Hello! I’ve been lucky enough to be asked to join a group of bloggers who are writing the 50 things for which they are grateful. The trick was we had to write the list in 10 minutes (adding pictures and links came later and did not count toward the total time). I had no trouble at all coming up with so many things to be thankful for. Life is rich. I live in a beautiful place. I have a solid support network, good friends, a loving family. When times get hard, I try to remember these things. I started the list off with some of the things I repeat to myself on mornings when running is challenging–I am grateful for my body parts that all work as they should. If you’d like to join in on the gratitude blogging fun, you can find instructions at the bottom of this blog. Enjoy!
If you’d like to join in, here’s how it works: set a timer for 10 minutes; timing this is critical. Once you start the timer, start your list. The goal is to write 50 things that made you happy in 2015, or 50 thing that you feel grateful for. The idea is to not think too hard; write what comes to mind in the time allotted. When the timer’s done, stop writing. If you haven’t written 50 things, that’s ok. If you have more than 50 things and still have time, keep writing; you can’t feel too happy or too grateful! When I finished my list, I took a few extra minutes to add links and photos.
To join the bloggers who have come together for this project: 1) Write your post and publish it (please copy and paste the instructions from this post, into yours) 2) Click on the link at the bottom of this post. 3) That will take you to another window, where you can past the URL to your post. 4) Follow the prompts, and your post will be added to the Blog Party List.
Please note that only blog posts that include a list of 50 (or an attempt to write 50) things that made you feel Happy or 50 things that you are Grateful for, will be included. Please don’t add a link to a post that isn’t part of this exercise.
I originally published this piece on my blog in December 2012. I thought it was worth re-posting, given that it’s that time of year again and my holiday anxiety is ramping up.
Christmas Eve always provokes anxiety in me. For all of the 1960s and well into the 70s, I was the sole granddaughter amongst many grandsons and as such the only target for girly gifts from my well-meaning Mema: dolls, dresses, and purses. While my cousins and younger brother gleefully tore through the wrapping paper to discover footballs, cowboy hats, cap pistols, and baseball gloves, I opened my gifts cautiously, always hopeful that my true wishes would be granted, that my grandmother would see me for the tomboy I was, not as the girly girl she wanted me to be. As the Barbies, ballet slippers, tea sets, and girly frou-frou piled up over the years, I knew better than to be expressively disappointed. Growing up in a conservative Christian household, I learned early that it is better to give than to receive, to be thankful for what I had, and to put others ahead of myself, so I pasted on a smile and gave my thanks with as much authenticity as I could muster.
That’s me on the right, checking to see if my cousins, Jimmy, TJ, and Billy, got better presents than I did.
As the years wore on and the family expanded, my girl cousins finally came along, gleeful recipients of all things sugar and spice and everything nice, and I could ignore my gifts and slip away to play with my boy cousins and their superior toys. They would share their bounty with me, and for many happy hours I wore the cowboy hat and shot the cap guns, threw the footballs around the basement. Still, an uneasiness always settled over me as the holidays drew near, and as much as I looked forward to Christmas Eve at Mema’s, a genuinely fun and spirited occasion where the alcohol flowed freely and everyone sang and acted out a verse in The Twelve Days of Christmas, where we all wore colored paper hats from the Christmas crackers, I dreaded going because I didn’t feel like I belonged.
A sense of Other became my Christmas cloak: fundamentalist Christian amongst fun loving Catholics; country bumpkin cousin among my sophisticated Seattle cousins; and something deeper that I sensed about myself, something I knew set me apart in ways I wouldn’t understand for many years.
So, no surprise then that those familiar pangs rushed back as I navigated our red late-model Volvo into Mema’s driveway for Christmas Eve in 1994. Even though I was 31 and had a family, the anxiety dogged me. I let out the breath I’d been holding during our hour and a half drive south from where I lived with my partner and our two daughters. I pulled on my wide-brimmed purple felt hat that matched my paisley purple dress and smiled through the rear view mirror at the girls, Anna four and a half, and Taylor six months old. They were ready to be sprung from their car seats, their holiday dresses hidden beneath their matching Christmas coats from Nordstrom. I squeezed Sweetie’s hand, both for comfort and for strength, and admired her stylish red wool coat and her fine black leather gloves. I allowed a small satisfaction and confidence to creep upon me. We looked so normal that no one could possibly know from first glance that we were lesbians with two children. I drew comfort from our appearance as we wrested the girls out of the car and arranged ourselves into presentability—straightening rumpled tights, buckling Mary Janes, wiping the spit up from Taylor’s chin and removing her bib, making sure Anna had a firm grasp on Blankie. We each carried a child and marched to the front door to ring the bell.
Anna and Taylor, Christmas 1997
We knew better than to wait for someone to answer before letting ourselves in. The bell served only to announce our presence before we walked into the sounds and smells of Christmas tradition: cracked crab, singed spaghetti sauce, bourbon, scotch, laughter and conversation, the burble of children’s voices and laughter. Aunts and uncles yelled out greetings or raised their glasses to us as we entered. My mother came to coo over her granddaughters. We collected hugs and kisses as we waded deeper into the gathering, and because we were women, we all finally came to a stop in the kitchen.
“Merry Christmas!” My aunt Betsy said, “You guys look great. I love your dress Pam.”
“Where did you get that hat?” Mema sipped her vodka, the ice tinkling. “I love it!”
“Sweetie!” Uncle David stepped towards us, a glass of red wine in his hand. “Merry Christmas!” He gave her a sideways hug and a peck on the cheek. “How are the girls?”
“Hey David,” Sweetie matched his enthusiasm. “They are great. Thanks for asking! Your girls must be getting big, too!”
I began unbundling the girls, removing their coats, checking Taylor’s diapers for any obvious odors. They both looked amazing, their brown skin glowing against the red velvet dresses, their white tights gleaming, their Mary Janes shiny. Anna’s eyes took on the pensiveness of being in a strange situation, and Taylor’s eyes grew wide, her Surprise Baby look we called it. Since we’d only just adopted her in May, many of my relatives had yet to meet her.
“She’s so tiny! How old is she, again?”
“She’s so dark!”
“Well, yes, she’s African American,” I explained. “She’s just a bit over seven months old.”
“Anna, you’ve gotten so big!”
“Anna! How do you like being a big sister?”
Anna buries her face in the pleats of Sweetie’s red skirt.
“She’s still adjusting,” I say.
“Hey, Pamalamala!” My uncle Mike approaches, the funny guy in the family. “What can I get you to drink? You’re still drinking, right?” He nods at Taylor in my arms. “You’re not nursing are you?”
“Scotch on the rocks sounds fabulous,” I say, happy at that moment to be an adoptive parent, no breastfeeding required.
Anna peaks inquisitively from Sweetie’s skirt. “Pamalamala?” She laughs. “That’s funny Mommy!”
“That’s what I called myself when I was your age,” I explain. “I couldn’t say Pamela, so I said Pamalamala whenever someone wanted to know my name.”
Anna’s brown eyes light up, and some of the anxiety disappears. I want nothing more than for her to be free of the anxiety. Mike hands me my scotch and I relax, happy to be among family on this holiday, grateful for the acceptance from nearly everyone, and even thankful for the forbearance of those who might still disapprove. I am aware they might be masking their disdain with holiday cheer and copious amounts of alcohol. I don’t mind.
Before long, the girls and their cousins hear the prancing of reindeer feet on the roof and the ringing of sleigh bells. The little ones who are old enough to walk, rush to the window hoping to catch a glimpse of Santa. I hold Taylor as she wiggles and babbles excitedly and points to her big sister, eyes wide with anticipation.
“HO! HO! HO!” Santa opens the front door, a pillowcase bursting with presents slung over his shoulder. “I hear there are children here who have been very good this year!
“Sit over here, Santa,” one of my younger cousins points to a wing-backed chair between the fireplace and the lavishly decorated tree. Over the course of the next hour, each child under 18 sits on Santa’s lap and assures him they’ve been nice and not at all naughty during the year. Santa digs in his bag and presents each child with a present, and as they unwrap their gifts, they hold them up as cameras snap and flash. The adults grin conspiratorially at one another, remembering Christmases not that long ago when they did the same. I’ve chosen Anna and Taylor’s gifts carefully, the sting of disappointment still fresh on me.
Once the spaghetti and crab have been devoured, once the platters of cookies have been depleted, once the children have succumbed to the rush of sugar and the excitement of Santa and fallen asleep about the living room, once the adults have exchanged gifts, and had a final glass of holiday cheer, we begin to gather our newly acquired belongings, our coats, the diaper bag, Anna’s Blankie. We whisper our good-byes and carry our sleeping babies to the car and tuck them in to their car seats. After several more forays between house and car, more hugs and kisses, I put the Volvo in reverse and head north, letting out the breath I’d been holding the past several hours.
We had navigated through a family Christmas Eve, our little family of four breaking new ground, the four of us presenting as just another family in spite of our differences. No one else in my extended family had ventured quite this far outside of the norm: being a “married” lesbian mother of adopted multi-ethnic children broke some new family ground and gained not just tolerance, but acceptance. Still, my anxiety and self doubt colored my experience and I believed that the love and welcomes came because we worked so hard to be a normal family, we wore dresses and feminine shoes; we bought thoughtful and not inexpensive gifts; we were fortunate to have beautiful children and dressed them in dresses and lace. We drove a Volvo. I believed that acceptance required stringent adherence to heterosexual norms. I thought that if we were going to be a successful lesbian family, we were going to have to be as non-threatening and as normal as possible.
I was so busy hiding who I was, I didn’t even try to be myself. It didn’t occur to me that my family would love me anyway.
Taking the train sounds so romantic and low stress. What could be better than rolling along toward my destination without the stress of having to drive? Three times in the past year I have succumbed to the lure of riding the rails, and three times I have had less than optimal experiences getting from Point A to Point B.
As I write this, I’m sitting somewhere north of Everett, WA, in an Amtrak dining car that is decidedly not rolling along the tracks to anywhere. I fear that soon they will back us up to the Everett station and make us get on one of the dreaded Amtrak buses. I always laugh when I see these buses on the freeway, chuckling to myself about the suckers who thought they were going for a train ride and ended up going greyhound against their will. Yeah. Who’s the sucker now? Why have I not learned my lesson?
Evidently someone raised a drawbridge that won’t go back down. We are waiting for an engineer to be pulled away from his leftover turkey dinner into the cold and frosty night, and, do what? Hand crank the bridge back into place? I can only imagine. Frankly, I have little faith that I will get home before midnight. Just like last Thanksgiving.
Last year, I made my train reservations for the Thanksgiving weekend a month in advance, but when it came time to board the train bound for Portland, I found myself instead getting on the dreaded bus because a landslide had covered the tracks. We were able to board the actual train in Everett and resumed making our way south without incident. When it came time to make the return trip, all seemed solid. We (and by we I mean myself, my mother, my then wife) got on the train at Portland’s Union Station and chugged our way successfully to King Street Station in Seattle. The wife disembarked to go to her apartment (she lives in Seattle during the week for work) and Mother and I remained on the train. And remained. And remained.
An hour passed and still we sat, unmoving. Evidently while we had been waiting for passengers to board in Seattle, another mudslide had covered the tracks. Mom needed to get only to Edmonds where she could catch a ferry back to her home in the rainforest. So, Amtrak put her in a taxi and sent her on her way. I continued to wait. Before Mother had left, she made friends with the drunk couple in the seat in front of us and they continued to slur their words in my direction. I left them for the dining car where I could stew about the delay in some peace and with a beer to call my own.
Eventually, Amtrak put all of the Vancouver BC passengers on a bus and sent them on their way, but still those of us destined for Skagit and Whatcom County languished while the powers that be tried to decide our fate. The buses finally arrived, four hours later, but because their drivers had reached their maximum hours on the road for the day, we could only get as far north as Everett, a good hour from home. We had to change buses again before we could finally head north again. When I got home around 1 a.m., my pre-arranged ride home had long abandoned me (I totally understood, btw). I pondered walking home bumping my suitcase behind me, but another friend took pity on me and came to my rescue.
So why, why, why did I book tickets on Amtrak again this year? The only explanation I have is that I can think of few things I hate more than the drive to Portland on Thanksgiving weekend, even though I love my brother and his family dearly. That, and I’ve had some seriously bad luck with traffic cops lately. Plus I have homework to do and what better way to get it done than by being trapped in a train car for seven hours? Driving anywhere on I-5 between Bellingham and Portland becomes more untenable each year. I’ve watched my hair turn gray and my arteries harden while sitting in traffic south of Tacoma.
So, here I sit. I have only myself to blame. But, I do have friends who travel by train regularly and they NEVER have these issues. Why am I three for three? Some lady is in need of medicine and another dude cannot believe that his debit card won’t work in the dining car. He really wants beer, and, evidently, his debit card worked fine on the morning’s southbound train. He’s been telling us all about it for a good 45 minutes now. I’m this close to taking up a collection to buy him a damn beer if it’ll shut him up already. I’d buy it myself if it wasn’t $7.25. I mean, really? Is this anywhere nearly as fun as a baseball game? If the beer is that expensive, there should at least be garlic fries. Where are the garlic fries?
At least I left my car in the long-term parking lot so I don’t have to get any friends out of bed in the middle of the night. And, even though the conductor announced that the wifi router is broken, my computer is still connected to the Internets. So that’s something, right?
Oh, look! We’re moving! I sure hope that bridge inspector knows his stuff.
Today’s the day. Ninety days ago I signed my divorce decree, and now we can get divorced. I simply have to go to the lawyer’s office to sign the final paperwork. I didn’t know going into this divorce that the 90 days is a “cooling off” period. I just thought it took that long for the paperwork to make its way through the court system. My lawyer corrected my misperception. I said, “You mean to tell me it only takes 3 days to get married but 90 to get divorced? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” She nodded sagely. I suppose there’s some sort of job security for her in it working this way.
I don’t know. I imagine I’d still be in the same place even if I’d had an extra 90 days to contemplate getting married. In fact, we did wait an entire year between the time I proposed and the day we finally married (to read more about that, click here). We were unraveling at that point anyway. Earlier this week I received an email letting me know that the lawyers had drafted the final decree dissolving our marriage. The past few mornings have been a miasma of mixed feelings. Yesterday I woke up with an outsized case of anxiety, and this morning I am not feeling any better.
A divorce is a death, a loss, an end. And in the hours since I received the lawyer’s notice, the past fifteen years have been flashing before my eyes as I understand happens before any death experience. The good, the bad, the ugly. The beginning, the middle, the end. Not that there’s necessarily a correlation—these things have a way of spiraling and weaving. There were signs of our eventual demise early on, had I been more aware, and we experienced moments of grace toward the end, even as recently as last week when we had dinner with my brother and his family in Seattle.
On our first date, we attended an Indigo Girls concert on the Pier in Seattle. Cliché? Maybe. I still remember what I wore that warm July night. I was on my way to her house a few months later when Al Gore lost (was robbed of) the election to (by) George W. Bush. On September 11 almost a year later, we awoke to a phone call from her sister-in-law on the east coast, telling us to turn on the television, that a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center. Together we watched astounded and in disbelief from her bed as the airplane careened into the second tower, which then crumbled. I told her how Aaron Brown, whose presence on CNN that day I found so stabilizing in a world come apart, had once been a local news anchor.
We attended at least two family weddings as a couple before we had our pre-legal same sex marriage commitment ceremony in September 2003. We dubbed it our Silly Ceremony. In retrospect, I wonder if perhaps we made a mistake calling it that. If perhaps we did not take ourselves or our union seriously enough from the beginning. We called it that because at my father’s wedding in April 2001, one of my relatives pulled me aside to congratulate me on my new relationship, to tell me how much she loved my new love, and then, almost as an aside said “But, you two aren’t going to have one of those silly ceremonies are you?” Of course. We had to after that.
I worked for the Catholics when we had the Silly Ceremony. I’d only been in my position there a few months, but still felt comfortable enough to invite a few of the friends I’d made in that time. My parents, by then divorced, came. My kids. Her sister. My brother and his family. Our neighbors. Her good friend, the holiest person we knew, officiated. We partied epically. People danced on the tables.
The temptation is to pick through the remnants, parsing out the good from the bad, categorizing events into a sort of giant, fifteen-year tally sheet. We spent many summer days playing Scrabble on our deck. And we kept score. One of the things that attracted me was her ability to string a sentence together, to spell. We fell in love online and spent our first few months there before we met in real time, exchanging instant messages and emails. She knew how to punctuate, a skill akin to tantric sex for a writer.
Even though we’ve essentially lived apart these past two years, and even though she officially moved her belongings out for good in mid-February, I am still sad to have finally completed this one last act.
We’ve been circling around the issue for a couple of years, been to couples’ counseling with two different therapists. Said the D word then reconciled again, deciding to give it one last go, at least twice. So, when I signed the decree 90 days ago, I guess it felt like anything was possible. Three months stretched out ahead in a sort of eternity. I still had 90 days worth of health insurance. We settled into a sort of amicable truce. She came up to see the cats. I stayed at her new place on my way to and from the airport. We had a few dinners, spent Easter with my family. Celebrated our birthdays in June with a lovely dinner on the Bellingham waterfront.
But this week, once we got the email from our attorneys letting us know that the final FINAL papers were ready, that we could sign them on August 21? Then I realized that this is it. The end. I know. I know. I didn’t want to get married in the first place. Marriage is a patriarchal institution. But I started thinking about having a fixed date for the demise of our relationship. In previous relationships we just sort of came apart in fits and starts. There were no hard and fast dates and times to affix to the ending. No “on thus and such a date we officially broke up.” At least not one recorded in the annals of time for all of perpetuity.
From here forward, August 21 will be complicated. One part heartbreak, one part freedom. One part new adventure. One part wistfulness. It’s particularly metaphorical that the eastern half of the state is currently on fire. We spent one of our happiest road trips in recent memory exploring the Methow and the Okanagon a couple of summers ago. We set out in the jeep one weekend and just kept driving until we reached Conconully. We drove up Hart’s Pass where I wanted to camp even though it was 32 degrees up there. I guess if I wanted to read something into the fires, I could. I was sitting in a friend’s house in Winthrop the first time she suggested (offered?) divorce, in an email. I’ve always joked about having a scorched earth policy when leaving jobs and relationships. It’s a policy I have worked to change in recent years. I would like the end of this relationship to be different. Gentler.
I’m trying to resist the urge to get sentimental, but finding resistance futile. Scenes. Memories. Events. Dates. In the course of those 15 years my children grew into adults. I forged a new career, realized my dream of becoming a published writer, changed careers, returned to school. Had a job with a Fortune 150 company. Became a runner. I found myself and so doing became many things I never expected to be, including single at 52.
Some days my life feels like one fat question mark. What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Who am I doing it for? Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? Who do I think I am?
That last question, that one comes up a lot: just who do I think I am? I hear my mom (sorry Mom) asking me: “Just who do you think you are, young lady?” I hear (probably imaginary) voices whisper “Who does she think she is?” I spend a lot of time wondering that as well, and this too: “When am I going to grow the hell up?”
I imagine that my questions are not mine alone. I believe that most of us have these sorts of doubts about ourselves and our mission, our Quest (to use a Q word), here on earth. What would it be like, I often wonder, to be sure of myself, to be certain in my worth, my value, my purpose? How can people be so goddamned self-assured (or self-righteous)?
Myself, the older I get, the less sure I become. When I was in my twenties, I knew everything. I answered questions with great authority even if I didn’t know the answer. I could stand in front of a classroom of people most of whom were older than me and spend an hour or two discussing writing. Now I’m more than twice that old, and I’m having anxiety attacks about leading a 20-minute discussion with a classroom full of people half my age on a subject I actually do know a lot about.
What the hell happened to me? How has my life come to this place of uncertainty? Have I chosen the correct path? Will the decisions I make today come back to haunt me in a year or two?
Me, in front of Shakespeare’s birthplace, Fall 1987
Just today I told a friend about how, when I was 19, I went to Europe, traveled across the continent in the dead of winter, alone and with no concrete plans, no hotel or hostel reservations, no pre-purchased train tickets. Fearless, with only a copy of Let’s Go Europe and a few American Express Traveller’s Cheques. Now, I can’t imagine being that carefree, that trusting of myself.
Last weekend, I had lunch with my nearly 25-year-old daughter and told her about my summers during college working as a forest fire fighter. As I regaled her with tales of bad-assery, I kept thinking to myself “Were you crazy?” and, conversely, “What happened to that girl? Where’d she go?”
Maybe it’s just the menopause talking. The hormones (or lack thereof) could be out of control. My therapist said to me the other day (as I was complaining about hot flashes and throwing myself onto the fan in her office) that perhaps this is the time in my life that I will know myself the best.
Maybe menopause doesn’t make us crazy, she suggested, but helps to clarify things. Maybe only now will I begin to discover just who I think I am. Perhaps the only way to learn is by asking questions. Maybe the answers lie somewhere in the uncertainty, in the spaces between.
Some runners like to run to music. Some runners do not. On one Facebook group I belong to, there’s the occasional message about running “tech free” and listening to nature. I’m pretty sure everyone reading knows where I fall in this debate—I have a playlist and I run to it every day (unless I somehow get to the trail without my phone or sans earbuds).
I’ve written plenty about how I pace myself according to where I am when particular songs come on. With a pattern (rut?) like I mine (running the same routes, listening to the same playlist), it is easy to tell how well I’m running from day to day.
My current playlist is about my fourth since I started running, the third in the past year. Here are the songs and artists in order and the approximate mile I should be on when they play:
Sara Bareilles, Brave
Roy Orbison and kd lang, Crying (.75 miles by the end of the song)
Florence and the Machine, Dog Days of Summer (1 mile by early/mid song)
One Republic, Counting Stars
Fall Out Boy, My Songs Know what You Do in the Dark
Adele, Rolling in the Deep (2 miles)
Rihanna, S&M
Cher, Woman’s World (3 miles)
kd lang, Hallelujah (usually play this twice)
Adele, Rumor Has It (4 miles)
Sara Bareilles, Brave (again)
Hozier, Take Me to Church (5 miles–such a haunting song. Check out the video!)
kd lang singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is one of my favorite songs on the list, and I often play it twice. There’s something magical about running on a gorgeous PNW day and coming down the South Bay Trail or around a corner with a view of the water on Chuckanut and having kd singing her lungs out in my ears. Takes my breath away.
I’m often struck by the words of a particular song, too, while running. Many times I will hear a song without really listening to the words or thinking about what they mean. When I hear them day in and day out on my runs, it’s easy to not pay attention to the words. Just this morning after months of running to Rumor Has It (it was on my old playlist as well), I really heard the words for the first time . . . go figure.
Of course, I can run without the music if I so choose. And I have a few times, but tuning in to my heavy breathing and the sound of the water sloshing in my water bottles only makes me anxious and self conscious. And lord knows, there’s enough of that going on already.
I kind of got stuck on M—I’ve written at least three blogs but can’t quite bring myself to publish them. I’m not sure what M word is speaking to me yet. Meditation? Menopause? Midlife Crisis? On the face of things, not one of those words have anything whatsoever to do with running—but in my life all of these M words DO have something to do with running.
Other contenders include Muse, Motivation. Mental Health. But I can’t come up with anything Meaningful to say. I guess M just stands for Marooned in the Middle. I’ve got some catching up to do. Hopefully N O P Q and R are not so recalcitrant.
Everyone hates running hills, and I am no exception. Hills hurt. Even going downhill, which seems like it might be far easier and more rewarding than running uphill, carries its own perils and pains. My daily running route of late has not been very hilly (because I’ve come down with a bad case of lazy)—but over the past year, my usual loop included a lot of ups and downs, none very long or terribly extreme, but with enough variety to keep me in pretty good hill shape. Or so I thought.
In February, I ran my first (and possibly only) trail half marathon with my pal Cami who has done a lot of marathons. I wanted to sign up for the 10k, but she talked me into doing the half . . . “It’ll be fun,” she said. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be that much fun, but I acquiesced, not wanting to appear wimpish. How bad could it be?
Bad. I’d never run a trail race before—not a single-track race where five hundred people share a mere two-foot wide path, a hilly, winding, steep up, steep down, muddy trail. In all the time I’d been running up to that date, I had not ever fallen down while running. Not once. Yet I fell twice during that trail half marathon—once while running up one of the bazillion hills, and once while running on the flat.
The first fall surprised me early in the race when I still had a fair amount of energy. I took a muddy uphill switchback too fast and my foot slipped. My face landed in the muddy trail in front of me, but I jumped up quickly, brushed myself off, and moved on. The second fall came sometime after mile eight, by which point I felt exhausted. I could barely pick up my feet and that’s what caused the fall. I hit a root and went down hard. I did not bounce back up quickly.
I slogged on through the final five miles, up and down, down and up. Relentless. With less than a mile and a half to go, the course opened up along a bluff overlooking Puget Sound, and just when the going looked easier (and breathtakingly beautiful), we came to one final uphill: a foot wide, completely vertical sandy path that wound endlessly skyward.
I could see the finish line over my left shoulder—I could stop here, skip this final hill, and call it quits. Or, I could complete the climb and follow the rest of the runners back into the woods and finish the race.
Quit or forge ahead? I’d come this far, I told myself, so I dug in. I could climb this final (I hoped) hill. I channeled The Little Engine That Could. I visualized all the hills I normally ran every day and strung them together in my mind, and I got to the top of that damn cliff.
Climbing the hills makes us stronger and gives us stamina for the long flat stretches. We can always catch our breath on the backside, on the way back down.
What awaits us at
The top is unimportant.
‘Tis the climb that counts.
Pamela Helberg 