COMMENTARY
Last Sunday was one of my favorite annual holidays: the “fall back” time change. What to do with the glorious gift of an extra hour?
“Sleeping in” would be the obvious answer — except in my case. I complained bitterly after realizing I had signed up for an early-bird shift at the home meet for my daughter’s swim team. Who in their right mind wants to be at the pool at 7:30 on a Sunday morning?
I kept these thoughts to myself, well aware that other parents on the Kettering City Swim Team carried the water for the rest of us — not only during home meets, when families are required to work three four-hour shifts, but all season long. I marveled at Uber-mothers, like Margaret Hong and Marti Paul and Victoria McComb and Kristi Schnipke, who not only camp out at the Kettering Rec Center for the duration of the meets, but can always spare a smile and a patient answer to an ignorant question.
Hong coined the KCST Cobras’ motto, “Small Team; Big Heart,” and proved it by helping the swimmers organize a silent auction fundraiser held during one of our home meets for Haiti relief. A master organic gardener who owned a landscape company with her husband, Chung, Hong served as the team’s environmental conscience, making us recycle at every meet and then taking the leftover materials home to make sure they got recycled.
Hong had been hospitalized during the weekend, recovering from surgery, and her absence was keenly felt. We knew she would have wanted nothing more than to be with us, toiling away at the home meet. Still, I felt sorry for myself when I reviewed my harried schedule on what should have been a day of rest: 7:30: arrive at the pool so I can sell heat sheets; 9:30, pick up Veronica so she can finish out my shift so I can attend my twice-monthly women’s prayer group at church; go home and cook dinner in one hour for my Aunt Aggie, who is visiting from Florida; get back to the pool by 12:30 for a four-hour timing shift; get back home by 5:30 p.m. for my dinner guests.
An extra hour, is all? I need a whole extra day, more like it. Is it too much to ask for one blessed afternoon relaxing with a book?
I made it home with a few minutes to spare, when, in a further comedy of errors, my wonderful neighbor approached me about bringing down the drum set I’d purchased at a garage sale a few weeks earlier. I’m pretty sure I barked at her, “Fine! But I don’t have time to help you!”
I was tempted to describe it as “The Terrible, Awful, No Good, Very Bad Day” — in honor of one of my children’s favorite books — but, when I thought back on it, this day had, in fact, been a very good day. Too busy, it’s true, but filled with meaningful things: family, faith, giving back to the community.
And my aunt and my father could charm anybody out of a bad mood. When my guests left, the kitchen clock blinked 9:53, too late to get my daughters to the nearby Urgent Care. Veronica needed her physical for Fairmont High School athletics, and NiNi was nursing a bad cold. “Too late — the clinic closes at 10,” I said with feigned disappointment. I wasn’t eager to add another item to the day’s long, long, agenda, until Veronica pointed out, “Mom, it’s really only 8:53. Time change.”
I laughed when I realized that’s how I ended up using my extra hour — at Urgent Care with my daughters. The next evening Paul sent out an email to the swim team with tragic news: Hong had died unexpectedly Monday, at 54, from surgery complications. She left her husband and three children; the youngest, 16-year-old Eleanore, swims for KCST. “Margaret firmly believed the true value of swimming is found in the swimmers’ support for and encouragement of each other, in and out of the water, rather than a number on the scoreboard,” Paul wrote.
At Hong’s memorial service Saturday afternoon at Cox Arboretum, swimmers tied purple ribbons around the trees lining the driveway, in honor of Hong’s trademark cheerful purple. Paul said it was a fitting tribute to a woman who held the philosophy, “If you want to make it better, then get out there and do it.”
Paul will sorely miss her bleacher buddy: “She had a very sharp wit and she was a hoot, just a joy to be around. Anybody looking in would think, ‘How do those people stand being there all that time?’ Well, it’s the people. It’s the Margarets of the world who make it so much fun.”
None of us knows, in this life, how many precious hours we’ll be granted.
We can only try our mightiest to use them well.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2209 or mmccarty @DaytonDailyNews.com.
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