It’s not the first thing out of my mouth when I meet someone, but if you know me really, really well, you know that I’m a crier. Most of the time, I just get emotional. I could be mad as hornets or frustrated enough to want to strangle someone. It doesn’t have to be actual wet-eyes crying. But, when it happens, and it happens often, there’s no stopping it.

And I know where I get it from: Violet. Yeah, it’s probably weird to most that I’d call my birth mother by her name, but I always have, even as a kid. I’ve never called her “Mom”. Around the house, it was “where’s your mom” or “tell your mom” something. It was never “my mom”; it was just Violet.

Anyway, she’s a crier, was when I was little, and still is. Just last weekend when we dropped her off at the airport, she started crying before she could even say goodbye. Then when she got back to Illinois, she called me to say thank you again, and again, she cried. Us kids laugh at it because it’s just what she’s done since we can remember. But we all cry a fair bit, too. And little does she know, I was crying on this end of the phone back in April when I called to ask if she’d want to come out to see me run the 44th Annual Marine Corps Marathon, my first marathon.

I reached out because I wanted to have her come to D.C., someplace I knew she’d enjoy but didn’t think she’d ever been to. I wasn’t sure, just like a lot of things, because sometimes I don’t think I know her that well. Hell, even just last weekend, I found out her middle name was Mae. I saw it on my original birth certificate, the one that has Jerome Kenneth Getter as my given name at birth. You know, because she must have been doing some wicked-good acid when she figured the name pronounced Jeremy was spelled Jerome. Anyway, before that, I knew her middle initial was M., but I honestly thought it stood for Marie. The little things we learn.

She gave birth to me in 1971, August 29 to be exact at 9:07 a.m. I was a shiny, loud-mouthed 7 pounds, 8 ounces and 19 ½ inches long. I had to have been the joy of St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, Wis., just a handful of blocks south of UW Madison and around the corner from the Henry Vilas Zoo. I don’t remember much of my really young years, but I do remember going to that zoo and especially leaving there with the purple wax apes out of the toy machines by the exit, and sometimes, the yellow lions, too.

It wasn’t much before then that Violet had been a high schooler up the road at Madison West. She was just 19 – less than a month from her 20th birthday, to be honest – when she had me, very young for a single mother back in the early ‘70s. My biological father was never in the picture after I was born, other than for a few seconds when I was about 12. I sent him a letter, he replied, and in it he sent a couple pictures and a note that essentially said, “New phone, who dis?”

Whatever. I dropped it and have never had a desire to look him up again. I mean, why should I? I’ve had a pretty good life as it. Besides, I already had a dad who had adopted me, although that’s a long story for another time.

And I also had Violet’s husband, Frosty. Like Violet, I never called him “Dad” and honestly, until the last few years of his life, I never talked about him to anyone else as being my stepdad. It was just Frosty.

Side note: this is where Violet will really start to cry. I mean, she’s already crying, but it’s going to be a sloppy wet cry from here on out.

So, let’s talk about Frosty.

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When I was growing up, the man scared the living shit out of me. I’m sure I rolled in like a spoiled brat when visiting their house, probably because I didn’t live there but I got all the perks, and it’s easy to be a jerk when you’re a kid. Yet, he never made me feel like anything other than his own child, despite me not understanding that until much later in life. In fact, looking back, he treated me exactly like all the others. And there were plenty of them – David, Renee, Crystal, Bambi, Amber and Jon, all born in the 12 years after they were married on Oct. 19, 1974, just a year after they had met. I was 2 when they got together, so I was the oldest of Violet’s seven children. All the others were with Frosty, which, strangely, never made me even a little bit jealous. Because I was “adopted” (seriously, it’s a drinking story), I essentially had two great families instead of just one. And if presents at one house sucked at my birthday or the holidays, then I could try to finagle better ones at the other. Win, win.

Why did he scare me? Well, I was a pudgy kid growing up, anything but athletic. It wasn’t until middle school that I started playing sports, and I wasn’t that good really. If it were today, I’d get a ribbon or medal because everyone does, but back then, I didn’t get those very often. Until I was almost out of high school, I was the boy wearing Husky-sized pants and who had sweaty armpits in a cold classroom. It didn’t seem to me that I was like him at all, this tall, muscular, beer-drinking guy whose forearm tattoo was badass when you watched him lift a cigarette to his mouth. He got that tattoo when he was a Marine, as he said yes to serving his country by enlisting to go to Korea on Oct. 29, 1953. Whether you call it a war or not, he purposefully went where people were putting their lives on the line every day. He spent one day short of three years in the Marines, making sergeant and then serving three more years in the reserves. In every way, he was bigger than life. Even when we butted heads from time to time, he typically took the higher ground. Nearly every time, he’d defer to Violet when it came to me because he didn’t want to do anything to upset her. If that didn’t make my pudgy kid head – and ego – a bit bigger, nothing could.

As the years passed, my understanding of our relationship changed. It wasn’t so much me being scared of him as it was being in awe of him. Since he met Violet in the cafeteria line at the Chrysler plant outside of town, where he was such as smart-ass she wouldn’t serve him, he did his best to take care of her. He did everything a man, a husband, a father should try to do by making a good home, raising a good family. And he succeeded. He did everything a man needed to do to warrant his wife buying a t-shirt two years after his death that says, “I gave my heart to a Marine” as Violet did last week when we went to the Marine Corps Museum. I was much older before I realized I’d be doing pretty good in life if I became half the man he was.

Those later years were pretty special. I only go home to Illinois maybe once or twice a year, and not every time did I tell the family I was there. But as Frosty started getting up there in age – he was 16 years older than Violet, so anyone calling me a cradle robber needs to back off – I really enjoyed spending a little time with him when I came home. Sometimes, when I’d hang out late, we’d stay up talking, and I’d learn so much about who he was. It wasn’t always that way, though. For many years, we just had sports to talk about. The Bears, the Bulls, the Blackhawks. Oh, and our Cubs. We could talk about the Cubbies for days, the same team he took me to see for my first professional game in 1982. I still remember that day, unlike so many other unmemorable childhood days. We sat behind home plate off to the third base side. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon well before there were lights. Day games are the best, and visiting Wrigley for the first time during the day in the summer as a childhood memory is a blessing everyone should have.

At some point, our talks gradually turned to my life, my job, my family. And then, at times, we talked about his past, his family growing up, and especially his life in the military. I was always interested in that even though I never had any real interest in serving. After being in the Marines so long ago, as a veteran he joined the Marine Corps League, spending two decades devoting time to other veterans and causes, even serving as league Commandant for 10 years. The years of leadership were noted when he was honored at the state level by the Department of Illinois Marine Corps League. Him and some of his MCL buddies probably put back a few and had a good old time that night.

That love Frosty had for the Marines until the day he died in 2017 made it an easy decision for me to pick a race when I first decided to run a marathon. So many of my training team friends said the Marine Corps Marathon was an incredible race, especially for a first-timer, and the connection to my family – to Frosty – clinched it. That’s why my voice was cracking and I was struggling – and failing – to hold back tears when I called Violet to see if she wanted to come out with us for that weekend. That’s why so many times on midweek runs this summer I was glad to be wearing sunglasses when I thought about crossing that line at 26.2 miles and know that he’d be proud of my accomplishment.

That it all came together so perfectly, well, you just couldn’t script it any better. The weather was epic, I overcame physical and mental stress that could have pushed me out, and I finished. That was really the only goal. And then we spent two days sight-seeing and taking Violet to places I think she may have thought she’d never visit. Getting the chance to give back like that was a feeling nothing short of amazing.

I could say I really wished Frosty had been there for it too, and it would have been gratifying, but everything happens at its own time and for its own reason. He never let us think otherwise. I remember a talk we had when I was 17. I was trying to decide about going to college. No one in my family – either family – had really gone on past high school while some didn’t even go that far. And I was on the fence. He said that the military would be a good option if I didn’t go to school. I’m guessing he meant the Army as I probably wasn’t Marines material, or I’ve joked to myself that’s what he’d meant. But he never pushed it. He let me do me, sinking and swimming on my own terms through life with him right there every time with a hand to give when I needed it. And that’s probably why at 4:30 in the morning before the race, I had this weird thought. Out of nowhere, it was in my mind: “It was never meant for me to be a Marine, but it’s always been meant that I run this race.” And it was meant to be this year with Violet there and Frosty watching down.

For that, all I can say is, thank you Mom and Dad.