eagle-eyed strangers
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!
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With my kids growing up way too fast for me, I feel like I come up with “favorite time” every couple of weeks. Then I think about how I don’t have enough time to savor each “favorite” time. Then sometimes, I see a photo, find a long lost item behind the couch, or hear a phrase, and I remember a “favorite time” that I forgot about and try to reprioritize which ones are really my “favorites”. How many can you have on your list? A million?
Comment by Jimmy B. — 5/24/2006 @ 10:05 am
I am neither fiery nor wiry - but I am still a kid, even if I’m a bald-headed kid with a face that looks like a road map of New Hampshire.
If you bashed in the side of my head with a hammer, you’d see a twelve-year-old sitting at the controls, and trying to figure out how to work them.
Comment by Fat Charlie the Archangel — 5/24/2006 @ 11:09 am
Joan, I side with you over F.S.F.
I find myself experiencing my new favorite moment almost every other week.
But speaking solely about running, I would be lying if I said that I did not miss the emotion that flooded my body as I slipped on my jersey prior to an XC race during my freshman year at UNC. The way in which you likened a Team to “soldiers on a battlefield” is spot on. I have always felt that teammates (especially running teammates) have a special connection due to the large amount of time spent suffering alongside each other during daily workouts and races.
These days, my wife is probably the only person who could inspire me to work as hard as I did in those days. Although, I am sure that when I have children, they will inspire me in such a way as well.
A college freshman with a good group of teammates is unstoppable, at least in his/her own mind. This is before the pragmatism sets in. Before he/she realizes that they will not win NCAA’s. This is when they are not scared to take some risks.
It is a shame they cannot bottle that stuff and sell it at running stores… I’d buy it.
Comment by JOCKO — 5/24/2006 @ 1:29 pm