Songs of Experience

Every day on the way home from picking my four year-old up from pre-school, I drive by this house with pink, plastic flamingoes perched high up in a tree. Of course, I am curious about the owner … is he gay or merely eccentric? I’ve heard that a pink flamingo in someone’s yard is code for, uh, how shall I say it? A Brokeback Mountain fan? Anyway, its none of my business what someone’s sexual orinetation is; I’m just curious about the birds.
I usually slow down and sort of crane my neck while driving by. Anybody home?! For months I saw no sign of life. Probably someone who works 9-5:00, I thought, who wouldn’t be home in the middle of the day. Actually, nobody’s home in the middle of the day anymore. When I made the decision to quit my coaching work and stay home full-time I thought I’d be spending my days outside in a neighborhood full of children – chatting and sharing the (long!) days with other moms, but stay-at-home moms don’t stay at home; they drive. And drive and drive, hither and yon! (I love that expression), to playdates, pre-school, music classes, sports activities, birthday parties, Target, Costco … anywhere but home. Neighborhoods in America become ghost towns between 9:00am & 5:00pm … and I’m scared of ghosts!
So, you can imagine my surprise when I finally DID see someone home at Flamingo House at 12:00noon on a week-day.
I saw the screen door swing open and a slender man on crutches slowly made his way to the mailbox. He was wearing a pink shirt (for real) and only had one leg. One very long, skinny leg and I thought, “Why, that’s it! That’s why he has those symbollic flamingoes up in his tree. One leg or no, they’re fixin’ to fly!!”

When I drove away I prayed, “Thank-you, God, for my two running legs.” I can fly too.

Who out there has ever read Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters?

While searching for Running and Being (on JOCKO’s suggestion) at the library today, I redisocvered this treasure!

remember Petit, The Poet?

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel–
Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens–
But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
And what is love but a rose that fades?
Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure–
All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers–
Blind to all of it all my life long.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines?

You see, the thing about runners is … we are not “blind to all of it all our life long” because we’re out “roaring in the pines” on every single run.

Yawp!

Every week or so I receive an on-line newsletter from our local (Carrboro, NC) Fleet Feet running store. I have a spam blocker/junk detector on my computer to immediately delete such bulk missives, but I decidedly mark the Fleet Feet news “Not Junk.” There’s always a gem to be found amongst the upcoming races and new shoe stock announcements. This week, a quote by spiritualist running guru (now deceased), George Sheehan, gave me pause. I also love the old-timey painting the FF owner, Bobby Biles, found. Was Norman Rockwell a runner?

Anyway, I was thinking about how corny/cheesy Old George used to seem to me. I remember meeting him once at a race in Mobile, Alabama. We were both killing time before the gun went off, me pretending to stretch … him actually doing it (because that’s what “old”people do, right?). He was talking about what a beautiful day it was for running and how much he enjoyed coming to races to meet new people, and how good the warmth of the sun felt, etc. “Uh, yeah, me too,” I said, but thought “I wonder if Lori Henes is going to show up.” There was a soft field and an easy $1,000.00 to be made.
We exchanged names and he seemed taken-aback when I didn’t know who he was. I guess he was pretty famous among the jogging set, but I was a racer. “Nope, never heard of you. Gotta go.” I had [important] strides to do before my race. I bolted away, feeling I had escaped some long-winded great uncle before he launched into yet another WWII story. I was young and fast and didn’t need his running philosphy.
Ahhh, the folly of youth! I see now that I was young and fast and foolish. Who doesn’t need to be reminded of the warmth of the sun, the beauty of the trees, the simplicity of the run ?!

I didn’t realize running was my “self-renewing compulsion;” until I was old and cheesy myself.

“There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be.”
-George Sheehan

Amy’s comment has me thinking about Saint Ralph again.

When the movie ended, my first thought was, “Is this a true story?” It sure felt true throughout. I rewound to the beginning to read the disclaimer: “all the characters in this movie are fictitious and are not meant to portray actual people, etc.”
Alas, Ralph never existed in real life, nor did his bronze medalist runner turned priest/coach, nor the mystical coaching manual from which he drew. I wanted it all to be true because then I could go check Thomas Longboat’s book out of the library! [Thomas Longboat, himself, was a real-life runner - a Canadian legend.]
So, my next thought was, “who could have written such a believable story?” (and who directed the film?). I hit my “menu” button for the special features on the DVD and whose mug did I see but my own former teammate and fellow English major from UNC, Mike McGowan. I couldn’t f ‘ing believe it! We rode in the same stinky cross-country van together. He was on the team that got 5th at NCAA’s in 1985 (the one with George Nicholas that Chris Fox coached). This guy wrote and directed a movie runners will watch for years and years to come – like Chariots of Fire. Coaches will make their teams see it before the State meet. Running geeks will buy copies of it for their libraries. No wonder the scenes were so real. McGowan was a low 29’s 10k guy and a 2:18 marathoner. He was also smart, and sensitive, and hilarious, and . . . apparently . . . brilliant.

Go Tar Heels!!

p.s. if anyone knows McGowan’s e-mail address, please send it to me so I can personally (as opposed to virtually) gush.

A few months ago I blogged about Found Magazine. I am still fascinated with “found literature” and “found art” we can discover right under our noses in our everyday lives. In college, I had a professor of Romantic Poetry, not coincidentally, named Dr. Reed (believe me, we did some close reading of texts in his class) who encouraged us to look closely for poems all around us that the universe presented. One example I will never forget is a little, yellow, pedestrian traffic sign out in front of the post office – as you cross Franklin Street – that reads, “Walk with light.” How’s that for a found poem?!

This week the universe presented a work of art on a trail that I have run a zillion times. I “found” this amazing flower somehow imprinted, by God, in the center of a sawn tree.

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

- David Wagoner

No two trees are the same to a Runner.

(thanks to Randy for sending me this poem)

On Jan 18, 2006, at 10:49 PM, George Dosher wrote:

Joan, Wow!

I will give you the short story.

I’m 43, in the last two years, I lost nearly 100 pounds. Last year, I decided I wanted to run the Indy Mini Marathon in ‘06. So I started running. Even though I was a semi-athlete in High School, I hated running.

I used to tell my wife, if I ever started running, to call the Looney Bin and book me a room. She now has the number on speed dial. I am only up to 16 miles a week, but for a guy who the first time he ever ran 2 miles was last May…

Without boring you further, I found your site tonight reading the Oct ‘05 of Runner’s World. I really enjoyed what I read. I thought it would be more running oriented, but like what I am reading, it is about life.

Thanks, I needed it!

Have a Blessed Day!
George – F.F.S.G.*

*Formerly Fat Skinny Guy

Website: http://www.xanga.com/CoffeeRun

Hello George,
Congratulations and welcome to the greatest sport on earth!
It is wise of you to read for inspiration (on-line and off) to help you get out the door in the early stages of running.
Once you have been at it for a while, you will find that your attitude will change from “I have to run” to “I GET to run.”
I often explain to people that in our house my husband and I don’t ask each other “Are you going to run today?” but “WHEN are you going to run today?”.
Keep up the great work,
joan

For the last 7 or 8 years I have been coaching local great, John Hinton. John, whom I affectionately refer to as “Hinton-dog,” has been running so fast for so long that none of us think he will ever get old. In his prime, John qualified for 4 Olympic Trials in the 1,500m with a lifetime PR of 3:40.22; as a Masters runner, he holds the 1,500m outdoor US record in 3:49.82 and is a 2-time world masters champion. Just this past Saturday, at the UNC indoor track season opener, at the age of 43 and 3/4 (he turns 44 in May), John toed the line with a bunch of 18-20 year-old college kids in the mile … taking the lead at 800 and cruising to an easy victory in 4:22. In 2005, he opened with a 4:19 so I asked, “Are you disappointed with the time?”

“Not really; last year the Kenyans took it out fast and I had to lead today, so – no – I’m not disappointed.”

He gave me his splits, like always, but when we started to talk about next week’s work-outs I heard a slight catch in his voice – and it wasn’t coming from cell phone interference.

“What is it, John?”
“Well …” another pause, … “for the first time, ever, I felt old out there.”
“Oh?” I said. We’d always called him “the old man,” but it was a joke, you know, because he seems truly ageless … stomping all over people in The Michigan workout year in and year out, still being able to close in 43 over the last 300m.

“Yeah, they looked like high school boys, so young, and I thought, ‘What am I doing? Why am I still doing this?’” (Because you still love it, I thought).
“Does it make you want to quit?” I asked.
“No. Not yet. But I can now see why people do quit.”

I remember when it hit me – that I was too old. I was down in Charlotte in 2000, I think (John and I had traveled to the track meet together). I was lining up for the 1,500m with all these cute little girls in crop-tops and bun-huggers, with their bobbing pony-tails and their spring-break tans. At nearly 40, I had graduated to half-tights and a singlet for my racing uniform. My legs were flourescent white and I wore sunglasses not to stop the glare, but to hide my crow’s feet. I felt downright silly striding out before the gun went off. I was twice their age! I could have been their mother … yet I bolted into the lead and pounded out each 400m split (69, 2:19, 3:31), lift, lift, around the turn, drive your arms, sprint, kick, grunt, across the line for the win – 4:23.14

The bobbing little girls finished in a flurry behind me. I remember thinking, “Run away; run away.” Run away and hide how old you are. I didn’t want to talk to any of them (in my warped imagination, their voices would have squeaked). I wanted to find grown-up people to play with – to run with, to race with. My “green time” on the track was over.

I don’t know if John had as clear a vision this past Saturday when he “felt old out there,” but I do think the end is near. Soon and very soon, the amazing and inspiring Hinton-dog will hang up his track spikes forever. That will be a very sad day, indeed, for all of us old and young-timers who have been blessed, blessed, to witness his beauty in motion for, lo, these past 25 years.

(more…)

I keep returning to church and God in this blog. Maybe its because my running has always been a form of prayer, so its impossible for me to write about my running life without at least gesturing toward my faith. According to the Catholic calendar, the church is currently experiencing “ordinary time.” Oddly enough, ordinary time is my favorite time of year … but what, exactly, is it?

Theologian, Paul Turner, writes, “Ordinary Time, the longest portion of the church year, fills the weeks which do not celebrate a specific aspect of the mystery of Christ. It’s the no-particular-reason season. The Christmas cycle honors the birth of Christ. The Easter cycle rejoices in the resurrection. Ordinary Time is devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects.”

That might be the technical definition, but I like to think of ordinary time as the daily rituals of regular life. The quotidian moments. No feasts or gifts or celebrations or parties. No guests or visitors. No rushing to get anywhere. Just hanging out in my pj’s at home, drinking a second cup of coffee (reheated in the microwave because I put the first hot cup down somewhere and forgot about it), playing board games with the girls after homework is done, folding half a basket of laundry, eating spaghetti noodles, with butter and salt, again for dinner (“white spaghetti”) because I just don’t feel like going to the grocery store … not answering the phone, reading around in 3-4 books yet never finishing any of them, watching old movies, cleaning out closets, forgetting to comb my hair (my dad used to call it “frog fur” when I was little), listening to the birds outside, or the wood-stove popping inside … being still, still, and listening.

And after the stillness, stirring to run. Sometimes I don’t even put on “proper” running clothes; I just get in the car and drive to the nearest trail and run. Alone or with friends, it doesn’t matter. I’m not training for anything specific so I could run for 20 minutes or 90, depending on how I feel. Intervals or jogging. No pressure to perform. It’s just ordinary running. During ordinary time.

The next season of celebration, with all its attendant busy-ness and noise, will come soon enough. Enjoy the peace and quiet of the no-particular-reason season.

I’ll admit I’m a geek when it comes to cheesy sports movies. As a kid, I loved Robbie Benson in One-on-One, I laughed at the Bad News Bears, I couldn’t wait for Rocky 2,3,4, and 5 to come out (is there really going to be a Rocky 6?!), and I still cry whenever I hear the theme music from Brian’s Song. Two summers ago, I made my daughters watch all four of The Karate Kid movies and confessed to my 12 year-old that I once wrote Ralph Machio a fan letter – he never wrote back.

When I grew up to become a runner and a coach, I watched movies-with-jocks like some junkie needing an inspiration drug. I rented any video I could find that had the struggling-athlete theme: Bang the Drum Slowly, Running Brave (of course, another Robbie Benson gem!), Breaking Away, Hoosiers, Hoop Dreams, Chariots of Fire, On the Waterfront, a Carolina Women’s Soccer documentary, all the Pre movies, Bud Greenspan Olympic films, The Arthur Ashe story, A Sebastian Coe training video (I played the scene with his road 800’s, while his father/coach followed in the car – “Are you ready, Seb?!” – over and over and over), Children of Heaven, Endurance, Bull Durham, The Natural, and – recently – Million Dollar Baby, etc.!

My all-time favorite sports movie, National Velvet (a black & white classic with Elizabeth Taylor and Micky Rooney) became a litmus test for athletes I coached. If you “got it,” I knew we would have a successful coach/athlete relationship; if not, not. For me, NO movie has ever matched Velvet’s blend of intensity and sensitivity …its love and guts. You need BOTH to be great. You must love your sport (or in Velvet’s case, your horse )with all your heart and you must have the guts to follow your heart. No movie has ever measured up to National Velvet . . . until now.

Run, do not walk, do not pass GO, to your nearest video store and rent Saint Ralph. I give it 5 stars and two fists … one fist for the triumphant punch of victory and another for the fist I cried into because it was so beautiful. So beautiful.

p.s.
Cool website for running movies:
http://www.runningmovies.com/feature.htm

A while back I posted a story I wrote for Running Times on three “distant heroes” I had researched with a grant from USA Track & Field (the “Ken Doherty fellowship”). Well, since that time I have stayed in contact with Bob Schul … still alive and kickin’ in Ohio. During our interview, I urged Bob to make video copies of his gold medal run available to ambitious, young American runners. You have to be able to see success before achieving it. Schul is the only Olympic gold medalist we have ever had , male or female, in the 5,000m (and one of only 4 gold medalists in any track distance event. 1904, and 1906 saw Jim Lightbody win the 1,5oo and steeplechase, followed by Mel Sheppard’s 1,500m gold in 1908. In 1952, Horace Ashenfelter took gold in the steelple. And, finally, there was Billy Mill’s long-shot victory in the 10,000m, also in 1964).

Anyway, after waiting 5 years, I am thrilled to offer you a link from Bob Schul, himself, to the television coverage of his 1964 gold-medal race in Tokyo, Japan. The film is a bit choppy, but the commentating is superb.

Enjoy!

Bob Schul, Olympic Champion 1964 5K Gold Medal Race (Video)

1912 Hannes Kolehmainen, FIN 14:36.6 Jean Bouin, FRA 14:36.7 George Hutson, GBR 15:07.6
1920 Joseph Guillemot, FRA 14:55.6 Paavo Nurmi, FIN 15:00.0e Erik Backman, SWE 15:13.0e
1924 Paavo Nurmi, FIN 14:31.2 Ville Ritola, FIN 14:31.4 Edvin Wide, SWE 15:01.8
1928 Ville Ritola, FIN 14:38.0 Paavo Nurmi, FIN 14:40.0 Edvin Wide, SWE 14:41.2
1932 Lauri Lehtinen, FIN 14:29.91 Ralph Hill, USA 14:30.0 Lauri Virtanen, FIN 14:44.0
1936 Gunnar Höckert, FIN 14:22.2 Lauri Lehtinen, FIN 14:25.8 Henry Jonsson, SWE 14:29.0
1948 Gaston Reiff, BEL 14:17.6 Emil Zátopek, TCH 14:17.8 Willem Slijkhuis, NED 14:26.8
1952 Emil Zátopek, TCH 14:06.72 Alain Mimoun, FRA 14:07.58 Herbert Schade, GER 14:08.80
1956 Vladimir Kuts, URS 13:39.86 Gordon Pirie, GBR 13:50.78 Derek Ibbotson, GBR 13:54.60
1960 Murray Halberg, NZL 13:43.76 Hans Grodotzki, GER 13:45.01 Kazimierz Zimny, POL 13:45.09
1964 Bob Schul, USA 13:48.8 Harald Norpoth, GER 13:49.6 Bill Dellinger, USA 13:49.8
1968 Mohamed Gammoudi, TUN 14:05.01 Kip Keino, KEN 14:05.16 Naftali Temu, KEN 14:06.41
1972 Lasse Viren, FIN 13:26.42 Mohamed Gammoudi, TUN 13:27.33 Ian Stewart, GBR 13:27.61
1976 Lasse Viren, FIN 13:24.76 Dick Quax, NZL 13:25.16 Klaus-Peter Hildenbrand, FRG 13:25.38
1980 Miruts Yifter, ETH 13:20.91 Suleiman Nyambui, TAN 13:21.60 Kaarlo Maaninka, FIN 13:22.00
1984 Saïd Aouita, MAR 13:05.59 Markus Ryffel, SUI 13:07.54 António Leitão, POR 13:09.20
1988 John Ngugi, KEN 13:11.70 Dieter Baumann, FRG 13:15.52 Hansjörg Junze, GDR 13:15.73
1992 Dieter Baumann, GER 13:12.52 Paul Bitok, KEN 13:12.71 Fita Bayissa, ETH 13:13.03
1996 Vénuste Niyongabo, BDI 13:07.96 Paul Bitok, KEN 13:08.16 Khalid Boulami, MAR 13:08.37
2000 Million Wolde, ETH 13:35.49 Ali Saïdi Sief, ALG 13:36.20 Brahim Lahlafi, MAR 13:36.47
2004 Hicham el Guerrouj, MAR 13:14.39 Kenenisa Bekele, ETH 13:14.59 Eliud Kipchoge, KEN 13:15.10

Over the week-end, I read a fantastic essay called “Why Nerds Are Unpopular” in a book by Paul Graham, Hackers and Painters. If you want to read the whole thing, you can go to http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html. Here’s the part that I want to talk about tonight:

“As far as I can tell, the concept of the hormone-crazed teenager is coeval with suburbia. I don’t think this is a coincidence. I think teenagers are driven crazy by the life they’re made to lead. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance were working dogs. Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere.

When I was in school, suicide was a constant topic among the smarter kids. No one I knew did it, but several planned to, and some may have tried. Mostly this was just a pose. Like other teenagers, we loved the dramatic, and suicide seemed very dramatic. But partly it was because our lives were at times genuinely miserable.

Bullying was only part of the problem. Another problem, and possibly an even worse one, was that we never had anything real to work on. Humans like to work; in most of the world, your work is your identity. And all the work we did was pointless, or seemed so at the time.

At best it was practice for real work we might do far in the future, so far that we didn’t even know at the time what we were practicing for. More often it was just an arbitrary series of hoops to jump through, words without content designed mainly for testability. (The three main causes of the Civil War were…. Test: List the three main causes of the Civil War.)

And there was no way to opt out. The adults had agreed among themselves that this was to be the route to college. The only way to escape this empty life was to submit to it.”

When I was a teenager, I discovered running as a way “to escape this empty life” and it was for me the real work Paul Graham speaks of. Each time I headed out to do a run on my own (not during a track season or as part of conditioning for tennis or basketball, but just for ME, my own thing), I felt that I was doing something real.

I still feel this way almost 30 years later. Teenagers flock to junior and high school cross-country teams throughout our nation because they need to know that their labor is meaningful, that their lives are meaningful.

There’s nothing pointless about running.

I saw a cairn (Wikipedia writeup) on my run this morning and, of course, I bent down to find a rock to place on it. My running partner said, “Why’d you do that?”

“It’s a tradition. Irish, I think (later, I searched to find it is Scottish). People stack rocks to make cairns as trail markers, or to honor the graves of dead, or sometimes just for artistic expression.”

“Can anyone add to it?”

“Sure. In fact, it might be back luck (or bad karma) NOT to add to it.” This, I’m still searching for … is it spiritually “rude” to pass by a cairn without weighing in?

Interestingly, as I think about adding my own “two cents” to the cairn I remember that the shape of the structure was actually a scale of sorts. One large rock, in the center, held a piece of flat-wood/bark and on each end of the wood were balanced stones. Up from the center of this structure rose the cairn on top of which I placed my rock.

I wonder … did the mountain bikers leave this found art for us to enjoy? Was it the high school XC team? The dog walkers? We all share the same trails so it is important – maybe even holy – to participate in this ancient, communal ritual.

My friend carefully positioned her stone so the delicate balance would not be altered and announced, “I’ll never run by one again without adding a rock.”

Me either.

Fat Charlie and JOCKO’s comments got me to thinking about reflection vs. self-reflection. To understand the distinction, you must ask yourself what master are you serving … self or other (“other” being God, or country, family, community, etc)? If you are serving yourself, then all reflection eventually degenerates from self-examination to narcissism and egomania. Egomaniacs, or what I will call self-addicts, can’t see beyond the nose on their face and they examine only the lint in their own, pitiful navel.

In the young adult fiction classic, Rumblefish, S.E. Hinton explains that if a mirror is placed against the tank of the “fighting fish” they will bash and bash their heads into the glass – thinking their own reflection is an enemy fish – until they kill themselves.

Self-obsession is a soul killer, especially for runners who spend so much time alone and lost in our own thoughts. We would all be wise to emulate Chicago Bears’ football legend, Gayle Sayers, who titled his autobiography, “I Am Third.” First is God, then his friends/family, and “I am third,” he said.

I went to Fat Charlie’s website to read what more he had to say on this subject and was quite moved to find that he is taking a hiatus from blogging. He had the wisdom and integrity to turn away from the mirror before bashing his head in.

(more…)

I have too too many thoughts buzzing in my brain, so I had to set up several draft folders for future blog ideas (nerds, narcissism, The Outsiders and S.E. Hinton, one-legged man at the mailbox, tammie’s summer, running with the lone wolf vs. the buffaloes, etc.). The reason I am full to bursting is that I had zero time for solitary reflection over Christmas break. As I said in an earlier post, my ideal life consists of time for the three R’s – reading, running, and ruminating. Well, when you’re a mom with three kids home from school from December 13th until this very morning, some 21 days later, you must sacrifice the third R. Maybe my brain was percolating on the back burner, like a computer in “sleep” mode, but it wasn’t until today that I was allowed to flip the full-on switch.

I could go into the gargantuan list of responsibilities that we moms (gladly?) do, but it might sound like what my old running partner used to call my “bitch of the day.” Suffice it to say, every holiday taste treat was baked; every present was purchased, assembled, wrapped, and placed under the fully decorated tree; every out-of-town gift addressed and mailed, every Christmas card sent, every song sung, every board game played, every activity planned and executed, every meal prepared and cleaned up after, every sock washed, every dream listened to each morning … Narnia- check; King Kong – check; charades, pictionary, cards (Hearts and, hey, I shot the moon!) – check, check, check!

It is a round-the-clock labor of true love. But worth it. Oh, so worth it. My eldest recorded a cd of her own fiddle playing for our Christmas present, my mushy-kisses-hating middle daughter gave me a mod-podged vase with a huge pink heart smack in the center, and my industrious youngest made her very own button flowers for the vase – colorful buttons glued on to the end of “big toothpicks” (actually, shish-kabob skewers) that she saw on ZOOM.

So, I am full of ideas and love this first free day of 2006.

When I read in Alice Munro’s short story, The View from Castle Rock, of a turn-of-the century doctor, on board a ship heading from Ireland to The Americas, asking his patient, whose baby he just delivered, “What will you do in Canada West?”, I felt a kindred shock of recognition in her reply:

“It seems to her the silliest question. She shakes her head – what can she say? She will wash and sew and cook and almost certainly suckle more children. Where that will be doesn’t much matter. It will be in a house.”

Domesticated.

My friend, Marion, sent me this quote from her Mr. Rogers’ calendar today:

“Fred Rogers February 14th…
As a relationship matures, you start to see that just being there for each other is the most important thing you can do, just being there to listen and be sorry with them, to be happy with them, to share all that there is to share.”

We had been talking about the ethereal quality of most modern relationships. Because of cell phones and the internet and the illusion that people on television screens actually care about us (my sister seriously thinks Oprah will solve all her problems if she write her a letter … but she’s saving that for a last resort), physically being there is a rarity. We drive around in our sound-proof booths (cars with tinted windows); we shop for most of our goods on-line without ever even having to speak to another human being; meetings are held through conference calls; e-mail lists serve as group reunions; family gatherings are replaced with photo-shares. Just the other day I did a Google search to see what my nephew, Josh, looks like because I haven’t been with him, in person, for years (he’s a soccer player at Stanford, so I checked out their media guide and, sure enough, there he was … all grown and handsome).

As I sit here in the comfort of my home, fully enjoying the “modern” convenience of electronic communication, I can’t help lamenting the loss of old-fashioned get-togethers. I remember my mother meeting all the other ladies on the street every day at our group-mailbox – there were six in a row. My mom was often in her robe (they called them “house coats” back then) and a pair of rubber boots (easy to slip on, I guess). There, they would catch each other up on the happenings in their daily lives (Susan’s home sick, chicken pox is going around, Arty might need to have surgery) or neighborhood gossip (did Johpne and Dan really have an “open marriage”?) or plan coffee and bridge dates later in the week. They might not have been close friends or confidants in any lasting way (we moved, after a few years, to a house with our own singular mailbox) but those ladies meant somthing to my mom – and to me, who felt safe on a street with 5 other grown-ups whose names I knew, whose faces I saw every day, whose yards I played in, and in whose kitchens I drank cherry kool-aid.

I think running communities serve a similar purpose. Few American families still have kin living in close proximity; young people leave home for college and never return. We break from our first families and become “independent” without realizing the flipside of independence is isolation. For my entire adult life (and maybe even before, if you count my high school XC team) I have found/chosen/created an intentional family through running that has helped me feel seen and known and safe. Currently, my running brothers and sisters are the Trailheads and seejanerun, but at any given time in my life, it was always a running friend – out there on the trails or track or road, with real-life flesh and blood and sweat – “who was there to listen and be sorry with me, to be happy with me, to share all that there is to share.”

Thank you, Marion.

This morning our priest read to us from Edward Hays’ book of Prayers for the Domestic Church. His New Year’s Blessing really resonated with me. I hope it does with you as well. Happy New Year, dear readers!

New Year’s Blessing Prayer for Clocks and Calendars

“Lord, You who live outside of time
and reside in the imperishable moment,
we ask Your blessing this new year’s day
upon Your gift to us of T I M E.

Bless our clocks and watches,
You who kindly direct us
to observe the passing of minutes and hours.

May they make us aware of the miracle
of each second of life we experience.

May these our ticking servants
help us not to miss that which is important,
while You keep us from machine-like routine.

May we ever be free from being clock watchers
and instead become time lovers.

Bless our calendars,
these ordered lists of days, weeks and months,
of holidays, holydays, fasts and feasts –
all our special days of remembering.

May these servants, our calendars,
once reserved for the royal few,
for Magi and pyramid priests,
now grace our homes and our lives.

May they remind us of birthdays and other gift-days,
as they teach us the secret:
that all life
is meant for celebration
and contemplation.”