Seasons Turning

After days of heavy rains, the skies clear and today I was finally able to get back out on the open roads. With a heavy gait, I took my time on the out and back, waiting for the magic moment when my body stops protesting and begins to relax into the run. Since all my mileage is down, I can feel how even a very moderate run like this is challenging...it's hard to believe that a year ago I was consistently logging 35-45 mpw. But the beautiful clear, cool atmosphere gave me peace and time to let my mind think its thoughts. There's the one about work, the most annoying and niggling of all, the one which sets off anxiety, frustration and dread. There's the one about Mom, who in her beautiful decline, provokes equal measure adoration and impatience. The kids, the circle of friends/loved ones, the roll of the seasons over into spring.
Don't tell me the climate is not changing!! This has been the coldest and wildest winter since I've been in So Flo. And my prediction: hold onto your hats! I think we're in for more wild rides.

The thought about running, even while doing it, had me in a headlock. My magic moment was fleeting...somewhere coming back from my Anderson Park pit-stop...and a brief feeling of ease as I found the core strength to relax the rest of my body. I don't know what factors are at work; stress, sleep, nutritional...my bodily complaints keep rising, while my energy and ability to run comfortable decreases. In a woman's life, we have physiological benchmarks related to first menses, birth, menopause, etc. I remember the year I bound out of the latter feeling like a girl again! That was about age 50-51. I hope 54 is not the year my body put the kabosh on my running dreams...I am not yet ready to accept much lower expectations. Yet.

My mom...my teacher in all things acceptance. "I want to die" is peppered in between yiddish phrases, sailor-like swearing, questions about the dead and contorted musings over the condo crowd. I tell her I understand every single time; I do. I would feel the same, I know my Dad did. Old age is not for the cowardly I can see. And yet with all my 'preventative' work, my very good diet, my physical fitness, my mental stamina, I know like everyone I have my Achilles heel. Mom's is her fate of being locked inside a body and mind over which she has lost so much control. Mine is, well I guess it's safe to say it's the hypersensitivity to the press of the world which blasts through my filters and causes the rush of existential despair my family is famous for...and yet...

Spring brings amazing incomprehensible change. The very air seems charged with something outside the ordinary, as every living thing begins to perk itself up out of the gloom of winter's crazy hold. The dominant blue sky, the rush of breezes and winds off the ocean and everglades; Florida has the wealth of Nature to push past the arcane turn of year. Here it's everything lush, over the top and with any sun at all, warmth.

I am just holding on for dear life. While the inner and outer worlds keep bouncing and colliding around, I keep aim for that still center where everything evolves to quiet. I know, when the run is taking me, instead of me going for a run, that the feeling of relaxing deep into myself cannot be 'practiced', unless practice is the consistent path inside. Whatever the method, it feels like this place is the only way to sustain my faith in a process which has gone almost outside our hands. And yet....
it is our very desire towards our dreams, no matter how fantastic, which leads us closer and closer still.