Mom

By John O’Malley

It’s a story of endurance, building, and more importantly, rebuilding. And Picasso’s The Old Guitarist. I tell this story often, including at clinics,  because it represents the essence of what I have learned about coaching and teaching. 

I was 18 years old when I lost my dad to a fatal heart attack. A month later I was home from my freshman year of college for the start of summer and our house caught fire. A plumber had been soldering a pipe in the bathroom when the insulation caught the flame of the blow torch and went up. With the water supply turned off, he had no quick way to contain the fire and the flames quickly spread up into the attic and beyond. We called the fire department, I turned the water supply on and grabbed the garden hose and ran up the stairs to the bathroom. As my family left the house I started spraying water into the walls and up into the attic. A few minutes later a fireman arrived and I told him I had that area under control, and he immediately told me to leave the house. 

I said no. 

He explained to me that he’d carry me over his shoulders if I didn’t get the hell out of there immediately. I reluctantly agreed to leave. But here I was, 18 years old, and the old cliche became a reality for me: what would you grab if your house was on fire? I had no time to think. 

I grabbed a book. It was one my dad shared with me. 

Our house fire was eventually extinguished. The house was destroyed. Our home was not. 

Despite being declared uninhabitable, my mother said that we were going to stay there, refusing to accept any housing arrangements from the insurance company. My mother, with six children, recently widowed with no life insurance policy from my dad to ease the stress, refused to leave our home. I slept in the basement that evening, and for the entire summer. I recall the first night looking through the gaping hole that used to be our roof and seeing stars, smelling the overwhelming char of the 2x4s that used to be the walls that protected me from the storms, I was now vulnerable to whatever the weather would bring. 

That summer, our house was rebuilt. The day before I went back to school to start my sophomore year, one of the workers put up The Old Guitarist on the wall. It was a print we’d had that survived the fire. I looked at it a moment. I never really thought about it before. It was just a famous print of a painting. In that moment, I realized something about that painting. I always preface this explanation with the point that I don’t ever want to know what Picasso intended with that painting. What it meant to me, in that moment, was profound. I realized that the guitar was holding up the old man, not the other way around. I had never looked at it that way. Perhaps I needed to experience tragedy. Perhaps I needed to understand what it means to endure. The rest of the painting is filled with dark blues and grays. The guitar is the true center of the painting, composed of the brightest colors of the painting. It is holding the man up. What is it that holds us up at times we need to endure? Where do we find the strength to rebuild?

My mom taught me endurance that summer. My mom taught me how to rebuild. 

My parents never taught me to fight a fire. They built a home worth fighting for. I know what I was feeling that day and I would have gone down with the flames. 

And this is what I always share that we need to do with our classes and our teams: Don’t tell them to fight the fire. Give them purpose to fight. 

How absurd to think that someone would fight that fire if they were threatened with being grounded, or worried about how they’d be graded on their firefighting skills? I am pretty sure I broke some rules that day. Rules don’t inspire. If your athletes and students aren’t fighting, willing to suffer, or willing to try, it’s not because they aren’t tough enough, it’s not because you can’t enforce grades. It’s because the guitar isn’t there. 

I think of that moment as my mom’s greatest moment. 

We talked that night, in the smoke filled kitchen, at the kitchen table my dad died at a month earlier. She managed to save a book in the fire too, and she told me: The Giving Tree. You know, the Shel Silversteen book about a boy and tree that gives the boy everything it has starting with shade, then apples, its branches, and finally trunk. Then the boy, now an old man, uses the stump as a place to rest. I gave her that book a few weeks earlier for Mother’s Day. I wrote in it that the book reminded me of her. She was my Giving Tree. 

This week that book reached its final page. My mother gave everything, left with nothing left to give, and lost her life to this horrible disease everyone is talking about. I said goodbye to her a few days ago. And I sit here, on Mother’s Day, reflecting on what she has given me. 

My mother was a stubborn, hippie wannabe. She loved the counterculture mentality of the 60s, she questioned authority and the norm, she advocated for diversity and differences, she hated compliance. Though not a true believer in reincarnation, she would say that she felt the students who died at Kent State were reincarnated into her children, that’s how strongly connected she felt to the protest movement. She showed me the ability to suffer, to fight, to endure, but only things worth fighting for. As Buffalo Springfield played in the background, war was almost always not one of those things, she explained. My mom hated the consumption part of our culture. I’ve always advocated for coaches and teachers to be sure to be builders, not consumers. Some people in our country right now are willing for people to die so they can continue consuming in the way they used to consume. Some coaches and teachers consume their students and athletes. Their students and athletes are used to fulfill their desires and motivations.  I want to be a builder, not someone who consumes.  Where did I learn this from?

My mom famously had the concept of ‘checking in’ that most of us had growing up. As the day began on those limitless childhood summer days of wonder, she would say, “check in.” No cell phones, just go out on an adventure and check in now and then. My mom valued checking in. For us, that was the kitchen table and the back porch. Her favorite activity was easily porch or deck sitting. Checking in. My dad died at the kitchen table. My mom’s last visit to my house included a deck session. My mom’s chair sits prominently on my deck. 

This week has been filled with a variety of emotions, naturally. I’ve had anger, especially at a political institution that has failed miserably in protecting our vulnerable. My mom would have protested. The day after my mom died, I did what my mom taught me: I started rebuilding. I had so much energy. I had a couple hundred dollars of lumber delivered  and I went to work. I built a massive privacy fence for my deck. It broke a village code. I created my design. The essence of my mother. 

The unexpected part was when my wife, Heather, came over and helped with the project. I planned on diving into the project solo, a sort of manic depressive response of sorts to my mom’s death. Instead, Heather and I built together. Truthfully, we started rebuilding together.

My friend and coaching guru, Tony Holler, frequently suggests that we should let kids build their own house. Develop that guitar. But what happens when your house burns down? We need to not just build our house, but be prepared to rebuild. It will burn down at some point. 

As my friend and coach, Alex Lyons recently said, “It’s not about learning crochet.” That’s right. It’s not about any activity. It’s about what happens inwardly as you pursue that activity. At the end of our day, the fence complete, Heather and I sat on our deck and admired our work. The fence isn’t about blocking out. It’s about creating a place to check in. 

And that’s what it’s about. It’s about kitchen tables, decks, and guitars. 

Strong families operate as teams; strong teams operate as families. The division between family and team is a blurred one for me. Indeed, I learned everything I needed to know about coaching and teaching from my family. I grew up with five siblings and tribes appeal to me. Classes, teams, staffs, friends, families. Our cross country coaching staff is a small tribe, my team, my classes, my friends, family…all small tribes. And like all things, you need to build your tribe. Sometimes, you need to rebuild.

It seems many of us are going to be in need of rebuilding. Your teams, your careers, your families. And times will occur when you wonder where your strength will come from. What should you focus on in order to build? What should you build to begin with? Find that guitar. That guitar is love. Love creates endurance. Love creates passion. For me, it’s a kitchen table, a wife building a place for us to check in with our kids, a tribe of friends, family, athletes and students. 

This process of rebuilding is not linear. The day after completing the fence I didn’t take more than 100 steps in my sweat pants all day. I was marinating in sadness. 

I ran the Chicago Marathon this past October. I was hitting the 21 mile marker and my sister, on the sidelines waiting for me, jumped onto the street and started running with me. After a block or so, she asked how I was doing. “I’m hurting.” Her response? “Good.” 

Yes, that’s what I was there for. That’s why I signed up. That’s why I started the race. It’s not about learning crochet. 

And that’s what we’ve all signed up for. And when you love something, there is never a such thing as too tired. My mother taught me that. 

Happy Mother’s Day.