This morning, I returned to running after a one-day-shy-of-two-weeks hiatus.
First thought upon writing that sentence: if I've lamented being behind on my plans to run 1111 miles in 2011 already twice before, taking off two weeks doesn't exactly suggest that my either of my previous renewed commitments are worth much at all. Yes, readers, there is guilt.
It's funny. Physically-speaking, I recovered beautifully after running in Williamsburg. By day two, all traces of soreness were gone and by all accounts, I should have been ready to go.
Ah, but there was the heat. 95-degree blistering heat. My reliable (and convenient) excuse for falling off from running for the third summer in a row.
But this time around, it really is an excuse. An excuse I've been telling myself for the past few weeks to cover up what's really rolling around in my head.
The passing of my grandmother has touched me in places I did not know existed; it has raised questions I thought I already had answers to; it has humbled me enormously. And it was a beautiful passing - it could have been far more sudden, traumatic, and painful. And yet, though I am beyond grateful for so many things surrounding this event, I feel lost.
Not because of her actual passing. That would be melodramatic of me - who has been living away from home for ten years now - to assert. I am terrifically happy and at peace with the idea of her body returned to the earth, her spirit even more with me now.
I have been both blessed and cursed to have those I consider closest to me with me for so long. Confronting mortality in this direct sense for the first time at 28 is unnerving. Unsettling. Uprooting.
And I have been wallowing in it.
A few weeks ago, my friend Glenna, a teacher, asked me to participate in a 5K that one of her students was putting together to raise money for his local library as one of his final Eagle Scout projects. If she reads this, she will learn that while I planned to donate to his cause, I originally never intended to run.
But sweet Glenna also invited both Renee and me, last minute, to join in a Friday Ladies Bunco Night that she and some friends have been hosting for nearly ten years now and drawn by the idea of female fellowship, I went.
Gathered in those rooms last night, mindlessly throwing dice for the first time with eleven other women - some who I knew not at all - I felt myself part of a tradition much bigger than myself and glimpsed what so many people find wonderful about a Catholic mass.
And I remembered why I run.
I run because I am alive, because I can, because - whether you are religious, spiritual, scientific, or flat out atheist - you can't deny that the mechanics of the human body are beautiful, and putting those mechanics to use makes a thoughtless sense.
So I got up this morning and James came with me and on a beautiful, hot - but not too hot - day, I ran. And when I finished, I watched as the small gathering of people cheered louder for the sixty or so participants in this community event than at any professionally organized event I've been to. I watched as a group of teenagers ran to meet their grandmother - the last participant- and cross the chalked finish line with her.
Miles 214-216: 26 minutes and 39 seconds under the beautiful North Carolina sun.
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