48 years ago she gave me life. 27 years ago, she kinda saved me from my life. This party girl was a little bit chubby, liked her 20 something new found freedom a bit too much, and you'd even see a cigarette dangling from her mouth every now and again. But Mom got tough when I ran out of dough and had to come home after I thought I left for good. She made me run with her. Everyday. (Her answer to everything was sport and she made all of her kids pick a sport at a very young age...or she'd pick it for them). She loved to run and said if I was going to live under her roof now, it was by her rules since she was not obliged to take care of me any more---at least not according to the law. Sigh. No smoking. No driving. AND I had to go to the track with her everyday. I tried to cry my way out of this daily ritual with all my aches and pains of a whiny spoiled child. She said, "You don't have to run---but you have to go with me." She even smiled when she said it. So I'd go to the track and cry and sulk and walk around while she would go jogging passed, all grins. She had 3 pins in one of her ankles from a hiking adventure in Ukiah years ago so she kinda had this cute sideways "gate" to her trot. And I could always hear her coming passed me because she ran with her keys in one hand. Anyway, after 2 weeks of trying to get out of it, I secretly started to like going. Even started jogging. She was faster than I, but I just went at my own pace. HOOKED for life. 6 months later I entered my first Half Marathon and finished in under 2 hours.
Up until the very end of her challenge with pancreatic cancer, years and years beyond her original diagnosis of only a few months (to almost 6 years survival), she and I would go to the track together when I would go visit, which was often. It was such a treat for us both. It was me now, passing her with a smile on my face---but she would beam right back at me...still trotting with her sideways gate and keys jingling. Sometimes she could only do a few laps before leaving to find a restroom (darn chemo)---and I would stay and run and sometimes she'd come back and sometimes I would have to run home. She'd want to know how many miles I did and how fast I was, and how did it feel to be in such a "small body" (her words). Then we'd eat, shower and kick my dad out of bed and watch TV together until we went to sleep with the TV on. My Dad would aways leave us together and he would go and sleep in the guest room or on the couch.
The umbilical chord is still attached. I'm the girl running all over the Truckee Meadows with a chord reaching for the heavens looking like it's attached to the clouds. And everyday on my running escapades i think of her and thank her for giving me life and then saving my life a couple of decades later from my own self destructive path.
Happy Mother's Day Mom! My heart is chipped without you....
