Favorite Posts

Super Bowl Blues

2009-05-09T21:34:00.000-07:00

I detest football. In all fairness I never gave it a fair chance. When someone has attempted to explain the logistics of it, after the first mention of yards and the thought that I’d have to keep track of it, I tune out. It remains to me a bunch of grown men chasing each other trying to take a ball off each other’s hands. Heck, I watched my kids do that for years. And then, there is the throwing each other on the ground and piling on top of the one already down….that sounds like a lesson of life.

I’ve never watched a Super Bowl in my life and the closest I came to it was years ago when I was invited for some unknown reason to somebody’s house to watch it. I sat in the living room watching people scream and jump up from their seats applauding at the TV while I bored myself to death.

Out of desperation and hoping to pass the time, I started writing to my friend. In the writing that lasted two hours, I told her how much her friendship meant to me, how much I had changed for the better since I knew her and I also stated my confidence and sincere desire for us to grow old as what we were, best friends. Our children would grow together, our spouses would be friends…a fairy tale.

I am glad I wrote those feelings back then for shortly after I friendship ended. I am not sure why. Strong relationships sometimes end for the most stupid reasons or for no reason at all. There were some contributing factors, no doubt. I got married and she also became involved in a relationship that made it clear from the start there was no room for me.

I tried to stay connected, to bring back or at least remind her of what we had liked in each other hoping that after a break we could resume but our times together had lost the spark of the old days. My friend, the one I could spend 15 minutes or a whole day with, was no longer.

Gradually, we missed important events in each other’s lives and our last meetings and conversations were filled with uncomfortable pauses where before there had been so many laughs.Eventually, I stopped calling. And slowly her absence became part of my life like her presence once had been. Our season had ended.

I always knew that if she ever called, it would never be too late. But I also knew that she would never call.

I might have glorified our friendship over the years as we tend to do in the distance. But I’d rather.

A relationship that meant so much, gave me so much, should only stay in our minds as something good if at all.

I have been blessed with many other good friends since then but occasionally I remember her, my best friend. And I wonder if she still credits me with any of the good she once did.An occasional invite to a Super Bowl reminds me of that letter. And sometimes I wonder if she remembers it too.

Bette Midler More CMT Music More CMT Music Videos

Beyond Repair

2009-05-07T16:34:00.000-07:00

How many times are you going to fix that bracelet before you realize it can’t be fixed anymore? My friend said as I held the two pieces in my hand that once formed my bracelet.

I had fixed it already twice but it had broken again and in spite of the repairs it had not been the same.

As I looked at it I tried to remember what made me want it back so badly. There were many memories attached to it. It had been with me for so long that I felt it my duty to prolong its stay with me. When it was new I had loved it, it had looked great. But I remembered too how it had been lately. Its sides were no longer smooth and it had gotten on every fabric ruining many dresses. It had lost form, style. It did not look the same.“You need to stop trying to fix what can not be repaired” she insisted.

I knew what she meant. It was not only the bracelet. How many relationships I had tried to fix? my own, others. I had tried to repair marriages, other people’s friendships that were not mine. Work situations where I had tried to fix something and by doing it I had put power in the hands of the offender.

How many times I had gone to the same race, year after year, running a substandard race where the race director had no desire to improve but I kept supporting it, enabling it.

What laid underneath this urge to fix, to never accept the end? What made me want to repair and settle for a bracelet that no longer was what it once was to me? It is a personality trait, I guess.In our effort to fix everything, we remain attached to a memory, suspended in a state of mourning over what was gone.

Let the damn bracelet go.

There is something to be said for perseverance, for not giving up. But some things have a life span, the bracelet lived its time.

I looked at my hand still holding the pieces. I smiled at it. I knew it would not be repaired again. I put it away and still smiling, I tied my sneakers and went for a run. After it, I might just go looking for a new one.Some things must be put to rest.

Treasure the memories, live the present.

Losing Oneself

2009-05-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

To live is so startling it leaves no time for anything else. – Emily Dickinson

I followed and looked for something that no longer belonged to me forgetting to live in its pursuit.

What had been mine once had been an important part of my life and it had deserved the force with which I fought to bring it back, but it was gone and although I was not ready to accept its defeat without a fight, a part of me knew that its short lived existence in my life had brought me happiness, but it was also time to realize it had ended and it had ended because there was no longer a reason for it to stay.

But the rest of my being fought with all the passion that was in me to regain and reconquer what I had thought would never leave. And it had…it had left me. My world did not have what I so much loved. My world was empty, I was empty.

I tried to fill my emptiness by holding on to a past that no longer existed and in doing so I prevented a future from materializing. I refused to create a new memory because my memories were taken. And so was my life, I had forgotten how to live.

Loving intensely should not take over one’s life. We can only give the best of who we are when we remain who we are, shaped and enhanced by those around us but not reduced by their presence and not displaced by their absence.

Passionately fighting for what I loved is not something I regret and if I had to live my life again, I would love just as intensely and I would work as hard to retain what I loved but I would hope that I’d accept loss without losing sight of who I am as I did the first time around.

Accepting loss takes dignity and reclaiming of self respect, something I had also forgotten in my pursuit. But when a loss becomes real, when there is no more to hope for, only in acceptance there can be freedom.

The memories don't have to die. They will always live even in the freedom that we choose. It is them that make the past worth it, and the future enticing.

Days Like These

2009-05-02T20:25:00.000-07:00

On weekends, I like to start my run early so I can enjoy as many hours of the day as I can. Odd, but weekends and vacation is when I wake up the earliest.

I love to run. Running gives me peace, it offers me a place to sooth my soul. But most runs are uneventful, done to keep my fitness level or for training purposes. Today was a training run and it was also a great run.I went for an 8 mile run early enough to have the roads to myself while the city slept. Late enough to have sunshine.

When I run alone I let my mind wander. If I have my IPod, I get into the feelings that the lyrics of my music evoke in me. I look at the ground or directly in front of me. I seldom stop to “smell the flowers” (too early for flowers anyway); today I did. I noticed the birds flying low to the ground.I noticed a small waterfall; I looked behind and noticed a pond I had never seen. The sound of the water hitting the rocks was clearly audible in the silence of the road.

There was still snow pushed to the curb of the road blackened by sand and dirt, the roads were framed by the streams formed by the melting snow reminding me that everything goes back eventually to its normal state; the coldest days, the snow covered roads, it all reclaims its stability.

In the last two miles of the run, the neighborhood was awakening. Kids in their sweats and pajamas were beginning to play in their front yards. Dogs were being walked.My legs were getting tired; my pace had been faster than I needed it to be. Somehow, the tranquility of this road infused energy in my body, and peace in my soul.

Today was a great run.

The Final Days of a Runner

2009-05-02T20:21:00.000-07:00

We ran together many years. I never knew if he was indeed faster than I. What I knew is that he couldn’t just run by my side. He always had to pull ahead of me when I caught up to him; some men tend to do that when running with a female. He certainly did.

There were days when I wanted to run alone but he always found out and tagged along or he would make me feel bad for leaving him.After a while, I noticed he wasn’t that interested anymore in running with me. He took walk breaks and clearly wasn’t into it as much. I understood and stopped asking him. He didn’t seem to mind.

I did wonder if I had done something to upset him but I don’t think so. He did not seem upset just not so much into me, something had changed between us, I thought….I had been the love of his life since he met me, and he had been in my bedroom every night since that first time. I adored him too but in a different way…you see, he is Porkchop, my dog.

Except for a brief period of time when he was infatuated with another female – a friend of mine who played with him a little, he has followed me and slept by the side of my bed every night since he came to live with us 13 years ago. But lately, it is difficult for him to make it to my bedroom.

His back legs don’t support him anymore and he falls often. He looks at me with a sad look in his face; maybe he wants to tell me that he misses running with me too. We sit together, he and I, and spend a few minutes each night. I want him to know how much I love him before it’s too late. And I hope he can let me know when it is too much for him to take.

My Porkchop has been the only true canine love of my life and I will hold on to him as long as I can, even if to pay his vet bills, I’ll have to work like a dog… He deserves no less.

Sadness

2009-02-16T18:19:00.000-08:00

Sometimes there is sadness, a quiet, long, subdued kind of sadness.

It is a different emotion than the devastating achie feeling of despair. It is a feeling that simply sits there watching the hours go by without a lingering hope of something taking it away.

That sadness does not have a drive, no urgency to it, it is drenched in conformity and resignation like hitting a wall and reaching a dead end, no way out, no place to move forward.

There are no tears in that kind of sadness, no comfort in memories. There is no anger, there are no regrets. There is emptiness that mixes with the hours.

There is sadness, there is emptiness.

Aging Gracefully

2008-12-22T19:34:00.000-08:00

I am not as young as I used to be; I know that. I doesn’t bother me either that I don’t look the way I used to when I was 17…But it seems that orthopedic doctors have nothing better to say than remind one of our aging process.

The Sports Medicine physician I am seeing tells me as if discovering the cause of my ailments“You can’t expect to beat up your body at your age and not have any problems…”And to add insult to injury he adds:

“You should try walking; people go to the mall in the mornings and walk…” I should remind him that I don’t’ have my seniors card yet but I bite my tongue instead. His reimbursement would be lower if Medicare was paying my bill. I don’t think he would like that.

The man has no mercy, “I treat athletes all the time. But when it comes to people like you and me, we have to take it easy”….wait a minute now “you and me????” this man is bald, wrinkled and chubby…you and me? He must be at least….a year or two older than I am.

Then, I naively ask my daughter about Facebook. I am getting a lot of invitations from people to be added to their Facebook, what do I do with that? I ask. Without even pausing to think she replies with a question“Old people have Facebook???”

So I still don’t know what to do with Facebook…Nothing I can do about this inevitable aging process, but it beats the alternative and that is good enough for me.

As for my doctor, he recommended that I cross train (in the mall) a few days a week and run only a couple of times a week, that should eliminate my injuries…He might be right but for now, I think I’ll log on Marathonguide.com and find a marathon. I miss training and those 50 mile weeks, might be just what I need…

That is something I couldn’t do at 17…

What I want my children to know

2008-12-16T17:26:00.000-08:00

I am intrigued and amazed by the necessity to express and the difficulty to convey the reason why people run. I, for one, am faced with that dilemma every Sunday morning when my children with sleep heavy in their eyes ask “Mama, why do you have to run?” I want to tell them that I do not have to, I want to but I know that answer will only prompt another question, why do I want to run? Because…I don’t know, maybe because running is the pillar of my resilience, that what started as a way to lose weight, is now a way of life.

It is more than a physical activity. It is a feeling I am delighted by, obsessed with, driven by. Running nourishes my soul and soothes my mind. I would like to tell them that until they do it, they won’t understand that catharsis that overcomes a runner after a hard run when, with muscles aching and sweat pouring down, all at that instant is right with the world.

I would like to, seeking their approval, explain that the long runs they hate so much, have cemented some very memorable relationships in my life, and even those run in solitude, have dissipated my fears and calmed my anger; running is an extension of my emotions.

Maybe one day they will understand that this world they are getting to know is a stage and that in running there are no scripts and I play no roles – I, for once, am who I am.

That when I run and my eyes get lost in that divine painting of the horizon, I do not become more nor less than, I become one with.

Tears

2008-12-16T17:21:00.000-08:00

I have cried many kinds of tears, I am sure there are many more I will cry.

I used to think that I never cried…that has changed dramatically over the past decade, maybe age has made me more expressive, maybe life has made more human.I am not embarrassed to cry anymore. Tears are an expression of feelings I don’t know how to express in any other way. When words fail to express more, when the emotion inside needs to come out, tears yield the way.

I have cried in search of a catharsis, to reach a point where I am “cried out” so it does not hurt anymore. I have cried looking for a way to end the pain.I have cried out of joy. The last time was when my son came home for the first time since he left for college. I sat in his room and watched him sleep. I cried watching him. I don’t know why, I cried.

There are those tears felt in panic, when you lose your child in the mall and the minutes seem hours. There is that fear, that feeling of running to find them and not knowing where to go.

There are those tears that come out exhaustion, overwhelmed. When it all seems to be too much to handle. When we don’t know if we can go on any longer.

There are those tears that come unexpectedly, maybe triggered by a song, a place or nothing.

Some tears come out of nothing. They usually come as I am driving, when it is only me and the road, me and God. I don’t know why I cry and it doesn’t matter. I need to cry then and I let it be.

Sometimes I do that. I let the tears be.

2008-12-06T19:45:00.000-08:00

9.11

During our evening walk, I heard my son’s voice recount his feelings of 09/11. It was clear that he was trying to sound casual. Matter of factly, he stated that he had not experienced the same feelings everyone else had and that day had given him an outlet to escape his own mind.

I knew exactly what he meant. 2001 had been a difficult year. That day, on September 11, 2001, I sat on my daughter’s bed in Westchester Hospital watching the news. A baseball cap over my head contained the hair that was falling out on my shoulders as the first chemo dose received three weeks earlier destroyed the fast growing cells.

My daughter lied on her side with her head bandaged. Her badly bitten ear almost completely chewed up by a dog, drained blood on towels placed by her side. Her left leg severed with deep cuts from the dog’s teeth was immobilized in an effort to save it. IV’s and transfusions hooked up to her arms.Two weeks earlier, my job had entered rehabilitation and laid me off. I now had no job, I was on chemotherapy treatment and my daughter had been savagely attacked. How much more could we take?

Silently, I watched the TV as the towers fell one by one but my heart was numb, I could not feel any more pain. Later that day, I went for my run and then to the Chapel like I had done since she was in the hospital; I would wait for people to take turns voicing specific blessings and I’d ask God to bless my child.

But this day was different. One by one, every one present asked God for peace, for forgiveness, for strength and all prayed for the falling heroes of that terrible tragedy. And for the first time I realized that I was not feeling what everyone was feeling…The towers, the planes, were not real to me; my daughter, my life were my reality. And on 09 11 I could only think of my daughter and my hair falling out.

Years have gone by now. My daughter survived the dog attack and the scars left behind have faded somewhat. My hair grew back in and gratefully life went on. But every 09/11 anniversary I feel ashamed for my heart not grieving this horrific tragedy with the world.I was living my own tragedy and so was my son and there was no room for more.

In Autumn Days...

2008-10-22T12:50:00.000-07:00

Crisp days of autumn have a sense of serenity to them. The days are sunny, dry, leaves cover the ground, blueberries are gone. A light sweater shields us from the light breeze. There seems to be no hurry in those days.

I sit pausing after a long day of chores interrupted by my own unplanned schedule. In that serenity that floats in the air, there are memories that dance around. Memories are times froze in a part between brain and heart. Moments that no longer are. Good memories are good to remember in autumn days.

I like good memories; the ones that make me smile. Sometimes they have a name and a face and I reach for the phone but it’s been so long, I put the phone down. I remain in the memory that does not seem a reality any longer.

I let those memories exist until something takes me out of that moment and then they safeguard themselves again in that place where they belong.They’ll come out again at another time. More infrequently as time goes on. But they will always be just as sweet.

Waking Up with a Broken Heart

2008-09-11T17:04:00.001-07:00

It is probably the hardest part.

Waking up from a bad dream is a happy awakening. Regardless of how bad the reality is, it is better than the dream was. But waking up to face a reality we wish had been a nightmare and realizing we are indisputably living it, is a tough awakening.

I woke up the morning after learning of my dreadful diagnosis to the nightmare of my reality. I slowly opened my eyes and looked at the crucifix on the wall and just as slowly the events unfolded. As I woke I remembered seeing my mother, after seeing the specialist, at the top of the stairs of her house. I remembered her face, waiting in anticipation for my news. I remembered her expression changing from hope to desperation as I climbed the stairs and did not smile and did not answer her question. I remembered her hugging me and crying desperately, anguishly.

I remembered her learning the news:

Her child, her healthy child had cancer.

I remembered all of that as I woke up.I remembered the phone ringing incessantly. I remembered my husband Rene answering and walking away to talk or telling callers to call later. I remembered Rene crying as we entered the oncologist office. I remembered that as I woke up.

I don't remember falling asleep.I had closed my eyes again as I woke up and whispered “God, let this be a dream”. But it wasn’t.

I remember Rene walking in the bedroom, his eyes red and swollen to tell me breakfast was ready and “everything will be okay because I prayed and offered God half of the life I have left to save you”

I remember waking up that morning and praying I didn’t have to.

There are mornings like that in everyone’s life. There are also the mornings waking up after a break up. Seeing the light through the window’s blinds bringing in a new day and realizing the person we love is gone.

Realizing that what took them away actually happened and the phone won’t ring, their presence is gone. It was not a dream, we are living the nightmare.

I can remember waking up to those mornings too. Getting out of bed and crying until I fell to my knees realizing the person I loved was gone. I remember waking up that morning when breathing was so hard I wish I didn’t have to.

I remember showering and letting the water mix in with the tears. Feeling I couldn’t breath. Getting in the car and driving through tears to places that would give me a chance to find that person…but mostly I remember waking up and knowing it was over.

Waking up with a broken heart is hard to do.

The process of getting there is the best part – Lance Armstrong

It is hard to get there...

Weakening the desire

2008-09-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

There is a reason why I pushed myself to go back to running after my surgery besides controlling my weight. Running has been my passion; it has been something good in my life, something I want to keep.When we starve a passion, it weakens.

It was easy in the first weeks post surgery to concentrate on how bad it felt to run. And I did, sometimes feeling sorry for myself fits the mood. It was easy during those days to remember the bad, the pain of the last or all 26 miles of a marathon, to remember the bad long runs and the bad short races. It was easy to forget the benefits that passion has given me.

It was easy to forget how much good this passion has added to my life, how it has changed my body, how it has helped my mind. It was easy to forget when it helped me in my difficult days.
Yes, in those bad moments it is so easy to forget the good.

I had to insist, I had to keep at it and I had to allow myself to remember the good, and to allow myself to feel the good again. Sometimes, that is all it takes.

Any feeling, any desire, any passion, no matter how strong is weaken when starved. Running will not be one.

How Good Is That?

2008-08-21T17:39:00.000-07:00

There comes a time when we move on after having held on for way too long. When the change in attitude comes, when our life resumes a normal course, when we reach the other side of the mountain, we hear the comments “it’s good that you are over him or her”. But how good is it?

All relationships make a difference in our lives; all leave something behind. They come for a reason, a season or a life time. But it is those that get to the very bottom of your soul, the ones that come to your life only once and become part of your life. They seldom stay a life time. We only wish they did.

And why don’t they? Why throw away what we were so lucky to find once? It is seldom that people get to experience relationships that are fulfilling. Why not save it? Maybe they didn’t love as strongly or maybe they were afraid to love - stupid reason to leave…I just don’t buy that one.Love thrives, there is magic in love.

And when we truly love we should never give up. But we do.

If we exhausted all resources to save a relationship, I can’t help but believe that we would have never wanted to consider getting over it.And why is it that it couldn’t be repaired? If two people work towards the same objective, the end result has to be good. But seldom two work together. It is usually one person trying, one person rejecting.W

hen all is said and done, when our stubbornness wins, when we made our point and walked away from a unique relationship, one that will never be again, how good is that?

Suddenly

2008-08-06T19:58:00.000-07:00

The diapers were coming along fine. This one needed a change and I was tired, sort of wishing for the time it would go away.

My friend called from California. After our conversation I shared that I was about to change a diaper….again. Her reply was “enjoy it, it won’t last long”. How could I enjoy it, I thought? I loved my son and I was a happy mother but the diapers…if there was a better way; there was also the sleep I was being robbed off at night, the sudden crying that made me rush to the room. If only he could get older faster….

Then one day it was time to put him on the bus, he wore a button down shirt and carried a book bag bigger than he was. He brought home his first drawing that I placed in an album hoping to save all his drawings. Soon I had to attend his first field day and watched him jump over hurdles.And then he was learning to read but suddenly he was no longer in kinder and one day he had won the first National Geography contest and his name was on the first plaque placed in the school.

And just as suddenly, he stopped having birthday parties, he was too old for them…One day I noticed his voiced had changed and my boy was shaving. And then, I was the passenger and he the driver.

Where did the years go?

He was opinionated just like his mother but suddenly I found that he knew more than I did. That it was difficult to win an argument.

That he had become his own person as has my daughter. And I wonder how much of me is in them and how much of me I hope is not…

But what I do want my children to know is that life is not always easy, but it’s worth living.That sometimes and many times they will have to fight for what they love. And many times they will lose.

That life is full of mistakes; but that without them we would never grow.

That the worth of a person is not measured in the mistakes they make but in their effort to correct them.

That those who will place more weight on their mistakes and overlook their kindness, and their loyalty, are not worth having in their lives.

That there will be times when someone will show up at a ceremony to watch them receive an award or do something important, and they should remember that gesture and forget an argument.

That no matter how much they want something, they should never step on somebody else to achieve it.

That they should take pride in what they do. And they should always keep their dignity.

That it is the little things, ice cream in the rain, a picnic in the park, that will give meaning to their lives.

That when they have their own children, they will begin to wish for time to enjoy life with them just as I do today.

2008-08-06T19:51:00.000-07:00

Redemption

Is there really such thing as redemption? In running, I believe there is. One can run a streak of bad races and then redeem oneself with a good performance. But is there redemption in any other aspects of life?

Redemption is the concept referring to forgiveness or absolution for past sins. We often claim to forgive but will seldom forget. We like to carry that baggage with us of past events we can conveniently produce at just the right times and prove that no matter what it is now, we know what it was then…there is no redemption.

I love the forgiveness of running. It lets me go and it takes me back, it does not question my return. It does not grill me with blame. It wastes no time, it accepts me. It lets me be, at my pace, when I’m ready.It is a snapshot of the moment and it wastes no time in the remembrance of past times.

No one comes to me after crossing the finish line in a marathon (or any other distance) and tells me “you did well today but you did really poorly before”. In running, “it” is what it is. My efforts (or lack of) show in my performance and they are appreciated for what they are.

When it comes to redemption, the redeeming needs only come from within. It is there where it is to be appreciated. As I was told by a friend “create the space and energy for something good to happen”…

I kneel before myself and I repent to my heart. After all, I may be the only fair judge of my redemption.

2008-08-06T19:43:00.000-07:00

An Occasional Runner

He claims no interest in running but he runs and he runs well, infrequently well. He races occasionally, and if you have the time, he will give you a dissertation in painful detail of all the aches, pains, ailments, hair loss, the meal he ate three months ago and everything that could have affected his performance today. He will argue that he could have beaten a number of competitors had it not been for the issues he faced today.

He remembers every course he has ever run. He notices to the last detail everyone around, in front and even behind him and he will debate that his time was better than what the rest of us remember or what the clock above his head showed.

When the challenges of life have threatened to take the best of him, he has turned running into his only therapy, and while whispering a silent prayer, he has found in it the courage to go on. Thank God for those challenges, they seem to be the only kind of speed work he ever gets.

When I take a break from the rushes of my everyday life, I realize how much I have forgotten about this man, the same things that made me notice him years ago in New York City; the childlike candor with which he listens to a joke, the effervescence with which he talks to his children, the passion with which he defends what he loves and the gentle smile with which he accepts his mistakes. And while I remember these qualities, I’ll listen once again to the reasons why he didn’t run well today…

2008-08-06T19:41:00.000-07:00

The Next Time

It was the second wake in two weeks that I had to attend; like the first one, this person had succumbed to exactly the same illness as the one before, the difference was that this wake was for Carol McManus, a member of the running community and a respectable race director - someone I knew personally.

George, her husband, smiled at me and said "she loved your race". I shook his hand while I mumbled some condolences that sounded more like an apology for not having been present in her final days. He offered that Carol would not have recognized me anyway in her last days. Yet, that justification did not make me feel better.I had not been present the last week or the week before, I had not been present at all.

Almost everyday in the last two weeks before her passing I thought about e-mailing her; the last time I had corresponded with her, she had told me that her next goal was to make it to spring and that she prayed for me every night. I was going to send her a card but never looked for the address and I postponed calling her, what would I have said? Illness has a devastating way of not only eating your health away but also of submerging you in a lonely place - illness is a state of loneliness. I prayed that others had found the time, had written the e-mails, had mitigated her isolation in the last days.

While I drove home immersed in my thoughts, I remembered my friend Marc whose call I had not returned until the day when the phone call awoke me, he had suddenly passed away. I cried at the funeral for the good friend I had lost but also I cried for my own ineptitude, for my lack of time, for my neglect. I told his wife and my friend how much I missed him, but I would never be able to tell Marc how sorry I was.

How many times will life shake me and I'll miss its calling…will I do it right one day, will I not wait until I can't wait no more…Maybe wishing Carol well in the distance and praying for her every now and then was enough, but in my heart I know I could have done better…I should have done better….maybe, maybe I'll do it right next time.