Another eventful week for Marathon Training. Details at the bottom.

A reader described me looking liked a drowned rat in the photo that was included last week and below. Hard to argue with that. I do look better with a shirt on as you can tell.

Please send me your before and after photos the next time you run 8 miles in the rain, so we can compare.

 My Mom was raised by an uncle and aunt that we simply called “Uncle” and “Auntie.” Both with hearts of gold, perhaps the two nicest people ever put on the face of the earth. They couldn’t do enough for the eight Doherty kids. When I was young during summer vacation, I would go to stay with Uncle and Auntie for days or even weeks at a time on the third floor of a triple-decker in Roslindale.

Uncle and I would walk down to Louie’s spa on Hyde Park Avenue and catch the bus to Forest Hills, almost every day, and then take the Orange Line downtown and walk. We walked everywhere. The Freedom Trail, the State House, the Shopping District, the Back Bay, the Charles River, etc. By the time I was 12, I knew more about Boston than anyone else I knew.

Sometimes we hit the swan boats, operating since the 1880's and sometimes we just wandered around looking at architectural highlights.

Whatever we did, we would walk and talk and look and learn, and then about 11:30 we would end up at a Bickford’s Cafeteria and devour chicken croquettes, still my all-time favorite food. Once we were full, we would hop on the Green Line and head to Kenmore Square and Fenway Park.

Recently I was at the Mapparium on Mass Ave. in Boston, a place I visited regularly with Uncle. Totally unique in the world.

If you've never heard of the place it is a basically a stained glass (I think) reverse lit globe that you can walk inside to see the whole world in perspective, as it existed almost 100 years ago.

As I was standing in a place I stood as a six-year-old, and a twelve-year old, all I could think about was Uncle, in his tweed sport coat, standing there with me talking and teaching me about Boston, life, the world and values. I think the most important thing I learned from Uncle and Auntie was the concept of unconditional love.

Sometimes, usually without realizing it, we all attach conditions to our affections, but Uncle and Auntie did not. It didn’t matter what you did, they loved you.

It didn’t matter whether you called them when you should have, they loved you anyway. It didn’t matter if you forgot their birthday or didn’t write back, they loved you anyway.

I think that the best gift you can give another person is unconditional love: loving them no matter what.

When I was inside the Mapparium, for the first time in many years, I really wished I could hop on the Swan boats with Uncle again, or sit on the back piazza with Auntie listening to the Sacred Heart School marching band practice in the early evening. But I can’t: they have been gone many years now. Standing in the Mapparium, what I realized I can do is honor them by loving those important to me unconditionally, just as they did

My flashback helped me remember them in a special way and hopefully will help make the love I have for my family a little less conditional than it was before. You are who you are because several someones in your past loved you unconditionally. You will be a better person if you remember that love shouldn’t depend on…..anything, it should be unconditional.

My son was named after Joseph Cummings, the man we called Uncle, keeping the string of unconditional love alive.  Isn’t there someone you’d like to ride on the Swan boats with one more time? If they are still alive, call them and tell them. You won’t believe how much they will appreciate it.  And if, like Uncle and Auntie, you can’t call them, love those who are close to you ‘unconditionally’ to honor the memory of those who have loved you.

Or run a marathon over the same streets you used to walk with them. Or both.

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