Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [72]
Even though we were grown, even though she’d always stressed toughness, she didn’t want Brandy’s death to be harder on us than it had to be.
I had surgery on both my Achilles and my foot in April of my sophomore year. Both my Achilles and plantar fascia (a tendon that runs along the bottom of the foot) had been severely damaged by intensive training. It was touch-and-go as to whether I would ever run again. With the dream still burning, I went through rehab and began jogging in July. By mid-August, I was running without pain for the first time in years. I trained hard and was soon recording the fastest training times I’d ever run in the past; in the second hard workout of the day, for instance, I clipped through five miles in a little more than twenty-three minutes and was never out of breath.
By October, though, the pain was back and getting worse, and I had a cortisone injection at the site of the old injury. An anti-inflammatory, it numbs the area and I kept on running. When the pain came back six weeks later, I got another cortisone shot. Soon, I was getting them monthly, but I salvaged a respectable season nonetheless. By summer, I needed to receive cortisone injections weekly to continue training—I’d had nearly thirty injections since the surgery—and I had to gear myself up for one last season. Both my Achilles and plantar fascia were swollen. As I limped out to the track for a workout, I remember realizing with a sense of clear-eyed finality that I simply couldn’t do it anymore.
I hung up my shoes for good, feeling sadness and—strangely—relief. With the exception of breaking a school record that still stands after nineteen years, I’d failed to reach the other goals I’d set for myself. But despite the fact that running had been the defining force in my life for the previous seven years, I knew that I’d survive without it.
I’d given it my best shot, but it wasn’t meant to be. And if I had to do it all over—and fail to reach my dream again—I would. When you chase a dream, you learn about yourself. You learn your capabilities and limitations, and the value of hard work and persistence.
When I told my dad about my decision—sharing my disappointment as well as relief in knowing that I’d finally made a decision—he put his arm around my shoulder.
“Everyone has dreams,” he said. “And even if yours didn’t work out the way you wanted, it doesn’t make me any less proud of you. Too many people never really try.”
That year, my mom finally got the horse she’d always wanted. A three-year-old Arabian, she named it Chinook.
Chinook was boarded at a stable near the American River, and my mom would drop in to feed and groom the horse before and after work. She could spend hours brushing Chinook’s coat, cleaning her stable, and cleaning the mud from her hooves.
Although there were riding trails along the American River, it was months before my mom could ride her. Chinook had lived most of her life in a pasture (along with a goat) and had never had so much as a saddle placed on her back, which was a big part of the reason my mom could afford to buy her. She was high-strung like many Arabians, but my mom had a natural talent when it came to calming her. Soon, Chinook allowed my mom to saddle her; when she got used to that, my mom finally crawled on. Chinook didn’t seem to like it, but my mom was patient, and I remember the joy in my mom’s voice one day when she called me on the phone.
“I rode Chinook for hours today!” she said. “You can’t believe how wonderful it was.”
“I’m happy for you, Mom,” I said. My mom had lived a life of sacrifice, her own dreams always coming second to ours. I couldn’t help but feel it was finally time that she got something that made her happy.
Later, she would get a second horse named Napoleon. Napoleon was good-natured and even-tempered; the kind of horse that was perfect for my father. And surprising me, my father agreed