Heartburn

Don’t save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is the special occasion, the quote on the Mary Engelbreit calendar page for June 2014 read. My mom hung it in the usual central place, above the phone nook in the dining room, but a new placard had been nailed in next to it: The heart that loves is always young. The placard was, of course, heart-shaped.

I might not have noticed these two messages, or the framed quotation from e.e. cummings's “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]” —i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)—displayed prominently on the porch, but I since had come home to be with my dad after he had a heart attack, they all seemed imbued with meaning. What meaning, I wasn’t sure: a cruel joke from the universe, or a stern warning from my mom. The quotation had been up since my sister’s wedding two years earlier; I’m guessing my mom had hung the placard weeks before, and since it was the last week of the month, the calendar page was merely a prescient coincidence. 

I was waiting for the bus when I got the call from my mom that Dad had just had a heart attack. I remember because I hate that bus stop, have always hated that bus stop, but it was quite possibly the worst place to receive such news, even though she assured me he was fine, even though she put Dad on the phone so I could confirm that. 

I contemplated walking back to my apartment, renting a plane—walking the 90 miles if I had to, to get to my dad—but since I was on my way to pick up my aged car from its latest round of repairs, a car I’d need in order to actually get to him, I stayed the course. 

But, I felt murderous the entire ten-minute ride, glaring at people who dared make the bus stop for them to get on or hop off; didn’t they know I was in a hurry? Couldn’t they tell the world had just shifted? Sure, Dad was fine, would be fine, had survived what was, by all accounts, the mildest of heart attacks. He thought it was just severe heartburn. But the man who packed my peanut butter sandwiches when I was in school, and cooked pancakes and hamburgers better than anyone, the man who pulled my baby teeth out with his bare hands, the man who loomed so large in my universe nearly ceased to exist, and in those first moments I couldn’t help but confront his mortality. And, by consequence, mine. When I was finally able to drive home to see him, I hugged him tighter than I ever remember, as if holding on would keep him safe. 

As I often did when I was single and living in an apartment, I brought laundry home to wash, maximizing my time in proximity to a washer and dryer, taking advantage of the fact that I didn’t need coins to operate them. In sorting my clothes, I came across a T-shirt I hadn’t worn with any regularity during the seven years since I’d gotten it for the 2007 Wall Street Heart Association Run/Walk 5K—my first 5K—which I’d run when I lived out in New York. Another reminder of heart health, this one more personal. I let my hands drop to my knees as I paused a minute before drizzling it with detergent and throwing it in with the rest of the whites. 

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My dad taught me how to run. A former track and cross country coach, he held the record at his high school for the 220-yard dash for the better part of two decades. Ironically, he made that record-setting run near the end of his senior-year season. My dad had run relays and the 440 but not the 220 solo, until his coach held an intrasquad meet the last week of the season and let the athletes pick their races. My dad chose the 100 and the 220, both of which he ran well enough to secure spots in the conference meet. It was there—at the end of the season and Dad’s first time running the 220 in a race—that he set the school record. (He would point out that not too long afterward they changed the distance to 200 meters, so people don’t run the 220 anymore.  But still.)

Years later, I imagine his frustration when the child who looks most like him ran sprints at a distance pace, plodding in two eleven-minute mile times in elementary school, even under his tutelage. To be fair, we had to keep track of our own laps, and the second time I was crying the whole way so I may have mis-counted. 

By the time I was ten or eleven, my dad had become the athletic director at the high school I would later attend. He gave up coaching, even though it wasn’t required at the time, because he didn’t want to risk the appearance of favoritism. He also still taught a couple of classes, so between the teaching prep and running around supporting various sporting events, he often got home late or stopped by for dinner only to go back out again for a basketball tournament or to announce the football games on Friday nights. Often concession stand popcorn was his dinner. But he made our lunches regularly before he left early in the morning for school, and when he got home he'd often peek in on my siblings and me in our beds, watching us as we slept. And we always knew how to get his attention: competition was his love language. 

When I had to run the mile in middle school, I asked him to take me out, analyze my gait, help me build endurance. How patiently he trotted along next to me, giving pointers, taking breaks when I had side cramps, helping me forget the burning in my lungs, my legs, and focus on points of interest. 

“Just try running to that tree,” he said. Or “You can make it to that lamppost.” I used that same technique when I trained for the Heart Association 5K, and later still when I trained for a triathlon in 2011. I took pride in how far I’d come from being the eleven-minute miler, but I nearly collapsed in tears when I saw my dad at the crest of a small hill at the end of the running portion of the race. Unbeknownst to me, he and my mom had gotten up early and driven nearly two hours to watch me complete the triathlon. 

“Lengthen your stride and don’t forget to breathe,” he said, almost jumping up and down. “Push through and sprint down the straightaway,” he called out, no doubt causing other runners to wonder who this wannabe coach was pointing out the nuances of the end of the course to a mediocre competitor as he galloped a few steps along the spectator line. 

“Okay, Dad,” I wheezed back, fighting my emotions as much as my exercise-induced asthma. I had done something I had always wanted to do, but knowing he was proud of me mattered more in that moment than beating my goal time, or even finishing for myself. 

Dad had loaned me his running pinney to wear, a white mesh tank top with the California flag on it: a grizzly bear on a patch of grass, lumbering toward a red star. He wore it to run and train when I was little, and even after laundering it still smelled musky with sweat. 

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I switched the washed clothes over to the dryer and threw in another load, waiting for the familiar thunk of the washer starting before sliding the laundry basket across the linoleum over to the dryer. The California bear pinney wasn’t in this load of laundry; it had long ago been washed and put away, but when I asked my dad if he wanted me to return it to him, he declined. “You keep it,” he said. “I haven’t been running much these days.”

I didn’t tell him, but I hadn’t been running much either. I’m more of a natural swimmer than a runner—I was the only person in my heat of the triathlon who seemed most excited for the swim part—but access to pools is limited, and without a triathlon or 5K to train for, I shifted from running to walking as my go-to form of exercise. I felt pleased that I had forced myself to train for the race, though, and hadn’t only focused on the swimming. 

Having my parents, but especially Dad, show up that morning had greater significance than I think either of us realized. My dad missed at least one Parents’ Night for me when I was in high school swimming because the intra city football game—the only Thursday football game of the season—happened to fall the same evening, and he didn’t want to delegate announcing duties. I’ve joked that it’s hard not to take that personally when, as athletic director, he controlled the football schedule and could have likely found a substitute. But I also know that he sometimes felt awkward, as athletic director, showing up to my sporting events, not wanting to be seen as showing partiality (to me or the sport of swimming, I’m not sure). The idea that someone would prefer watching swimming to another sport is hilarious to anyone who ever swam competitively. Fans generally consisted of our parents; we were lucky to have a (small) pep band perform at one meet the entire season. There were no cheerleaders. 

“Go Sare-bear!” he called out as I neared the finish line of the triathlon, or maybe I only imagined that, willed him to call me by my childhood nickname. “There’s the Sare-the-bear,” he’d say when I’d get home, and though, for a brief period in my teens I flinched at it, there was something comforting in its constancy. 

Dad is nothing if not reliable. Although he’s the exact middle of five children in his family, his own father sent him any and all correspondence to be distributed to the rest of the siblings. His dad also gave him power of attorney and made him executor of his will. Dad’s siblings look to and lean on him as the responsible one as well; our family always hosts during the holidays, and my dad usually has been in charge of planning the trips he and his siblings have taken over the years.

I’m the middle in my family but I fill the same role. I’m the power of attorney for my parents and third in line on two of my extended family members’ wills. When I was applying for jobs for the first time after college and applications asked for adjectives to describe me, I solicited suggestions from my mom. She paused half a second before responding, “Dependable, reliable, responsible.” After I made fun of her for using synonyms—“You were an English teacher!” and “Those are all the same word!” and “Why not throw in trustworthy?”—I thought of how bland and boring that is. 

But reliability’s also a heavy mantle to bear, and that, combined with his own father’s failing health and recent return to the Midwest, to assisted living—largely assisted by my father—likely contributed to Dad’s heart attack. The facts of my being similar to him in looks and temperament—“Dave Turner, Junior,” I like to joke—and my similar role as the responsible one in the family make me worried about my future health. 

Here’s what really concerns me: I’ve started getting heartburn.

I never had a problem with acid reflux before. I had colic as a baby and have never been someone who lives to eat, often throwing away those same sandwiches Dad lovingly made for me in elementary school, but only in the last few years have I experienced mild bouts of the familiar burn that radiates from the center of your chest, like swallowing carbonated beverages too fast, or pushing through the hard-to-breathe part at the end of a race. Whether it’s because I’m not properly chewing or I’m eating too fast, or purely genetics, I’m not sure. A few times it’s scared me how close to choking I may have come, swallowing too quickly or the food “going down the wrong pipe.” I’ve read that heart attacks often don’t produce chest pain, especially in women, and heartburn is one of the ways they can present. If that’s what my father felt when he had a heart attack, what if that happens to me? How will I know to tell the difference? 

I’m not ready for my dad to die any more than I’m ready to die myself. I don’t know which thought scares me more, but I do know that death comes whether we’re ready for it—okay with it—or not. No one outruns their own hourglass, no matter how young and loving their heart may be. 

***************

I came up from the basement after round number three of laundry to find my father sleeping in his recliner in the living room, a book open and reading glasses nearby. He sat so still and with a face so slack and full of peace he looked like death. The terror of that thought seized me and I checked to make sure he was breathing, watching several minutes as he must have watched over me thirty years ago, waiting for his chest to rise, and fall.

SARAH ELIZABETH TURNER has an MFA from Hamline University. Her work has appeared in Water~Stone Review, Sleet, Versus, the Brevity blog, and Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland. She's currently seeking representation for her completed "select-your-own-ending" dating memoir. You can also find archived work at sarahinsmalldoses.wordpress.com, where she mostly writes nonfiction with a humorous tilt.