By Mike Muschta | March 21st, 2014

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Alex Muschta with dad“So who won, the tortoise or the hare?”

Ask me this question every five years and each time I’ll give you a different answer.

The answers change but the only certainty is that they will keep changing.  Change is the only thing I’m really sure of, and the paradox is that change is of itself… unchanging.

Back to Aesop’s fable.   Common knowledge puts that green-shelled protagonist as the crowd favourite, while that unfocused hare could have the winner’s ribbon all for the want of a bit of humility.  The lesson is in the mindset and the definitions of winning and losing are all relative.  My answer to the question took a quantum shift this five-year-mark.

“Neither. “

“Neither won?”  the passerby interrupted, quizzically.

“Both.”

“Both what… won?”

“Yes, that too.”With that, Passerby half-rolled his eyes, installed his blinders and refocused his tweeting.

Since the last five-year interval (where for the record, I was hedged on the tortoise camp) my definitions have shifted somewhat from the absolutes of winning/losing  to the myriad of relatives in between.   In that time, we grew our little family of three to include one more, a beautiful little man with Trisomy 21 who, on a daily basis, single-handedly redefines the tortoise and the hare for us:  wanting to know which racer wins is akin to asking what colour shoes the rabbit was wearing (actually for the record, one shoe is red).  The old goal recedes into triviality when the prize is the race itself.

What gives meaning is that the child we have now is more powerful than the rules of the race.   This child redefines the entire framework of the race itself.  It’s  not about where or how we end up, rather the beauty of the journey that gives every day its fragrance.

This 3/21 is a road marker my fingers graze as I glance back over my shoulder.  The footsteps on the road behind a collection of tip-toes, shuffling, and dancing.   This dad’s feet left the ground at times when he was either floating, or when he was being carried.  Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.

As much as those footsteps changed, what did not change was that they were steady, and that they led to this mark on the road.  When we get to the finish line, and who gets there first is so less fulfilling than the footsteps we will create getting there.  That race is worth telling.  See you at the next road marker.