Enjoy the Walk

This weekend was the two week anniversary of my back sprain.  The physician’s assistant who diagnosed me refused to give me a timeline for recovery, but from my subsequent internet exploring I learned that a sprain generally takes from two weeks to two months to heal.  Clearly I am not on the two week plan.  On Wednesday, I tried running in 30 second intervals, but my back couldn’t make it the full 30 seconds.  Oh well. 

The truth is—and hopefully this confession does not disqualify me as a “real runner”—that I have been enjoying walking.  Every so often I see someone running and think, “Oh, I’ll do that again someday,” but really any agitation I feel from being downshifted to walking is more about the events I’ll miss because I won’t be in shape for them.  I meant to run a 5K this weekend, but this is obviously not going to happen.  I meant to run a 10 miler in May.  Also not going to happen.  Triathlons in June are probably out.  These things make me sad.  (And of course it makes me crazy that I can’t do the things that I see need doing: a trip to Costco, gardening, mildew cleaning.  Honestly, I don’t particularly love to clean bathrooms, it’s just not having it done that annoys me, but that’s a rant for another day.) 

The background truth, again at the risk of losing my runner status, is that I’ve been slogging through my runs for a while.  I knew I ought to be enjoying them, but my hips were sore all the time.  I did stretches and leg lifts and hip hikes all day long.  Nothing seemed to make it any better.  My body felt  heavy and slow.  I have been feeling unreasonably fatigued.  When I tried to fix the sluggishness by doing some speedwork, I found I didn’t have any speed.  I just plain ol’ could not get myself around the track quickly, and that was demoralizing and depressing, even though I wanted to be able to shrug it off and just appreciate that I could run at all.  I was frustrated with the fact that I couldn’t keep up with my running groups.   I was embarrassed that I was so slow and so easily worn out.  I maybe should have hung it up for a while at that point, but that’s not my style.  Instead, I figured the only solution was to try harder, to run more, to start doing speedwork again, to try a new lighter “natural” running shoe.  And that, my friends, is how a person sets herself up for something like a sprained back.

I’m not going to abandon running.  I am mentally prepared for a long slow road back to health.  I’ve been here before.  Several times, actually.  There will be weeks of short easy runs then months of base building.  If I’m lucky, I might be ready to do some races again by late summer or fall.  The reality of that timeline makes me feel a bit impatient in advance, but in the meantime I am surprisingly content to walk.

Last weekend I decided to have a goal to walk about 20 miles this week.  So far, I’ve walked 26 miles in six days, averaging about four miles a day.  Of course, it takes me almost twice as long to walk four miles as it would take to run it, but for some reason, I’m OK with that.   This is one of the ways that walking is healing me.

Walking through my injury forces peace upon me.  I do find peace in running, but often my running is about, well, running.  Even when I say I don’t care about my pace, I still notice it.  I’ll come clean: I had said I only wanted to finish the Lost Dutchman Marathon and that if I had to have a time goal, it would be to finish in under four hours, but then when I did finish in under four hours, I was still disappointed in myself.  Yes, that was a “race,” so maybe it invites those types of emotions, but for me, so did group runs.  I too often cared who was running ahead of me; I cared that there was a whole world of people with whom I just couldn’t keep pace.  I told myself not to care, but I did.  Even when running alone without a watch, which I almost never do, I felt slow and sore and therefore disappointed in myself.  More: even when I felt great, the running was about running.  Putting forth a sustained effort takes some mental as well as physical effort.  The ease of walking, in contrast, allows me to pray, to notice more details—in the last two weeks I’ve seen three Eastern bluebirds, wild turkeys, a toad, baby killdeer, several hawks, and some wonderful spring blossoms—and  to work out some internal tangles.  Being injured, being a walker, I also find that I am far easier on myself.  I am not bothered when people run past me.  I don’t even keep track of time, other than to make sure I get back home when I need to be there.  I walk with the time available, and whatever distance that happens to be, I accept.  I’ve never once calculated my walking pace.  I have tried, in the past, to have that attitude about running, but it’s difficult.  Being relaxed about running is its own kind of effort, an annoying oxymoron.  There is always a little corner of my mind where I store a speck of panic that somehow I am falling behind, that I’m not running far enough or fast enough.  Enough for what?  I couldn’t tell you, exactly.  Perhaps I’m chasing down the runner I used to be, or maybe I’m chasing the runner I wish I could be.  When I walk, I’m not chasing anything.  I’m never behind.  I’m always just outside, moving, being alive and glad of it.

More importantly, walking has helped me regain some perspective.  On Wednesday night, I had the pleasure of walking with my friend Joe, who is also a downshifted runner, having had bypass surgery last summer and a heart attack this spring.  His running suspension is a bit more serious than my discomfort. I had just told him that although it had originally been my plan, I probably won’t be signing up for the Philadelphia Marathon this fall.  It seems not to matter how many 20 milers I put in beforehand, something about the marathon seems to beat me up to a level where I can hardly recover.  It’s happened too many times to be coincidence.  I’m not going to be well enough to do another one this November.  At that moment, Sasha and Elena ran past us, the first of the running group.  They had just run the Boston Marathon a week and a half before, and Elena had placed third in the 50-54 age group, beating Joan Benoit Samuelson.  And back in February, one week before I ran my marathon, Elena WON a marathon.  Not just her age group, THE MARATHON.  As in, she was the first woman to cross the finish line.  Pointing to Sasha and Elena I asked, “Why can they do it, and I can’t?”

“Do you think Cassie ever sees you and asks that?” he replied.  “You play with the hand you are dealt.  That’s all you can do.”  Good point.  I can never trump the Cassie card.  We walked.  “You know about Bruce, right?” he asked. 

A man from our running club, someone around Elena’s age, was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.  I was silent for a moment.  Bruce is a great guy: joyful sense of humor, world traveler, proud father of three.  “There’s no getting over that, is there?” I asked.  “It’s a death sentence,” Joe replied.  Worse, it’s not an easy way to go.  The news silenced me.  I hadn’t known about the diagnosis.  What I did know was that Bruce had recently walked a marathon with Joe and that they had signed up to walk another one in the fall.  He’s living the life he has.  On facebook, someone had posted that Bruce is his hero.  Mine too.

Wednesday was a beautiful evening for walking: clear, cool, with trees all covered in their tender new leaves, a green that only exists for a couple of weeks mid-spring.  Living where we do, we have the blessing of seeing, repeatedly, mercilessly, undeniably, that it’s OK to break down, to come to a halt, and to start anew.

Yes, Elena is one of my running role models.  I’ll never achieve what she has because I’m not starting with the same body, but what inspires me even more than her national-level rankings is that she is setting marathon PRs in her 50s.  I want to think that my best running years might still be ahead of me.  I’d like to think that with time and determination and my love of running restored, I’ll someday be able to keep up with more of my talented running friends (but not Elena.) For now, though, I am content to keep walking.  It makes my sprained back feel better: loosens up tight muscles, helps me to straighten out my sore spots.  More importantly, it’s been helping me straighten out some things that matter more than muscles and ligaments. 

Even when we were both running, Bruce was never faster than I was, but it turns out that he, too, is one of my running role models.  Yes, I’d enjoy being fast, but if I had to choose one, I’d rather be courageous.  I’d like to know I could keep up with the winners, but rather than lament what I am not, Bruce reminds me to live out the life I have.  Eventually we will all slow down.  Sooner or later, the bodies of even the fastest runners will shut down, will crumble, will break.  This needn’t be the case with the spirit. 

There isn’t anyone, fast or not fast, who doesn’t have to live with mortality and make peace with it.  If you’ve been given a today, and if today you can still put one foot in front of the other, at any pace, consider this a blessing.  Enjoy the walk.

Mr. Awesome

Last night the kids played school. "Penelope" came home from the first day of school with a take-home folder and a form for me to fill out about my child. It was hand written by her teacher, "Mr. Awesome." Mr. Awesome was, appropriately, an awesome teacher. He sent home daily progress reports on how Penelope did with her soccer lessons and her xylophone lessons. He helped her make a craft: a flower in a flower pot that he himself cut out and decorated. School with Mr. Awesome is what all parents wish school could be for their children: full of creativity and excitement and plenty of individual attention. He's a dream come true.

When bedtime came, Penelope knocked on the door where Mr. Awesome was showering. He let her brush her teeth, wash her face, and go potty while he was in the shower. They talked, during these activities, about how it was that they share a bathroom. Turns out, one lives next door to the bathroom and the other lives right across from the bathroom. Both teacher and student were excited by this discovery. Mr. Awesome read Penelope her bedtime story, and when there was a little time left on the timer, he read her another.

After Penelope had gone to bed, Mr. Awesome confided in me that the next day there would be a new student Penelope's class. He was up after hours coming up with lesson plans.

My book club arrived late, but even after we were all gathered, someone noticed that Adam's bedroom light was still on. Mr. Awesome was supposed to set his timer for fifteen more minutes and then turn out the light. Recently, Mr. Awesome has discovered Roald Dahl and has been unable to stop reading Fantastic Mr. Fox even when he should be turning out the light. Mr. Awesome heard me coming up the stairs, and his light went out just as I was almost level with his door.

On the way to the camp-out today, Mr. Awesome was very pokey about getting dressed because it's really rather difficult to put on shoes and a sweatshirt with an open book in one's hand. He asked, finally, if he could take James and the Giant Peach with him to the cub scout camp-out. I warned him that there probably wouldn't be much time for reading and then said, "Of course." I understand completely. My insides are celebrating. Awesome.

Empty Space

This poem arrived in my e-mailbox today from Poem-a-Day:

Ghostology
by Rebecca Lindenberg

The whistler's
inhale,

the white space
between is

and not
or after a question,

a pause. Nothing
isn't song:
a leaf hatching
from its green shell,

frost whorling
across a windshield,

an open door
opening

Oh Lord, teach me to be thankful for the empty spaces. Help me to hear the silences as a part of the song.

I have never been one to deal well with emptiness. Or, rather, I have never been one to allow much emptiness to exist. On the rare occasion when I have chosen it, allowed emptiness can feel like a blessing.

I've been stiff and sore and oddly fatigued for the last week or two. I ran anyway. I thought maybe more running would make me feel better, more fit, more able to face the apathy and fatigue that seem to be haunting me.  Instead, I felt stiff and sore and sluggish while running more.  So I figured what I really needed was a good yoga class. Power yoga. Turns out that was NOT what I needed. I found myself unable to do some of the positions that I usually can do effortlessly.  Friday evening I was quite sore and quite stiff, so I planned to swim in the morning and see how that went before I planned my run. It was a big concession for me. By Saturday morning I was unable to move and nearly unable to handle the pain. For someone who runs and does triathlons for fun and who gave birth twice (once with pitocin) without pain killers, that's saying something.

And so I took Saturday off--mostly. I am a stay-at-home mom, a type-a, and an exercise addict, so taking a day off never ever happens. But it did. I stayed in bed for most of the morning. I got Gretchen dressed and sent the whole family out to do a Cub Scouts electronics recycling project without me. I slept, off and on, for most of the morning. I went downstairs for lunch, after it was mostly assembled by my husband. I did take Adam to his baseball practice, where I stood around, afraid to sit lest I get stuck and unable to get up. I came home exhausted and lay around some more. I slept through family dinner, which was OK since I had a dinner date with an old friend from high school. We had a delicious dinner followed by chocolate fondue and a walk that blistered up my feet but kept my back fairly limber. I had been invited to go see a friend's band play at a nearby bar, and although I wanted to see my friends there, I decided I had pushed myself far enough and went home to lie down again.

Sunday I marveled at how I had actually let myself off the hook multiple times. Realizing I could not bend enough to get into my swimsuit, I did not exercise. I didn't do the service project. I didn't make any meals or do any laundry or wash any dishes or floors. I considered the possibility that maybe the one who keeps me "on" those "hooks" is me. My husband picked up the slack, and he did it without accusation or complaint. My family did not eat as usual, but no one said anything about it. My friend never accused me of being wimpy for taking 20 seconds to stand up after dinner. The gym never called to ask why I hadn't come to swim. My running friends will be there next week and the week after.... Turns out, the emptiness was lovely. Freeing. And restful.

Of course, I couldn't repeat the performance on Sunday. I considered not going to church, not singing in the choir, but I went anyway. I sat through Adam's first piano recital, of course. I went through with the previously extended invitation to have friends over for pizza. Then when they wanted something other than pizza, I didn't hang myself all that high, but I did boil some pasta and heat up some store-bought pasta sauce. Nothing major. But not quite as empty as Saturday. I was not entirely off the hook.

Monday I woke up in much much worse pain. Saturday I didn't swim because I thought I couldn't bend enough to get into and out of my swimming suit. Monday I didn't swim because I was pretty sure I would get in the water (if I could get in the water, that is) push off the wall, immediately spasm, freak out, and drown. It seemed a poor risk.  Pain or no, I was going to have to be on duty again. Sure enough, while packing Adam’s lunch, I got stuck in the garage when I went to retrieve a juice box. I couldn't pull myself up the step without a railing. My legs wouldn't do it. Later, I cried, then coughed, then spasmed and screamed and hyperventilated, each while continuing the previous occupation. So I called the doctor.

The diagnosis: sprained back. Lumbar and sacroiliac. The treatment: rest.

Suddenly I find myself not only released from all of the activities that take up my time--kettlebell, running, swimming, yoga, laundry, washing floors, gardening, picking up after others, ridding showers of mildew, vacuuming, grocery shopping--but more or less forbidden them. Suddenly, what only days ago was freedom is now prison. A day off is lovely. Watching weeds invade the garden and dust gather and laundry piles grow is stressful. While I probably should take some time more regularly to be still and contemplate, I find that having nothing to do but be still and contemplate feels almost as painful as the injury itself.

To add to the emptiness, yesterday I was finally forced to face the reality that my covenant group is disbanding. I’ve seen it coming for a while. And most people are not coming to book club either. The plate that was, a few weeks ago, frustratingly full now has a fair amount of white space on it. I feel like suddenly most of me is empty space. In one week, I've lost most of my job, my covenant group, my running group, my yoga and kettlebell classes, and my race ambitions. I shouldn't even be sitting here writing, since sitting is one of the things that aggravates my back. I can’t sit and practice my horn or support the weight of it while standing. So what am I to do with all of this life I have?  More than once a day I find myself staring at nothing in particular or drifting off to sleep because the alternative is pondering the possibility or even likelihood that my existence is quite pointless.

Today I walked extra on the way home from preschool, walking being one of the few things I am allowed to do with myself. And, of course, I can think, not that I have that much to think about. I was struck, pretty forcefully, with the sudden understanding that I feel stagnant, stuck.  I recently read the autobiography of Beryl Markham, whose adventurous life in Africa was pretty much as far from mine as conceivable, and was stabbed by her assertion that “A life has to move or it stagnates.  Even this life, I think.  Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday.” Ouch.  I’ve been doing the same thing for eight years now.  I have a master’s degree, but I have spent more years doing housework than any other full time pursuit in my life.  Oh, sure, the childcare needs have slowly shifted as my children have become potty trained and able to eat solid food and have begun to have sports practices and homework.  And I do change the details from day to day: what I make for dinner, which load of laundry I do.  It’s like the scene in When Harry Met Sally where Harry questions Sally about her dull recurring sex dream in which a faceless man rips off her clothes and Sally says, “Oh sometimes I change it a little.”  Harry asks how, and she says, “What I’m wearing.”  Should I mention that I have worn pretty much the same clothes every day for the last eight years, varying a bit by season?

I don't want to admit that I've been bored more or less since I quit my job eight years ago, but there it is, whether I like it or not. I love my children. I find raising children challenging to the point of being almost impossible, and I will readily agree with anyone who (condescendingly or sincerely) declares that raising children is the most important thing a person can do, but even so, it doesn't provide the sort of constant intellectual stimulation I seem hardwired to prefer. I need something else.  I have filled up my time with other pursuits to supplement the chores: band, running, triathlons, choir, covenant group, Bible study.  In a time when my body forbids physical activity, and the people who would potentially provide mental stimulation via book club or covenant group or Bible study are too busy with their own lives to concern themselves with my restlessness, I cannot deny that I am, in spite of my full calendar, miserably aimless and empty.  I survive from day to day.  I make the dinner and process the laundry.  Then the next day I make another dinner and wash a different load of laundry.  A dinner that will be eaten and forgotten.  Laundry that will be dirty again in a couple of days.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Indefinitely.  For years.

Oh, I know I should appreciate the blessings I have.  As Warren Zevon would sing, “Poor, poor pitiful me.”  I have not only enough of everything, I have too much.  And I have to wash it.  Boo hoo.  I have the luxury of lounging around whining about existential things while other people are worrying about where to sleep, how to stay warm, and whether or not they will get a meal today.  Those are the kinds of worries that are real, and the kinds of priorities that make lives like mine and Beryl Markham’s seem cushy and arrogant when we want something else.

So I am sidelined.  I’m not going to starve because of it.  Rather, I should probably use this time of forced stillness to figure out which direction I should move when I am able to go again.  When most of the buzz of constant motion is silenced, when all of the activity I use to distract myself from the emptiness is put on hold, what is left?  Who am I underneath the things that I do?  Why am I here?  If, as Lindenberg claims, “Nothing/ isn’t song,” this injury, this perceived emptiness has value.  Eventually, the whistler will exhale.

Holy Week: The Music

A friend asked me a couple of weeks ago if I would still believe in God if it wasn't for music. I'm not sure if he meant it as a serious question or a teasing question, but it felt serious internally. Would I? Hmm. Maybe not. And if not, is that entirely bad? Is it wrong that the way I physically experience the divine is through an art form? I rather think not.

Last night I stayed after the Good Friday service for choir rehearsal and after rehearsal to hear what my dad is singing at the early service on Easter. Sitting in the sanctuary at that time, I was privy to a conversation between Bill, the senior pastor, and Scott, the director of music, about the choir processing in at the beginning of the 9am service on Easter morning. This, I know, means that we will not be in the sanctuary for Widor's Toccata. It wasn't my place, of course, to mess with the high-church plans the staff was making for EASTER SUNDAY. Plus, I'm all for pulling out all of the stops on Easter. Give me Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus. Give me a trumpet fanfare on "Christ the Lord is Risen Today." Fill the sanctuary with so many flowers their scent wafts out into the street. Let's have everyone wear their very best clothes and hats with ribbons and shiny new shoes. Let's eat chocolate while we worship! Let's clap and cheer and weep and throw streamers and hug and kiss and slap each other's backs and butts and hands. Let's take buckets of sidewalk chalk and hundreds of balloons and festoon every block of the downtown with color. So yes, by all means, let's have the choir wear robes and process. But, as I told Scott, half seriously, I will QUIT CHOIR if being in the choir means I miss the Toccata.

At first, I had a hard time believing the Good Friday service last night. My mind kept going elsewhere.  I was fully present at the Maundy Thursday service, but it took a long time for me to get to Good Friday. The Bible readings helped, of course, but what really moved me to grief was the "Agnus Dei" Scott had written. I was blessed to get to sing the solo descant, and by the end, I was singing it for the death of my best friend, for the loss of all hope in a new world. Afterwards, there was darkness. There was regret. There was sorrow. And then on the last verse of the last hymn, Scott did something with the organ that made my heart break. I was crying, nearly weeping. I am a word person. I love the Bible. But music. Music. Music expresses what words cannot come anywhere near. Of all of the people in my church who have contributed to what faith I have, Scott probably has the single largest share. There maybe are not words enough make Good Friday real again, 2000 years later, on the other side of the globe, in a different culture. But there certainly are organ pipes enough. There are a capella choir pieces. I cannot fully describe a broken heart, but Scott can break your heart for you, make you feel it all over again.

Likewise, Widor's Toccata, for me, is Easter. It is the mystery and anticipation of seeing the stone rolled away, a high and quick obbligato. Then, underneath that racing heartbeat, it is a joyful proclamation, heard over and over and over. Surely the voice of an angel would replay in one's mind endlessly: “He is not here; He is risen!” Those two things: physical response and exclamation, right hand and left hand.  It lifts the heart, or swells it. It quickens the pulse. And then.... Oh, the pedal tones! You can feel them in your rib cage and the soles of your feet. They shake the church. They are the sudden understanding of what all this means. Not a quick exuberant joy, not a sharp in-your-face kind of victory, but a dawning realization that the very foundations of civilization have been rolled away with that one tomb boulder. Oh, we had lost hope, but it is possible that Jesus was right all along, that his way is the way, and that you can't kill that kind of love with weapons or betrayal or armies or governments. God is bigger than that.  Big enough to shatter buildings and institutions with the vibration of his voice and big enough and loving enough not to do so but rather to starve in the wilderness with us, to carry a cross with us, to drink defeat, to wear humiliation, to weep, to die and then still to live. I cannot describe the power of that emotion with words—certainly not better than the authors of the Bible and the thousands of saints and scholars who have written since—but I feel it in my body and my soul when I hear Widor's Toccata.  For a few short minutes a year on Easter morning, I hear the voice of God, and God says “I AM.”  Or, rather, God sings: this.  This! Believe. Rejoice. Carry on.

Would I still believe if there was no music? Lord, I hope never to find out.

Holy Week

April and her four kids were here from Monday evening to Wednesday afternoon. Oh, it's wonderful to be with April. Even after not seeing her for months and months and not talking all that much either, there is no period of reacquaintance. The time and space that have been between us are immediately irrelevant. Although she is rarely a part of my daily life, I feel most myself when I am with her. There is never any question that I'm not going to be good enough in any way. I already am. And this is not because she only sees me at my best. She knows some of the messy little corners of my life. She has seen me sick and tired and discouraged and pregnant and hungry and indecisive. If April's love was ever a thing that I needed to earn, somehow I earned it long long ago. More likely, though, I think that I never earned it. It just flows from her generous and loving heart. It took no effort or decision. I don't believe it was earned or that it will be revoked.

Being around April makes me a better person. It never crosses my mind to do anything just to impress her, but without meaning to I strive to do things she would approve of or admire. When I do something well as a parent and April comments upon it, I want to be a good parent all of the time. April said once that she thinks I am brave, and so when my courage fails, I remember that, and I am brave. April thinks my house is lovely and clean, and when I remember that, I clean my house with a happier heart. April admires my cooking, and I wish that I could cook for her more often. April thinks I am smart and helpful and caring, and so I am, and so I wish to be. Not because April will love me more but because I wish to live up to the love I already have. I do not want to disappoint April or to make her sad. And yet, I trust her with my weaknesses, knowing that she carries my hurts with her but will never use them against me. They will never make her love me less.

It occurs to me, as I write about April, that this sort of love sounds strangely familiar. April is not God. She is not perfect. I do not mean to imply that she is or to burder her with such a comparison. But because of her, I begin to see how God might be.

Tomorrow is Good Friday. Sunday is Easter. It's a baffling time of year to be a Christian. Why must Christ be killed? I don't quite buy any of the major atonement theories. I don't like the picture they paint of God. But if I think of Jesus as a friend like April, someone whose love is absolutely certain, whose judgment is more like compassion than verdict, who has endless hope in me and in my capacity to be someone truly wonderful regardless of the confused and flawed human I have been and still am, who would look upon my worst crimes not with condemnation but with agony over the gap between the faith she has in me and my behavior, I begin to understand. God is that kind of love. The life of Jesus says to us that that kind of love is what changes the world, not with demands or punishments or threats or force, but one friend at a time, one day at a time. Good Friday and Easter Sunday promise us that it's a love so powerful I cannot kill it. I cannot ruin it. I can refuse to interact with it; I can forget to spend time on it; I could probably even ask it to leave me alone, but it will still be there year after year after year. It's always exactly what I need. Even if I lose faith in that kind of love, it still has faith in me.

How can I not go forth in confidence having experienced that kind of love? How can I want less than to show that kind of love in return? How can greed or hate or selfishness or even apathy ever triumph in the end if everyone lives with that kind of love? It cannot. It does not.

Holy week.



John 13:34
"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."