Birthday Run

June 3, 2019

Greetings from the gift,

These miles we shared.  I took you along because it was a day to celebrate, and that is best done with friends and loved ones.

The first mile we pour out on the ground, an offering to the day, a bit of gratitude just to be able to move and feel the world around us.  The second we ask what's possible today and see what our bodies say.  This morning, just a little after sunrise, it feels like our bodies say, ‘Let’s run forever.’

If this was your first time out, you probably thought this is some magic, and maybe it is.  The confluence of body and spirit and weather and rest and food, and threaded throughout all of it, this humming vibration.  I am a needle in the groove, the record spinning under me, playing the sound through me.

The next miles whirl by without comment, I am a little afraid to acknowledge how fast we are going.  A few rabbits come to the edge of the road and blink their admiration and then run along for a moment before zagging into the brush.

The sixth mile tips over, the world is more open here, shaped by what is grown instead of where people live.  I see a couple wading through a garden, picking asparagus.  We yell “Morning!” at each other, then I add: “Today is my birthday!”  The woman calls back: “Happy birthday!”  Also could have been: “Buy some asparagus!”

Two redwing blackbirds skate and swoop in the field next to me, daring me to chase them. 

I look up across the empty field, bordered in tall grass in the ditches and see a big speedboat racing across the field, which should have startled me but does not.  A moment later the car pulling it emerges from behind the grass and then disappears again and the boat flies over the waves of green.

My shorts are dark with sweat.  The sun has moved up to watch what we are doing and with it comes a hint of summer.  I have settled into a natural pace, no longer resisting, determined to trust my legs.  I am some other version of me, decades ago.  It makes me smile as I run.

We glide past a corn cemetery, jagged vestiges of another season.  I look to the north and point out a girl in a red shirt, running toward us, maybe half a mile away.  It is remarkable because somehow, wherever she started, oblivious of us, she has timed her run so we cross the same intersection at the same moment.  I nod and say good morning as she goes by.  She is redfaced and sweating, and gasps something back as we cross, inches from each other.

Effortless.  That’s the word that floats up at the ninth mile, so we name it that.  Out to our right are rows of green buds like bright guitar strings across the earth.  The hum is stronger.  I am tempted to open it up, see what will happen, but there is a long way to go.  I drift off for a mile, thinking, listening to the next song, and then we talk about this life.

We turn back east, and the twelfth mile introduces itself with a rumble.  Somewhere to the northwest there is a storm.  The meteorologist called for ‘scattered thunderstorms’ and I pictured God casting a handful of these over The Mitten, sewing wide swaths of angry purple among the peaceful blue.  Scattered.

We count steps crunching in the gravel, thack thack thack thack, a metronome setting a pace I tell all of you I am still a little surprised by.  I am deep in thought for a while, remembering other runs, other celebrations, then brought back by the dull deep thud of the storm beyond the trees.  It sounds like someone is dragging huge furniture over the wood floor above the clouds.

I have not broken stride in sixteen miles, barely slowing to grab the bottles of water I cached the night before.  I have not felt my breathing change since the second mile when I was told how the day would be.  I know what this is.

A dog confronts us, and we lurch to the edge of the road, feel the miles that have been chasing us pile up into us at the sudden deceleration.  Seconds tick by that seem like hours, and then the dog relents, and I feel the enormous weight of gravity as I reassert momentum against the pavement.  And then the hum is back, my arms swinging easy, legs devouring the blacktop, muscles working, breathing easily again.

The air cooled when the clouds slipped over the sun, dimming the morning.  I am back in my groove, legs are turning under me on their own volition, faster now than the first miles.  I sense a flash of light, then the angry grumble, feel it more than hear it.  I feel a mist come at me from my left, see the pavement go shiny with the wetness.  The first drops come, so large I can see the individual shapes as they go by the brim of my hat and crash into the road.  And then they are splashing onto my shoulder, sluicing my back, and we are immersed in the storm.

This is the eighteenth mile; it’s as if we waded into a concert in full swing, the timpani leading the orchestra, thumping so loud that it nearly covers the hiss of the rain.  It feels like someone is throwing enormous balls of water at us, each exploding on my bare skin and forming with its kin and running to my shoes.  It is not raining on me; I am in the rain.

The thunder and lightning are not some far off news report, it is crashing all around us.  This mile splashes by, I am running faster, maybe from fear, but it doesn’t feel like that, it feels like the most natural thing to do.  And then this happens:

White peas begin bouncing off the black pavement. Hail joins the rain, pelting the earth, plinking against me on its way down.  I start laughing, at first because it is such a surprise, and then just because it is so beautiful.  The beads of white are dancing on the world around me, celebrating with us.

For a mile the world becomes this mixture of oversized teardrops and these kernels of ice, a sheet of texture and movement, the hail ricocheting off the earth and then settling like cake sprinkles swept off some pastry chef’s table. 

And then it’s the twentieth mile. The rain has faded, the hail is done.  I turn onto my street, almost surprised that we are here already.  I am not far from a shower and breakfast, and a cornucopia of good wishes from around the world.  But in that last stretch I slow a bit, not wanting it to be over.

I know I was given a gift, this magic morning where I could run and not be weary.  I had to keep myself from questioning it, and finally to simply accept it as part of this wonderful day.  Nature came and put on a show, made me part of it, gave me experiences that changed me.  I celebrated my birthday with you.  I felt your presence in every step, felt you reaching from this place and that to say you were with me, happy that it was my birthday.

I know this possibility exists in every morning, waiting for us to notice.  It is a gift we are given each time we open our eyes and begin again.  I am so grateful I was awake to see it, and that you were with me.  Thanks to all of you who came along.

Hope this finds you soaking it in,

David

Copyright © 2019 David Smith