The Art of Racing in the Rain

by Garth Stein

That’s humiliating and degrading.

In terms of anthropomorphism then humanly this would be quite a catastrophic and negative way to view the body failing in old age. What is degrading is not that feeble state but rather viewing that PERSON as less alive.

It was the best thing I’ve ever seen on television, other than the 1993 Grand Prix of Europe, of course, the greatest automobile race of all time in which Ayrton Senna proved himself to be a genius in the rain.

Obviously a teaser for the title of the book? What happened in that race in the rain?

when a dog is finished living his lifetimes as a dog, his next incarnation will be as a man.

Profoundly beautiful. What a premise!

What can I do but force myself to remember? Try to imprint what I know on my soul, a thing that has no surface, no sides, no pages, no form of any kind. Carry it so deeply in the pockets of my existence that when I open my eyes and look down at my new hands with their thumbs that are able to close tightly around their fingers, I will already know. I will already see.

Gah! What writing!

He lifts me easily, he cradles me, and I can smell the day on him. I can smell everything he’s done.

Usually, I’m excellent with elapsed time, but I wasn’t paying attention because of my emoting.

It’s so hard to communicate because there are so many moving parts. There’s presentation and there’s interpretation and they’re so dependent on each other it makes things very difficult.

I didn’t want him to feel bad about this. I wanted him to see the obvious, that it’s okay for him to let me go. He’s been going through so much, and he’s finally through it. He needs to not have me around to worry about anymore. He needs me to free him to be brilliant.

He is so brilliant. He shines. He’s beautiful with his hands that grab things and his tongue that says things and the way he stands and chews his food for so long, mashing it into a paste before he swallows. I wi...

But I can’t let sentimentality cloud my grand plan. After this happens, Denny will be free to live his life, and I will return to earth in a new form, as a man, and I will find him and shake his hand and comment on how talented he is, and then I will wink at him and say, “Enzo says hello,” and turn and walk quic...

He puts in a video from one of his races and he turns it on and we watch. It’s one of my favorites. The racetrack is dry for the pace lap, and then just after the green flag is waved, indicating the start of the race, there is a wall of rain, a torrential downpour that engulfs the track, and all the cars around him spin out of control into the fields and he drives through them as if the rain didn’t fall on him, like he had a magic spell that cleared water from his path. Just like the 1993 Grand Prix of Europe, when Senna passed four cars on the opening lap, four of the best championship drivers in their championship cars—Schumacher, Wendlinger, Hill, Prost—and he passed them all. Like he had a magic spell.

Denny stops talking for a minute, and when he starts again, his voice doesn’t sound like his voice. It’s rough, like when he has a cold or allergies. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not sure it’s a round trip visit.”

For a moment, I’m surprised my plan is working. It is the best thing for all involved, I know. It’s the right thing for Denny to do. He’s done so much for me, my whole life. I owe him the gift of setting him free. Letting him ascend.

We had a good run, and now it’s over; what’s wrong with that?

So many things. People and their rituals. They cling to things so hard sometimes.

I’ve often wondered if he sired me.

I like to think I came from a determined gene pool.

“Very gently. Like there are eggshells on your pedals,” Denny always says, “and you don’t want to break them. That’s how you drive in the rain.”

Ahhh. The first part of the answer to the question of how you race in the rain.

Balance, anticipation, patience. These are all vital.

But what I’ve always liked best is when he talks about having no memory. No memory of things he’d done just a second before. Good or bad. Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present.

It is being a part of a moment and being aware of nothing else but that moment. Reflection must come at a later time.

“You don’t mind if I love him, too, do you? I won’t come between you.”

“Did he have rain tires?” Eve asked. “I think so. But his car wasn’t set up right.” “Still. You’re driving like the track isn’t wet, and everyone else is driving like it is.”

“That which you manifest is before you,” Denny said softly.

“Drivers are afraid of the rain,” Denny told us. “Rain amplifies your mistakes, and water on the track can make your car handle unpredictably. When something unpredictable happens you have to react to it; if you’re reacting at speed, you’re reacting too late. And so you should be afraid.” “I’m afraid just watching it,” Eve said. “If I intentionally make the car do something, then I can predict what it’s going to do. In other words, it’s only unpredictable if I’m not…possessing… it.”

Such a simple concept, yet so true: that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.

I had always wanted to love Eve as Denny loved her, but I never had because I was afraid. She was my rain. She was my unpredictable element. She was my fear. But a racer should not be afraid of rain; a racer should embrace the rain. I, alone, could manifest a change in that which was around me. By changing my mood, my energy, I allowed Eve to regard me differently. And while I cannot say that I am a master of my own destiny, I can say that I have experienced a glimpse of mastery, and I know what I have to work toward.

“He’s my husband and he’s Zoë’s father, and I love him. What else does he need to contribute to our family?”

Learn to listen!

“It’s okay, Daddy,” she said. “I know you won’t leave me here forever.” He smiled at her and took her little-kid hand and held it in his own and kissed her on the forehead. “I promise I will never do that,” he said. It was agreed then, perhaps to neither of their satisfaction, that she would stay.

I marveled at them both; how difficult it must be to be a person. To constantly subvert your desires. To worry about doing the right thing, rather than doing what is most expedient.

I wasn’t sure why she wanted me around, but I understood why she wanted Denny to go: as he fell asleep that night, she wanted him to dream of her as she used to be, not as she currently was; she didn’t want Denny’s vision of her to be corrupted by her presence. What she didn’t understand was Denny’s ability to look beyond her physical condition. He was focusing on the next turn. Perhaps if she had had the same ability, things would have turned out differently for her.

the other father with the three children would sometimes offer to buy us a coffee, and sometimes we would accept and we would all walk to Madison to the nice bakery and drink coffee at the sidewalk tables. Until once, when the other father said, “Your wife works?” Obviously, he was trying to explain to himself Eve’s absence. “No,” Denny replied. “She’s recovering from brain cancer.” The man dipped his head sadly upon hearing the situation. After that day, whenever we went to the bus stop, the man made himself busy talking to other people or checking his cell phone. We never spoke to him again.

The true hero is flawed. The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles—preferably of his own making—in order to triumph. A hero without a flaw is of no interest to an audience or to the universe, which, after all, is based on conflict and opposition, the irresistible force meeting the unmovable object.

I'm divided. On the one hand I should agree because the most perfect champion endured the most difficult challenges, overcoming sin, death and the grave willingly, just for us. ANd YET there is a flaw in this logic. If the qualities are admirable it doesn't matter how we get there. Imagine not needing to err in order to gain wisdom. To be unscarred. This is what he does not realize. No one should want scars for those they love.

Michael Schumacher,

Lewis Hamilton has dethroned him and is still winning races.

I would like to tell you that I am such a master of my destiny that I contrived the entire situation, that I made myself crazy so Zoë could calm me on this trip, and thus would be distracted from her own agitation. Truth be told, however, I have to admit I was glad she was holding me; I was very afraid, and I was grateful for her care.

AFTER saying a hero needs to be flawed and overcome challenges it is a little too obvious to have the narrator tell of his own flaws and challe,ges as if toi insinuate that he is indeed the hero.

“We must have just missed it,” Denny said. “Thank God.”

There is nothing like it. The sensation of speed. Nothing in the world can compare.

There is nothing more to tell about that trip because nothing could possibly be more incredible than those few hot laps that Denny gave to me. Until that moment I thought that I loved racing. I intellectualized that I would enjoy being in a race car. Until that moment I didn’t know. How could anyone know until he sits in a car at race speed and takes turns at the limits of adhesion, brakes a hair from lockup, the engine begging for the redline?

I wonder if athletes whose sport revolves around speed identify with this description of intoxicating speed?

To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life, as Eve felt the joy of life. To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter every day. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to. When I am a person, that is how I will live my life.

“Do you see?” she asked. “I’m not afraid of it anymore. I wanted you with me before because I wanted you to protect me, but I’m not afraid of it anymore. Because it’s not the end.”

Of what she said. It is not the end. She died that night. Her last breath took her soul, I saw it in my dream. I saw her soul leave her body as she exhaled, and then she had no more needs, no more reason; she was released from her body, and, being released, she continued her journey elsewhere, high in the firmament where soul material gathers and plays out all the dreams and joys of which we temporal beings can barely conceive, all the things that are beyond our comprehension, but even so, are not beyond our attainment if we choose to attain them, and believe that we truly can.

Denny said, rising from the chair. “You can’t have custody of my daughter. Final answer.” The Twins sighed simultaneously. Trish shook her head in dismay. Maxwell reached into his back pocket and removed a business envelope. “We didn’t want it to have to be this way,” he said, and he handed the envelope to Denny. “What’s this?” Denny asked. “Open it,” Maxwell said. Denny opened the envelope and removed several sheets of paper. He glanced at them briefly. “What does this mean?” he asked again. “I don’t know if you have a lawyer,” Maxwell said. “But if you don’t, you should get one. We’re suing for custody of our granddaughter.”

Denny pulled the driver’s-side door closed with a slam that shook the car. “Do I have a lawyer?” he said to himself. “I work at the most prestigious BMW and Mercedes service center in Seattle. Who does he think he’s dealing with? I have a good relationship with all the best lawyers in this town. And I have their home phone numbers.”

Seeing Denny’s hands shake was as upsetting for me as it was for him. After Eve’s death, he glanced at his hands often, held them before his eyes as if they weren’t really his hands at all, held them up and watched them shake. He tried to do it so no one would see. “Nerves,” he would say to me whenever he caught me watching his manual examination. “Stress.” And then he would tuck them into his pants pockets and keep them there, out of sight.

Eve had only been dead for a few days, but since her death, I had felt so bottled up and congested, sitting with Denny in the house for much of the time, breathing the same stale air over and over.

Denny abruptly straightened and pulled away from her. “Zoë,” he said. “Enzo and I are going to watch from a special spot. Come on, Enzo.” He bent down and kissed her forehead, and we walked away. Zoë and Trish watched us go. We continued on the circular path and walked up the bump of a hill to the top, where we stood underneath the trees, and, protected from the lightly falling rain, watched the whole thing. The people coming to attention. The man reading from a book. The people laying roses on the coffin. And everyone leaving in their cars. We stayed. We waited for the workers who came and dismantled the tents.

Unforgivable. I don’t know if the writer realizes how violent the inlaws’ actions are. His wife has just died and they have betrayed and turned on him and his wife’s daughter in the most selfish way possible

As I matured and the protective cartilage at the ends of my bones wore away, as cartilage tends to do, the pain became more acute. And yet, instead of complaining, I tried to hide my problem. Perhaps I have always been more like Eve than I’ve ever admitted, for I distrusted the medical world immensely, and I found ways to compensate for my disability so I could avoid a diagnosis that would undoubtedly hasten my demise.

The pain was so intense it left me shivering and weak. Later, Doc applied salve to my wounds and wrapped my forelegs tightly and whispered to me, “It’s a mean bastard who won’t pay for a little local anesthetic for his pups.” Do you see? This is why I distrust them. It’s a mean bastard who will do the cutting without anesthetic because he wants to get paid.

It is a rare person who can hear the blunt authority of a terminal diagnosis, refuse to accept it, and choose a different path.