Songs of Experience

If ever I travel away from my normal stomping ground, it is uncanny how quickly I will create a “home loop” from wherever I’m staying. Over Memorial Day week-end, my in-laws treated the whole family to a vacation in New Bern, NC and though we were downtown (with no trails to sniff out), I did manage to run the same loop every morning and see the same townspeople at the same time. I could have been in some scientific experiment (like The Truman Show) where they plopped me down in town A – as exhibit B – to see how quickly I would adapt my running routine.

Right away, it seems. On the first day, I did an exploration run with Dave – always a great way to check out a foreign city; on day two, I repeated the exact course with my daughter (even crossing to the other side of the street at the precise spot I had the day before); and on day three, I did the loop as a warm-up before some intervals. In just three days, I knew where to avoid the potholes and noticed the gardener had trimmed the hedges on Front Street. I was even angry that someone’s dog poop hadn’t been scooped – as if I actually lived in that neighborhood!

Why is it that a runner can make the unfamiliar familiar in only three days? How was I able to come up with a work-out so naturally in the middle of a mostly-paved downtown? I have found that the terrain of a place “presents” the intervals you should do … maybe the way a composer knows (or feels) how a piece of music should be written. New Bern presented me an overpass to train on … a small one (not like the monster hills of South Carolina’s famed Cooper Bridge Run – as seen in the painting above), for a small, “vacation-sized” work-out. After my warm-up loop (now my New Bern standard loop), I started on one end of the overpass, running against traffic on a single-person pedestrian walkway, and ran hard up and over to the other end … guessing it would take me between 90 seconds and 2 minutes. My plan was to do just 4 – out and back, X 2. I ran the first up hard, feeling the pure pleasure of my solo effort early in the morning – the salty wind hitting my face at the crest of the hill – then counting the metal beams as I ran down the other side 1.2.3.4.5.6.7 – with 10 seconds between each. All focus markers to become immediately familiar in my 11-minute symphony.

My total time on #1 was 2:00 even. Perfect. With 60 seconds recovery, I set off on #2 (on the other side of the road) for 1.2.3.4.5.6.7 to the top, and downdowndown for a 1:59. #3 was 1:56 and #4 was 1:55. Then it was back to the home loop, in reverse of course! (or what I call “pool” – loop spelled backwards) for the cool down. Exhibit B passed her test with flying colors.

Am I weird, or do all runners find a home on the road like this?

Over the week-end I went to the wedding of one of my former UNC athletes. While there, I had unfinished conversations with so many of “the guys” that a part of me longed to go back to those interminable van rides so I could talk track late into the night. It was weird to look into the fleshier faces of former sub-4:00 milers, ACC champions, and 100-mile-a-weekers knowing their intensity was now directed toward making money and building families. Many still keep up with the sport of track & field and some still compete as fast amateurs, but that fierceness … that urgency of running blind to prove something (to make their mark in the world) is nothing but a memory.

I wonder if they saw the same lack of ferocity in me? Sure, I’m a dangerous mother bear if anyone were to threaten the well-being of my children (grrrrrrrr!) … but where is the woman who ran so hard she lost peripheral vision on nearly every hard work-out?

In Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “most of us have a favorite, a heroic period, in our lives.” The years I spent “training for the Olympics” and my time at UNC, when we were all working together to realize our dreams as runners for the team and for ourselves (much like soldiers on a battlefield) was undoubtedly heroic … but wouldn’t it be a shame if that were my favorite.

In each phase of my children’s lives I think, “THIS is the best, definitely. Lizzie at, say, 3 years-old telling her knock-knock joke about the volcano … “I lava you.” But then I hear her in the other room (just now, right now in fact, with her dad) reading the word “giggle” on her own – out loud – and I think, no THIS is my favorite.

Says Fitzgerald, “It is confusing to come across a youthful photograph of someone known in a rounded maturity and gaze with a shock upon a fiery, wiry, eagle-eyed stranger.”

Maybe not, Scott.
Maybe underneath we’re all still fiery and wiry.

Lizzie, living large!

I have a sticky “C” key
which makes very cranky
whenever I type ice or nice
I have to hit “C” twice
or thrice
or, C-C-Christ!, delete
again
now back to C-C-C
and then
I’ve lost my fuccckin’ thought …

How kan I live without my “C”?
It would be a katastrophe!

I am fit to be tied. Like I said before, I currently coach the CC Pacers, a local running club for kids. As is our custom, parents are invited to participate as coaches/helpers, mostly to run along at the back of the pack as “sweepers” so we don’t lose anyone. Well, last week a newly-minted Pacer dad showed up with his 10 and 6 year-old sons and announced that they were to be in the big dog group (despite the fact that the middle dogs would be a better age-appropriate fit for his 6 year-old). “They run 5 miles a day,” he boasted.

Okay, big dogs it is. They handled the pace and distance with no problem on our first outing, but it was the dad who pissed me off … one-stepping me and running up in the front with son #1 when he had no idea where we were going and encouraging none of the other dozen young runners. Son #2 was also up near the front, beet-red and panting in an effort to get his father’s attention. At one point, bitch me barked, “Hey, who’s sweeping? Nobdoy’s back there with the last runner.” Immediately, one of my stalwart moms circled back, “I’ve got it,” she said. But I wasn’t yelling at her! I am wondering if superdad would have treated a male coach thus. Was it sexism that caused such boorishness?

It gets worse. Yesterday, we had a mile time trial at the track. I set it up beautifully (if I do say so myself); I had the kids write down their names and their predicted times based on the 400m and 800m races we had run earlier in the season (and knowing that pacing comes into play). When they crossed the finish line, they were instructed to listen for the time I was calling out – varying from 6:12 to 8:49 – and then record their actual times on the back of their paper.

On your marks, get set, go! 30 kids, middle and big dogs combined, bolted off the line for the 4-lap race. 30 kids and one dad, that is. I was amazed and shocked, dumbfounded and dumbstruck to see superdad pacing son #1 … out in lane 4. The only parent on the track, he looked like Big Bird loping along with the young ‘uns. A cartoon character. Surely he will stop after one lap, I thought, truly aghast. But, NO, he kept on going for another lap, encouraging only his son, “Go get her! You can pass her!” As the children earnestly charged around each turn, I was trying to model (loudly – because “to the hard of hearing you must shout!” said Flannery O’Connor) good Pacer etiquette: “Goooo Pacers. Work together. You look great! Keep pushing. Everyone’s going to break 7:00 today,” etc.

When I realized my indiret message wasn’t getting through to Big Bird, I stepped out into lane 4 after the second lap to face my (now) enemy. “Hey, Dad!” I commanded. “Would you please stop pacing your son. It’s rude to the other runners.” Not to mention illegal. Can you imagine a dad striding out to right field during a baseball game to give his kid some pointers on how to field a grounder? “Keep your glove down, son. Always put your body in front of the ball,” etc. The coach would go berserk, like I did.

This afternoon my middle girl was particularly wiggly, jumping on her sister’s back and begging, “Can we play a game, can we, can we?!” so I suggested, “Go outside and run around” the same way my mother must have suggested I go down in the basement to try to beat my jump rope record when I was too wiggly as a kid. 1,062 … 1,063 … 1,064 and before I knew it my dad was calling me up for dinner. Tricky.

So, when Rosie went outside to run around I shouldn’t have been surprised that she was literally running around the house, as fast as she could, with Sarah Jane timing her using the stopwatch. 18 seconds! “Do it again, Rosie, faster!” Then she ran 17 seconds. Next, SJ said, “How about a ladder, 1 lap, 2 lap, 3 lap, 4 lap 3 lap, 2 lap, 1 lap with limited recovery.”

Ha! Limited recovery. I guess she’s been listening afterall.
Rosie’s times were 18, 40, 58, 1:18, 58, 38, and 17.

“Time to eat!” I called and a very un-wiggly, red-faced Rosie sauntered in.
Tricky Sarah Jane followed, smiling, “What’s for dinner?”

Today I found out my Rosie’s elementary school principal is leaving at the end of the year and last week our priest announced his retirement [aside: I thought priests couldn't "retire," that it was like marriage to God with no divorce allowed]. And, of course, our family just lost a beloved member when Aunt Louise died. All of these changes – in personnel? – has me feeling so thankful for the people in my life who stay put: the pre-school directors and long-time teachers, the good neighbors and steady librarians, running partners and race directors, my dentist, our doctor, friends who don’t move … or move on, the check-out lady at the grocery store who always asks how my children are doing, my mother-in-law who saves her stale bread to feed the ducks just in case Lizzie comes to visit, my ex- who always returns home to his girls, and my current who, simply, stays … my ever-fixed mark.

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Wm Shakespeare

Come one, come all, to hear the legendary Once a Runner author, John L. Parker, speak at Fleet Feet Sports in Carrboro, NC. Tonight, May 8th – from 5:00pm to 7:00pm.

Just in case he gives us a sneak preview of the long-awaited sequel, Again to Carthage, I plan to bring my charged-up ipod recorder.

Also present at the gathering tonight will be the newly-crowned prince of running writers, Chris Lear,
author of Running with the Buffaloes.

I hope to post some choice nuggets later.

*
This is for you, Louise (and Bill and Kate … and all my Kerwin family):
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/h/c/hcaikeep.htm

I will miss you.

How Can I Keep From Singing?

My life flows on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentation.
I hear the real, though far off hymn
That hails the new creation
Above the tumult and the strife,
I hear the music ringing;
It sounds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing?

What though the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth.
What though the darkness round me close,
Songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is lord of Heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?

I doubt anyone will comment on my last post. I guess it was more of a rant. What can you say to that? Besides, nowadays, any opinions on the sanctified job of staying home with your brood (ahem, it’s holy but still unpaid) is tantamount to blasphemy. We’re turning into a bunch of Victorians, who kept their females indoors doing delicate “women’s work” … and if they felt sick from all this rarified air (who wouldn’t?!), what was prescribed? Why, more time indoors – a resting cure (which, of course, made them even sicker … until they became clinically hysterical).

We no longer call them “resting cures,” but I recently heard of a mother who “got away from the house” by shopping. Nothing too abnormal about that, right? Lots of people – especially Americans – use the shopping cure. Well, this lady’s day at the mall takes a turn toward the truly hysterical (using both definitions of that word). She consumes an entire morning or afternoon buying things “for the house,” or (maybe?) for herself, indulging in the giddy process of spending too much money for this or that item, then she likely has her giant latte treat before heading home to “confess” her purchases to hubby [he's the one who told me this story]. They have a ritualized argument about not wasting hard-earned money before she explains (and this is the crazy part), “I always take everything back.” Whaaaaaat?!

Back to the mall. Another day away. Away! “No harm done,” says Hubby. “It makes her happy.” Does it? This lady even argues, “It’s a net loss of zero.” Is it?

Wordsworth comes to mind:

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;”

Jean Lazarre said,

“When I left Benjamin (her son) behind in the mornings [to go to the library] it was not with a feeling that I was going to something unimportant, some manufactured interest which finally was only serving the purpose of getting me away from my child and the house. Rather, I went almost with a sense of mission. I saw those textbooks and records of adventures as bibles, or at least holders of answers to infinite mysteries.”

Amen, sister!

*
Lizzie is home sick today.
Today, my writing day.
My writing day.

SO, instead of a blessed morning of reading, ruminating, and wRiting, I am answering (through gritted teeth), “How do you spell ‘plasitc pony’?” (for her birthday list).
“P-L-A” I say slowly … then blurt out, “ess-tee-eye-see” and she says, “Slower, Mommy, please.”
But I don’t want to go slower.
“Try drawing the pictures of what you want for your list,” I say, hoping to stall for time.
(Please, God, just let me finish typing this senten …
“How do you spell ‘Horn’ – for my bike?”
“I told you to draw a picture of it.”
“But I don’t know how. Can you help me?”
“No”
“Why?”
“because Mommy’s busy writing.”
“But I want to write too.”
But it’s my turn! I want to scream.
It’s my turn to write; today is my writing day.
Not yours. (I stopped short of sticking my tongue out at her).

None of the books told me it would be this hard. None of the other mothers ever told the truth. Not even my own mother. If I asked her, now, why she never told (why she kept the secret all those years) she would say with a sly smile, “Well, you never asked.” But was I supposed to ask, at age 4 (my Llzzie’s age), at 10 – at 20? I plan to tell my own daughters the brutally honest truth, so they won’t be blindsided, “Being a mother is the hardest thing you will ever do – be prepared to lose your own life for a long, long time.”

How many times have I heard, “Oh, it goes by so quickly.”?
No, it doesn’t. Not when they’re home sick and you want to get something done – anything done. Not when it’s your writing day.

You can imagine my delight (relief? I am not alone!) when I randomly discovered Jane Lazarre’s The Mother Knot on the library shelf. Published nearly 30 years ago, this book reveals the timeless realities of the sacrifice of motherhood – which, I contend, should be an issue of parenthood in 2006. She explains how psychically debilitating it is for mothers to stay home day after day, year after year (for some of us) … with no end in sight:

And psychic health? That was something you dragged around with you like a ball and chain, which prevented you from lying down on the floor as you wanted to, just lying down and screaming and crying forever, or at least until someone somewhere in the background you heard a responsible voice say, “She has fallen apart.” It has defeated her. Put her in a hospital, an excellent one, of course, where she will get the best of care, be listened to, allowed to get well.

Then strong arms would lift you and carry you away to somewhere near the ocean, where breakfast was served every night at eight and dinner each morning with the sunrise: nothing would be ordinary. And several times a day, some kindly person would say, “Now, dear, tell me about yourself. When did all this begin?”

Instead, the ball and chain pulled on your ankles until they were raw and an adult-sounding voice insisted, “Get up, the baby’s crying.”

I might have enjoyed that summer of routine and silence if I had been sure that it would end, that at some point in the well-organized future, I would heave a sigh and say, “Ah, well, I must get back to work.”

“Mommy, how do you spell ‘giant trampoline’?”