"Gee, mom, why are your shoes so red?"
2005. It was pretty dry summer that year. Not so much hot but just lacking in rainfall. Typical Northwest August. I was hitting the track after work back then, getting in laps whenever I could. It didn't take long before the results started showing. One thing lead to another and before I knew it I was walking almost every day. Dropped two pants sizes and was working towards losing the third before life took a strange turn and I started back up the scale again. Happy to say that my weight is back down once again, and that I am comfortably sloppy in size 38's. Nothing tight about them now, but for awhile, I hate to say, "forties" were looking mighty tempting. Thank goodness for annual checkups and vanity.
The Cedar Heights J high track has played a big part in helping keep me honest about my walking time and my mileage. Four laps, one mile, fifteen or so minutes. On a nice summer afternoon it's not too hard to knock out twelve or sixteen laps. I would rather walk the boulevard but that "round and round" action also makes for a nice bit of meditative bliss. Plus every time I come around the track and start to head south again I see "my" tree up ahead. It's there, above the distant tree line, and over the years it's gained a bit of height. And for that I am happy. It's marking time by growing and so am I.
That track is pretty popular. Over the years I have shard that track with not only locals, coworkers and pals but my family, too. Sad to say it was never a really good time that way, as we were always anxious when the younger kids were out of eyesight so somebody always had to stop their exercise for the day to watch them. So in the end it was never really much of a walk as it was a family outing. Not bad in itself if that was the intention. Somewhere I lost connection to that, that the track was our time out. I kept falling back on how my needs were not being met and so I lost track of everybody else's. Somehow I saw that today while I watching other families walking and talking and goofing off with their kids. Somehow I lost my way, which is damn hard to do on a circular track, but there you have it.
But things change. We know that all too well.
I remember that August, the one where you would magically appear seemingly out of nowhere when I was out doing my laps. You would always somehow find a reason to go out grocery shopping and would hop in the car to seek me out. For me the joy was in making the turn at the bottom of the track and see you coming up out of the draw. There were days when you would fairly run to catch up to me, never mind that I was already heading up the track towards you. We would do a turn or three, just enough time to chat and let each other know..know what, at the time, I couldn't tell you what we were trying to say...but there you have it. We made time. We talked about whatever it was that we found to talk about, there always something to talk about at the time, total exploratory chats, but on occasion we would find that there were things we couldn't budge on, that we couldn't make exceptions for, and that's when we would slow down and scratch out a line in the sand.
I think of those lines, how we maintained our convictions, how we kept to our standards, to our values. We did have an immense amount of integrity, darling, no matter what others thought about us and our wild actions later on. We held the line when it came to the kids. We saw that family was important, more important than us, and for that I am glad.
I thought I saw that, anyway, at the time. I did those drives to Boise to see my kids, I stayed on the property when the family came back, I did what I could do for the family when they were here but somehow I couldn't see over the horizon, or even as far as that distant tree, and see those things that I really needed to see. Frankly I couldn't see what it was that you saw. I suppose I never had the chance to do that, not really. My family decamped that August of '05, my bed was vacated, but not yours. You had little or less to repair than I did, and so you did. Me, instead of repairing my relationship I did a Sherman's March on the remains of my marriage. I tore up track and burned down the estate. I let my hurt and my anger and my pride lead the way. I burned a path all the way to today and you, well, M, you still live where you live and live the life that you lived before all this started.
I saw that tree in the distance today as I made my way around the track and realized that somehow, somewhere I was given back my far reaching vision. I can see where all this, the house, you and me, my pride, my arrogance, my wistfulness, has gotten me. In truth I found that out at 2:30 this morning. I woke up to a very quiet and empty house. I took that march all the way to the sea and once I got there I had to stop and watch the sun come up. Alone. Nothing wrong in that, I suppose, if I was single and didn't have a family, but darlin', I should have listened to you a long time ago. "Be brave like me" you told me that one September morning back at Bataan Park. Had I done that, laid down my pride, erased that line in the sand I had made for the actions of my Estranged One, I would have never grown, never chased you down, never took the hit for old letters and this blog. Sometimes those lines in the sand are more valuable and more experiential than a doctoral degree.
Somehow those old faded lines in the sand never got crossed. Not until this summer. The ones that say that family is important are finally being honored. The house is being worked on every day. Folks are regularly coming through looking at it, and every day I do box runs and fill those boxes up. I have applications out there, I keep my eye on Idaho real estate and talk to my kids on the phone as regularly as their schedules allow. I may never get back together with the Estranged One, but that's not the point. I want to go somewhere that has a dirt track close by, someplace where I can walk till I sweat myself silly. Someplace where I can take my kids and then, when they need me or want me I can say to hell with my three or four miles a day and play with them the way that I should have years ago.
Years ago we scratched out a line in the sand at the Cedar Heights track. That one, for me, anyway, said that I would love you forever. Just know, M, that no matter where I go or what I do that that line is still there, etched in the red dirt track of my heart. You can try to rub it out, time can do it's best to erase it, but you know, I walk that track every day in my mind and know that it's still there, just like that tree in the distance. You keep coming up, every time I hit the curve, and like that tree, you are the distant vision, are one of the many grand things that I honor that make this walk through life worthwhile.
Your WHMB
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