Hoarder.

Thanks to some very generous wedding gifts, the GCM and I are finally in the process of furnishing our second guest bedroom (more Tucson training camps yay) / office. The acquisition of a desk and need to make space for a daybed mean that I have to go through boxes of notebooks, cards, and other papers. I am kind of a hoarder so I never know what I will find in there.

Before the days of the internet, I was an obsessive letter-writer (similar to my surgical attachment to my crackberry at present, now that I think about it). Actually, when I was in college, the internet was in fact in full swing, but I was a late adopter. Instead I wrote several (literally) letters per day to my friends who were away at school and to my Nana. I committed to myself to sending her one letter per day and I am pretty sure I stuck with that. Anyhow, my point was about hoarding . . . I saved pretty much all the letters I received and now have boxes of letters to sort through.

Just the other night a new, non-triathlete friend was asking me, in more polite terms, how I became nuts—or who influenced me to want to smash myself for a living, and for fun.

“Are your parents . . .” she paused, trying to think of another way to say “crazy, too?” I think.

“Nope. They think I am nuts.”

My standard answer.

Then the next day, amidst my stacks of papers, I found a note that I received when I was seven, apparently, and with it, part of my answer to this question:

Grandpa.

And bribery.

In finding this letter, I  also found an excuse for my hoarding. Grandpa was one of the biggest supporters of my athletic career, often getting up at 4AM to drive me to swim practice well into his 80s. He has been gone for over 10 years now and I sure am glad that I still have this note.