True North

870 run/130 to go

The joy is somewhat harder to come by in the runs these days. I am too close to do anything but run a set number of miles each week, there are few free days. Sure, I consider how great it'll feel to not have the obligation hanging overhead, I also know that ultimately, nothing will replace running as my way-to-rightness. I'm so damn close!

I flew to Virginia a couple of weeks ago. My cousin was getting married, and the trip would be a great chance to eat, drink and be Roettinger (which pretty much means to eat, drink, be loved lots and laugh plenty - the Roettingers are a fun bunch for sure). I arrived on a Friday evening, was picked up at the airport by my aunt Alwyne and Uncle Derek; fed grilled cheese, wine, cookies and, eventually an Ambien. Heavenly. I needed the long, hard sleep, needed the physical and mental rejuvenation.

Next day, I lingered over coffee before lacing up and heading out for a 7 miler. I ran parallel to the shoreline though still along a busy highway. There are safer, simpler routes to run, but this one rewards me a couple miles in with such an extraordinary view of the water that I brave the slim highway shoulder to get to it.

As I neared the Lessner Bridge, each breath grew thicker with the briny air of low tide. If you don't know low tide, if you didn't grow up looking to the shore early mornings to see where the waterline sits and what's been left behind - drying crab shells, wet, curling ribbons of seaweed, jiggly mounds of jellyfish (careful of the ones shot through with pink!); if you didn't grow up walking barefoot to the beachfront shop with your dad in the quiet haze of salty blue dawn to pick up the local paper and listen to grownups shoot the shit for twenty minutes before the sun comes blazing in white and blinding; if you don't know what it is to squish your toes in the muddy flats of a salt pond at low tide, keeping an eye out for tiny bubbles to lead you to quahogs tucked down in the silky loam; if you don't remember riding back to the cottage from the lobsterman docks in the back of a beat to hell pickup with your cousins and two coolers packed full of squirming bugs headed for the supper table...if you don't know those things, you might not get the power of the first sniff of low tide after a long, landlocked spell.

My beautiful and brilliant friend Susan is a pilot (and author of the wonderful book, Into the Blue). She once told me that all airports have a spot where a plane can be brought to calibrate and synch controls to true north. Without the accurate determination of true north, no desired course can be followed. It is essential stuff. It was easy to feel the intense magnetic pull of my own true north, the ocean and the people I love who populate its shores.

Back on the bridge, I breathed deep and long, I took a rare mid-run break to stand and look out on the sun spattered splash. I rarely visited Virignia when my mother was alive. Our relationship and the visits felt complicated and difficult. As each year passes without her, I find myself coming to understand and appreciate her more. As I type this, the shiny glint of her signet ring catches my eye, her initials fit so perfectly to my ring finger, reminding me to be strong and of good courage, that I am of her. My parents gave me this ocean. For all the turbulence and chop, they also gave me the reassurance that each low tide carpet of debris would, in time, be swept free with an ancient and enduring tidal tug.

Two years ago, Rob and I took the kids to Barcelona for Spring break. It was a trip that threatened to knock us off balance from the beginning; from our arrival at a different airport than expected to the apartment we had rented being suddenly unavailable, leaving us with no obvious place to stay. We pulled it together, got to the city and found ourselves staying in the eccentric apartment of a famous Spanish artist. We walked along the Las Ramblas, drank in the gorgeous curving beauty of Gaudi Park and, ate tapas, sipped sangria and, one grey day, took a boat tour on the Mediterranean Sea.

For the Seinfeldians among you, I'll put it this way: the sea was angry that day, my friends. It began to rain lightly shortly after we left the port. The skies were cold and leaden, the water was a churling chop, knocking the bow of boat up and down as we headed out. The older kids wanted to go out on the deck and meet the waves head on. I bought a coffee and brought them out into the steel colored, misty wind. They each held tight to the sturdy deck railings, hair blown back, faces soon coated in salty damp. I stood behind them, near two deckhands who smoked and spoke low in Catalan. As each dip and swell of the water swallowed and then lifted us up, my body knew without thought how to properly absorb the movement. Threatening as it did to knock most over, I knew to sense the shift and sway of turbulence and tide, to absorb with my body and believe with my soul that I could not be knocked down.

I watched my kids, there holding tight to the rails when the seas were the roughest and letting go when they felt confident enough, laughing at the balance they tend to take for granted being so swiftly taken from them. I know how to keep them safe, I know too how to stand back. I looked then past them into the choppy blue.

Matt finally looked back at me. He stared for a minute as I stood unaided, coffee unspilled in the biting cold mist and wind. I smiled a half smile at my boy, and when he finally spoke, it was to say "Mom...I want to be like you."

And already, he was.

Be well,

Jenny