{"id":76,"date":"2013-05-06T06:46:37","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T06:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=76"},"modified":"2014-01-22T11:07:46","modified_gmt":"2014-01-22T11:07:46","slug":"champions-and-fighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/champions-and-fighters\/","title":{"rendered":"Champions and Fighters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FOXBLUEPOND\"<\/a>\u201cWhat did you do to this water?\u201d one of my son\u2019s friends asks. Four of us regard the dark turquoise pond that glows and eerily reflects off our faces. It looks like a lake of shimmering nuclear paint.<\/p>\n

\u201cI put blue pond dye in it. To keep out algae,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s weird water.\u201d He makes a face.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah. I put in twice as much as I should have. Wasn\u2019t thinking straight.\u201d It\u2019s been a week of frazzled nerves, huge highs and lows, little sleep. Friday is my daughter\u2019s birthday. Marika would have turned 23. The days leading up to and around May 3rd I race around frantic and out of control. I stay up all night photo-shopping pictures of the fox and kits that live under the deck. I miss appointments and meals. I trade in my perfectly fine car and take on debt to buy a new Prius. There is a gigantic grenade in my head that could detonate in a thunderous explosion at any moment and I\u2019ve been trying to outrun it.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreg tells me you\u2019re writing a book,\u201d says the other friend, who has become famous in the mixed martial arts world and is the current UFC Light Heavyweight Champion. \u201cWhat\u2019s your book about?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, my daughter died of leukemia when she was 20. It\u2019s our story of her almost 3-year fight against cancer.\u201d I try to be short, knowing this is not a favorite topic for anyone, let alone a champion prizefighter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a large following on Twitter. Could you use a tweet about your book, a link to your website?\u201d he asks. Whoa! How does he know I\u2019m trying to build an audience?<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cUm \u2013 hundreds of thousands of martial arts and fighting-match followers? Uh – that\u2019s interesting. Not exactly my audience.\u201d I\u2019ve forgotten for the moment my own four years of taking tae kwon do at the Ithaca Chung Do Kwan Tae Kwon Do Club. \u201cSure. I could really use the help,\u201d I finally say. \u201cThere must be someone in all your fans that lost a loved one. Someone who\u2019s trying to get over grief and live life bigger. Maybe you can ask them to pass the information along to their mothers or girlfriends?\u201d Who in this guy\u2019s crowd would be interested in me or my book? What on Earth could we possibly have in common?<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cMy sister died of brain cancer when she was 18,\u201d he says. My gaze flies from the blue pond to the warm eyes of this fellow fighter and champion of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“What did you do to this water?” one of my son’s friends asks. Four of us regard the dark turquoise pond that glows and eerily reflects off our faces. It looks like a lake of shimmering nuclear paint. “I put blue pond dye in it. To keep out algae,” I say. “That’s weird water.” He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-25"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t