The 4th

I spent the weekend with my sister's family in Delaware Co. near Columbus. My kids will stay the remainder of the week in my sister's comfortable spacious home with nice smelling soap, fluffy towels and tons to do like they have every summer for the past few years. She'll make my daughter eat her fruit and make my son put his dirty laundry in the hamper; she'll take my kids to Bible school along with her kids, and otherwise keep them so busy they won't know hit them--an oasis of fun in what has been a lackluster summer sea of boring.

This gives me a chance to tend to the legalistic matters relating to my divorce, out of their sight which I'd rather not subject them to. They struggle enough, dealing with the inevitable emotional fallout, why subject them to the ugly nuts and bolts of it too? Last year, I spent the week boxing up my stuff and moving it over to my apartment, separating the love seat from the couch, the side table from the coffee, and otherwise splitting up a matched sets that had always gone together. I'm glad I spared them the sight. My kids were well aware that I was going to be moving, I just didn't want them to witness the trauma, like watching an accident unfurl right before your eyes. Sometimes it's easier to look at the aftermath than the painful moments leading up to it, like the time I watched my dad literally walk through a sliding glass door and shatter it, bloodied by knife like shards, or the time my mom, carrying a bowl of popcorn down the stairs, slipped, and snowed popcorn before settling around my distraught mother at the bottom of the stairs. I wish I didn't see it, even though I could have dealt with the end result, call help for Dad and help my mom up from the floor and pick up the mess; likewise, I think our kids are handling the divorce well without watching the details unfurl.

I took my kids to the big 4th of July party at my sister's friends' house. We've gone to this party for years. It's as wholesome as it gets: cornhole tournaments out back, pulled pork sandwiches, potluck style sides, desserts to make you cry, inflatable jumpies for scads of kids, rum punches for the adults, and a clear shot of the Delaware fireworks after dark. All my sister's friends are happily married couples with children, but this was the first year I came without Mike. I sat under the tent drinking a Blue Moon Pumpkin ale, feeling as unseasonably miserable as my beer and conspicuously mateless while I watched drips of rain drizzle off the edge of the tent. I made no bones with my sister that I wasn't feeling real up for this today, but consoled myself with more pulled pork. I was especially comforted by a platter of little skewered tomato and soft mozzarella appetizers with a basil leaf in the middle and covered in balsamic vinegar. I don't think anyone but myself was eating them, but I had them almost polished off by the fireworks finale. I didn't worry about the basil getting stuck in my teeth cause I wasn't smiling. I really wanted to leave, but Kim said that would only bum out my kids. She was right, I stayed and consoled myself with cobbler.

The next morning, I needed to run. I like running around Delaware Co.--it's countrified and flat as a pancake. Kim encourages me to dip into one of the brown cookie-cutter allotments crisscrossed with streets named for geographical landmarks like Whispering Brook and Shady Pines which the allotments ironically replaced. She worries, I think, that her crazy running sister will come to a tragic running end, so she steers me gently to allotments, but I prefer to stick to the long country straightaways, past the allotments, running alongside farms and roadside wildflowers. On a Sunday morning, the traffic was light, any car coming my way could see my fluorescent colored pink top a mile away before they came upon my figure running facing traffic like I'm supposed to. It was taking me a long time to warm up. Officially on my taper, I need to deal with the half dozen little pinpoints of pain in and around my body--kernels of pain whisper in my left ankle, my right piriformis, my right foot, and my right hip flexor and one midlined pain in the center of my lower back, that any one could magnify and rear their ugly heads for the Buckeye 50K.

I wondered if my little kernels of pain are just manifestations of unconscious pain, like Benjamin Cheever talked about in his article, "The Big Hurt" that appeared in this August's issue of Runner's World. I keep thinking of one thing he said that rang so true with me as well. Running has not turned out to be just another hobby that I'll eventually fade with a death nell like scrap booking, cross-stitch, and herb growing. He says, "Running is my anchor. It's not what I do, but it's what makes everything else I do OK." How true that is...

Finally warming up my sore spots, feeling good, I wave to a cyclist that passes me and he amicably waves back...tons of cyclist out here...rarely see a runner. Then a women in a blue car, of appreciable girth, and middle age passes me coming the other direction. She scares me half out of my mind by blaring her horn, gesturing wildly for me to get off the road, like I don't belong there even though I'm observing all the rules of traffic by running facing traffic. More incredulous yet, this was a wide road...she wasn't pressed for room in the least. I had no inclination to dart into the berm the way some close calls with passing traffic demand. Maybe my sister was right to suggest the development--there's some resentful motorists out here that would be better off shedding their armored skins and taking a walk to develop, if not their muscles, then their humanity and tolerance for those that are just trying to stay in shape to cope with what life hands them.

By the time I got back to Kim's, I was feeling fabulous. It was a good run, even with the lady wigging out on me. I kissed my kids goodbye, read them a litany of rules and things to remember and thanked my sister for watching my kids for the week, so that I could concentrate on getting through some hard stuff. I've made a date with Mike--we'll poor a glass of wine and get through deliberating the terms of our divorce, amicably, and hopefully, with no regrets for our past 21 years together, but our eyes turned toward the finishing line.