Breaking Eggs
You can’t bake a cake without breaking some eggs.
I was scrambling eggs to make an omelet when the proverb came to mind. I had run the Shiner half marathon the day before, and I woke up feeling good. The race was challenging—intermittent rain and wind, unexpected steep grades (who was the genius that decided to put a hill at mile 11?), two miles of mud—but I met one of my two goals, finishing in the top 10 of my age group.
A great race ended, another goal met, and I tried hard to be in the moment to enjoy the accomplishment that comes from hard work, a job done to the best of my ability.
Nevertheless, post-race blues were sinking in and about to be compounded by holiday-associated stress, the approach of the busiest four months of my work year, and a sick dog.
Maybe you don’t get post-race blues. It took me a few races to recognize them for what they are. When the thing I’ve focused on for 8, 12, 16 weeks or more is over and I look at the side of my fridge where my training plan hangs only to see a blank slate waiting to be filled, to start all over again. The promise of a new beginning, which is, and should be, exciting.
Yet any beginning emerges from an end. Creation is preceded by destruction. (Or as Wallace Stevens would say, “Death is the mother of beauty.”)
Before I let my emptiness cave in on itself—before Thanksgiving Day—I selected a new race, registered, and created a new training plan, ready to start December 1. But the long days of holiday-associated stress, the approach of the busiest four work months of the year, and a sick dog cut into my plan. I am not off to the best start. (Although, thank God, my dog is getting better.)
This week I stood in the kitchen beating eggs again, remembering when my mom taught us to bake. For a time my favorite was lemon meringue pie. It wasn’t the taste I so much enjoyed as the making of the pie, or, at least, the end result. So many eggs broken, vigorously whisked into tall, stiff peaks strong enough to stand on their own.
It was the beating that gave me qualms. Before they can peak, the eggs fold in on themselves, all mush and formlessness, unable to hold anything together, much less themselves.
Me, the past couple of weeks.
But you can’t bake a cake without breaking some eggs. Maybe it’s time to rise again.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )
Planting Seeds
Hard choices. The theme for the day’s lunch. Discuss our hard choices and what we’ve learned from them, how they’ve shaped us.
Was the choice hard from the beginning, or did hardship arise only in the middle, when we were knee-deep in, no going back? Or was it the end of the choice and the bearing of its consequences that brought hardship on?
I immediately thought of all the times I’ve moved, over twenty when I stopped counting several years ago. Some easy–a few blocks away, in college, to the other side of town, same city. Some decidedly hard, requiring the shedding of material, intellectual, philosophical things, like a snake sheds its skin, leaving me feeling naked, exposed. Another state, another country. Back again, and always the question, now what?
I’d taken to thinking of my life as if I was a dandelion spore, blown about by the breeze, landing here or there by chance. Not a lovely thing, not rooted.
Until I landed here, where I stumbled into a community, a home. A place where hope multiplies like dandelions in a field, ineradicable.
I’ve always been a fan of fields and flowers and trees, but I now understand the power of a seed.
“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”
Henry D. Thoreau
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )But I have promises to keep…
Sarah, go to the gym.
That’s what my friend says she needs someone to tell her, to motivate her. It’s not that she doesn’t like the gym. It’s not that deep down she really doesn’t want to go. It’s more that when time gets tight and life overwhelming, the first promise she breaks is the one she makes to herself.
She’s not alone. I can’t count the number of times I wake before my alarm, my daily calendar cluttering my mind, stealing my peace. It’s not just the tasks but the weight of it all that makes me want to lie in bed just a little longer.
So the mental calculations begin. What can I cut from my day to buy some time as I lie here, watching the slats for the first hint of dawn, delaying the inevitable? Never meetings or phone calls. Never promises to friends.
Always meetings with myself. Always promises to me. 
My workout, sometimes. More often, my writing. Always, something I like to do, just for me. So easy to back out on these things. I am not accountable for them to anyone but me.
But here’s the thing. Breaking these promises to myself, not doing the things that keep me whole, balanced, healthy, at peace with the world, ultimately affects my world and those who are in it. If I don’t take care of myself first, I am useless to others later.
I may become, in fact, a mean old lady with a sour face who lives alone with a dozen Chihuahuas in the house on the corner that’s overgrown with wild roses and thyme, the one that all the neighborhood kids pelt with rotten apples.
Or, worse, I may become a burden in my self-imposed declining health instead.
When I was in college, I visited my dad for the summer. It was his Saturday morning ritual to mow the lawn. Later in the day, he’d spend time with us. One Friday I thought I’d surprise him and mow the lawn while he was at work, free up his weekend time to spend with me.
Late that night when he came home and saw the yard shorn and flowerbeds well-tended, happiness was not the look on his face. His mouth opened, then closed. He licked his lips, inhaled deeply, eyebrows knitted downward into the deepest expression of disappointment I had seen on his face in a long time. I was heartsick and stammered to explain.
“But I like to mow the lawn,” he said. I had stolen his time, his exercise. His peace.
So I say to Sarah what I say to myself. Go to the gym. Go write or paint or walk your dog or any of the private, personal things you need just for you.
Ignore the arched brows when you go to the gym or out for a walk mid-morning, the smug comments about how nice it must be to get away and do something so unimportant when others are working or caring for kids.
Your time for you is your work. It’s your duty to yourself to be healthy, balanced, happy. It makes you more productive at work, more relaxed with your family and friends. Better able to tackle the rest of life.
I never mowed my dad’s lawn again. Now, when I mow my own, when I’m sticky with sweat and plastered with grass clippings and dirt, when I see the wake of clean lines left behind my mower and feel an immense satisfaction, an inner peace, I think of him and smile.
When I wake up tomorrow morning, I hope I remember this, the necessity to write, to run. The satisfaction, the peace. Because I have promises to keep. And miles so go before I sleep, again.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
Just the Facts, Ma’am
You need to post more information about yourself, my editor tells me. People need to know you.
Why? I ask. Whoever reads my blog knows me by what I write. The stories. The struggles. The voice and tone. What more is there to know?
It’s been a battle of the wills for months, but she will inevitably win. Writing a memoir is hard, the distillation of a lifetime through a funnel called Running, Community.
It starts in a blog, a series of posts, and expands ever outward, from blog to memoir to a compilation of runners’ stories woven together like a tightly knit shawl. To be complete by the end of summer. Draft 1.
The hardest question to answer: Tell us about yourself. Writing a bio of even three sentences is excruciatingly hard.
What is it people want to know, the facts (or the truth behind them)?
My favorite colors are blue and green (the colors of peace and tranquility—like floating under water, suspended by saline and waves; the only sound your breath, to know you are alive; surrounded by fish the color of the sun or the sky at dawn, a funnel cloud of rainbow eddying around you).
But this is no longer eighth grade and the relevant facts do not involve (so I am told) colors or music or movies.
Do they want to know the history (or the narrative)? Dates or events comprise the skeleton, stories connect the organs and flesh.
It takes a lifetime to build a body.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Hello Summer
It’s here, semi-officially, this week.
I know, it doesn’t officially start until summer solstice, Saturday, June 21, at 6:51 am. In case you’re counting.
But this week marks the end of the school year, which means…
Less traffic.
Less shoe-wearing.
More lawn mowing (I love the smell of fresh cut grass. It reminds me of watermelon. And my dad.)
More pool time.
More down time.
And more sweat.
Well, maybe not that much more. I’m just glad it’s here.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Happiness Is…
Peace. Calm. 
That’s the conclusion my friends and I came to this week. Peace and calm, we realized, is actually the precondition for happiness, at least for the three of us.
Each month, my friends and I meet to talk about the issues that pertain to running a business, leading as a woman. This month’s topic: happiness.
What makes you happy? The question that launched the discussion, based on an article we read in USA Today. Our answers weren’t what some may think—not money or material goods, not power or prestige, not hedonism. They are, in fact, the simple things.
Running.
Practicing yoga.
Sitting on the deck in the sun listening to the breeze stirring wind chimes.
Cleaning the garage.
Spending time with people we care about.
As we worked through the question of happiness, we realized that a sense of order, peace, calm was part of the equation. Creating order is a necessary component of happiness. The symmetry, cleanliness, beauty, peace come first. The result? Happiness.
Not the cleaning itself, but the having cleaned.
Not the writing itself, but the having written.
A goal met. A sense of achievement. And in the midst of it all, the flow of time suspended.
Which is what I get when I run.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
To Say It Makes It So
I’m in the process of writing a book about—wait for it—running. I know. Who’d have thought?
The book is part memoir—how running has transformed me personally and professionally—and part community collaboration. It will include the stories of remarkable women I’ve been fortunate to know here in San Antonio and how running has transformed them too.
It’s because of these women that I found the courage to write this book. And I was lucky enough to meet them because of the work I do as council director for Girls on the Run of Bexar County. Through it all, I am learning what it means to be part of a community. And I am learning so much more.
Writing is a tricky process. It comes in fits and starts, and sometimes goes even quicker. There are days when I can’t wait to get in front of my computer to dump out the piece of story that’s written itself in my head, and days when I can’t, for the life of me, string together one true sentence.
But it’s coming together nevertheless, slowly but surely. I’m half way there. Over the hump. Which is why I feel safe enough to say it out loud. And you know how words work. To say it makes it so.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )
Dodging Hurdles, or the impetus to run
image from cutestlife.com
The first time I took up running it was because of a boy. A crush. I was starting junior high, seventh grade, and he was a year ahead of me. Naturally wavy blonde hair. Blue eyes. Athletic. I was tall and had long legs, and he suggested I try out for the track team. So I gave it a go.
The first day of try-outs, the coach looked at me, my height, the length of my legs and said, “You’re running hurdles.”
Hurdles? You mean my feet have to leave the ground and I need to open my body like a jackknife over that thing that looks like a traffic barricade?
The eighth grade boy nodded vigorously. I gave it a go.
“How about the high jump?” the coach suggested as she picked gravel out of my bloody knees. My body was not built to open like a jackknife. It preferred a straight line. If I could simply run and weave around the hurdles, straight flat-out running, maybe it would be all right.
I kept a brave face, even though my knees stung and the skin hung from them in tiny flecks like shredded cheese.
But the eighth grade boy nodded vigorously. So I gave the high jump a go.
On the first try, I sailed over the horizontal bar. Never mind that it was less than two feet off the ground and I could have hopped it on one foot. The coach clapped her hands and raised the bar twice as high, level with my waist.
I stepped back to the start line, sweating, and eye-balled the bar. Surely I could do this. The eighth grade boy was watching, as was the coach, my friends.
I ran toward the bar, planted my foot at the base, and sprung into the air, landing on my butt in the sand trap on the other side. I heard a sound like a bell clanging, and my forehead stung briefly. I blinked sand out of my eyes, pleased that I had made it, for the split second I thought I’d made it, and tried to stand up.
But all eyes were on me, and all mouths were open.
“What?” I said, but before I could say more, my eyes were forced shut. Blood poured down the right side of my face, into my eyes and the corner of my mouth.
I yelped as my hand flew up, swiping at the blood. I looked toward the bar, but it was not held aloft on the pegs. My foot had hit it, dragging down the support poles, one of which knocked me in the head.
I sat on the curb in front of the school alone and waited for my mom. Several stitches and a concussion later, I decided that running was not for me. And maybe neither was this eighth grade boy.
It would be twenty years until I took up running again. The second time, I took it up because of me.
There would be no one to impress. No one to determine my ability based on my appearance.
No one to tell me how far I could go or how fast, or to place obstacles in my path.
There would be only the long-fingered mango leaves beckoning me down the road in the star-soaked, pre-dawn darkness of Guam.
This time, I more than gave it a go. This time, it stayed.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Creating Order out of Chaos
My new training plan is posted on the side of my refrigerator, a black and white grid containing daily directives and empty white space awaiting my penciled-in results. I love a new plan. It’s challenge and promise weigh equally. It gives me a sense of purpose each day. A reason to get out of bed earlier than the birds. And the direction and clarity to know what to do even after the white space is filled in.
That’s the key, really. The “after” part of completing the daily plan.
Sure, running is the reason for the plan. And, for now, for my new 16-week plan, biking and swimming is too. It is the reward, the goal, the tool, the end in itself and the means to a greater end all rolled into one. There is freedom in running. There is joy and health and confidence.
But there is more.
Running helps me to create order out of chaos. And chaos is, after all, life, mostly.
It is a million different forces all pressing on us at once, vying for our attention, demanding action. It is a million bits of information clamoring to be heard, absorbed, incorporated into the design.
It is a million blades of grass forming a raggedly blanket of a lawn that the HOA insists must be flattened and smoothed.
I get tremendous satisfaction in mowing my lawn. Watching straight lines form in the grass behind my mower, leaving a wake of structure.
So it is with me in running. The sheer act of physical movement, of allowing my mind the freedom to construct my day, week, month, story, life at the dawn of each day produces the structure for all else. Without it, I cannot write, at least not well. Without it, the organization I lead would not be led strategically, compassionately, or wisely, a goal I mindfully set each day, but instead would become like the field behind my house, overgrown with weeds.
My desk has always faced a wall. Until recently, the wall has been blank. Now, a corkboard hangs in front of me, the center space empty, all else tacked to the sides. Whenever I look up, I see the vision of what will be that my mind’s eye projects there, like a movie on a screen, the endless possibilities a swirl of chaos. Writing and leading an organization have this in common: You must always keep your vision in front of you to make the right choices, choose the right ideas, to create order out of the chaos.
My new training plan started this week. The Royal Empress and Mountain Laurel have just begun to bloom. Their fragrance rolls out before me like a red carpet when I run. There is so much promise in the newness of spring, its plan unfolding.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Dem Bones, or the Anatomy of a Writer/Runner
Courtesy of the Jersey Shore Running Club
Mrs. Morgan, my eighth grade music teacher, loved to sing songs that required us to move. Tap a foot, sway, snap our fingers, something, anything to keep us from standing still. I love music, but not necessarily that music. The sad part is, I remember most of the songs, particularly the anatomy song, “Dem Bones.” Everyone knows it, even if they don’t know they do:
The foot bone connected to the leg bone.
The leg bone connected to the knee bone.
Etc., etc.
Yeah, that song.
Turns out, they missed a link, the one that connects the runner to…well, to everything else: thought, creativity, productivity, organizational skills, and, for me, the ability to write. No running, no writing. It’s that simple.
Now I know this to be true—I do my best writing in my head during a run, starting around mile 3—but I sometimes forget the connection. Until it’s lost. Like during my recent 5 weeks of not running. No running, no writing. Lord knows I tried. I sat in front of my computer staring at a blank screen, and simply cried. I can’t do it, I thought. It’s just too hard. Maybe I’m fooling myself and am not really a writer after all.
But then the miraculous happened—again—the week I started running. Day 2, mile 3, and I’m rounding the little hill in the middle of a cul-de-sac where I usually slow down to count deer, and it occurs to me that I’m not running slower, I’m running faster. And I’m not looking for deer, I’m not looking for anything. My eyes are turned inward, and I’ve been writing, in my head, for the last mile. Not just half-baked thoughts but complete sentences, full paragraphs, developed ideas unfurling with the dawn. And I smile, relieved, and think thank God, thank you God, the connection is reestablished. Apparently laces are the missing link.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
More Than Running... 