Front-Row Seats to a Tough Life Lesson

I came to know her first as a second-grade teacher at my daughters’ school. Her soft voice and warm hugs drew children to her classroom each day, even after the final bell had rung.

Then I learned of her exploits as an athlete, one of the few women to rank among the world’s top competitors in torturous “adventure racing.”

Now I see her waging the fight of her life as she battles back from breast cancer . . . while our kids watch from front-row seats.

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She is supposed to be in Ecuador now, hacking her way through jungles, fording dangerous rivers, rappelling along rock walls, leading her team to victory in the annual international Raid Gauloises.

Instead, Louise Cooper-Lovelace is weaving through bunches of second-graders in the Chatsworth classroom where she teaches. She stoops to help one child sound out a word, admonishes another to keep his hands to himself. From time to time she adjusts the brim of the hat that school officials asked her to wear, to shield 7-year-olds from the shocking sight of her nearly bald head.

She looks slightly more wan than she did two years ago, when she taught my older daughter’s class. But intact are the sparkling smile, easy laugh and gentle manner that give even the most timid child the confidence to read out loud.

I used to watch her and wonder how a woman my age could look so young, push herself so hard, have such boundless energy. A veteran of more than 50 marathons and seven triathlons, she took up adventure racing four years ago. In adventure racing, four-person teams run, climb, hike, paddle, ride horses and sometimes crawl across hundreds of miles of wilderness, with only a map to guide them through ever-changing terrain. The races last for days, and competitors have little chance to eat or sleep.

Cooper-Lovelace was in training for this month’s race when she discovered a lump in her breast a few months ago. Before long, she’d traded her athletic team for a medical team and cut back on swimming and lifting weights to accommodate chemotherapy.

Her training has prepared her for the battle against cancer, she says.

“Each race is different, and there’s never any guarantee. . . . Despite all your training and plans, something can go wrong and cost your team the race.

“You have to get used to overcoming setbacks. . . . You can’t afford to let bad breaks throw you off track.”

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It takes me two hands to count the number of friends who have been stricken by breast cancer in the last few years, so many that I’ve begun to view the disease as inevitable, a consequence of reaching middle age.

Statistics bear me out: A woman is found to have breast cancer every three minutes in America; one in nine will get the disease in her lifetime. But cancer is no longer the death sentence it once was.

Cooper-Lovelace gathered her students on the first day of school to explain why their teacher was wearing a hat.

“I was ill over the summer,” she said, “and the medication I had to take made my hair fall out.”

They took it in, wide-eyed and solemn. Some stared curiously at the wide-brimmed hat, and she finally removed it to show her scalp--with tufts of downy hair where long, blond curls had been.

What do you think? she asked, offering suggestions as they struggled for words. “Scary, weird, funny?”

No, the children decided. Just different. And the day’s lesson--sans hat--went on.

I think back on all she taught my daughter, both as teacher and athlete. Not just about nouns and commas but about life: that the race doesn’t always go to the swift or the strong, that perseverance counts for plenty and mental attitude can trump bad luck.

And I know there are lessons ahead for this year’s second-graders that never could be taught from a book.

That scary things happen to everybody, even teachers. That disappointments can slow you down, but they don’t have to stop you. That even if you do everything right, things can turn out . . . well, different. And sometimes, different will have to do.

* Sandy Banks’ column is published Mondays and Fridays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.