Race Day Commentary

Random thoughts from the Go! St. Louis Half Marathon, a race I registered for months ago in the  Nike Women's afterglow and then, for reasons mostly medical and partly lackadaisical, didn't train for. 


1. What goes up must come down is not topographically true. Nothing like a foot race for realizing the streets I've been driving for 25 years are not even remotely flat: they're all uphill. Both ways!


2.  Mic Ultra may not be beer except under the strictest definition, but when it's ice cold, fresh out of the tap, free, and the first non-Gatorade beverage one has had in 13.1 miles, it's not bad at all. 


3.  Body Glide is a miracle substance: just don't miss a spot. 


4.  The guy with a KISS Army tattoo owes us all a story, don't you think?


5.  So do those women packing four water bottles that were still full at mile twelve. 


6.  Bagpipes are cool. 


7.  And so is running through the brewery compound, even if it's not really A-B any more, and even if I never buy their beer. It's just red brick St. Louis in a way that means I'm-not-sure-what to me. 


8.  In the category of High School Age Race Day Volunteers, San Francisco wins hands down over the Lou.  Yes, kids, there are "so many people," so pour the Gatorade already. And try to weasel out of the end of your shift after you hand me my medal. 


9.  A big thank you to those who are willing to cheer for anyone who passes your spectator spot, and not just your one friend/relative/significant other.  For those of you who won't, I bet it'd make your day a lot more fun if you did.  


10.  Same goes for 9/10 of the TNT staff. I know the power's in the purple shirt, but damn.  Didn't you see the Team in Training keyholder on my shoe? ; ) 


11.  Having my too sedentary girl say, unprompted, that she'd do a Half - "but just walk it" - sometime is a pretty cool prize, and a testament to the power of actions over words. I do this for me, but if she follows, maybe it's not selfish. 


12.  Having come late to the participant party, I love the start just about as much as the finish. Maybe more. 


13.1. Today felt like coming out of retirement. Hell yes, I'll do it again. 

invitation

"I was going to come up to school and invite u," she texts, and it might even be true.  I know I'd be welcome, even if it turns out I'm inviting myself: we go way back, this girl and I, and though the ties have loosened in the absence of day after school day, we are still connected across place and space and time. 

She doesn't blink, I can tell, when my, "This is Ms. P" message barges into her inbox, demanding to know whether the rumors of her impending marriage are true. I believe them-- she is, after all, nineteen-- but I'm not going to rely on the third-hand report when I have a number and a phone in my hand.  Instead I ask, and our first exchange in a year is a good natured interrogation. "Who's the boy?" and "Do your parents like him?" and "When?" and "Where?" As if I have the right, because I do.  

She answers all my questions in her same old girlish chatter, all my questions except the time and the place, since beyond, "next Saturday," she doesn't quite know. I can nearly see her shrug off the details in that familiar but foreign Latina way as she explains, "My friend is helping me set it up."  In other words, "it'll happen." In the meantime, no worries, no offense. 

I check in with her, days later, when the promised logistics don't appear-- turns out all the banquet halls are booked and wedded bliss may be delayed. I allow myself an, "Imagine that!" in reply but that's all I'm compelled to say.  She is, of course, too young, too barely educated, too minimally employed, but that may matter or that may not in the world she occupies. After all this time, I'll still looking through a window, and though I'm welcome, I'm not qualified to say. 

loss

In my mind's eye, I see his van in the driveway- is it silver or black or faded maroon?- and the question on her face as she pulls up to the house that I likely will never visit and would need a map to find.  I see her walking up steps that may or may not exist to the bedroom where he is but should not be.  I think of 911 and paramedics, rising panic and spreading alarm. 

I see her students, shocked silent in a classroom I haven't entered for years now.  I think about her kids. 


I haven't talked to her since last Fall when we spoke of students transferred from her to school mine and the money I was raising for LLS; money was tight she told me, but they'd already donated: "My husband has leukemia." 


It didn't kill him. 


But Wednesday night they went to bed, and Thursday morning she left early for a conference.   Thursday afternoon she decided to go home for lunch and discovered that she is a widow.  The universe is cold and cruel. Such a sudden loss wouldn't be any less sad of a story if the woman surviving it weren't someone I admire, a force for good who'd also been a help to me, but we all see the world through our own lenses, and I see a friendly face forever changed. 

blossom

We're three lines in to the conversation when I realize what she's saying. This is not, as it happens, a rarity, and not only because I'm slow on the uptake: spend enough time talking to the not-quite-proficient and you, too, will someday find yourself two nods and an "uh huh" in before it becomes clear that the Target bag stashed on top of the back book shelf is not full of supplies for her speech but instead a gift. 


"Is it for me?" I ask, certain, almost, of the answer. 


She nods twice, quickly, eyes dancing: "My brother and I made it last night." 


Our smiles reflect each other as I thank her sincerely and mouth, "I love it," because I do.  It is the best of all possible gifts; if it weren't mine, I'd envy the owner, but it is, and I am so pleased.  I love it because she made it, because she's excited to give it to me, and because it's beautiful. And I love what this winter branch adorned with dozens of red paper flowers represents. 


When the time comes, once lunch is past and we've learned both how to juggle and how to bathe a baby, I move my new bouquet to the table up front, and without bidding she approaches to make her first-ever presentation as an English-speaking student, a demonstration of the paper folding she learned as a girl in Vietnam. She is ready, having practiced, having followed all instructions, but I cannot overstate the resolve it took for her to ignore her palpitations and stand before her classmates and speak loud enough and clear, but today she did it. Today, she bloomed.