, when I have a few more literary connections, my dream is to publish the book she started writing when she was in high school. She worked on it up until a couple years before she died. It still needs a little work, but I think that some day it will make it in to print. If I can do it, surely Pat can.

It took me awhile to figure out why I picked these two pictures. My sister Pat and my son Nick. They have an awful lot in common. Perfectionist tops the list. Just like Pat, though, I can pretty much reach Nick at the dumbest times. I can count on him to be on-line at midnight as well as six am. 

I feel bad that I couldn't find any pictures of Aunt Pat with Val, but just you wait Val, your turn will come.

Does anyone make a difference?

Dear God,

If I die tomorrow

Or a thousand tomorrows from now,

Will it matter?

Will I be changed

Or have changed the world?

Will another moment from eternity of existence

Cause the moon to fall,

The oceans to weep,

The trees to walk?

But if an extra heartbeat brings one smile to a teary eye,

If all my heartbeats can make another soul sing,

Another life less dull,

Then my entire being has purpose.

And eternity becomes an instant of joy.

(by Pat Loehmer)

If I looked back through all the letters my sister Pat wrote me over the years, I would probably find the date when she wrote this. But I am pretty sure that it was well before she was diagnosed with cancer, well before she realized that her days were numbered, that mortality would come knocking way too soon.

Last night I finished yet another draft of my memoir of my mission trip to Kenya. Much of that trip was spent wondering if I made a difference, if any of those people who I tried to help actually had been helped in any way by my presence for that very short period of time. It took me several years to realize why I had gone to Africa; I should have read this poem then and it would have come clear.