Dear 2010,

There are years that seem rather amazing in how much change they wreak on a body. The change is continual, with a million whiplash-inducing surprises (pleasant and otherwise) keeping me on my toes.  Years that become watersheds.  2002 and 2003 were like that for me, the pre- and post- Peace Corps bookends of my life.  2005 was like that, the pre- and post- Hurricane Katrina year.  And 2007 was like that, the year I graduated from law school, left my favorite city in the world, moved somewhere that allows one to walk on water in wintertime, started running, started to lose those 80 pounds. 

The years since the move have been momentous in quieter ways, more of a building-up and breaking-down in intimate increments.  All that falling-in and falling-out of love business in 2009-2010 was enough to exhaust me, but good in its way.  And the marathons, the half-marathons, and travels, and new friends were enough to make the crappier bits of this year passable.

2010 wasn't stellar, but it was a solid showing, full of highlights (Barcelona, running a half-marathon with my kid sister, celebrating my 30th birthday with my best best best friend by my side, other smaller, slower moments involving walks to my car in the rain, fireworks, first kisses, groovy bands that left me sweating and disgusting from hours of dancing, perfecting the art of the gingerbread cookie, singing at my Grandmother's piano).  It wasn't a watershed year in and of itself, not a year that I will look back on as particularly remarkable, but it's a year that feels like a beginning of very good, very blessed things.  And those are years worth loving, too.

Thank you, 2010, for being a happy, instructive chunk of experience. Thank you for new friends and new lessons, and the healing of wounds. Thank you for the optimism you've inspired and the miraculous community of family and friends that you've blessed me with to see me on to next year's adventures.  Thank you for providing me, even on the cloudiest days, with endless justification for happiness and hope.

Love,
R

My Taste Buds' Interpretation of Heaven

I truly believe the best elements of cooking, the tried-and-true, home-tastes-like-THIS, type recipes are the ones fashioned by a combination of love and meager means.  Home-cooking is not five-star restaurant cooking.  It's a culmination of accidents, family folklore, and not-great-but-not-awful dishes that simply bookend years of childhood.  For instance, my Mom went through a phase when we lived in Arkansas of really loving, and pushing, the Taco Salad with Catalina Dressing.  There were kidney beans involved. Cheap shredded cheddar. Iceberg lettuce. Tortilla chips.  When I think of elementary school, Catalina dressing is never far from my thoughts.

My family never made bread pudding.  But it's the sort of dish born of some quiet moment by a fire years ago that I think must be not unlike the catalina-dressing-taco-salad creation of my younger years. Mind you, bread pudding has evolved into one of the more treasured of Southern gustatory endeavors.  The Catalina-Taco-Salad has not quite caught on with that level of enthusiasm. But I bet the first women to dream up bread pudding were not unlike my Mom.  Good, busy, thoughtful Moms who found something pretty yummy that worked, something simple that incorporated what was in the cupboard and didn't require a trip to the grocery store, or the market, or the fields. And it was dirt cheap.

Stale bread, milk, eggs, sugar.  There are only four ingredients to the simplest of bread puddings.  And like other brilliant food combinations (tomato+cheese, banana+peanut butter,  chocolate+anything), its simplicity is what makes it great.  Other genius Southern fare arose out of similar circumstances, gumbo, for instance, is nothing but leftover pig mixed with perfect spices, rice, beans, okra, and the most powerful of Gulf resources, the Shrimp.  It's a dish born of what was handy and what could be caught or grown oneself. Bread pudding, likewise, was a child of necessity, born of a mother's desire to serve something special and sweet without the pocketbook to afford the extra flour a cake would require.

Despite all the ills associated with carbohydrates and fats and calories (and I have suffered my own share of battles in that minefield), I have never believed that food, truly good food, was an evil.  It's a gift and a blessing, a provision of manna in the wilderness. The best of foods don't come out of factory concoctions and field testing.  The best comes from love and making-do and the passing on of secrets and the greasing of Grandmother's best cookie sheet, Mama's rolling pin. The best of foods never mean harm, only love and sustenance, only a small slice of shelter on the days the world seems bent on cruelty.  I do not believe it is wrong for food to be a comfort. In fact, in all of the worst days in history, I am positive joy was shared, peace delivered, love communicated, at a million tables around the world.  There was, and always will be, bread, and sugar, and eggs, and milk. So even on the worst days, the meager days (literal or metaphorical), Heaven waves hello from the tongue.

The NOEL was in the Cupboard

I do not remember a Christmas without the ceramic NOEL. Four greenish, redish ceramic letter candleholders that would grace my Grandmother's piano in Mullins, South Carolina and now hold court on top of the wood cabinet beside her refrigerator in Columbia. 

They aren't an exciting piece of Christmas decoration.  My Grandmother and my parents each own much more impressive nuggets of frivolity to ring in the season.  But these letters are a small sliver of family experience that remains important.  They've been in the family for over 50 years, having been a gift from a family friend who used to babysit my dad when he was a toddler. They're simple and unremarkable, but it's hard to picture Christmas without the NOEL.  Or the LEON.  Or the ELON. Or the NOLE. Or, my personal favorite, the LONE.

Rearranging the letters was just something everybody did.  You did it preferably when Grandmother's back was turned.  Maybe she was digging in the pantry for the cookie tin of fudge.  Maybe she was adding pepper to the chicken bog.  Maybe she was sitting in the living room, crossword puzzle in hand.  But if you walked by the letters and they happen to be spelling their intended word, well, somebody needed to rectify that.

My dad poked around online and found out that these dear letters are not, in fact, a novelty.  They are everywhere.  So we are clearly not the only family with this tradition and I like to wonder how many other kids grew up rearranging the ceramics to Grandma's chagrin.  My dad bought a set for each of us kids and he gave me mine last year.  A small gift, but a very important one.

For the life of me, however, I could not remember where I tucked them.  My apartment is very small, so there really are few places where anything of a decent size could be lost.  Under the bed? Nope. In the closet? Nope. Forgotten rung of a bookshelf? Nope. The infamous drawer-that-shall-not-be-opened? Nope.

I was rather heartbroken by the loss and had even begun to search online for a replacement. (Note: For those of you who want one of these, I recommend waiting til after the holidays.  Somebody out there is jacking up prices on these bad boys and I just don't condone black market ceramic peddling)  But, in the midst of a baking escapade yesterday and the pursuit of a long lost wire whisk (never found it), I opened a cupboard that never gets opened as it requires a chair for me to reach.  And there they were, spelling L-O-N-E all on their own.

They're sitting on my window sill now.  And while the broken window blind, cigar box,  and #1 Lawyer mug may surround them with a bit of non-holy non-Christmas reality, I believe they look right at home.

The Garden Level

When I was looking for a new apartment over a year ago, I heard anti-garden level apartment shpiels from everyone.  The level most likely to be robbed.  The level with the least sunlight.  The level most likely to be burdened by backed up sinks, noisy upstairs neighbors, and crappy heating. 

I've never been robbed (and honestly, I think the bars on my windows are kinda pretty).  I get plenty of light.  My sinks have been fine (notsomuch the occassional toilet issue).  My next door neighbors are the noisy ones, courtesy of a boisterous toddler.  And my heating issues were copious until I called my landlord and said, "well, I'm cold. And the heater sounds like a cat stuck in a washing machine." 

I really love my little home. It's ridiculously small, yes.  But I'm only one person and have no need for large amounts of space.  I'm walking distance from my favorite brunch place, my favorite bluegrass place, my favorite coffee place, my favorite lake, my favorite spring roll place, my favorite ice cream place, my favorite place to buy milk and peanut butter, and my favorite place to buy and sell clothes.  In short, I could survive quite happily without ever getting in my car, which is ideal.

And now I've discovered a new benefit to garden level urban living in Minneapolis.  When we get a doozy of a snowstorm, I'm as cozy as can be thanks to the igloo-erific view of snow drifting up my window. 

A ribboned and tinseled silver-stemmed tree Perches on the edge of my 2nd hand desk
And the smell of butter and sugar and sugar and sugar
Warms the kitchen in its Christmas-themed mess

The warmth of my oven can't reach the window
Can't free the ice 'round some neighbor's squealing tire
But it toasts my insides, roasts them from within,
Replaces the snow drifts with a cushion of fire

My first near-blizzard, in my favorite nearly-Home
Builds bricks of winter against iron-graced glass
And as the wind whips it higher, encasing me in white
This sleigh-bells-ring-are-you-listening? oatmeal cookie heat must last.

Lipstick

On my thirtieth birthday I wore red:

red reminiscent of skinned knees

and four-eyed eyelids puckered by November allergies.

A red sweatshirt I wore in the third grade,

A yellow star in the center and rhinestoned clouds weeping rhinestone tears.

Thirty years and a sweatshirt still lingers.  And the smell of dirt beside a Southern jungle gym, red sweatshirt ripped at the shoulder by some ill-timed leap.

Red hair is less red against Red Diva lipliner.

The red I never wear crept into a plastic bag, clutched by my mother as she searched for her own mother's perfect shade.

Only grownups wear red lipstick.

Only daughters search for perfect reds for perfect mothers as they valiantly embrace age from hospital beds.

Not too orangey.

Not the pink-tinted one.

The Revlon with a touch of blood in it, of earth, of grownups and children and warm, Sunday mornings spent in churches without fans.

Reds with a touch of Texas in them, Arkansas, or Minnesota, or Tennessee, a splash of a few months toasting sisters in Times Square or South Korea or all-the-sisters-sound-the-same-on-the-phone

  Reds bought and lost and kept in a million handbags in a million places beside a million men, many of whom never matter at all.

Reds of childhood sweatshirts hanging from monkey bars too far apart, and of Mamaw's lips, soft and loveworn, pretty for the World,

Sticks to the wine glass

And the cup of sweet tea

Both sipped in loved company,

Both moments made perfect by their color.

Finishing Strong

I started off this racing season with a goal of running six half-marathons. I ran seven, and the seventh was, by far, by fastest and most fun. I figured I'd recap this quasi-crazy summer adventure before detailing why this last race was my best.

Minnetonka Half: Gorgeous course, beautiful day, lots of happy spectators, but it was way too early in my training. The race was early May and I'd initially leaned towards Fargo (late May) being my first of the season. I signed up for Minnetonka for a purely emotional reason. Recent breakup, heartbroken, I needed some sort of I-am-woman-hear-me-roar type endeavor to remind myself I was a tough, tough cookie. It served its purpose but man it hurt. Definitely on my list for next year as it's a lovely race, but this time I'll train better.

Fargo Half: My first trip to North Dakota! I ran it with a dear friend, Katrina, and it was an excellent course. We arrived at the start mere seconds before gun time due to traffic and it began to rain as soon as we arrived. Happily, the rain ended by mile 4, and the flat, sunshiney course with tons of awesome spectators made for my fastest half other than the one today.

Minneapolis Half: Miserable. Absolutely miserable. Too hot, too humid, and I walked a sizeable chunk because of some out-of-nowhere hip pain. I think I was partly dehydrated, too. This was the only race that I seriously considered just walking away from midway. The course was fine but it was just not a good running day for me.

Red, White, and Boom Half: This was enjoyable to an extent but largely because it was so retched. It was ludicrous how much rain poured down, by mile 3 my shoes were completely soaked and my festive red, white, and blue blinking light headband had fritzed out and was impossibly tangled in my hair. My ipod also bit the big one that day and just decided it didn't want to work in the rain. But by mile 7 or so I was so wet and everyone around me was so wet that we were just all kinda enjoying it. I started splashing in the puddles on purpose and just gave up any hopes of getting a decent time. My friend, Molly, was there to high five me at the end and it takes a TRUE friend to stand in the rain for that long.

Urban Wildlands Half: Another rainy one but not near as rainy as the July 4th race. It was humid so the rain actually helped cut the air a bit and cool me down. It was a decently paced race for me, which was great, and my parents came to cheer me on at the finish. My friend, Kristen, ran it as her first half so it's always nice to know a fellow crazy soul is slogging through the miles with you.

Salomon Trail Half: My only trail half-marathon and my slowest time. Second only to the Monster Dash for most fun. This race helped me discover that I loooooooove trail running. I ran into a tree at one point and also managed to acquire about 50 stickleburrs at one time (those are fun to pluck off while running). I also pretty severely injured a toe that bled like the dickens, I could feel the blood squishing in my sock, so this was also my most painful race. But I loved running up and down the hills, hiking the tall ones, checking out the gorgeous fall colors. I honestly think I hurt as much after this one as after the full marathon last year. I limped for a few days. My body had never done that amount of hill work and it's just a different leg muscle experience running trail versus road. I will definitely do this one again.

Monster Dash Half: My final race of the year, which I ran with my kid sister, Caroline to fundraise for the Epilepsy Foundation. It was Caroline's first half and despite having knee problems the last several weeks, she was a total trooper! She's younger and smaller than me so her pace is naturally faster but we stayed together the whole time and I think my slowing us down a bit probably saved her a bit of pain. We finished just shy of a 10:30 pace, which is definitely my fastest, and we had excellent cheering from Mom, Dad, and Caroline's boyfriend throughout the race. We celebrated with omelets the size of our heads and cinnamon rolls at Pannekoeken Huis.

My mom asked Caroline after the race if she would be "hooked" on races now. Caroline smiled and shrugged and said, "probably, just like Rachel." It is a feeling you can't describe to non-racers. There really is nothing like the feeling just beyond a finish line. Even if you're not fast, even if the race hurts, crossing that line makes for a good day. Because life throws us all sorts of impossible situations that never seem to really end. There are struggles that ebb and flow and weave and sleep and reawaken. But a race is a finite, powerful thing. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. And getting through each mile is a minor victory, leading up to that moment of completion. It's a strong reminder of how deft the human body is at recognizing a challenge and rising to meet it. And on the days the world feels hard, it's a nice memory to return to, cling to maybe, as proof that what feels unlikely, even impossible, sometimes only requires one more mile.

Other Sets of Feet

I have never been one to run with other people. Running for me is primarily a solo event. I race against myself, disappoint myself, encourage myself, and high five myself for a job well done. I could say that this is indicative of my independent nature and I'm sure there is some truth to that assessment. But my solitary adventures can also be credited to that quiet voice I still hear occassionally that whispers, "you are not a runner." Other people are runners. Other people are athletic. Other people are fast. Other people are thin. Other people are graceful. Other people look better in lycra.

I went running tonight with my friend, Kristen. Kristen is lovely. She's taller than me, thinner than me, with cascades of curly brunette hair, and painfully pretty skin. She's just the sort of woman who manages to exude grace while wearing a tshirt, which I find rather amazing. I feel like a freckled, clumsy mess next to this sweet ladyfriend.

Not to mention she is, indisputably, faster than me.

But I thoroughly enjoyed my first run with a fellow human. We talked about work, about stresses, about church, about running, about the weather. And we stopped midway for ice cream at Sebastien Joe's. We sweated a bit, but not much given my slowness and the beauty of a fallish day.

I like being proven wrong (within reason). While I do still hear that voice, teasing my assumption that I am now A Runner (one marathon and six half-marathons should be fair proof), I am getting better at ignoring its implications. I am not fast. And I'm not particularly graceful. I can't imagine that lycra will ever be my fabric of choice. But I am one of those other people. And running with those other runners, the ones that are faster and thinner and stronger than me, only reminds me of how far away from being beside them I was a couple years ago. And regardless of my speed or ability (or lack thereof), there is a communion of pavement pounding that everyone who does it understands. It doesn't take a 7 minute mile to recognize and appreciate the feel of legs and street and arms and hips and ankles and sidewalk cracks.

I'm a runner, are you?

Yes, I'm a runner, too.

For God's Sake

I spent last week in Barcelona with my family. On the flight home I thought about what I should write about, what was worth posting, worth trying to describe. It was a precious, happy time with my family, especially given how rarely the five of us are together. But the subject of this post is not my family, but rather a crazy, commanding structure that I explored with my family not long after we arrived.

The Sagrada Familia resembles a cathedral that has been microwaved (desciptor borrowed from a friend). Its rust-colored spires seem almost collapsed, like long balloons slowly deflating. A somewhat depressing description, but it's impossible to articulate it properly. Having seen Notre Dame de Paris and St. Paul's in London and various other cathedrals scattered around Europe, a glance at Sagrada Familia is rather violent. It is so different as to be somewhat otherworldly. And I suppose that is the point.


Gaudi (Sagrada's architect) was heavily influenced by nature and that's evident in the structure. Comparatively, Notre Dame de Paris feels un-natural, not-of-the-earth, elements that aid the feeling of transcendence anyone would experience walking through its nave. The light shines through Notre Dame and it feels like God himself is wrapping his fingers around the buttresses, lifting them heavenward.


Sagrada is different. There is transcendence to be sure. But it is rooted in Creation and crowned with Christ's story, told in the facades wrapping the exterior of the building. The interior columns' design was inspired by trees and Gaudi desired a vision of treetops, a celestial forest, within the walls of the church. The light shines in very specifically, as Gaudi felt that too much or too little light disturbed the spiritual experience. You need enough light to feel God's touch, not so much that you are blinded to what He shows you. Even being inside now, so stark and unfinished, the light pouring in seemed perfect and unobtrusive. It was that ideal level of shine and shimmer, with just enough shadow to calm.


Throughout the structure there are elements of Earth. Birds, lizards, turtles, water, leaves, flowers, vines, fruit. The other cathedrals I've visited (and loved) seemed distinctly unworldy, on purpose perhaps given the directive that we be in the world but not of the world. It's a powerful separation with such sacred places, sliding you safely into a place fit for worship, protected from the world's temptations and terrors. But I found the Sagrada's earth-inspired body to be significantly more powerful. To glorify God inspired by the Creation he gave seems so much more tangible and translatable. I can touch a tree, smell a flower, dig my fingers into dirt. I cannot build the Sagrada but I can sit at the foot of some trunk and look heavenward and sigh. The Sagrada, miraculously, creates a space of holiness and reverence while maintaining a connection to the dirt it covers.


Perhaps it moved me more because I love the Earth, too. Value it physically as well as spiritually. I do not take lightly God's order that we are the stewards of this planet, that it is a gift we are meant to treasure and cherish and use. Its resources are our own, but we are not meant to rape those resources with no eye toward the future. Our stewardship is meant to be intelligent. Prosperous but not ignorant of the ramifications of our actions. So a church reaching heavenward with tree-inspired columns, spires resting on carvings of turtles, it simply makes sense to me. We take so much of this planet for granted, assuming its resources are unremarkable or undiminishing. If we treasured those resources, that dirt, that water, that oil, that coal, that salt, those diamonds, those trees, those mountains, that river, those fisheries, with the same love and specificity gifted by the Creator, I imagine our relationship with the earth would be quite different today.


If we walked through the world the way we walk through the corridor of a cathedral, light pouring in and wrapping 'round tree trunks, we would, at the very least, hesitate before lifting the axe.

The Wheels on the Bus

I've recently started taking the bus to work again after spending a good year among the intrepid (crazy?) population who treks from Minneapolis to St. Paul and back every workday. The drive would be passable but for 1) bad weather and 2) construction. As winter and spring take up the first problem and summer and fall take up the second, that really leaves very few days to make the 25 mile roundtrip drive worthwhile. And, to quote a friend who will remain nameless, I'm a "hippie," and reducing my carbon footprint is really just part of my job.

I have two main bus drivers on the route I take, gentlemen of exceedingly different personalities who see me near 6 am on the trek into St. Paul, and 4 pm on the trek home. I don't know their names. The gentleman in the morning always says hello, he smiles and thanks me when I wish him a happy day upon his dropping me off downtown, and he welcomes me back when I miss a morning or two due to travel or oversleeping. He often gives a lift to a fellow driver who's headed home after his shift and they laugh and smile at one another as good friends do. He waves at other drivers on the road. I even saw him blow a kiss to another bus driver, a bubbly-looking woman with her hair in a ribboned ponytail, who we drove past at a light on Nicollet. He smiles the way some people do, the way you know that smiles are their most common facial movement.

The gentleman in the afternoon clearly hates his job. He stares straight ahead, never says hello. He's much younger than my morning driver, and wears sunglasses even on the cloudiest day. Everyday when he drops me off I wish him a good day. I thank him. He has never acknowledged me. But I may have found my "in" for getting an occasional hello from the man...

Evidently if you fall down the steps of his bus and land, hard, on the sidewalk with your farmer's market potatoes rolling out of your "Virginia is for Lovers" bag, he will not just drive away in his sunglassed, mopey world. He will jump down the stairs and exclaim, "Holy shit, lady, are you alright?" I really was fine and potatoes are totally edible when bruised, so it could have been worse. He actually gave me a smile and a "you have a nice day" when I stood up. Public embarrassment inspires kindness, I suppose. I do not plan on making a habit of falling off his bus so hopefully cordiality from here on out will not require injury. I'm all for reducing my carbon footprint but I hadn't factored in bruising as a possible result of that pursuit.

Baseball

There are few things more holy to a summer than a baseball game. I attended my first Twins game recently at the widely heralded (deservedly) brand spanking new Target Field. While I remain firm in my belief, rooted in a childhood dedicated to the Cardinals and their Arkansas farm team, that the National League is far superior to the "fake baseball" attempted by the AL, I can give credit where credit is due for a good game. I attended with a fellow baseball-lover (I should say "fake baseball"-lover since he's a Twins fan but since he provided the tickets, I'll overlook that flaw) and I don't think there's anything better on a sunny afternoon than a mild tshirt-shaped sunburn, good company, and a homerun to cheer for.

I bought a scorecard as soon as we entered and enjoyed relearning all the chickenscratches my Dad taught me as a girl. There's a certain satisfaction from that backwards K (called strikeout) and the filled in black diamond of a homerun. I also like the 6-4-3 of the double play. My favorite position in softball was shortstop, and I liked owning that "6."

On Saturday I'm headed to a Saints game, the minor league team in St. Paul that boasts $5 tickets, burn-your-ass metal bleachers, and a pig mascot that runs around the field at will. It's very different from the major league experience, but honestly, save a Cardinals game in my former hometown, I much prefer the minor league feel. It reminds me more of the first baseball games of growing up, the ones spent at Ray Winderfield Field (only a handful of people will notice that childish mistake), hot dogs and mosquitos, crowd cheering for Geronimoooooooo Pennnnnna. Those are the games that spell B-A-S-E-B-A-L-L in my heart. The Saints games remind me of those hot, Arkansas evenings, even if the Minnesota sun is significantly kinder than those Southern scorchers.

I think, too, that a baseball fan is simply more my sort of human than other sports fans. Football can be fun to watch, and I admit to getting jazzed for New Orleans this past February. But my affection for football is fleeting, and only emotionally tied to the handful of my kid brother's games I caught while he was in high school. I've never cared about basketball (an apathy born of one miserable season spent "playing" basketball in middle school when I would sob for an hour before practice because I loathed it so much).

Baseball. Now that is a sport worth loving. A slow one at times, to be sure, steeped in decades and decades of history, generations of rivalries, old wounds, underdogs, and the smell of dirt and chalk and soft, sweaty leather. Baseball fans are fervent but they're also patient. Football is over in a blink, barely a dozen games to sink your teeth into. Baseball requires weeks, months of dedication. An exhaustion of sweeps and death spirals, records to break, pulled tendons, perfect games, rainouts, games ahead, games behind. I respect that slowness. And I respect the fan that settles in for the long haul in April, the promise of sun and a homerun peeking through springtime's clouds.

Mid-July is prime baseball season. Squinting against the glare, the near-scream of joy for the nearly-fair nearly-homerun, the smell of bug spray and beer and mustard. It's a specific slice of the year, before the smell of autumn creeps across the grass and forces the acknowledgment of other seasons. I love that slow creep of darkness, when the outfield lights buzz on, love the sugary promise of cotton candy, and the way my ponytail dissolves in a cascade of sweaty strings after I jump up too many times to cheer. I just love it.

Swing away!

Bummer

I suppose everyone has a crappy race now and again. I don't think I've ever finished a race where my time didn't improve, even just a tiny bit. Today my time wasn't even in the ballpark of prior best times, I was nearly one minute off my pace average per mile. But, a list of the things that might have contributed to the blehhhhhhhh-ness:

1. Hills in the second half, several
2. Didn't sleep well the night before
3. Tripped at mile 5, didn't fall, but did something wonky to my right hip
4. Should have worn a tank top instead of a tee
5. Off and on headache for the last few days...allergies? Dunno.

So I suppose I can chalk this morning's lackluster performance up to a series of minor errors and misfortunes that together simply made the race a bit of an annoyance. As always, it was a happy moment to cross the finish, grab my metal, rejoice in the end of another race started and officially completed. But I've recently gotten used to the feeling of that-was-the-best-I've-ever-done after each line crossing. Today was simply not that kind of race. But I checked off another race in my goal of running six half-marathons this summer. And given that the first 3 were in a mere 5 weeks, I should probably add "minor exhaustion" to the list of errors above. Spreading the races out a bit better would have been a good idea. But the rest of the races are better spread, just one a month in July, August, and September. I might toss in a 10K if something cool comes up.

Bummer of a race or not...

3 half-marathons down. 3 to go.

Two Hundred

This is my two hundredth blog posting on The Orange and The Fish. I began this blog as a lark, a way to decompress when the stress of Civil Procedure and Contracts II made me want to walk away from law school and pay off the debt by waiting tables in the Quarter. I would post sporadically the spring of 2005, encouraged by my intrepid little band of friends who read the posts while they were, themselves, ignoring class for sanity's sake. I mused on my new city, which I fell in love with immediately and blindly.

The blog soon found me in Little Rock, posting only to retain some sense of normalcy post-Katrina. I didn't post much that semester, and what I did post were sad little missives detailing how much I missed certain stretches of sidewalk, certain friends, certain taken-for-granted activities that seemed impossible to replicate in a city so battered by water, wind, gunfire.

My writing once I returned to New Orleans was equal parts evaluation of a city trying to rebuild and redeem itself and also a constant tearing apart of my own desire to both stay in New Orleans forever and to leave it behind. New Orleans is still the only city that has felt fully mine, built exclusively for my personality and my happy habit of romanticizing chronic disappointment. On a plane recently, flying back from a visit to my dear, now oily City, I overheard someone say New Orleans would be a hard city to love. Perhaps it's a distinction of personality. I have always loved old, broken things. Ideas in need of repair. Dreams deferred. New Orleans is a city where that propensity for damage exists side by side with breathtaking hope, a fire to continue, always.

Once I made the move North, half my writing was about this odd, cold place and my preference for the heat I ran away from, and the other half was wide-eyed training for my first half-marathon, first marathon. The running made Minneapolis an easier place to love. You make a city yours when you know the cracks in the pavement, the dips in the path around Lake Harriet, the roots around Lake Calhoun that call out for broken ankles. If New Orleans was the city that built a house for my heart, Minneapolis is the city that built my body and taught it to run. Equally important tasks, I believe.

The blogging comes in spurts. I blogged pretty routinely while training for the marathon, in part because it helped me articulate my frustrations and joys, and in part because I hoped my then-boyfriend would read the posts and recognize that my head was preoccupied by a worthy exercise. I haven't written as much this running season as it feels more familiar and there's less to articulate in the way of new experiences. I've had blood blisters before. Achey quads. Angry, rainy runs. But, more importantly, last summer I was in a relationship and shared much of those frustrations with him. I whined and had someone to whine to, someone to buy me a burger after a long run. This summer is different and the running feels more mine, more solidly part of my whole life, not just some season of experience that will disappear with a new face or new commitment or new stress. I talk about it less, maybe, because I am no longer surprised or daunted by the goals I set for myself. I am less in need of someone to tell me "you can do it!" because I now know I can. I needed that encouragement for awhile, but it's good to no longer be dependent on the whims of another's support.

And so, two hundred. Five years.

On my most recent trip to New Orleans I got a new tattoo (sorry, Dad), one I've been daydreaming about for months. It says, "ISAIAH 40:31" on my left foot. Its promise of renewed strength carried me through the latter half of the marathon, and after the miles I dedicated to these feet, I wanted a record of that promise. Two hundred. Five years. A Hurricane. A law degree. Two cities. And I have no doubt that the best parts of my life are in front me. "But those who Hope in the Lord..."

Kickin' Butt

I ran the Get in Gear 10K on Saturday in some pretty miserable weather. Mid 50s, unending rain, breezy, no hint of sunshine. To make the experience even worse, I discovered 9to my horror) while lining up at the start that I had failed to charge my iPod. I am not a runner in silence, I need my music. So the prospect of a miserably rainy, musicless 10K was daunting and annoying. But evidently, that's when I run my best...

Most runs over 5K (and less than 10 miles) my pace is roughly 10:30-10:45 min/mile. But on Saturday I ran a 10K (6.2 miles) at a 10:11 min/mile pace, a vast improvement over earlier runs. I think the rain kept me cool and the annoyance factor made me fairly desperate to get the race over. I rarely pick up speed near the end but my last mile was a less than 10 min average. I just remember wanting to finish, get back to my car, strip off the soggy shirts and throw on the warm fleece I'd stashed in my backseat. In my mind this fleece was newly out of the dryer and steaming hot, which was not what awaited me in the car. But daydreams get you fairly far in races.

I remember being 14 and running the requisite one-miler for phys ed. I was miserable and struggled to make a 14 minute mile. To have run 6.2 miles at a far faster pace makes one fact very clear to me: My 29 year-old self kicks my 14 year-old self's butt.

So, despite the rain, that's an excellent day.

This is My Station

I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning driving to and from Grand Rapids, Minnesota thanks to a public hearing requiring my attendance. I've only been to a few public hearings but each one has led me somewhere new, which I appreciate.

The drive to Grand Rapids, birthplace of Judy Garland, is easy from the Cities, at least once you make it out of the endless stoplights and fits and starts of general suburban sprawl. Past Rogers you can actually get a bit of speed, leave traffic lights behind, coast with open fields on either side. The weather was perfect, cloudless and bright blue, with enough sun to make the whole world cheerful but not enough to make me miss the sunglasses I forgot at home.

Some people are adverse to lengthy bouts in the car, especially when driving alone. But I have always favored a good, long solo road trip. Part of it is genetic (or some hybrid nature/nurture thing) as my Dad is of the particular genre of human that enjoys waking the family for a 4a.m. departure for every trip to Disneyworld, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, D.C., myriad fishing trips, etc. He's a drive-straight-through kind of guy, never balking at the prospect of 14 hour days in the car. I can't say my affinity for road trips is as strong as his, but there is a bit of him in my love of a long stretch of road. I think of him whenever I'm looking for a gas station, and his constant refrain of "never exit unless you can actually SEE the gas station from the highway, you don't want to pull off and then see the sign that points you 3 miles to the left." Good advice.

Usually I have music playing the whole time I drive but yesterday I was sick of my CDs and in radio no man's land so for awhile I road in almost silence, just the sound of a bumpy highway and the (I hope) normal squeaks and occassional hums and rattles of an aging car. That kind of quiet can be oppressive, especially when your brain has been on autopilot for several weeks. But the quiet was good for me, solemn and solid and sunshiney.

April 2010 will not go down in history as the best month of my life. Even March left a lot to be desired. It's common, of course, to have hiccups along the way, frustrations or disappointments or little heartaches. But it's uncommonly exhausting to fight a thousand minor battles at one time. Those periods of defensiveness make every day feel like a maze, some puzzle to be worked out and completed with a reward at the end of hot tea, pillow, and a book. Nothing is simple, and all the completely right (with no regrets) decisions I make still hurt.

But a drive is such a simple, perfect thing. There is a starting point and a destination. There is refueling, some stops along the way to look at interesting things (pretty lakes), but in the end there is only a straight line from A to B. An arrival feels like some sort of success, even if it's later than originally hoped, and a car is a solid companion that carries you forward without asking where the road will end.

On the drive back this morning I saw a gas station, closed by the looks of it, with the name, "This is My Station." I don't know how I missed it on the drive North. It was large and red with white pumps and there may have been some boards against a few windows. I loved that loud, brave, obnoxious sign. This is my station. This is simply where I am and what I do right now. This where I belong or where I'm stuck. This is it, for now. This is where you'll find me. This is how far I've come and how far I have yet to go. This is all of it, rolled up into this small, hardy place.

I know the shop was closed and I guess I could write something about that metaphor, too, but I like to think the owner moved on for some greater station, some better location, some sweeter place beyond that one he fashioned along Highway 169. Perhaps it was a product of recession bruises, or perhaps it was a result of new dreams and opportunities, or maybe it was a combination of the two. Regardless, I liked that at some point he/she stated, for what it was worth, exactly where they were and what they were.

In the middle of the puzzle that is my Spring 2010, it's a visual I needed on my trip home. Despite the many minor and not-so-minor heartaches and worries and prayers and hopes of this season, I do know where I am. I know whose road I am on. This is my station, and that is no small thing.

Training

I ran ten miles this morning, the first time since October I've hit a double digit. Usually I run the Greenway to the Lakes and then do laps til I've hit the mileage. But today I just decided to keep running along the Greenway to see how far five miles (and then return) would take me. I'm happy I did.

I have loved trains all my life. And if I'm being honest, I'm sure part of my somewhat misguided affection for Atlas Shrugged (sacrilege for a liberal?) is wrapped up in Dagney Taggart's profession. Trains have factored into my days in intermittent ways. In New Orleans I was often late for various social excursions thanks to being stuck counting railcars. New Orleans' favorite methods for making me late were slow-moving trains and slower-moving parades. The number of times I asked a friend on the phone, while stuck in traffic to allow the passage of a parade, "is today a holiday? Another parade...", cannot be counted on my fingers and toes. I miss those parades. But I miss the trains more, and the terrifying Huey Long Bridge, with its tressle defying gravity. Humans are amazing. The things they build...

The Greenway near me pounds out in spurts beside train tracks. And about 4 miles down the way I pass under a small bridge of tracks, my favorite thing. A string of spray-painted cars were lined up on one set of tracks and I spent a good mile daydreaming about tucking away between a couple cars, riding South.

The ten miles hurt, the way I would expect it to after months away from serious mileage. But running beside train tracks makes for a happier pounding, a reminder that the slow-moving conduit still gets from point A to point B. Slow and steady, mile after mile after mile.

I am a train. I am training.

Spring

As we're comfortably established in April, without a speck of snow throughout March, I think most Minnesotans feel secure in welcoming Spring. Colors other than brown, more brown, and a little more brown, are finally starting to emerge (though we could use a bit more rain to speed that along), and sunshiney days aren't as few and far between.

Spring, for me, means it's time to relace the running shoes and get going. This time last year I was gearing up for my very first half-marathon. It's hard for me to believe I accomplished even that one goal, much less the big beast of a hurdle in the full Marathon last October. It's hard to believe largely because they feel like eons ago, and my legs have gotten a bit lazy with their elliptical gym time and leisurely treadmilling.

As is usually the case with me when revving up for a goal or a challenge, I blast out of the gate too early. I pick up too much speed in new-found joy or freedom or ability or affection and then mid-run I start to wonder if my legs are going to fall off before or after my heart explodes. In true form, I signed up for a May 2 Half-Marathon. That is three weekends from now. And I'm thinking that is bordering on impossible. I haven't run further than 6 miles since October. I could, maybe (helpful if I was being chased), run 8 or 9 miles without actually dying. But 13.1 seems very large to me.

I've decided that the money is spent ($60) and nonrefundable. The date is set and unchangeable. All I can really do is try my best to get nearly there, and when I wake up on the 2nd I will just decide whether or not it's a racing day. Nobody but me will be disappointed if I don't race on that particular day. And I'm already signed up for four other half-marathons so far, with two more in the wings. (And a possible marathon??)

After beating myself up a bit over my a-bit-too-optimistic goal-setting habit, I just got rather tired of beating myself up about it. I'm not sure if that's complacency or maturity talking, perhaps a hybrid of the two. I know that shooting too fast or too far leads often to disappointment but I've gotten good at scaring my way into success by forcing a too-big or too-soon goal upon myself. Fear is a lovely motivator. And with a race looming, my feet just fall a little more deliberately.

A Big Hard Sun

...O, there's a big
A big hard sun
Beating on the big people
In a big hard world

When I go to cross that river
She is comfort by my side
When I try to understand,
She just opens up her hands

-Eddie Vedder, Big Hard Sun

Recently I serendipitously stumbled upon an old, scratched-beyond-recognition CD from Peace Corps days. In the Marrakech souk there are myriad stalls of pirated music. We frequented one in particular and fed our American need for newness after weeks or months of hitting repeat on CD players. For Christmas a fellow volunteer, David, gifted me with a CD of Beck's Sea Change. I was a moderate Beck fan at the time, but David said I'd like it and the power of a crush can make a woman believe anything.

There was nothing to talk me into with that CD. I was in love from the first play. One song in particular, Paper Tiger, just bought me and kept a hold of me throughout my Moroccan experience. I would lay for hours when the electricity would go out (often), leaving me in the dark and restless, listen to that haunting melody. Especially as the war inched closer, I played it more often. It wasn't until later in my life that I first experienced the agony of panic attacks, but I think some of those evenings waiting for news of attacks, news of evacuation, I think there were moments in those evenings that Beck and his Paper Tiger nursed my fetal positioned, journal-clutching, self into believing it would all be alright. I don't think I ever panicked in Morocco. But I think my heart broke often, and some evenings that song just felt like a blanket. A road somewhere pretty and warless, a road that led somewhere expected, no surprises.

I listened to the song again, perhaps the first time I've heard it all the way through since leaving Youssoufia. It's odd, I know I've given the CD to others, or burned that song in particular onto many a mix for ex-boyfriends or friends going through breakups. But I think it was habit, and subconscious acknowledgment that it was a song that comforted me once. I listened to it again and became reacquainted with the notion that the senses are time capsules. I could feel the hardness of concrete beneath my feet, the cold of it when I'd roll onto the floor from my inch-thick mattress. I could smell the cumin wafting from the family that lived above me, feel the condensation on the inside of my walls that dampened everything I owned. I could feel the heavy bruise in my stomach, the hopeful knot of anxiety that rose with every day--will we go to war with Iraq before Thanksgiving? Before Christmas? Before Easter? Should I tell my students now? Who should I leave my kitchen goods to? Does it matter? Does any of this matter at all? I could feel it all, and hear the happy, resigned sighs of my Moroccan self. The girl who wanted to stay but knew she would not be so lucky.

In the past few months I've had Eddie Vedder's soundtrack to Into the Wild on steady repeat in my apartment. "A Big Hard Sun," especially, has been on the type of rotation that would probably drive anyone other than me insane. Much like my former Paper Tiger obsession, or Closing Time, or Hurricane, or Sunday Bloody Sunday, or La Marseillaise...

I am waiting for no war. I am happy in most of the ways that matter, and anxious only in ways and for reasons that I think are fairly healthy. I enjoy the world I've tucked away for myself. And so I wonder, years from now, when I stumble on Mr. Vedder and his Big Hard Sun, when I play it again for the first time in a decade, what will I remember of these months. What will reawaken in my gut, what dreams will I remember, and what will I recall as the underlying thesis of these moments?

In a couple months it will have been seven years since my unexpected and unappreciated evacuation from Morocco. Seven years and yet there are moments, songs, smells, that remain visceral in a way I cannot adequately describe. I wonder what moments will be the moments I cannot adequately describe 10 years from now. And if those moments are hard to pick out, perhaps it's time to start making them, make sure my Big Hard Sun era is easily, excitedly, happily recalled.

Cold, Interrupted

I'm typing with half-frozen fingers so I imagine this post will take me an annoyingly long time to write. I dived into Cold this weekend and spent a good deal more time outside than normal. As a certifiable cold wimp, this is a big step for me.

I ran outside for the first time in ages today. The sun was too pretty and the day windless enough to assume I would not keel over and die. I was correct. No death. But my Madonna-inspired hot pink fingerless gloves really have to go. They may be perfect for blustery fall days, but they do not cut it when it's freezing outside, sunshine or not.

I was fairly excited to run outside partly because I've been dying to test out the running capabilities of these Yak Trak contraptions, weird metal thingies that attach to my running shoes to (supposedly) make running on less-than-clear sidewalks a bit safer. For running purposes, I hate them. For walking, they are awesome, definitely better traction and no slipping around even on that solid, evil kind of ice that peppers the sidewalks around my apartment. But running is a whole other animal. The weird metal things throw the balance of each foot off just enough to make each step feel unstable. While I felt pretty sure I wouldn't slip on any ice, I was less confident that I wouldn't simply lose my balance. So I went for a brisk, long walk after 2 miles of "gonna break my ankle, gonna break my ankle" at a pace that wasn't much faster than a brisk walk anyway. Running outside did make me yearn for spring, for new races, clear sidewalks, sunlight for hours after work so I can drive to Calhoun and do 6 miles before dinner. I do miss sunlight.

But I feel like I've had a healthy dose of it this weekend, happily. I spent yesterday afternoon ice fishing with my dad. I've been wanting to go ever since I moved up here but there is something about weekends and timing and planning and parents and grown children that I think just presents an obstacle. But, luckily, this weekend I had time, my Dad had time, the weather was good, the ice was thick...the stars were aligned.

We stopped by Gander Mtn for minnows and mealwormy things (wax worms?) and then drove out onto Bryant Lake (driving out "onto" a lake still feels bizarre to me). Dad drilled the hole, we pitched the little hut, and he broke out "cute" (my word) ice fishing poles. Dad also brought some chicken breasts and canned biscuits to testdrive on his portable propane grill, which proved to be a yummy lunch on the ice, burnt pieces notwithstanding. Dad caught two fish, neither worth keeping, and I practiced my technique of bobbing the pole up and down while sipping coffee and eating a biscuit. True talent.

The cold up here is easier to take with company. And I think for an Outsider, it's nice when that company is of the not-from-here variety. My dad loves Minnesota, loves the cold weather activities, the snow, the novelty of driving across lakes, of hammering a nail with a frozen banana. I'm not entirely impressed by these things, but I enjoy them more in his company. Tucked into an ice fishing hut on the middle of a lake, it's nice to be next to someone who understands the "holy crap, can you believe we're in a little house with a heater going on top of a lake and we drilled a hole into a foot of ice to catch fish with tiny little poles?!" feeling that just kind of permeates many of my winter experiences here.

A shared adventure interrupts the cold. Breaks the chill. Warms the soul.

Walking on Water

I snowshoed for the first time this weekend, borrowing my mother's pair and traipsing down a hill, through a patch of trees, and across Staring Lake. I still can't accept this walking on water business. It seems unnatural to me, no matter how thick the ice appears, no matter how many people I see skiing across the surface, and (eventually) no matter how many trucks I see parked where I once rode in a boat. But I walked, trailing a taller, heavier-than-me fellow who I figured would fall through before me and give me some warning as to the precariousness of my situation.

Not sure if that makes me a survival-minded woman or a bad girlfriend. Perhaps a smidge of both.

As much as I like to deny any affection for my Northern home short of respect for its excellent summers, I will admit that there are aspects of winter that are lovely. The lack of sunlight, I think, makes the rare sunny afternoon a treasure, even at 3 degrees. The white of snow-laden lakes, the white caught in tree limbs yet to be shaken, the snow with ridges, like waves, where you can see the fingerprints of windy evenings; I will concede a beauty here that would not exist in my prior homes.

I have wondered lately if I could stay here longer than I originally intended. If I can tuck more sunny, snowshoeing afternoons into this 6-month doldrum they call winter, I would say it is a stronger possibility than I have maintained in the past. Louisiana still feels like a place I'd like to call home again. And Arkansas, too, sometimes. And other warm, Southern places. But perhaps that's just blood calling, and habits of homesickness. Not a habit I plan to break, but one I could set aside for awhile longer, perhaps allow myself to enjoy this Northern space and its bright, cold, quasi-miraculous, walk-on-water afternoons.