Anniversaries

I’ve told this story before. When I was a teenager the “running craze” was huge. One day my mother announced she was going to take up jogging. She and a friend met at the cinder track at the elementary school around 8am a few days a week. I think my mother wore deck shoes, jeans and a t-shirt. You didn’t need a lot of fancy clothing to take up jogging in the 70s. This lasted for a few months and then it petered out or maybe school started and they couldn’t use the track. I don’t remember.

One night the following January my mother stopped at my bedroom door and asked if I’d run with her in the morning. I was a high school senior and could best be described as “uncooperative” and “not a morning person”. I was unenthusiastic, but she was insistent. It was just for company. She’d wake me, make sure I got out of bed and go with me. I wouldn’t have to do anything. I reluctantly agreed and she woke me early the next morning - a very cold and snowy February 1st. It was DARK.

I could hear the wind howling. Getting up was the last thing I wanted to do, but I got up and we did some “warm up” exercises she’d seen on the Today Show. I went out the door dressed in my older brother’s ancient hand knit sweater with the reindeer on it (hand knit by mom), some sweat pants, a hat and mittens. I think I wore my Converse sneakers. I know I didn’t have “running shoes” until later in the year when I got a pair of coveted New Balance with money from my grandfather.

After a few weeks we established a pattern. We’d jog to “the tree”, an old willow about a half-mile from our house, then I would continue on to the gas plant another half mile or so up the road. Mom would walk for a bit. We’d both turn around and meet back somewhere near the tree and jog home together. This continued five days a week until fall when I left for college in Ohio.

One day my mom called me in Ohio to tell me she hadn’t had a cigarette in two months. Think about it, she’d taken up jogging without giving up smoking. The 70s were confusing. In the winter I transferred to a college back home and we continued our morning routine, only now it was different. Somewhere along the line I had become a runner and my mother had become a walker.

Forty years later, I’m still a runner and she’s still a walker. It took me years to realize that she started jogging only two days after her 40th birthday. She quit smoking when her eldest daughter left for college. Her response to these milestones in her life was positive and affirming although I’m sure she struggled with them.

Even at eighty my mother is still always moving forward. I used to say the best gift she ever gave me was the gift of running; it’s helped me through a lot of difficult times and I enjoy it every time I go. But, there was another gift in there, the gift of meeting challenges and going forward whether you’re walking or you’re running.