My brother Jeff is turning 22 today. I want to share a piece of writing I composed a few years ago that captures Jeff’s infectious spirit. Happy birthday, bro! Love you lots.
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What Would Jeff Do?
On a recent return to my childhood home to help my parents complete a long-weekend’s list of chores and projects, I came across a dusty box of tapes documenting various Atwood family events, celebrations, and gatherings. That evening, after a long day of painting my old room with my mom, building shelves and cabinets with my dad for his workspace in the garage, and eating and cleaning up from a hearty feast of Rakot Kaposzta, a Hungarian casserole of beef, potatoes, sauerkraut, sour cream, and cheese, my parents and I settled into our well-worn couches, excited to laugh together at the silliness and simplicity of suburban life in the late 1980s.
On one tape my brother Jeff and I stand proudly next to a sad, under-grown, and crooked Douglas fir that we fell on our first, and last, “Atwood cut your own Christmas tree” expedition.
A few minutes of tape later, the young faces of family are hidden underneath heaps of hair. On my mom, grandma, and aunts: Mary Lou Retton and Princess Diana inspired hairdos, all accentuated with heavy and dangly bangs. (I remember LA Looks styling gel being a staple on our weekly shopping list.) On Jeff and I, my dad, grandpa, and uncles: Chia Pet-like perms, bowl cuts, flattops, and “the wave.”
Another tape documents our annual neighborhood Nerf football challenge in the quiet streets on Thanksgiving morning. Friends and family are all swimming in ridiculously over-sized neon shirts. I am wearing three Swatch watches on one wrist; Jeff has two different colored laces in each shoes.
Ten minutes beyond this I am caught on tape ferociously wiping my sweaty palms on my corduroy pants before awkwardly reaching for the hands of Jenny Holcombe, my elementary school crush, during the couple skate at the local skating rink.
The most hilarious bit from those wonder years, however, is on the tape labeled “August-December 1990.”
I am standing at the foot of my bed in the room Jeff and I share, dressed in my best back-to-school clothes: pleated plaid shorts, LA Gear high-tops, and a colorful silk button-down shirt that I purchased with the allowance I saved over the summer. I am unaware that that dad has begun recording and I am caught running my hands through my hair before standing at attention with them clasped behind my back. Dad, from behind the camera, explains the importance of the day: it is my first day of third grade, and Jeff’s first day in kindergarten, at Golden View Elementary School.
Dad asks, “J.R., what are you looking forward to about this year?” As if I had rehearsed my response off-camera, I launch into a mini-stump speech about my plans to run for class mayor, volunteer as a student crossing guard, ride my bike to school to get extra exercise, join the book and chess clubs, pick-up trash on the playground during lunch, and produce and sell a “gator bank” for my class mini-society project. (Our school mascot was an alligator.)
A few minutes into my monologue, Jeff, dressed in the same shirt and short combination as I, dances into the scene. He is wearing a giant smile of gums and baby teeth and singsongs in a high-pitched voice. “Dad, dad, look at me. Let’s play roughhouse. Dad! Dad! Tape me wrestling J.R.!” And then Jeff, utterly uninterested in my speech for the camera, picks me up like a sack of potatoes. It is like a scene from The Flintstones when Bam Bam Rubble “plays” with the boulders in his yard. I am a foot taller and 30 pounds heavier than my dimpled younger brother of three years, yet he throws me across the room and onto the bed. I stand to tuck my shirt back into my shorts and fix my hair when Jeff, giggling, grabs my legs, lifts me up, and body-slams me onto the carpet. He kindly offers me a hand and then runs behind to get me into a headlock.
“Dad, dad! We’re playing wrestle. Roughhouse! Tape us playing.”
Jeff is playing. Dad is laughing from behind the camera—the video does a little “hiccup dance” because his shoulders are shrugging up and down with each guffaw. I am foolishly flapping around, slapping at flies that aren’t there, in an effort to twist out of my brother’s hold.
***
My brother’s “rough house” victories in our shared bedroom, in our backyard, and on the kitchen floor soon extended to the basketball court, soccer field, and baseball diamond where he was always able, despite being three years younger, to jump higher and shoot better, to kick farther and sprint faster, and to throw harder and hit with more power than I.
Jeff is now in his third year of college and one of the most naturally gifted athletes I know. His physical stats—5’10” and 165 lbs—are not extraordinary. A small sampling of his early achievements, however, reveal his athletic potential: pitching 65 mph fastballs as a 12 year-old; smacking 275+ yard drives on the golf course when just 13; running a sub-4:50 mile as a 14 year-old kid.
He could have chosen one or two sports, almost any sport, and focused and committed to extend his All-Star and All-League kudos in high school to the collegiate, perhaps semi-pro, level. He chose, instead, to be a normal kid with a healthy social life, his ambition being to live a balanced life rather than dogmatically commit to a lifestyle that could take him to the top of athletics.
This used to bother me. I thought it was frustrating, even tragic, that someone so gifted would choose not to realize his potential.
Jeff knew long before I learned, however, that doing something because we can is sometimes different, and sometimes less fulfilling, than doing what we want to do. For Jeff, sport is not a way to find his identity, but an opportunity to play. He once told me, “If you aren’t smiling, you aren’t living.” And I am hard-pressed to think of my brother in any context without a smile on his face.
All of which makes what happened two weeks ago so upsetting.
During a football game with some friends, Jeff and the player he was marking on defense ran into each other at full speed. Jeff went down, screaming.
Four years earlier, Jeff was viciously tackled from behind nearing the end of the first half of a soccer game. He was like a giant redwood… Always standing strong and proud amongst his peers, always graceful on his feet. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone take him down. But he crashed hard to the ground after being tackled. He limped to the sidelines and at the beginning of the next half, tried to charge the field to take his position at starting forward. His knee kept buckling, however, and he was unable to do so. He cheered-on his teammates throughout the game and then hobbled with them to a Subway sandwich stop, one mile away, for a post-victory celebration. Later that week, however, he was still in pain and went to see a doctor. Jeff was told that his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) was torn, an injury that sends professionals off the field in crutches and stretchers and to the bench for the remainder of the season.
Jeff shed not even a single tear when he tore his ACL as a 16-year-old. (And even managed to hobble on it!) But he was screaming now, and he and his friends knew something was wrong.
Jeff was transported to the hospital via ambulance. X-rays revealed that he had completely torn his ACL, again, though this time in his other knee. He also had a complete tear of the infrapatellar tendon and a partially sprained posterior cruciate ligament (PCL). The team of doctors and therapists at the hospital said it was the worst blown-knee case they have seen.
Jeff would need to undergo surgery to repair his infrapatellar tendon with a cadaver. After months of rehab, he would undergo a second surgery to repair his ACL with another cadaver. This would require another 6+ months of rehab to learn to walk on a knee full of screws and ligaments from dead person.
My parents brought Jeff home from Chico for his surgery. Even facing 12 months without being able to walk, Jeff was of high and infectious spirit. “Hey, I will have the ligaments of two different dead people in both my knees. That’s kind of cool.” But seeing him confined to the couch, dependent on crutches and the kindness of his friends and family to help him move about and take care of himself, I could not help but be hurt myself.
Yes, things could be a lot worse. And by this time next year, Jeff will be able to jog again. But it seems unfair that my brother, not yet 20-years old, has suffered two lifestyle-changing knee injuries.
His injury has changed my life, too. Rather, Jeff has changed my life.
I have spent a lot of time with him these past few weeks. He is stuck on the couch and we stay up talking into the night, long past when mom and dad have retired for the evening, often about our most fond memories on the sports field. We also watch a lot of movies together, including a few home videos from yesteryear.
In these moments, I find myself inspired by Jeff. Even with a bum knee, I know my younger brother can beat me at “playing roughhouse.” But it is his approach to sport—life, really—that most amazes me.
My motto has always been, Too much is almost enough. I am proud of, and found an identity in, my training log. In it I scribble copious notes about my diet, my weight, the weather, and other environmental factors alongside summaries of the number of miles and amount of hours I spend swimming, cycling, or running in a given week.
Jeff’s motto has always been Play hard; get dirty. He is proud of, and finds an identity in, the relationships he forms while playing a game.
These last few mornings, when I engage in an internal mental debate about whether to hit the snooze button on my alarm or to go for a pre-sunrise run… When I find myself more focused on my stop-watch and split-times at the track than on the scenery during my jog to the gym… When I catch myself counting my heart rate after a hill sprint rather than enjoying the sting of crisp air filling my lungs… In these moments I ask myself, “What would Jeff do?”
Jeff would jump out of bed. He would wave and say hello to people he passes on the street. He would stop when he is tired or to take in the view from a trail run up Mt. Diablo, not when his watch beeps. He would run hard and wild. But he can’t. And so because I can, it is important that I do. I feel like I have an obligation to exercise and enjoy my body.
So I have been running with Jeff, metaphorically. He is back at school now, but remains my training partner and coach. Pictures of him blazing down the track or soccer field are uncomfortably, almost awkwardly, juxtaposed with images of him on his crutches. But in all of them, he is smiling. This gets me up, gets me outside, and keeps me going.
Thanks, Jeff. Because of and for you, I am running.
Run With It!
J.R. Atwood
For today’s spin class, I dug deep into my collection of mixes and pulled out the CD I made for my first class day of spin at the Presidio YMCA three months ago. An oldie, but a goodie.
The Effort Effect
Published March 30, 2007 Carol Dweck , Education , Psychology , Run With It! , Science , Social Commentary , Training Leave a CommentUpdate: The New Yorker published a fantastic feature on Dweck and her research under the title, “How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The Inverse Power of Praise.” For more Dweck, also check out NPR’s website. The Stanford professor and psychologist was interviewed on the network’s Morning Edition radio show. The topic of discussion: “[How] Students’ View of Intelligence Can Help Grades.”