A Tale of Two Mothers--Posted by Mark

Ann usually does the blog writing for our family. But since we are calling this year’s Mamma Jamma ride In This Two-Gether, I thought I would try and add my own words to the cause. I would like to start by saying we in no way want to make anyone feel obligated to giving to our cause. We appreciate any and all donations, but we also understand that there are other important causes you may be supporting and that we all have to meet our family needs as well. But, if you are looking for a cause to support, we certainly would appreciate it if you would consider giving to this one.

We were very fortunate during Ann’s breast cancer diagnosis and treatment to have good insurance coverage, great doctors for her treatment, and wonderful friends and family to help attend to our spiritual and emotional needs. But we are also quite aware that not everyone going through the breast cancer experience has all these things available to them. That is one of the big reasons we started participating in the Mamma Jamma ride. You can check out the Mamma Jamma website to see how the donations are used.

Last year was the first year the Mamma Jamma bicycle ride was held and it was the perfect event for Ann and me to participate in. As many of you know Ann has an incomplete spinal injury and one of her main sources of exercise is using a hand cycle. We participate in many local organized bike rides in the Central Texas area, and the Mamma Jamma ride allows us to do one of our favorite activities for a cause that is very important to us.

Over the last three years our participation in the Koman race for the cure and now the Mamma Jamma bicycle ride has provided us with many moving and touching moments. I would like to share one of them with you. It is only one of many. I would like to call this The Tale of Two Mothers. You see Ann’s mother also had breast cancer and died at the age of 29 when Ann was only 3 years old. Ann has very sketchy memories of her mother; home movies show a woman with a lot of spunk cleaning fish on the dock in one scene and attending to her children in the next scene. From stories heard and the too brief memories experienced, she had a lot of love for her kids.

During Ann’s breast cancer treatment we both felt a closeness from Ann’s mother that has been hard to explain. (And maybe we aren’t supposed to explain such feelings.) I only know that when we received some of the toughest news about Ann’s breast cancer, we both individually experienced a feeling of her presence being with us.

Well, we made it through Ann’s treatments, surgeries, and now follow ups. And we joined the cause to fight breast cancer and help those going through what we had personally experienced. The inaugural Mamma Jamma ride was met with unpredicted cold weather, but this didn’t stop over 500 riders from showing up to ride their choice of distances.

Before the race, Ann and I had decided to do the 27 mile ride, but as temperatures failed to rise and a drizzly rain fell over the ride, we struggled with the idea of just doing the 13 miles instead. After some debate we pushed on and headed down the turn off for the 27 mile route. We were so glad we did, because just a little ways down from our turn off was one of the signs that the event organizers had put up in memorial to people who had dealt with breast cancer. This one was in memory of Barbara Watkins (Ann’s mom). If we had shortened our ride we would have never had known it was there. I had my camera with me and snapped a picture of the sign for a keepsake from the ride.

Well, fine you say. That’s a tale of one mom, but you said this was a tale of two moms. Where is the other mom? With all due respects to Paul Harvey, let me now tell the rest of the story.

Weeks after the ride, Ann posted some of the pictures we had taken on the Mamma Jamma website. One of the pictures she posted was of her mother’s memorial sign. She captioned the picture “mom’s sign”.
A month later, Ann was checking one of our lesser used email sites and found an email from a woman who had also participated in the Mamma Jamma ride. She had chosen to do the 100 mile ride and had trained hard for the ride. But, the cold and drizzly weather had made for a miserable, slow ride and she was unable to complete the ride. She was disappointed by missing her goal, but what was most disappointing to her was that she never saw a sign in memorial to her mom. Her mother had died from breast cancer, and one of the reasons she wanted to complete this ride was in her memory.

After the race was over she had gone to the Mamma Jamma website and was looking at the folders of photos submitted by different participants. She noticed a thumbnail picture entitled “mom’s sign” and opened it. Yes, it was our picture. And there below Ann's mother's name was her own mother's name. The route of the 100 milers had bypassed this stretch of the ride, so even though she rode farther than we did, she never saw the sign.

What is all this supposes to mean? I don't really know--you can call it providence if you like, or coincidence. But I think the most important thing it means is that we really are ALL IN THIS TOGETHER. That's why we ride and that's why we ask for your support--by cheering us on, donating, sharing this with others, and/or adding a name to our flag so that we can honor those who have shared this experience called 'Breast Cancer.'