Halftime Lessons

Jay and his wife, Kat, one of the many gifts in his life.

The tag line selected by Jay for his site, Half­time Lessons, says a lot about him and his writ­ing: “Pre­pare all you want … fate doesn’t care.” He offers wry and fre­quently hilar­i­ous obser­va­tions about his life. As he explained last August, he is 40 and com­ing to grips with the fact that “[t]ime is no longer end­less, like it was when I was a kid … you couldn’t move the clock no mat­ter how hard you tried … Now, espe­cially with kids, time moves expo­nen­tially, hor­ri­fy­ingly so.” He’s “well past half­time” and deter­mined to “do it ‘right’” from this point for­ward, which is why so much of his writ­ing is also incred­i­bly poignant and touching.

Along with Deb at Dirty Socks and Pizza, he kicked off 2009 by launch­ing Tuesday’s Trib­ute, a weekly writ­ing exer­cise that invites blog­gers to shine their light upon some­one else, paus­ing for a lit­tle while to acknowl­edge and cel­e­brate that “it’s not all about me.”

On Jan­u­ary 19, 2009, Jay shown the spot­light on his mother. In a let­ter addressed to My Mum, Jay described how he dealt with his mother’s health cri­sis four years ago, com­par­ing his feel­ings then to the way he is han­dling the news that she is once again unwell.

I was fright­ened, sure, but more so I was in denial about what you would be going through. Plus, never hav­ing been through all those new feel­ings about watch­ing some­one you love strug­gle with their health, the more I emo­tion­ally hid from the whole thing.…

I made it more about me. I know that now. It took watch­ing your brav­ery to under­stand how lit­tle I was being, how selfish.

Jay is receiv­ing the Post of the Day Award because he wrote to his mother in a brave, raw, pub­lic, and refresh­ingly intro­spec­tive man­ner, express­ing feel­ings of fear and denial that are eas­ily rec­og­nized by other per­sons who have been through sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences with loved ones — but much more dif­fi­cult to dis­cern or lay own­er­ship to in oneself.

Now a par­ent, Jay under­stands his mother’s incli­na­tion to focus her energy upon wor­ry­ing “about how [her] kids are going to cope with it this time.” But he is self­lessly and rightly encour­ag­ing her to “focus on your­self.… [T]his time, it won’t be about me. This time, my only hope is that you don’t worry about any­thing but your­self. I know you will be fine.”

Jay is a good son, stand­ing by and with his mother dur­ing one of the rough­est peri­ods of her life. “You always hold us up, Mom; this time it’s our turn.”

The Ris­ing Blog­ger wishes the very best to Jay, his mother, and their entire fam­ily, espe­cially those lit­tle grand­chil­dren who adore her. Fate may not care, but all of us asso­ci­ated with The Ris­ing Blog­ger do.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Half­time Lessons, Post of the Day Award, The Ris­ing Blogger

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• Writing in Faith
• We’re At Dad’s That Week
• Vent … a Series of Takes
• Tricia’s Musings