Sound Off

I found the visor and after a 68 head lice check at 0600 I’ll be off to the Sequoias. Two weeks. No cel phone, no landline, no internet, no computer. No worries. Soft trails, tall lake, deep trees,  dirty knees.

I’m terrified and smiling at the prospect of being a camp counselor to a cabin full of girls. I have no idea of what the week will bring or what to expect and that in of itself, is refreshing. I don’t know if I’ll do a good job because I don’t know what that would look like. Hopefully the week will be whatever it needs to be for the campers. Maybe it will even be what I need too.

Whatever that looks like.

Dumbo’s Feather

I’ve gone and lost my lucky visor, the one that I wear during most races. The one that I don’t wash until after I’ve run whatever I’m training for and traces of salt outline its form, memories of  the miles I’ve run. I remember seeing it somewhere it didn’t belong a couple of weeks ago and thinking, “Why is that there? I’m never going to find it when I need it……….I’d better put it back in the car. Nah, I’ll remember where it is.” 

 The nasty visor and my steadfast belief that I have to run on the left when running with others betray a childhood mildy tinged with OCD….. faucets  checked time and again  before bed and teeth brushed beyond a reasonable doubt. Now I’ve got that nagging feeling that something is not quite right and I’ll have it until I find the damned visor.

It’s a silly visor and I’m probably going to die of skin cancer anyway, ( or one of the other multiple illness that I self diagnose on a daily basis. Occupational hazard I suppose. )

“Honey, I’m home.”

“How was your day?”

“Ah, well, I’ve got distal muscular dystrophy.”

“Okay love. Is that all?”

“Yeah, thanks. I’m going to bed now.”

Ridiculous, I know, but I believe in that visor. It’s a story I’ve told myself. I think, perhaps, that we are naught but stories, stories we’ve told to ourselves and stories others tell about us.

A couple of weeks ago I had a “problem”. Today I don’t even remember what it was, I only remember that it turned out to be okay and a longtime friend of mine grumbled at me, ” Everything always works out for you.” I remember thinking, “By god, she’s right” and “Is she SERIOUS??!!!”. When I look back at the series of events that I call “my life”, I see a series of stepping stones, each in of itself a tragedy and each a blessing. I lump related circumstances into discrete moments, artificial constructs with finite bounds not truly representing a continuum that must be by its nature indiscernible to one as limited  as myself. (Chapters, if you will, with a beginning and an end although life doesn’t work that way. You can’t finish the story, read the final chapter, and go about your business. Every story that you’ve ever told yourself shapes the story you are telling yourself at the present.) The stony side of the path is cliche to the point that I don’t write about it. Each stone too rough, too sharp, hard to the point of hurting but the stones strung together yield a lee in which I can tell the rest my story. In that windless place I tease words from the privilege, opportunity, and richness that life has offered me.

At least, that is what I tell myself.

As You Wish

My boys and I were camping at Lake Lopez last weekend and it was pointed out to me that my last post, long ago, was written about that little episode in which I accidentally drank my son’s urine. We were playing Two Truths and a Lie, a game in which whoever is “it” states two truths and one lie and the other players are left to guess which of the statements is fictitous.

“I’ve been cage diving with great whites, I’ve been to Timbuktu, and I’ve gone skydiving.”  That one was easy for my friends to guess. “I’ve accidentally drunk urine, I’ve accidentally smeared feces on my face, and I’ve eaten monkey brains.” My friend’s seven year old twins look rather shocked, ( they were disconcertingly mild mannered, polite, and respectful little boys in stark contrast to my ……spirited offspring who are used to hearing just about anything come out of my mouth).  I’m not giving the answer away to that one but Tek pointed out to me that the lie couldn’t have been about the drinking of the urine as I’d already broadcasted via blog the details of that series of unfortunate events……..which led to the realization that the last words I’d written concerned the drinking of the pee.

So, in case you were worried…….I didn’t die. I’m still around. I’ve just been too busy living to put that life into font.

I haven’t had much to say about running having just pulled out of a running slump. After the Two Oceans Ultra I was a bit burnt out but went ahead and bought a treadmill off of Craigslist in anticipation of the boys being out of school for the summer and having no childless moments in which I could take off up Jesusita or around Ellwood. Never noticing that the treadmill pace was in minutes and tenths of minutes instead of minutes per mile I couldn’t understand why it seemed so much harder then it should to run a 8:30 mile or intervals at a 6:30 or 7:30 pace. Before State Street mile I was trying to do 6:30 400’s and had to hold on to the handrails of the treadmill lest I fly off of the back of it.  My fitness was not such that the difference between a 8:30 pace and a 8 3/10 minute pace was trivial. I was put off and pouting even before Semana Nautica. To make matters worse I ran into Marianne at the start of Semana Nautica and she said something along the lines of, “Run with me, I’m going sloooooooooooooooowwwwwwww”  before she warped into hyperspeed and took off like a Springbok on methampetamines. I kept up for about two miles and hit that wall that Runner’s World is always talking about but I didn’t believe in. Now I know what it’s like to run through peanut butter, I got to do it for 7 miles that morning. That just about sums up my recent running endeavors.

Everything else in my life, ( except for my pace), seems to have speeded up. Each moment with my children is so damn frustrating and so damn heartbreakingly beautiful that I want to push pause and stare at what’s caught in the frame for days on end, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. It’s the small moments that I want to capture and keep but can’t because the boys won’t stop growing up and hurtling into a future in which I can’t keep them safe and can’t keep them small.

At Lake Lopez this past weekend  Tristan told me that he was going down the hill from our campsite to play on a fallen log that had become his headquarters for the trip. Back turned to me, he walked through the yellowed brush towards the downed oak.The angle between the slope and the sky made him small against the landscape. My breath caught in my throat tangled up in the fragility of his life. So big to me and yet nothing against time or accident he strode away, sure of himself and unaware that he was not permanent.

The boys are trying to make sense of their world and change to fit their perception of who they need to be so I’m never quite sure of who will come poke me in the morning when he wants to be fed. The poker is never  completely the same boy who I tucked in the night before.

There is somebody I can count on though……..who is patient with my craziness, gentle with my boys, always willing to go on a last minute adventure, and loves me for who I am , not who I was or who I could be, at my best and at my worst. Who is slow to judge and quick to care. Who makes me be my best in every aspect of my life except for running, (try as he might, he just can’t get me to speed up despite his efforts to provide me with an appropiate running schedule.)

 A year…….today. I’d like another one just like the one that has passed.