by Julie Moss
Years later, when the helicopter was grounded and Mats emerged an independent, well-balanced adult, I read something from Dr. Brené Brown that struck home:
Raising children who are hopeful and who have the courage to be vulnerable means stepping back and letting them experience disappointment, deal with conflict, learn how to assert themselves, and have the opportunity to fail. If we’re always following our children into the arena, hushing the critics, and assuring their victory, they’ll never learn that they have the ability to dare greatly on their own.
I’d spent my whole life living the second half of this statement. Now, though, I was so focused on Mats excelling academically that I became overly hovering. I certainly wasn’t helping him. While I continued to encourage his adventurous side on weekends, vacations, and holidays, I reverted to Helicopter Mom the second we focused on school. I fully expected Mats to live up to his intellectual potential, which I never did while in school. I pushed him, hard; I couldn’t allow him to fail.
Mats and I had many fights over grades and time-management choices. He often let me know how I made him feel—never good enough, no matter how hard he worked. If he got an A-minus in AP calculus, a strong grade in anyone’s book, I’d quickly point put that if only he’d put in a little more study and less video game time, that A-minus could be an A. In today’s overheated high school scene, with everyone clocking grade point averages that didn’t exist when I went to high school, that half-grade could mean the difference between admission to an A-list college and not. I would’ve done anything to finish high school with a 3.5 GPA, an honor roll position. Today, a 3.5 typically gets you two years at a community college. Mats was better than that, and I let him know over and over again.
When I revisit my attitude during those years, it wounds me to recall that my kid thought the way to love and approval was through achieving a slightly higher grade. It shames me. It is one of the few regrets in my life.
Helicopter parenting was my attempt to ensure success, therefore giving Mats more self-esteem and greater opportunities. I was so worried about the future that I didn’t appreciate the present. Here was a kid getting excellent grades, smart as could be, and a cross-country and water polo star. I didn’t take the time to celebrate his accomplishments. Later, I realized it was my fear of Mats not being “enough” that drove me. Enough for what exactly, Julie? I projected onto him my deep-seated childhood fear of not being good enough. OUCH.
Some decisions worked well. I introduced Mats to Junior Lifeguards, so he could experience something Mark and I enjoyed as teens. “You have to do junior guards,” I told him. “You have to do it once so you have good water safety.” I always wanted him to play sports and surf, but I rarely told him what I wanted him to do. Lifeguarding is part of the legacy that Mats comes from. Not surprisingly, he completed the program with flying colors.
In high school, I told Mats he needed to try out for sports teams, to experience and appreciate the social and competitive aspects. He chose water polo and cross-country—and became an all-Santa Cruz Coastal Athletic League performer in both. “My mom encouraged me to play water polo; that was my one and only team sport,” Mats said. “I started in middle school. It was one of those things I wasn’t excited about doing, but my mom said, ‘Well, you’re going to try it.’ I ended up loving it. It’s fun. You’re basically hanging out with a bunch of other kids, being active, scoring goals. I loved middle school water polo, but in high school . . . I liked the social aspect of hanging out, but I played year-round, so some of the kids on my club team, when they went back to their high schools, would kick my ass when our schools met. Every game seemed to be like that; my high school team wasn’t very good.”
He also became a reluctant team captain. Once selected, he led the team nicely. “The Bay Area has a lot of great club water polo teams. I was kind of bottom-of-the-barrel at club level, good enough to be on the teams, but not the best guy, not even close. High school was totally different,” Mats explained. “All of a sudden, I was kind of forced into the team captain role, the leading role. It was an interesting experience. I was used to being this solitary kid, so transitioning into that role was difficult. However, I picked up a lot of tools that served me well when I became an adult and got into my own life.”
Mats had no such trouble with cross-country. This is a fantastic high school sport, both a team and individual pursuit. You run against yourself, an opponent, and the clock, but you score team points—so there’s plenty of strategy and tactical maneuvering in those 5K races. Mats was good at it, to be expected; his dad was a superb runner, and I’d clocked a 2:47 marathon. I loved watching him, unaware that less than a decade later, I’d help coach the cross-country team at my alma mater, Carlsbad High School. When I offered pointers to my hometown Lancers, I felt a bit nostalgic.
“I’m more drawn toward individual endeavors, so I really enjoyed cross-country,” Mats said. “That was probably the first time I really pushed myself athletically, because I really wanted to run as fast as I could. It was a personal challenge. Who wouldn’t like trail running for three or four months a year instead of practicing on the same field or in the same pool every day?”
By the time Mats graduated, he had become his own man, with the best of Mark and I blended within him. He was forging his path as a fascinating human being. He no longer needed to be taken care of—and certainly didn’t need me trying to “upgrade” him.
We healed from my high school hovering. We persevered, he excelled, and then he emerged into adulthood with a personality, quirkiness, and strength of his own. One time, I commented that one of my most significant accomplishments was being his mom. “What will you do when I grow up?” he replied.
Good question: What would I do next?
Mats intuited that I needed to nurture my own dreams. From his youthful perspective on the universe, the more time I worked on my own life, the less time I’d have to hover over his! Again, he was spot on.
I continued to repair the damage I caused our relationship. In reading Elizabeth Fishel’s and Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s book, When Will My Grown-Up Kid Grow Up? (who I was reading it for—Mats or myself?), I found three valuable tips:
Observe respectful boundaries: Keeping a privacy buffer was key to our relationship. All through high school, I had access to Mats through the online parent portal, and he didn’t have a car until his senior year. Only after I moved back to Cardiff and Mats remained in Santa Cruz could he be free to define his identity.
Listen more than you talk: This elusive virtue was especially challenging for me. I’d literally have to bite my tongue to keep from giving too much unsolicited advice or asking too many nosy questions.
Do what you love together, and intimacy will follow: Surfing, skiing, hiking, and triathlon have offered many precious hours that Mats chooses to spend with me.
Mats was now a young man. A solid man at that. His upbringing now complete, what would I do? How would I find new meaning in my life? Where would I turn to find it?
I decided to return to the most solid life partner I had left, always waiting to receive me, the one I chose to leave rather than the opposite—triathlon.
But first, I had to dig myself out of another dark place. Maybe the darkest.
CHAPTER 18
A Hard Bottom
“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
—J. K. Rowling
The phone rang. “Julie, we’d like you to announce for the Tri-Cal season,” Darren Wood said.
The call from Darren, the husband of my 1997 training partner Jenny Wood, presented a nice opportunity to share my knowledge of triathlon and spread the love to event spectators. It also felt like a lifeline. With my despair mounting, I needed something.
Once again, my triathlon family came calling, this time with a vocation that combines three of my favorite things: striking up conversations, competition, and sharing inner victories and celebrations, the “Wonder Woman”
and “Superman” moments. I felt all but empty of this inner power, and badly needed to reconnect with it.
I loved announcing. I first fell into it when I did voiceover with Phil Liggett in London. In 1990, I was hired by Turner Sports to commentate on the Goodwill Games, an international sports competition CNN founder Ted Turner created after the Soviet Union and its allies boycotted the 1984 LA Summer Olympics. Like the Olympics, they were held every four years until ending in 2001. I worked on the 1990 Goodwill Games in New York, where I had a nice connection with beach volleyball superstar Gabby Reece and her husband, big-wave surf legend Laird Hamilton, famed for riding the fifty-foot waves (and larger) at Peahi (Jaws) in Maui. Gabby covered beach volleyball, I handled triathlon, and Laird tried to find surf somewhere on the south shore of Long Island. He needed some amusement, which for him meant anything to do with the ocean. I could relate to Laird’s need to keep busy and burn off excess energy.
When Tri-California called, I needed them as much as they needed me. In September 2003, I announced my first event in Pacific Grove, near Santa Cruz. Then I started announcing their entire season. First up was the Wildflower Festival, held every May for thirty-five years near San Luis Obispo. The event includes the iconic 70.3-mile triathlon, half the Ironman distance, and Sprint Mountain Bike on Saturday, then the Olympic and Collegiate Olympic championship on Sunday. We bring in Dean Harper, the winner of the inaugural Wildflower and University of California triathlon coach, as our race expert. He’s also a good friend. Our volunteer base comes from my alma mater, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. It’s great to see how much triathlon is part of the Cal Poly experience. I can remember when that experience consisted of a crazy girl trying to convince a kinesiology department chair that running an Ironman was a worthy senior thesis project.
Announcing plugged me back in. Again, I was around people I knew, an energy I loved, and a vibrant, nurturing atmosphere in which I thrived. It felt like coming home again.
I also learned more about the recreational athlete’s experience. I’d never thought of triathlon in this way until becoming an announcer; I only knew the pro experience, life at the front of the pack. When my race was over, I packed up my bikes and got out of there. The awards ceremony? Sometimes I passed on that too.
As an announcer, I draw from the personal experiences of all competitors, and spend little time with the pros. It took a while to get the hang of it. In my first Tri-California event, I interviewed the pro race champion. After we finished, a more seasoned announcer, Don Ryder, approached me. “Julie, there’s a little too much you in that interview,” he said. “Let’s make it more about the athlete.” All along, I was thinking, I’m going to ask the greatest questions or I’m going to use my experience to . . . In other words, finding ways to insert myself. As I’ve learned since, it’s about giving the athlete the opportunity to talk about their experience, no matter whether they finish first or 3,000th.
From the announcing tower, I look around for things, like someone holding up a sign: chelsea and sam wish daddy a good race. I’ll call them out on the mic: “Hey, Chelsea and Sam! How cool is your dad doing an Ironman?” That exchange elevates their experience and trains the spotlight on them. Announcing is all about putting the spotlight on someone else—and being a disassociated voice sometimes. I think some announcers, especially former pro athletes, focus too much on their personal experiences: “I did this and this and this . . .” Perhaps I overcompensated for doing the same too much at first, but I love making competitors happy, giving back to them. “She reads people very, very well, and senses what motivates and inspires them—and then gets them to talk openly about it,” Marshall says. “She adds so much to every triathlon she announces.”
Thanks, big brother . . .
The announcing gig came while I was extricating myself from the shattered mess I’d become. The darkness was unmatched in my life; there were many days and weeks when I didn’t want to get up. I kept myself going for Mats, staying busy with him and his school activities. The call from Tri-California snapped me out of a place where I lacked value and purpose, compounded by that awful Racing the Sunset feeling: being a former professional athlete without a post-career plan.
The call also triggered a desire to compete in another Ironman, this time the twenty-fifth anniversary event in Kona. I’d last competed in 1997, and been through six years of mostly hell since. Maybe I could lose myself in the training. My prerace comments to a visiting reporter read like a metaphorical window into my inner world: “I can suffer, and suffer deeply, and for a long time, and that’s a pretty scary thing. Sometimes I have some pretty deep valleys to climb out of. I do it methodically: What am I feeling right now? Then you go into cruise mode for a while. Then your attitude shifts and you say, ‘Okay, what’s wrong? What do I need?’ You would give just anything to stop—that seduction to stop—and you have to not give in to that.
“The heat scares the shit out of me. The heat strips me to the core . . . I’ve got to be smart all day. Sometimes you even need to slow down and walk, since quitting is not an option. You walk for a hundred yards. If you vomit, that’s okay. That’s surviving. I have my A Plan, and I have my B Plan, and I don’t think beyond that. On a heart level, you must surrender to the day and bring to it what it needs.”
I decided to run for two reasons: at age forty-five, I wanted to beat my 11:09 time from 1982, when I was twenty-three (that goal would circle back again); and I wanted to beat Kathleen. We even jokingly called it the “Battle of the Moms,” since she now had three kids.
My first race was on reporters’ minds when I arrived. “I have to keep reminding myself that that was a really amazing time in my life,” I told a Sports Illustrated writer. “Going back to compete in the twenty-fifth anniversary is a way to honor that memory. I don’t need to get anything more out of Hawaii . . . I have already received so much. All I really need to do is cross the line, which brings me back to that first race. That’s all it was about, just finishing something. Whatever else happens is icing on the cake. A lot of good things have happened to me because I just got across the line that day.”
I set off with 1,600 other contestants and felt strong during the swim. The online news site SFGate, which serves the San Francisco Bay Area, described me as “fresh as if she had just stepped out of the bath.” Next we rode to Hawi, at the other end of the Big Island, our turnaround point. “It was a little nuts at the beginning of the bike, frenetic,” I told Michael Maloney, the SFGate reporter. “Everybody started out sprinting, and they passed me, young and old, you name it, but I decided I didn’t want to work hard till twenty-five miles out, past the Waikoloa Hilton. I can’t remember a day when the lava fields were that calm, without wind, but that meant heat, and at Mile 70 I started getting nauseous. My stomach went bad, and I told myself, I’m going to just let my system chill, and I stopped eating and started riding aerobically.”
The stage was set for another difficult run, a possible DNF, another visitation by my old demons. This time, I didn’t have a husband’s race to watch, or a husband, or any other excuse. I wasn’t looking for one either. I endured a large cramp at the ten-mile mark, dealt with it, and remained focused. I didn’t worry about others in my age group passing me, or a podium appearance; I just focused on a strong result. I crossed the line in 10 hours, 57 minutes—13 minutes better than in 1982. I was double the age, and faster. It was incredibly rewarding and vindicating. Bad Mom was officially Badass Mom now!
Kathleen finished an hour and a half behind me, but what really impressed me is that she somehow trained herself into race shape despite having three kids (today, she has four). We celebrated our inner victories together.
Something I later said in the thirtieth anniversary book crystallized my thoughts and feelings about my relationship with Kona: “We’ve grown old together. But it took me a long time to own my image. I represent something to people. Twenty years later, I’m not about being an amazing athlete. It’s about having the personal qu
alities to not give up when things get really hard. The underlying theme for me is that this triathlon community is real. It’s familiar, and it’s familial. And always a nice source to tap into.”
Again, a strong metaphorical statement for what I needed to reclaim, retain, and strengthen in my own life.
I bottomed out as I hit fifty—and this bottom felt worse than hard. It felt bottomless. Many of the things women fear at that age converged, even as I tried to maintain a positive public persona and remain strong for Mats. I stopped working out, gained twenty pounds, drank too much wine, and became addicted to clove cigarettes. Once a woman who changed a sport, I found myself alone in a place I didn’t want to be, my soul raining tears as hard as any Pacific storm. I was a prisoner in my own backyard, where I secretly smoked, then took shower after shower to mask the smell. I felt deeply ashamed, unappealing, and unattractive to everyone, so I latched on—to Mats. I needed that emotional bond, because I had little else. When parents operate from their needs, teenagers tend to pull away. Mats did exactly that for some time.
I bottomed out on my purpose for living. I was depressed and addicted. It took my friends Lisette, Sue, Cindy, and Wing, along with my brother, to snap me out of it.
“Julie had a hard time letting go of Mats,” Lisette recalled. “Mats was the main guy in her life. He kind of took the place of a husband. That was a real struggle. It wasn’t easy for Mark, either; Mats stepped away from Dance of the Deer, central to Mark’s life. What Mats did more overtly when he became eighteen was to rebel. He was very overt.
“This bottom was worse than the one Julie had after her divorce. Far worse. She avoided it for as long as she possibly could. I knew it would happen, and when it did . . . she put it off by throwing herself into being a mom, and by all the other stuff she was doing. Finally, she couldn’t avoid it anymore. She had to face it, once and for all.”