buns of steel, teeth like baleen
I run through an Indiana summer heat wave. I run because I can again. Because it feels good again, after years of surgeries, babies, back pain. Years of doing all kinds of other things besides running, but still missing my first love. Twenty-five years ago, running was my life, and then *poof* I couldn't do it anymore. Like an addict, though, I never got the desire out of my system.
I can run again, but I have to force myself to keep going through the heat. Any running is progress, any stopping is backsliding. Half of running is mental--mental strength or mental illness, sometimes it's hard to tell. The weather site still reads ninety degrees and ninety-plus humidity at nine pm. Ninety, ninety, nine--some kind of cosmic joke on us. Why do people live in Indiana? (That's the lead in to the joke.) But we do live here, for various reasons, and ninety degrees at nine in the evening is what we get dealt sometimes. Very funny. With my family gawking at me like I'm a mental case, I go out and run anyway.
I am instantly soaked. It's a somewhat sadistic kind of pleasure that makes me feel tougher than I really am. "Punch my ass," I tell my husband, when I've been doing a lot of running. He's known me for a long time and tolerates my stupid desire to prove to him that my ass can be tightened into a rock hard muscle. "I'm not going to punch your ass." "No, seriously, punch my ass." He finally does so I'll shut up, and he acts suitably impressed, and then I laugh because it is completely ridiculous that I need him to understand that I am tough as nails.
By the string of small ponds, in a low spot where the breeze--if there were any breeze at all--is bunkered by blue spruce, I run through a thick cloud of tiny insects. They stick to my face and my bare sweaty arms. Breathing hard, I close my mouth just a little and imagine myself filtering the swarm through my teeth like a blue whale in my blue running shorts. "More protein" is the old joke that goes through my mind. I laugh to myself. It's hotter than Hades. The air is thick and damp and barely breathable. I am straining bugs through my teeth. But I am running again, and that makes me happy.
I can run again, but I have to force myself to keep going through the heat. Any running is progress, any stopping is backsliding. Half of running is mental--mental strength or mental illness, sometimes it's hard to tell. The weather site still reads ninety degrees and ninety-plus humidity at nine pm. Ninety, ninety, nine--some kind of cosmic joke on us. Why do people live in Indiana? (That's the lead in to the joke.) But we do live here, for various reasons, and ninety degrees at nine in the evening is what we get dealt sometimes. Very funny. With my family gawking at me like I'm a mental case, I go out and run anyway.
I am instantly soaked. It's a somewhat sadistic kind of pleasure that makes me feel tougher than I really am. "Punch my ass," I tell my husband, when I've been doing a lot of running. He's known me for a long time and tolerates my stupid desire to prove to him that my ass can be tightened into a rock hard muscle. "I'm not going to punch your ass." "No, seriously, punch my ass." He finally does so I'll shut up, and he acts suitably impressed, and then I laugh because it is completely ridiculous that I need him to understand that I am tough as nails.
By the string of small ponds, in a low spot where the breeze--if there were any breeze at all--is bunkered by blue spruce, I run through a thick cloud of tiny insects. They stick to my face and my bare sweaty arms. Breathing hard, I close my mouth just a little and imagine myself filtering the swarm through my teeth like a blue whale in my blue running shorts. "More protein" is the old joke that goes through my mind. I laugh to myself. It's hotter than Hades. The air is thick and damp and barely breathable. I am straining bugs through my teeth. But I am running again, and that makes me happy.
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