Habit foaming

Some things never really get old.

A box arrives every three months like clockwork. Every three hundred miles to be exact.

A new pair of running kicks.

It's not a mystery gift. I have no subscription to a running-shoe-of-the-month club (if there is such a thing). No, it's a carefully plotted purchase that has been months in the making. In fact, just a few days after the last pair arrived I've scrolled through hundreds of pages of online catalogs looking for exactly the same pair in a color I've never heard of, that matches no other piece of clothing I own.

Mine are meant to be bright and light and seen from outer space. They also must be so cushiony that every adjective that described them had been derived from the mental image of clouds.

As if striding atop the aerosol of tiny water droplets where saturated air has met its dew point would be even remotely comfortable let alone effortless.

I'd like to tell you I'd gone from here to Boston and back, but the truth is I've just circled the neighborhood a few hundred times.

It's a strangely slow process, buying shoes. I even bide my time in the hopes of reaching the mythical 400 miles. I see how long I can hold out. People who know about such things say I should be able to squeak out at least one more trip to Cambridge (the New York one) and back, but I never get that far.

I don't understand it exactly. They don't look worn-in let alone worn-out.

The quarter-year-old shoes haven't lost even a hint of their vibrant hue. There's a little fraying around the mystery lace hole that is supposed to lock your foot in place, but only four people on Earth have ever used it. And every single one of those people complained about the speed at which the fraying accelerated.

Yet somehow I feel their decrepitude in my bones. A creak here, a groan there. Each step I take after the magic number 300 threatens to multiply fatigue by superstition. Truth is, even if I didn't know down to the millimeter how far my shoes have traveled, I'd know by the knee pain.

I'm giddy when the box arrives. I am intoxicated by the prospect of fresh foam and the new ride smell that will greet me the second I open the lid and shift the paper protector. The chemical components of clouds.

I can't fathom how I've let color or style argue in the backseat as I make comfort ride upfront. 

As I transport them to their new home - a little out-of-the-way nook of the house with a built-in ledge for sitting - I anticipate the ease and speed that will undoubtedly accompany me on my next run. The occasion of which will be now, since that is how runners celebrate new shoes.

And quite honestly, in those first few moments; after I start my watch and wave to the neighbors (who have somehow noticed my feet's change in color and elevation) I feel like I am flying. 

As if I were five again.

Run your race

I was worried about parking. The lot already looked full and cars were still streaming in as I slowly steered my way around dots of colorfully dressed people; some of them in costume - a person wearing a furry green bear suit stood a few yards away from someone in a pink tulle tutu.

The second I opened the car door and felt the western wind slicing at my outstretched arm, I wondered why I had agreed to this. I have been running each and every day since late last May in all kinds of weather. The novelty hadn't worn off.

I've felt the crunch of ice under my shoes. I've warily watched trees dance while flashes of lightning crack open the sky. I have been drenched with rain and covered in snow.

It has become the hour, or half-hour, or just ten minutes, of each and every day that I can count as normal.

I've discovered this past year that I don't really dwell in the trappings of my old life. It may seem strange, but I feel more attached to the new paths that necessity has opened. I don't think about returns being triumphant.

And yet, somehow, a five-mile road race with 600 anxious runners in the middle (or the we-honestly-have-no-idea-what-segment) of a pandemic, was more than a novelty. It was a brief chasing of normality.

My double-masked friend was beside me in the car, and though we hadn't gotten out yet, I knew no amount of convincing would get her to skip this exercise. Just as I knew I would pin on the racing bib and declare the digits my registration had generated to be my "lucky" number.

Eventually we would part ways. Each of us running our own race, set by any number of reasons and variables that neither of us can give a full accounting.

I would select a secret rival - someone who might look younger, but who I believed I could overtake at the finish line in one last burst of unnecessary speed.

We all tell ourselves we don't need to beat someone by a fraction of a second here at the back of the pack, but we do it anyway.

It's easy to forget the feelings of others whenever we compete against ourselves.

Maybe it's the anticipation of an announcer's voice exhaling out names into a microphone, or the muscle memory of a primary school desire not to be last to cross that finish. Maybe it's just the urge to be done.

Whatever it is, I'm always careful to weigh my stamina against the distance left to go before I dig in.

I often miscalculate. 

That last tenth of a mile seems longer than metrically possible. I can see the finish line, but the distance between me and it doesn't appear to diminish.

I will have to choose between pulling back and letting my rival have the three-second edge or whether I will need to stray from the chute in the aftermath of same-time glory and find an out-of-the-way place to hurl.

No matter how I choose to end this race, I know I will be glad I ran it.

I can't believe I've missed this at all. And yet, I have.

Rhyme Time

Good morning!

It's 7 a.m.

Or is it 8 a.m.?

Wait a moment while I consult the magic rhyme I've recited in my head
since the custom of keeping track of time started to matter to me.

"Spring forward ... Fall back."

I'm sure I have that correct. Spring back .... Fall forward sounds
like what happens at frat parties or comedy shows. Though I can admit,
my sense of time being of importance only began to mature between
adolescence (when I lettered in sleeping past noon) and undergrad
(when bar hopping was my preferred sport) and an 8 a.m. survey class
might be the only drawback.

But that was then and this is now: A few decades later when sleep is a
thing that happens after you sit down but before you are determined to
turn in. And when time doesn’t seem to have a clear direction. Some
might even feel its suspension.

For me, this time is also and marked by having the annual argument in
an attempt to convince the resident husband that an hour of sleep will
disappear into the wee hours of the morning, not to be seen again
until Fall.

It also means engaging in the semi-annual argument about leaving off
the extra S in Daylight Saving or whether we are returning to the
Standard Time. We could steer all usage to a simple directive: "It's
Time To Change Your Clock," and be done with it.

However, if we did that, would there be any room for the semi-annual
discussions of leaving the time as it is year-round?  Or would we end
forever all argument about whether this practice came about as an
ancient farming technique, or an energy-saving construct, or a simple
ruse to allow executives more time on the links after a long day at
the office?

Would we be able to wrap our heads around how time refuses to stand
still? Would you miss that crazy clock illustration, with its wings
and its spinning, confused face?

But the answer is yes ... even with this children's illustrated
explanation, we will argue forward can't mean "losing" and going back
has the opposite meaning of gaining - for perhaps the 18th in the
history of our history together.

And I will resort to scouring the house for an antiquated clock I can
manipulate to show that moving the hands of a clock forward
(especially when you've just turned 21) loses you a solid hour of
imbibing between midnight and four a.m.

"At midnight you go directly to 1 a.m. in Boston they'd start talking
about Last Call.

Of course, you’d forget to set your alarm clock. You’d miss a class in
the morning. Or you’d get to the car and have an existential crisis.
Am I late?

Eventually, even this argument will be one we have only for Old Time’s sake.

Eventually, it will reset as NatureTM intended ... which in modern
times means the Apple product that sleeps next to your bed, and which
(we can admit) is the first thing we greet in the morning upon
awakening, will have already made the transition for you.

Safety third

 The wind seemed to reach over the fence in our backyard to squeeze the hand of a tree limb. It held on like a practical joker with a buzzer concealed in its palm. The shrubbery in its midst appeared to be laughing at the gale-force grip until the wind-weakened branch gave way.

The limb tumbled and clattered against the house, scraping the clapboard until it came to an uneasy rest on the back porch where it blocked the door.

The noise had frightened the dog and dissuaded her from doing a lick of her morning business.

I can't say that I blame her. I didn't want to venture out, either. Especially not after the wind's eerie howls had kept me up through the night.

It puzzled me some that this canine of mine wasn't similarly deprived of her puppy dreams. But not enough to add three layers to my running attire and leave the house. Instead, I took some cues from her refusals to navigate around the fallen tree parts and switch my outdoor run to an indoor one.

The treadmill is not my best friend.

It "tread-spreads" in the limited space of my office, which shrinks to fit an edge of our guest room. Which, now that I think about it, are all just imaginary components of life right now as we know it.

But I digress.

This loud, heavy, second-hand treadmill has saved my psyche and my current 283-day running streak exactly seven times, but it has always frightened me.

The fact that the green "UP" arrow that allows for incremental acceleration is a thumb press away from "10" (unofficially known as the speed of 10-thousand-miles-per-hour-immediately) is a design flaw that on more than one occasion has nearly launched me into the proverbial “next week.”

For this reason -- and a single accident that didn't kill him -- I have forbidden my son from using the contraption at all. My daughter, however, continues to use the device for Home School Gym Classes as she has taken fewer risks and more courses at the School of MOther PROtection (SMOTHER PRO for short).

But even she has found less use for the stationary conveyor, which is why, upon finding its deck lowered on this most blustery of days, I didn't follow any of my own safety precautions.

I just hopped on and set the pace at a leisurely Four. Four and a half. OK, five.

I wasn't even playing with the buttons when I felt a strange pull on my right sneaker and then the immediate sense of finally (and frighteningly) being at my first rodeo.

Only I was the calf; lassoed by the strap of an unzipped gym bag that had been living, evidently, on the front bumper of the machine. The thing NOT strapped to me was the emergency clip.

It's a good thing my reflexes are still capable of acting independently of my mind. I managed to shift my weight into my arms and lift my feet off the webbing, shaking my foot free of the bag and all the items from it that had tumbled onto the belt and were now jettisoning against the wall behind me. A comedy of errors.

But unlike this tree falling on my back porch, no one was the wiser. I hadn't screamed or fallen. Nothing went thud. And because I put safety third, I didn't have to start over.