We walk to the meet in the rain, shoes steeped in mud, and you ask why I'm not a man of firmer pressure. You discern in me a reticence to make you, to tell you who to be, what you must win, what face to wear at the start line. The ground is loose beneath us, and I tell you to do your best; and even though I’m sometimes tempted to prove it, tempted to doubt it, I pray that one day you will see that everything I have hoped for you, for me, is anything but soft.