Mar

7

Years

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I find it hard to write about Riley these days and so I don’t as much as I used to. I’m sure someone with better data visualization skills than what I possess could create a diagram charting your typical blogger-who-is-also-a-parent (see how I dodged that mommy bullet?) and see the downward trend of child-related writings as their kids get older. You start thinking about privacy, I suppose, but for me the issue is really more about my own writing abilities, and how he is becoming more complicated than these dashed-off words can represent.

Babies are simple, if baffling, creatures; toddlers are delicious pint-sized savages who tend to go through similar stages. Riley’s such a little kid and a giant hulking BOY, all at once, and it seems like an oddly fragile, impossible-to-capture age. I wish I could do a better job, if only for my own memories. It’s awful, isn’t it, to think of all the things that will eventually be lost to time—the way they pronounce certain words, the exact crescent of their fingernails against small, grimy hands.

I haven’t thought of him in terms of milestones for quite a while—I suppose I thought the big Firsts were all behind us. But this weekend I took him to his first soccer practice, and oh. Oh, you guys. I thought I was going to burst into ridiculous, humiliating tears, there on the side of the YMCA gym court. My boy, my boy, looking so grown up. His first team sport. Ah, I don’t know, something about those baggy shorts and the real no-shit coach and the way he ran like he was trying to get somewhere instead of the pinwheeling garage-sale physical chaos that usually happens when little kids run—it just knocked me over. I was so goddamned proud of him, and so overwhelmed by how fast the time has gone.

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He did really well, too. There was some hesitation when we first got there—his unsure, reluctant toe-scuffings sort of broke my heart, as I know that new-group feeling all too well—but once things got going he had a blast.

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Soccer! My god, I can hardly believe it. I mean, really.

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Mar

4

Next

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During the last couple miles of the race on Sunday I had two thoughts foremost in my mind: one, that it would all be over soon and I just had to hang in there for, like, twenty more minutes; and two, that I was never ever EVER going to try and do a full marathon because there is pushing yourself and then there is plain old masochism and holy fuck I think I know which side of street 26.2 miles lives on.

I said as much to the friendly Minneapolis couple I was seated next to on my flight home. They told me I should come do the Twin Cities race in October because the leaves are so pretty, and I said I’d love to, but only if there was a half. “I mean, twenty-six miles,” I said, and twirled my finger next to my temple. They agreed, and we had a hearty chuckle over the batfuck insanity of running for five straight hours. Who DOES that?

. . . you can probably guess where this is going, right?

Yeah.

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I really don’t know either, but I’ve got eight weeks to figure it out.

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