Running

My personal history with running can be said to have started in high school. It was not a glorious start. I went running with a girlfriend through a park the next town over. I am not sure how many laps we did. We may not have even completed once around before she started to pull ahead of me and I was cursing this bad idea. When she turned around to see just what had happened to me she stopped running and started laughing. You see apparently I had set the image of Kermit riding his bicycle in the "Muppet Movie". Just all flapping , gangly limbs it would seem. The nickname "Kermit" stuck through the next two years of high school. And to this day if someone yells Kermit I will turn to respond.

Next came my re-introduction to running by a college roommate who had thick brown hair , was a great athlete and carrying a double major of chemistry and biology. Needless to say I wanted to find something I could keep up with. So I started running with her. She had also explained the "adrenal rush" to me which sounded intriguing. And really that is when the real interest began. I didn't read books or magazines. I just laced up the sneakers, grabbed my boom box (...well my Walkman but for all accounts it felt that big) and went out the door.

During my 20's I ran quite a bit. I travelled for about 3 years , working in various states and would not know many people and the people I did become friends with usually were well ensconced in their lives. When I lived in New Jersey for a summer I met a fellow travel nurse who loved to run trails. I felt bad for her since we were after all in New Jersey. She assured me she had found a great trail and invited me along to try it out. I was hooked. I was also left in her dust. It became my goal to run that trail just like she did. She practically bounced off the ground missing rocks and fallen tree limbs like some kind of jack rabbit. By the end of summer I won't say I looked as graceful but I could have run that trail with my eyes closed. While living in South Carolina I worked mostly during the day and would run after work. I drove my route one afternoon to clock how many miles I was running. I watched with fascination as the odometer kept moving and when I reached my starting point it was a total of seven miles. The next week I signed up for a 5K. I did it in 23 minutes. Which for a girl who started out running like Kermit with all limbs a-flailing this was huge.

I kept running up until I got married. I am not sure why I stopped. I never ran to keep my weight down or keep my body in any kind of particular shape so perhaps I just let it fall away until I had forgotten how great it felt.

Two years ago I my husband suggested I run the Hartford Half Marathon with him. I scoffed at first since I had not had my running shoes on in some time, like about 7 years. But I thought "you're on,"laced up my sneakers and went out the door only to return panting and doubled over with a kink in my side. It did get better and the kink disappeared and it looked like I might even make it to the half marathon . Then we found out I was pregnant. There went running and just about any other form of recreation.

That baby is now 15 months old and time is again, however slight , on my side. A couple girlfriends invite me last fall to join their running group and once again those sneakers got laced up and I hit the road. I again have that half marathon in my sights. I have quite a ways to go. My mileage and the time I run it needs to improve by about double at this point but really for a mother of three I feel pretty good even making the attempt.

I emailed my husband a couple weeks back when I had clocked the run I had done that morning and the odometer kept climbing until it reached four miles and I was back in my driveway. I emailed him the distance and he emailed back:
"Run, Forest , run."
And that is just what I plan to do.

Some thoughts on turning 40

This morning my husband announced I have one more week of being 39. As though I truly needed a reminder. I love my birthday. The number means very little to me. He smiled at me though ,like he was getting to me. Carefully watching my reaction, gauging just how far he could push the topic. When I merely smiled at him his disappointment was palpable. His smile turned into a face of sheer wonder. Or perhaps it was awe.


"You really aren't bothered are you? It's just another birthday isn't it?" I smiled and answered" Yes but it is MY birthday."


This would bring us to "birthday week". The year I turned 26 was the first year I was to celebrate my birthday without the usual dinner with my parents. Yes I did say 26. I moved out of state just before my 26Th birthday and the usual dinner of a roast and mashed potatoes and Carvel ice cream cake would not be coming my way. I was living in Georgia and when it occurred to me I didn't have any family to celebrate with my first instinct was to buy a plane ticket and go home. But a nurses' schedule being what it is that really wasn't going to work. So I made the decision that instead of feeling sorry for myself because I didn't really have anyone to celebrate with me I would just celebrate myself. I turned one day into a week long self love fest. I did something nice for myself each day for a week before my birthday. Nothing really extravagant just simple like a day of total laziness, a day of hanging around a bookstore and buying whatever I wanted. I had requested my birthday off. One of my co-workers, who had quickly become a good friend called me late in the day and asked if I wanted to meet her and few people at Applebee's for a drink or two after they got out of work. I thought, great nice way to end my birthday!


When I got to the restaurant there they sat with an ice cream cake and balloons. Six people sitting around a table. All who had known me for less than a month, happy to help me celebrate.


This morning I was explaining to my girlfriends how I celebrate "birthday week". Turning 40 doesn't mean I have to amp it up and it doesn't mean I expect anything more from my birthday. I can have birthday week, just in less form that it used to take. I will have to arrange for babysitters if I want to go get a manicure or go shopping. But really it isn't even about spending money or treating myself. I like the idea of celebrating my being here, for however long it has been and how ever long it continues. My mother didn't go thorugh nine months to have me spending my life complaining that I am getting older. Getting older is just a fact. It is what you do with your time that matters most.

I still remember that birthday at Applebee's. And I remember many of my birthdays because somehow they have always managed to come with good friends and family somewhere near by and what is better than that?

What Goes Around

When I was in third grade, I hit a period of separation anxiety. I did not want to go to school. I wanted to be home with my mother because I felt safe there and really school wasn't all it was cracked up to be. At the time I was thinking this would make my mother happy that I wanted to be with her. I would cry my way to the nurses' office and wait patiently to be picked up by Mame Hall ( my grandmother for all intents and purposes). Mame would give me a hard look, which I would shrug off and once I was home it was Price is Right and As The World Turns and some serious time reading all the Carolyn Haywood books I could get my dad to let me take out of the library. I did not realize then how much my mother probably agonized over what was wrong with me really. Why did I need to be home after being in school 3 years already?



Thursday morning last week couple weeks back , the oldest child ,who is now in first grade, decided that school is just not for him and for better or worse he decided to cry his way out of going on Thursday. I had to call the school and explain to the school nurse that I did not think he was sick, only that he was having some separation anxiety or perhaps that aliens had switched my child during the night, leaving something akin to an alien in my house. She doubted the alien story and told me she would alert his teacher. When the teacher called I explained that he was near hysterics and I wasn't sure what to do. "bring him in. It will only get worse if you let him have his way today.' I thought "He's all yours ,sister." But calmly said. "We'll be there in ten minutes." I should have realized it would take me that much time to peel him off the ceiling first.

I put his brother and sister in the car and went back into the house,knowing I would have to carry him out . and I couldn't find him. Our house is not that big. It is 2 floors so after searching downstairs I headed up. My patience was not thin at this point it was thread bare. I looked everywhere and the last place I looked, under our bed, there he was. He held on to the bed frame so tightly I had to literally peel his fingers off one by one. ( Something my husband found so amusing when I called until he had to peel the kid off the kitchen island the next morning.)

I did have to drag him out to the car and drag him into school , where his teacher and the Principal then dragged him down the hall. He was crying for me and holding his hands out like someone being dragged off to prison. All I could do was walk away. I cried all the way home.

He got off the bus with a smile on his face. His teacher emailed to say he did fine once he got to school, although it did take him awhile to settle down.

He pulled this for about two weeks, with MOnday beign the worst until one day he came off the bus smiling this big smile and I looked down at that swet face and said "You're done. If you cry tomorrow morning about going to school I am giving away your Nintendo and you will lose computer and TV priviledges for a week." His smile faded quickly. He nodded his head and said "Okay mama I promise."

He has kept his promise.

Now I have an idea of how awful I probably made my mother feel. I am sure she forgave me or perhaps never felt the need to forgive me. As a mother you don't hold that kind of grudge. I think I played it harder than my mother did, though. I am thinking my father might have stepped in to stop my own tantrums about going to school. I am thinking if my mother had had more leverage....thank goodness for Nintendo.

Life with Cooper

My middle child is named Cooper, after Gary Cooper one of my favorite actors of the golden age of Hollywood. So far though he is not living up to the name in the quiet ,suave way of his namesake. Yesterday he hit his older brother with a bag and when he was confronted by me he calmly explained that the "bag is soft,mom". While he was with his aunt and grandmother yesterday he was having a conversation on the phone with two friends named PeePee and PoopPoop and apparently they were getting on his nerves since he told my sister in law he had to hang up on them harder and harder but they just kept calling him back.

This morning after getting his older brother on the school bus for the first day of school I could not find the large bottle of juice I know I purchased just three days ago. I put Cooper and his baby sister in the car and took them to the fabulously cheap grocery store one town over the bridge. All the while Cooper is saying to me," The juice is in the trunk" We don't have a trunk. We have a crossover with three rows of seats. I had looked in the car for the juice bottle, my husband looked in the car for the juice bottle and we both scratched our heads wondering what could have become of 96 ounces of apple juice. All the while Cooper is saying "the juice is in the trunk".


We get to the grocery store that has a happy sign that states they open at 9 am...it is 8:30. I have no where else to go and nothing to do. So I decide to head back home and just stop at the small town grocery store and pay way too much for juice just to get us through the morning. As I am loading said children back into the car I happen to move a beach towel from off the floor and there in the back seat of the car is the bottle of juice.

Cooper smiles and says ,"I told you there was juice in the trunk."

Did I mention he's only three?

The Sandals

When I was growing up I spent many summer days at a pool in our town called the Lions Pool, simply named because it was run by our local Lions' Club. My father was a member and worked each spring at getting the pool ready for summer. It was not a fancy pool. In fact it was at it's beginnings a mud hole and a swimmer could find themselves treading water next to an occasional snake. Lucky for me they eventually paved over the area and made it a large pool that mimicked a swimming hole. It had a very shallow end that gradually got deeper. And a deep end that didn't get much deeper than maybe 5 feet. Life guards at four stations and a snack bar. Truly, as a kid it was a little piece of heaven.

I don't live in my hometown so every now and again I will take a nostalgic drive around to places I loved growing up. I took such a drive a couple months back when I had two sleeping children in the car and wanted to kill some time before taking the kids to the pediatrician. I drove down Norton Road, eyeing suspiciously the new homes that have sprouted. Noticing a Gothic looking monster complete with a turret. It made me shudder. I once rode horses with my friend Tracy through those fields. I drove on down the hill and nearly wrecked my car. There before me was the saddest sight I had seen in some time. I pulled over to the side of the road and dialed my husband. As soon as he said hello I could barely talk.

" The pool, they tore up the pool. Houses, houses." Of course being my husband and quite use to tears and having grown up in the same town, swimming in the same pool , he knew exactly what I was saying.

"The Lion's Pool? Really? It's gone?"

I shook my head and he sighed. Which is, as a side note the really great thing about marriage, your body language begins to speak over the phone.

Two weeks ago I was working at the Y, sitting in a rocking chair with an unhappy child on my lap. I looked down at my sandals and noticed they were virtually falling apart. They are old. They are savagely worn and frayed and I am sure if I were ever on "What Not to Wear" they would throw them out. I love these shoes. My mother bought these shoes for me 9 summers ago. They have melted to my feet. You can see the impression of my toes. The sides are on the verge of exploding and exposing my pinky toes.

I looked up at my friend Amy and said, "I have to get these fixed." Now Amy is just the right person to say this to. Any other friend would have said, "Dude, they are falling apart. Get a new pair." But Amy understands sentimentality and she also understands frugality, of which I am a victim of both. And she told me where I can get them repaired and handed me a tissue.

I have established that I cry easily. But you may think, why cry over a pool? Why be sad over a pair of shoes that have more than served their purpose? I don't always like change. I am not fond of progress when it swipes at my childhood. I have very vivid memories of Lion's picnics at the pool, swimming in that God awful cold water in June and then swimming through the peeling paint in August. And I remember the day my mother bought me those sandals.

So as I think about that pool and how so many may not think it is a big deal that it is gone, I have to wonder why couldn't it be repaired? Why is it that we are always in such a hurry to throw away something because it needs fixing. Sometimes taking some time and effort can give the sweetest reward. "What Not to Wear " be damned, I am keeping my sandals.

Friends

When I was a camp nurse, many years ago after I graduated from college, I had to conduct the evening vespers. Believe it or not I struggled with this. It was a church based camp but not so much that I was expected to give a sermon. Evening vespers had been mostly done by the director or assistant director and had some lesson that capped off the days activities, more or less. But since I had done more than just sit in my cabin waiting for the injured, tired and homesick, the assistant director thought I should also take part. I am not always much of a public speaker and you have to admit speaking to a group of tweens is not always that easy. It can be a tough crowd.

The night before it was my turn I was sitting in the camp kitchen with the cook , who was funny by my standards. We pretty much laughed each night while I sat having a cup of tea or coffee and he worked preparing the next days adventures in food, as he called it. I had one more friend who was the cook's assistant who was usually there as well. And we all laughed. I loved those evenings. I loved camp. This particular night it struck me how fascinating camp was. We were all from very different backgrounds. Some of us were out of college, some hadn't even gotten there yet. Some counselors were athletic and loud and some were motherly, gentle. I started thinking about all of them and why I liked each one, what they meant to me. The following night that is what my vesper was all about. It was about each person I had been working with for the past weeks and why I liked them. I then played Peter Gabriel's song. "Don't Give Up" . What can I say, sometimes I do have a flare for the dramatic. And it was a hit with all those tweens.

17 summers have past since then and I can say that I still use that vesper in my daily life. I use it to remind myself of the good people I am surrounded by. The ones who are athletic, the ones who are loud. The ones who make me laugh. The ones who inspire me to be better and the ones who inspire me to let things go. The friends I have had since I was a toddler and the ones I met just in the past year. The friends who have to come to me again after a pause in our friendship, for whatever the reason and the friends who never let our friendship pause. The friends whose expertise I call on to get me through aches and pains and child rearing. The friends who have picked up where my mother left off and the ones who live too far away to hug me in person. The friends who have been able to say I am sorry and the ones who can't quite put that into words.

In May , my husband and I attended a wedding of a very good friend and we were surrounded for the day by very good friends. At one time during the day I looked around me and realized how awesome and possibly how rare it is to remain friends for such a long time with so many people. All of them guys, by the way. Once my husband and I reconnected with him came this wonderful return of many guy friends from junior high and earlier, with whom there had been a pause. Now with them came wives and girlfriends who are now part of my camp of funny and fabulous friends, who are cherished for who they are and what they add to my life.

In August the camp will hold a reunion weekend. My husband asked if I would go. I am tempted, hoping to see some of those wonderful people I worked and lived with for a summer. The cook and his young assistant , who I know is now a father . Some of the couselors who were loud or motherly. To remember the nights sitting in a brightly lit kitchen with laughter and the warmth of summer all around me. It would be fun, although I am hoping though that I do not have to conduct vespers, my list of friends and why I love them would take too long.

Smorgasbord

This morning I was standing at my kitchen window, cleaning my tea cup for that beautiful first cup of morning tea, when I spied the Devil with huge brown eyes staring me down. Standing in the middle of my yard, in the early morning light was the Devil in fawn's clothing. Yes, I did say Devil and for those of us who toil in our gardens that is what these creatures are.





They are the prima dona's of the animal world. They don't scavenge like a raccoon. They are not sneaky like a fox. They aren't skittish like the coyote. They are brazen, bold, blinded by their own cuteness. They are conniving. They know they are graceful and beautiful to watch. That is why they move in that deliberate way. Have you ever wondered why they stop and stare at you from the side of the road? Just to make sure you are watching when they bound into the woods and disappear.

If you don't have a garden then you probably feel as I once did, that they are sweet wondrous creatures and why not share a little lettuce with them? But once you have caught the gardening virus and your temperature rises with each chewed leaf and nibbled tomato plant it's a whole new game. A game of wits and speed. A game of staring down and scaring away. As I stood in the kitchen and stared out my window, eyes locked with Satan, I started developing my strategy. But I knew neither us of would back down.

Another deer made his way out of the woods and stopped short when he saw his companion still in the middle of our yard. I think the deer in our area have a communication going. I think Walt Disney was onto something when he created Bambi. They do talk and right now they are talking about our garden. We have the only garden in our immediate neighborhood ( because everyone else has pretty much given up and getting anything they can actually eat once the deer are done feasting). So I believe the chain of communication has spread wide and far. When they are tired of the grass and other "wild " things they migrate through the woods and over the golf course and find their way to the buffet on Penfield Hill Road. They talk about the sweet leaves of tomato plants and parsley and nibbles of carrots and pepper plants. They discuss how best to jump over our rustic yet inefficient fence and the best time to avoid the dog ( who by the way was in the front yard as I was staring down the deer in the back yard).

So we're upping the anty. A higher fence, bells to make noise when they get close to plants that are staked. And a recording of my voice saying ," Don't even think about it." There has to be a way to outsmart them. Ignore their looks. Ignore those big brown eyes , bring on the challenge. Game is on!