As a fundraiser for multiple sclerosis, Alex did a 150 mile bike ride at the beginning of May. The race is split over two days–80 miles the first day, 70 the second. After fighting through a broken gear box and finishing the first 70 miles using only two gears, he came home late on Saturday, walking like a grandpa who had ridden his horse a little too hard, fell into bed and woke up early on Sunday to drive back to the starting line for Day 2. He’d asked me to pick him up and of course, I told him that The Baby and I would be at the finish line, cheering him on.

The bikers crossed the finish line at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens. I pictured The Baby and I taking a leisurely stroll through the lush gardens, stopping to smell the spring flowers, and soaking up the fresh air in the dapples sunlight, before making our way to the finish line to cheer on Alex.

That’s what I pictured, at least.

On the morning of, I loaded the Baby and his wheelchair into the truck and drove about an hour to Fort Worth, giving us about an hour to figure out parking and get to the finish line with plenty of time. The line of cars at the Botanic garden was long. When it was finally my turn, the friendly parking attendant told me, authoritatively, that I needed to go park in Yellow Parking Lot 4, around the backside of the gardens. So I drove there and paid $20 to park in a very vacant lot, my truck a drop in an empty parking lot ocean.

I loaded The Baby into his wheelchair and headed towards a man who was sitting in some sort of tram for the May Day festival that was happening nearby.

At this point in the story, I was still wildly optimistic that everything is going according to plan. Smelling of sunscreen and wearing a smile, I greeted the man, “Hi. I need to get to the finish line for the MS150 bike race. Where should I go?”

“Oh, the Botanic garden is right there,” he pointed around the corner, not even bothering to look up from his phone.

I wheeled The Baby around some bushes to find two closed parking gates that did, indeed, look like they led to the Botanic garden. The problem is that they were locked. Like padlocked. Both of them.

Another middle aged woman was standing around looking lost too. “Are you trying to get to the bike race?” I asked her. She affirmed that her husband was a biker and so we unofficially teamed up. We both shook the gates, tried the call button on a keypad, and I tried reaching the front desk of the arboretum, but to no avail.

I checked Alex’s location on my phone. He was getting closer. I still had time but not much.

My cheery optimism was waning and I was annoyed now. I told my conspirator that we should walk back to the front gate to see if we could get some answers. The street had no sidewalk. And it had been raining so the narrow strip of grass between the botanic garden’s fence and the curb was swampy.

In naked defiance of traffic laws, in front of a traffic cop, no less, I pushed my disabled son in his wheelchair right down the center of the right lane on a busy road. Try me! my swagger must have communicated to the cop. Mary, the other annoyed spectator, walked in the grass and we chatted a little as we booked it towards the entrance of the gardens. We intersected with University Drive, the road that led to the gardens. Due to the race and the May Day celebration and the nice weather, the road was a complete madhouse and, of course, still didn’t have any sidewalks. I knew that I couldn’t walk with The Baby in the street here. So, instead, we off-roaded as best we could in the swampy grass. I was power-walking, agitating my plantar fascitis, and Mary was huffing beside me.

We finally rounded the corner, back to our starting point, where the very friendly, very wrong parking lot attendant had conveniently disappeared. I marched into the lobby of the botanic garden and accosted a man who was helping to answer questions.

“I need to get to the finish line of the MS-150. Where do we go?” I asked him, red-faced from annoyance and exertion.

“Well, you have to go back on University and go to parking lot D,” he told me matter-of-factly.

“Someone told me to park in some godforsaken lot and we walked here…without sidewalks,” I added, pointing at The Baby for emphasis. Tracks of grass and mud had followed us in. “I’m not going back onto University where there are no sidewalks.”

The Baby, by the way, was in his usual state of unperturbed bliss, happily tapping his toy remote against his mouth.

The man conferred with his coworker who told Mary and I that we could walk through the botanic garden to get to the finish line. They showed us a map, I confirmed that the trail was accessible and we took off again at a fast clip.

I checked Alex’s location again, which spiked my blood pressure. He was getting dangerously close and we were still hoping, on a wing and a prayer, that this third set of directions was going to be the correct one.

We kept to the left and stalked through the Margery Leonard Courtyard. We briskly moved through the Adelaid Polk Fuller Garden. The wheelchair bumped over the planks of the Texas Native Forest Boardwalk.

“Are we going the right way?” Mary asked once, stopping to look at a map outside the Japanese gardens.

“She said keep to the left,” I paused too.

Still unsure, we decided to keep going because we had no other plan. Alex’s arrival was eminent and I still had no confirmation that we were going in the right direction. I was sweating and stressed that I was going to miss him.

Finally, finally, in the distance, over the susurrus of the forest and chirping of the birds, we heard the DJ and music announcing bikers as they crossed over the finish-line. I checked my phone. Alex was turning onto University, the busy street that I had just sloshed through to get here.

“I’ve got to go, Mary! It was nice to meet you!” I yelled over my shoulder as I took off sprinting down the busy sidewalk.

I’m not a runner, but apparently I can be when highly motivated.

“ON YOUR LEFT!” I screamed as I flew by a group of flower enthusiasts taking their sweet time.

The wind rushed past my ears and my sandals made a slapping sound on the winding concrete path.

“COMING THROUGH!” I yelled as a woman yanked her Maltipoo out of the way as we bore down on them.

The Baby, sensing something irregular was happening, had paused his tapping to make his trademark TV static sound indicating he was happy. His wheelchair had never moved so fast.

“WATCH OUT!” I bellowed as we barreled towards a mother yanking her toddler out of the way by his arm.

My face was beet red and I was huffing and puffing when we were dumped out of the greenery near the waist-high gates that skirted the finish line. I rushed to find a clear spot where I could get a good video. A mere thirty seconds later, Alex crossed the finish line.

While I was very happy that we were there to see Alex cross the finish line, the whole thing left me shaken. If I had missed it, after putting myself and my child at risk of being hit by traffic or getting stuck in a quagmire, my resulting reaction probably would have made national news somehow.

I have a similar story from the first week that The Kid came home to live with us. I was very new to the mom game and I’d talked up some event at the library. Minutes before we were supposed to leave, we got locked out of the house, bereft of car keys or even a phone. It’s too long a story but the eventual solution involved me walking barefoot to the church across the street and begging a man we’d never met to give us a ride. In the grand scheme of things, this seemed like a very small win. After all, it was just some event at the library and, after a few days, or maybe even hours, the sting of missing it would have faded into oblivion. But, to me, this felt like a big deal. I’d made a promise and I was going to deliver, even if we showed up in a stranger’s car looking like barefoot bumpkins. With God as my witness, I was going to get him there.

And I did.

Love can be such a namby-pamby emotion- all feelings and abstract emotion. But these times-the ones where I show up red-faced or muddy or barefoot or needlessly defiant or the leash of a shih-tzu is tangled in the wheels of The Baby’s wheelchair- it’s these times when feel my love for my people feels the most concrete. It’s a love that says, I braved all of this to be here. For you. Because you matter that much to me.

So, of course, while I would have preferred my dreamy version of the day-the one where The Baby and I frolic through a field of wildflowers before calmly and peacefully watching Alex accomplish something big, I appreciated the opportunity to remind Alex that I love him this much.

I’m officially adding ‘Showing Up’ to my list of love languages.