When my oldest son told me that he intended to run the Daytona 100, a 100-mile ultramarathon in Florida from Jacksonville to Daytona, I thought he was nuts.
A cluster of fatherly cautions popped to mind: What if you permanently damage your knees? Shouldn’t you get a doctor’s OK first? What if you drop dead?
But I stifled my objections. Jake’s a 37-year-old attorney, happily married, and the father of seven children. In other words, he’s a grown man. Stuffing a cork into my bottled-up paternal anxieties, I smiled and wished him good luck.
It so happened that on Dec. 2, the day before the race, my brothers, sisters, and some nieces and nephews gathered in Jacksonville for a memorial service for a beloved brother-in-law. Most of that crew returned home early the next day, but two of my sisters, a couple of their grown children, and my daughter remained an extra day….