Midnight Highway (thoughts on running)

 

Midnight Highway

(Thoughts on running)

Saturday mornings 

With Melissa and her Wire Fox Terrier Miko 

Trotting, talking, scuttling along the perimeter  

Of her-tree lined Chicago neighborhood

Just off the Francisco brown line train stop

Or along the lakefront from Lee Street to Noyes

Thirteen-fourteen minute mile times

With occasional indulgent stops for community gardens or pie 

Two thirty-something-year-old girls
eventually sharing a first pregnancy together

Attempt to run and then trot then stroll 

Two old friends discussing pelvic pain, gestational diabetic diets, and baby registries

getting comments from strangers on our adorable pregnant pairing

An unexpected and early birth of my first child occurs hours after

Strolling with Melissa along the lake followed by

a bench view of the water for an hour, 

Two round-bellied friends and an August morning breeze

No better way would I have spent the hours before delivering

A six-pound baby girl

Running-trotting-jogging-shuffling 

A self-regulation tool I have used in almost all life transitions

Angst, sadness, heartbreak, or the need to ponder life circumstances and change

all seem to launch me from zero to multiple miles 

Six miles around the fields of West Lafayette 

for the blurred seasons of winter and spring 2000

Trying to stimulate my capillary system in an effort 

to rebuild and repair the biggest broken heart or

Lunchtime jaunts along the Mississippi with Lisa 

As we name origins and insertions of muscle groups in preparation for 

Our anatomical exams or 

The day I transferred to Northwestern University and ran 

To Lake Michigan before even one box was unpacked

(tangible happiness I had not encountered since 

previously mentioned broken heart almost two years prior) or 

Training for a half marathon with Elizabeth

after the move from St Paul back to Chicago and

transition from being single to being married and

becoming an occupational therapist facilitating neural healing or

Senior year of high school 

Friday nights around and around an indoor track with Megan 

Dreaming beautiful faulty vision boards for our future

not realizing we had been running all that time and

eventually coining the term “midnight highway” for that transformation where your 

breath 

Just

floats 

steadily, easily, expanding and contracting above two legs

Lightly treading, carrying, propelling a body forward

Twenty-four years later the midnight highway finds me on an elevated track

Overlooking a half court where my five-year-old son kicks a soccer ball

Melissa once likened him to a bouncy ball 

I cannot unsee this comparison

his movements more vertical than lateral

and, like me, his big feelings more vertical than lateral

This track located above my son's Sunday morning soccer class

helps meet my sudden compulsion to run 3-4-5 miles as often as possible

My son smiles and waves up at me as

Something about when a baby turns five

The freedoms and the growing up-ness

The letting go of being a mama to a baby-toddler-preschooler

The ability to return and inspect one's own life

I ponder the root of this blindside angst and

hyperawareness of transition

That my body increasingly intuits by

The need to feel air moving past my body

The desire to feel both the limits and rhythm of my slow stride 

The search for the beauty of steady breath

Which I envision hovering above my body like the dot of a lowercase i 

Or the image of the holy spirit floating above the apostles' in my daughter’s illustrated storybook bible

Or the wheels of an airplane as they just lift off the tarmac 

Until I enter the space of the night highway

Effortless propulsion forward wrapped within a tunnel of unknown 

Thoughts and sensory flooding, everything external disappears

Alone with a secure and steady breath 

It will carry me through

Stretching toward the clarity of dawn

* Picture: Francisco El platform is so beautiful (photo: July 2023)

** Fun resource: How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy.

*** Running playlist: My Autumn 2023 Running Playlist

Morning Archimedes

 

Morning Archimedes

Physical science at the dining room table occurs

Among leftover breakfast bowls and

Frazzled fuzz-balls of wool.

Textile projects will grow throughout the week

(as they always do).

In an attempt to clear a space

We trace a single woolen thread that attaches

to the beginnings of a scarf created 

for Bella (the stuffed dog) who somehow always seems to get swept up 

behind my bedroom door.

Fulcrums, effort, and levers,

Examples of a simple machine created with Legos, 

Lay beside thoughtfully chosen gourds that resemble

arched-necked swans and creeping dragons.

The simplest October decor.

My own attempt at self-care-  oil painting-

in that short time between a Sunday morning 

run & late afternoon church service 

Are now beautiful clutter that contribute

To a Monday morning mess.

Seeking redemption of previous academic failures

(At least I’m not facilitating instruction on chemistry.)

(Yet.) 

We open books promising exploration 

Of How Machines Work  and

The Way Things Work 

My five-year-old son is particularly struck

by a quote from Archimedes

“Give me a lever long enough 

And a fulcrum which to place it, and I shall move the world” 

On a whiteboard he draws out the scenario 

Using the moon as a fulcrum

And a lever 10 million light-years in length.

We imagine a small boy as he walks out to the end of this plank

Out into the universe, just to the very edge

He jumps just once.

Imagine.

* Picture: October's craft pile

** Fun Resource 1: We are loving our science curriculum this fall: Blossom & Root Level Four

*** Fun Resource 2: Why Does God Keep Making Poets by Tish Harrison Warren NYTimes 

"One reason I think we keep making poetry is because we are ourselves poems. There’s a verse in the Bible (Ephesians 2:10) in which we are described as the “handiwork of God.” But it’s the same Greek root that goes into the word “poetry.” It means “a made thing.” A more literal translation is that we are, as human beings, the poems of God. So we keep making poetry because we are ourselves poems.