Beale and Third streets with a dark torch, untouched by her daughter’s light. Cheers and shouts slowly disappeared into that suspended moment, clapping hands froze, faces faded.
In Sharon’s mental photo, there was Katelyn, smiling behind the dancing flame she was carrying as a 2002 Olympic torch bearer. Like a movie flashback, Sharon couldn’t help but think of the moment she and her husband, Ray, realized their daughter’s determination to one day compete as a swimmer in the Olympics.
It was six years earlier, when Katelyn was ten, that she, her parents, and her older sister, Crystal, traveled from their Florida home to an early morning swim meet three hours away in Kings Bay, Georgia. It was 5:00 a.m. and the only other cars on the highway surrounding them were packed with sleeping kids from Katelyn’s swim club team, part of USA Swimming. Crystal, also a competitor, snored lightly beside her sister, who sat as stiff as someone wearing a back brace, eyes focused as if she were about to breaststroke through water. Ray could see the tip of her hot pink swimmer’s cap—the rest of the team wore gold—in the rearview mirror. He tilted his head up a few inches to see her eyes covered in goggles. It was hours before the meet, but she was ready. Katelyn stayed frozen in that position as Ray nudged Sharon with his elbow. She peeked from the passenger’s side mirror at their daughter and grinned proudly.
Their swim coach greeted them when the team arrived. “If you guys were all as intense as Kate, you’d be undefeated!” her coach said.
The coach had passed Katelyn and her family on the highway, seen her focus, smiled at her dedication, and admired her commitment.
Voices of a chanting crowd seeped into Sharon’s mind, invaded her memory, snapping her back to the moment she was in—a moment that defined the new chapter in her family’s life. She knew that carrying a torch wasn’t the same as competing, but after everything Katelyn had been through, it was better than winning a gold medal. The fact that she could hear shouts from her family and friends, could see them as they cheered, and could carry a blazing torch in the cool, Tennessee air, was a far greater accomplishment—one worth more than gold.
As Katelyn approached her mother, Sharon wiped her eyes and tried to keep past images in her mind alive—smiles that came fromvictorious swim meets, laughter on the lake where Katelyn grew up, Punky Brewster-style outfits she had put together as a kid—but when the reality, so fresh in her mind, of doctors’ words, hospital smells, and threats of death took over, Sharon cried again.
But Katelyn was here and she was alive.
As she was wheeled toward her mother, she looked up with a smile that Sharon could only have dreamed about just a few short months ago. Katelyn reached up and ignited her mother’s torch, uniting their spirits. Sharon continued with a jog, continued their journey, down the streets of Memphis, her daughter’s light leading the way.
2
The sky in all its rage swirled black and hovered, threatening Ray as he raced down the open highway, hoping and praying it wouldn’t rip loose, drenching the road and his spirits.
“Dad, God gave us this storm to slow you down,” Crystal said a few hours later when the sky finally tore open, sending down blinding rain, exposing brutal thunder and lightning. At sixteen years old, Crystal had just started driving, but it didn’t take a license to understand the power of this storm, the advantage it had over her father’s determination to push through it. “So, please, slow down!”
If Crystal had seen the way Ray had driven to catch up to the bus she was on just a few hours before, she would have been even more persistent.
Katelyn has cancer.
Ray had repeated those words in his mind as he made his way down Mississippi’s Highway 49 in an effort to stop the bus bringing Crystal home from a church camp in Panama City, Florida. They worked
In Sharon’s mental photo, there was Katelyn, smiling behind the dancing flame she was carrying as a 2002 Olympic torch bearer. Like a movie flashback, Sharon couldn’t help but think of the moment she and her husband, Ray, realized their daughter’s determination to one day compete as a swimmer in the Olympics.
It was six years earlier, when Katelyn was ten, that she, her parents, and her older sister, Crystal, traveled from their Florida home to an early morning swim meet three hours away in Kings Bay, Georgia. It was 5:00 a.m. and the only other cars on the highway surrounding them were packed with sleeping kids from Katelyn’s swim club team, part of USA Swimming. Crystal, also a competitor, snored lightly beside her sister, who sat as stiff as someone wearing a back brace, eyes focused as if she were about to breaststroke through water. Ray could see the tip of her hot pink swimmer’s cap—the rest of the team wore gold—in the rearview mirror. He tilted his head up a few inches to see her eyes covered in goggles. It was hours before the meet, but she was ready. Katelyn stayed frozen in that position as Ray nudged Sharon with his elbow. She peeked from the passenger’s side mirror at their daughter and grinned proudly.
Their swim coach greeted them when the team arrived. “If you guys were all as intense as Kate, you’d be undefeated!” her coach said.
The coach had passed Katelyn and her family on the highway, seen her focus, smiled at her dedication, and admired her commitment.
Voices of a chanting crowd seeped into Sharon’s mind, invaded her memory, snapping her back to the moment she was in—a moment that defined the new chapter in her family’s life. She knew that carrying a torch wasn’t the same as competing, but after everything Katelyn had been through, it was better than winning a gold medal. The fact that she could hear shouts from her family and friends, could see them as they cheered, and could carry a blazing torch in the cool, Tennessee air, was a far greater accomplishment—one worth more than gold.
As Katelyn approached her mother, Sharon wiped her eyes and tried to keep past images in her mind alive—smiles that came fromvictorious swim meets, laughter on the lake where Katelyn grew up, Punky Brewster-style outfits she had put together as a kid—but when the reality, so fresh in her mind, of doctors’ words, hospital smells, and threats of death took over, Sharon cried again.
But Katelyn was here and she was alive.
As she was wheeled toward her mother, she looked up with a smile that Sharon could only have dreamed about just a few short months ago. Katelyn reached up and ignited her mother’s torch, uniting their spirits. Sharon continued with a jog, continued their journey, down the streets of Memphis, her daughter’s light leading the way.
2
The sky in all its rage swirled black and hovered, threatening Ray as he raced down the open highway, hoping and praying it wouldn’t rip loose, drenching the road and his spirits.
“Dad, God gave us this storm to slow you down,” Crystal said a few hours later when the sky finally tore open, sending down blinding rain, exposing brutal thunder and lightning. At sixteen years old, Crystal had just started driving, but it didn’t take a license to understand the power of this storm, the advantage it had over her father’s determination to push through it. “So, please, slow down!”
If Crystal had seen the way Ray had driven to catch up to the bus she was on just a few hours before, she would have been even more persistent.
Katelyn has cancer.
Ray had repeated those words in his mind as he made his way down Mississippi’s Highway 49 in an effort to stop the bus bringing Crystal home from a church camp in Panama City, Florida. They worked
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