Sixteen years ago tonight, I attempted to slow down the arrival of my first child by breathing into a paper bag. I had no idea if it would really help. I was pretty much at the mercy of the attending nurse by that point in the process. If she had told me to boil my own water, I’d have at least made the effort. [Read more →]
I idled in some “oh no, it snowed” traffic this morning, calculating the whole while how much faster I could have covered my route on foot. Tempting… There is something so renewing about running through fresh white stuff. When you’re intently focused on maintaining an upright position, the trail tends to end sooner than expected or desired. [Read more →]
I’m headed to run through my favorite park in a few minutes. Now, I can be slightly fickle on “favorites”; I have three “favorite” children, for instance. And my “favorite” trip is usually the one I’m dreaming of, packing for or traveling through.
But I really like Highbanks Metro Park … [Read more →]
I was headed for snowy Highbanks Metro Park this morning and ended up in Bermuda. Sadly, this was not a literal event. If I could make that happen on a Friday morning, my purse would hold more than its standard necessities of dental floss, crushed red peppers, and “lunch money”. No; it began as a quick ten minute journey through some old photos, boxed and awaiting eventual organization. But, in searching for some ice-laden winter shots from my favorite running trails, I stumbled into photos from my first BYOB(C) -”Bring Your Own Birth Certificate”- trip. So, I guess Highbanks will wait… I’m remembering the thrill of getting up out of Ohio and spotting coral reefs through an airplane window for the first time. [Read more →]
The “new year” just began this morning at my house as my youngest two resignedly returned to school (Believe me, a week delay on a new year is better than I ran through most of the end of 2007!). Our dog Lily is moping a bit and sticking pretty close to my side presently. I’m hoping she handles the sudden quiet a little better than on Christmas morning when I slipped back from a grandma visit to find our sweet wooden crèche scene massively rearranged and “down-sized”. Lily, thankfully, left two sheep and baby Jesus intact but chewed the heck out of the wise men.
Over the school break, we traveled the essential mental miles from over-scheduled, slightly chaotic lives back into a more natural rhythm, gifting one another with our own versions of “perspective”. I’m smiling now, remembering one such moment with Hannah. Struggling to locate our appropriate exit from a store overtaken by a sea of shopping carts, I looked to Hannah and asked, “Honey, where did we come from?” My daughter placed a calming hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and answered, “Well mom, when two people really love each other…” The errands went a lot easier after that laugh.
Last week, I began sifting through my boxes of pre-digital photos and got happily lost in both the Hawaiian and Virgin Islands. Still looking for Bermuda… Some of those photos will probably make their way to these pages as I plan new journeys for a new year. There is no adventure like the “next” adventure.
I’m finishing up a “book” (in quotes, because I have no plans to publish it yet), having finally figured out that struggles and grief, when laced with humor and hope, actually present pretty decent writing material! Call it the journal that wouldn’t die… It’s a woodsman’s sort of mentality, I guess, not wanting to waste any part of what has already been sacrificed. The first chapters of the next one have already been written during some winter trail runs. I like to live with a trip on the calendar and a book in my head…
“Chaos” is but a last-minute school project away, but I’m hoping to accumulate the mental miles to ride through it all in a “first class” kind of way.
I hope the same for you.
Happy 2008.
