Running Home by Katie Arnold

Author:Katie Arnold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2019-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

One of the ideas of Buddhism is that between the polarities in your life, there is an unseen third thing, a way to sidestep the suffering and contention. Natalie had mentioned this in passing on our hikes, but I always felt like I was listening to her with cotton stuffed into my ears. I’d hear her words, but I couldn’t make sense of them. She cheerfully admitted that, most of the time, she couldn’t, either. “If I had sixty more years, I still would hardly know anything,” she sometimes said.

I’ve always been torn: between my two fathers, two mothers, two homes, New Jersey and Virginia, Northeast and Southwest, water and desert, suffering and joy. I could live or die. I could be a good mother or a good writer. Between the worry and the love, the heartbreak that my babies will someday grow up and leave me and the fear that they will never sleep through the night, my insatiable urge to go and my longing to stay, there’s a middle way, a third thing building. I just don’t know what it is.

It’s the same with children. Sometimes Steve and I arrive at a moment when it seems that maybe we’re finally getting a grip on parenting. But no sooner do we congratulate each other than the girls stop napping and redouble their addiction to their pacifiers. I’ve read that in very young children, regression is a sign that they may be on the brink of a major developmental change, like learning to walk or talk. The brain is so busy conserving bandwidth for the big leap that other systems go haywire.

Maybe the swirling turmoil of the past year has served a purpose after all. It has led me here, to the harebrained notion to run thirty-one miles. The resolution flies out of my mind and onto the page. The words stare back at me from my notebook like a proclamation. Like the craziest thing I might ever do, and the one thing I absolutely have to try.

The third thing.

Deep down, I know that running has the power to save me. Only it won’t be enough to run up my mountain for an hour in the evenings while day turns to dusk. I need something huge enough to swallow my intractable grief, a goal that requires total commitment. I need to go farther, longer, deeper.

The next day, I give Steve a piece of paper with the words “My athletic goal for 2012 is ______” written on it. He never makes New Year’s resolutions, and I haven’t told him about mine. He reaches wordlessly for a pen, pauses to think, and bends his left hand around the paper, humoring me. A moment later, he gives it back. In his scrawly penmanship, he’s written, “Run a 50K ultramarathon.”

I stare at his resolution to make sure I’m not imagining it. It’s the exact same thing I wrote. The coincidence is uncanny. It’s been so long since we shared a goal beyond parenting, beyond just getting through the day, yet somehow we’re still in sync.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.