Buena Vista, Lakeside, New London, Old Forge, Quebec City + Spokane
Races you'll love running + Sabrina Little on slowing down, running 100 miles with Courtney Dauwalter, and one last 'Final Reckoning'
Picture this:
It’s early Thursday evening, and little T and I have tickets to see the opening-day showing of the last (maybe?) installment in the Mission: Impossible movie series, this weekend’s The Final Reckoning.
We have about twenty minutes before the movie starts, and we need to pick up a friend of his on the way to the theater. But T, who’s been dressed and ready to go for at least an hour, decides he’d like to do a wardrobe change.
“Dad, I want to try something,” he says.
Looking at my watch, I’m tempted to roll my eyes and say no, but I give in.
“Sure, why not,” I reply.
In about ten minutes — which I watch creep by on my watch, tick by tick — he’s back downstairs, dressed in white shirt, dark pants and dark blazer.
“Okay, I’m ready to go.”
And that’s when I realize, he’s going to the movie dressed as Tom Cruise — the Cruise we saw two years ago in M:I Dead Reckoning, running atop the Abu Dhabi airport and through the streets of Venice.
Sure enough, when we arrive at the theater — just barely in time, by the way — T asks me, “Dad, can I run to the door?” Just like his favorite movie star.
Of course I said yes! He and his friend ran, and did the same thing when we exited the theater three hours later. (And yes, the movie’s almost three hours long!)
The reason I share this with you isn’t because it’s especially out of the ordinary, or that he doesn’t do this stuff all the time. He does, but he’s also eleven years old now, and will turn twelve in just a few months. Which (probably?) means, we’ll start to see less and less of this kind of thing from him, and probably soon.
I truly hope not — I truly hope I’m wrong, and he keeps being the joyful, unselfconscious little guy he’s always been. But I know too, puberty comes for us all, and our relationship will change; and as odd as it may seem because it hasn’t happened yet, I’ve already begun to feel the first pangs of nostalgia for his almost-completed childhood.
I don’t really know why; as you can see, it’s not over yet! But something about the moment we’re in has made me realize there’s not a whole lot left of it, that I need to make sure I’m fully present for it all.
And, the truth is, we’ve all seen a hundred or more inspirational quotations that tell us that; we all know we need to gather our rosebuds while we may.
That’s really hard to do, though, when you’re in the middle of raising kids, especially in those really early years; a writer described it perfectly in The Atlantic a few years ago:
It’s hard to admire the curl taking shape in a child’s hair when you haven’t had a full night’s rest in months and are covered in another human’s bodily fluids. Likewise, the joys of parenthood can be overshadowed by the fear of screwing it up. “We’re really trying not to make any life-defining mistakes,” Woods said. Graham suspects that the singularity of the bond between a parent and a young child gets lost in the overwhelm and monotony of living it every moment of every day.
Only with distance from the minute-to-minute anxieties of caring for a small child does its sweeping beauty come into full view. But this isn’t so much a shortcoming of youth as it is a gift of age. The experiences that follow early parenthood enrich our understanding of it, allowing us to ponder it anew. Hindsight allows us to put suffering into context and recognize the purpose it served in our lives. Hohlbaum likened it to laying bricks in a road: Only after we find out where the path leads are we able to see the purpose each brick served in getting us there. People with grown children have a deeper appreciation for the initial years of parenthood, because they are observing it from a perspective that only time can grant.
There’s one more thing about parenting I haven’t seen much remarked on: having kids isn’t (only) something that happens to you — I’ve been changed by it too. It’s given me a chance to view life with fresh eyes, to experience a second childhood of my own in a way.
So I think there’s a part of me that’s wistful about that coming to a close; I know there will be new phases ahead, it’s just hard to see that right now.
Until they arrive, we’ll just keep running, right?
In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful, restful three-day weekend, and get some great runs in out there. As always, keep in touch.
Your friend,
— Terrell
🏃♀️ To run
🌲 The Kan. “Explore alpine meadows, huckleberry groves, and old pine forests” as you run the trails inside Washington’s Mount Spokane State Park at this early summer race known simply as “The Kan,” which offers a 50K, 25K and 10K distance. You’ll run the trails that wind through a section of the state park known as Mount Spokane Ski and Snowboard Park, and you’ll need to be ready for some steep climbs: the 10K features an elevation gain of some 1,700 feet, while the 25K features 3,500 feet and the 50K — or roughly 32 miles — a whopping 6,000 feet. Each distance, organizers say, is filled with “steep climbs and fast descents,” with plenty of both single- and double-track trails. Set for Saturday, June 14.