Daddy always tells me that I have two speeds: really fast and stop. Emotionally, he’s absolutely right. I’m 100% sunshine the biggest part of the time, but when the rain comes, it gets ugly. Give me a little space, some comfort food, and a good cry and I work my way back to sunny skies. Foot speed, however, is another story entirely.
The truth is ten years and thirty pounds ago I was fast. Really fast. But that was then.
These days I do my best to cover the distance. Nonetheless, when my sister–in–law asked if I wanted to train for a half–marathon with her, I couldn’t say no. After all, her hair is always perfect, pink is her signature color, and she wears heels— a lot. If she can do it, I can do it, right?
So, the training has begun and it’s embarrassing, mortifying even, but I’m taking the advice of the tortoise on this one. “Slow and steady gets the job done.”
I ran a 10k last week and more than a few hares passed me by, but I know the “Bravo, amor!”s and the “Buena, mona”s meant far less to them. As did running by the Catedral or the Fundadores or seeing a crowd of people at the finish line waiting for me. Me.
And in the front of them, my nine year old angel, Martin. “Run, Miss! It is terminaste! Mire! Ella es mi profesora!”
But I’m not training for a 10k, I’m training for twice that distance. There’s much work left to do.
My alarm goes off at 4:30. I fumble for it, silence it, and then push back on my hands. I feel the stretch in my chest and back as I look out my window at a Manizales that is still asleep. Socks, shirt, shorts, shoes. Ponytail, cap, watch.
And then I’m down the stairs. Freddie, the portero, greets me and tells me to “go with care.” I take my first few steps and feel the lead that is my legs. Slowly, they turn over and I somehow settle into an easy rhythm. In, 2,3. Out, 2, 3.
I pass the street sweeper who smiles and tips his hat, Bruno’s promising that I’ll eat there soon, and then up the hill. A wide turn at the top and then I’m headed back down. The man on the bike pedals by, the old couple that holds hands, the coffee shop.
Night is giving up her battle and the sky softens to gray. In, 2, 3. Out, 2, 3. A big loop and back up the mountain toward home. My legs are working harder and the pain is a welcome one.
Then, it is here. The bleeding sun, the clouds a purple fit for a King.
Come and listen. Come and listen. All you who are thirsty. Come. There is a song in the sunrise and I praise the King who has me hearing the song in South America for awhile.
With love and tired legs,
Emily
This post was originally sent as a mass email in November 2007. My preblog life.
First of all, shouldn’t you be all mushy and romantic everyday? Commercialized holidays shouldn’t tell us when to buy flowers or say nice things, should they? Fair enough, I’m probably just bitter and against relationships altogether.
Generally I wear all black on February 14th, eat chocolate for all three meals, and have ice cream with my mom to end that dreadful day. As Alexander would say, “It is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day!”
So, when I heard about Love and Friendship Day, a day in September that Colombians celebrate with great fervor — “a holiday that really is all about friendship”— I nearly puked. Do I really have to have two Valentine’s Days? One is enough torture for any woman to stand! Honestly!
And then-
Every day of the week I got a happy from students, parents, and coworkers. We added decorations to the room daily and my desk was covered in chocolates, sweets, a puzzle, a Colombian t-shirt, red paper hearts, even a poster with my name in glitter. I admit it, by Friday I, too, was all about love and friendship. I even wore pink and the lip gloss one of my angels gave me! I went home that afternoon with two dozen roses, a bouquet of daisies, and a newfound appreciation for holidays.
There really is something special about love and friendship, isn’t there?
Friendship keeps us grounded but never discourages us from seeing our dreams taking flight. Friendship assures that we never cry alone or eat pizza in solitude. It provides a sounding board and two arm hugs, fits of laughter, a work out buddy, and an “is he right for me?” radar. It’s throwing a frisbee in the dead of winter and driving in a green van listening to Journey headed for the beach.
Friendship is memories, stories, secrets, and passing books along state lines or oceans. Friendship is saying, “Go! Go! I’ll send you mail.” Friendship is lasting and real and a lifetime full of treasures.
And love.
Love is Momma’s biscuits and her waiting up for me. Love is the sound of Daddy’s tractor and the smell of his barn. Love is watching them ride down the driveway together in an old blue truck on a Sunday afternoon. Love is watching movies with my Sisser and seeing her as a counselor at Camp Lake Stephens. It’s my brother sending “diet coke could kill you” emails.
Love is looking up at your grandmother’s funeral and seeing a crowd that is there because your heart is broken. Love is campers that grow up and still call you their favorite and students that think you’re a rockstar. Love is Mamaw patching my favorite jeans for the 52nd time and making sweet potato pie.
Love is a choice, an action, a sacrifice, a precious, precious gift. Love is my Jesus, a cross, His grace.
My friends, my family, I love you and I think maybe I’ll wear red on February 14th this year.
With the greatest of affection,
Emily
This post was originally written as an email on September 22, 2007.
I was twenty years old the first time I ran away. I ran from all the things I knew and my friends and a life that was beating me up in all sorts of ways. I ran long and far and ended up in The Royal National Park right outside of Sydney, Australia.
That year was the best and hardest of my life. I couldn’t have been any further from home and the only friend I had was two hours away in the Blue Mountains. But there was Jesus and He was good to me. He loved me and held me and broke me into a million pieces. So that in the end all I could do was cling to Him and weep.
Which is what I should have been doing all along.
My first morning in Australia was September 12, 2001 which happened to be September 11th at home and the memory of being woken from a jet lagged stupor by people that I didn’t love yet still haunts me.
Okay, so it wasn’t a real date. It was more like my friend won two tickets to a jazz concert and she invited me to tag along. I’m sort of a sure thing that way.
The concert was part of the Jazz Festival of Manizales which is just the teensiest bit strange seeing as how jazz is the “American musical art form”and well, I think of Colombia as all salsa and hip shaking, but it was free so we decided to make a night of it.
I even wore cute shoes (I sure did) and dangly earrings (can you believe it?!) AND I did my hair in an uppity sort of thingy all elegant-like. Y’all that hairdo would have made BigMama, Boomama, and Shannon proud.
My cute shoes, my friend and I had a dinner we couldn’t afford where the tables had linens and too many forks and we ate things we couldn’t pronounce and felt like demure ladies out on the town. (Hello! My hair was all uppity and such.)
When we finally sashayed into the theatre we were feelin’ fine. Who wouldn’t, right? Then, the lights went down and my tummy did a little flip flop thing- it could have been the food I couldn’t pronounce, but I’m chalkin’ it up to excitement about all that jazz.
The music started.
Drums.
Bass.
Piano.
Then the saxophone and a trumpet and they were jamming, bending their knees and swiveling as they blew each perfect note.
Who am I kidding?
Jazz just doesn’t do it for me. All I could think about was Bill Clinton and that picture of Luis Armstrong where he looks like a blowfish and that horrid excuse for a date I had once.
You’ve heard the story-me thinking that my house was on fire (thank you, one hundred candles), a bottle of wine on the table (puh-leeze) and jazz playing in the background (um, seriously?). Poor guy. He didn’t last a week.
I love far off places and far-fetched dreams. I love people and purpose, protecting the broken and pretending that fairies might really exist. I travel frequently and lightly.
I like being barefoot and wet-headed. I love lasting friendships and conversations with strangers. I adore books and music and the idea of living in a little cabin in the woods.
I love the sound the tide makes as it rolls into the shore and naps on Sunday afternoons. I love summer camps and capture the flag and the thought that I might change the world. I adore adventure and the uncertainty of tomorrow, but revel in the comforts of home.
I believe that my heart has secrets it hasn’t told me yet and that hands are made for holding. I care about investing in relationships and knowing when to walk away and I have never been more certain that life really is good.
Walking through my parents’ yard sometimes feels like a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There are flowers of every kind that grow in their soil. Blossoms that are rich in color and invite you to walk among them.
There are purple cone flowers and daisies and black-eyed susans and lilies of every hue. Blooms that stretch a bit further with each passing year and seem at home in their recklessness.
And I love them all.
I am no hopeless romantic. I am not easily wooed nor taken by surprise. I am guarded and careful and unashamed by that profession, but hidden in the depths of me is the faintest hint of someday.
I’m sitting at my desk. There’s a dictionary in front of me opened to the word “asinine” because I’d like to use it someday. There’s a battered Spanish/English dictionary as well and a thesaurus is tucked comfortably beneath it.
My journal is among the clutter. On the last page there are words and phrases scribbled that have just come to me. Some of them at night. Some in the morning. In the shower. On the road. In the midst of a crazy day.
Things like art and music and fate and love and timeless and limitless and a staggering sort of beauty.
I don’t know when my fascination with words started. I’m sure that the story is buried somewhere and I hope it finds its way to the surface soon. But for now there are words in me and around me and there’s a tingling in my fingers that begs me to share them.
Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little. -Tom Stoppard
I’m sort of prone to carsickness. Scratch that. I want to throw my guts up at the sight of twists, turns, and dips ahead. But I haven’t thrown up carside in quite some time.
Well, except for that time when I was 25 or so and had to say, “No, Ma. I’m serious. I’ve got the salty taste. Pull over. Pull Over. PULL OVER.” After which I proceeded to hurl in the most unladylike fashion on the side of the Natchez Trace as the cars whizzed by and dear old Mom said, “Alright. Hurry up. That’s about enough of that. You’re fine.”
She’s known for her incredible sympathy.
But I digress.
Some friends and I spent Saturday in the valley where the sun’s more likely to shine. It’s worth it once we get there, but the twenty miles or so of winding road that lead down the mountain are rarely ever kind to me. So, I generally pull the oh-but-I’m-a-blonde-and-life-is-so-hard-in-a-coffee-colored-country card and get the front seat of the Jeep. I’ve been pretty lucky so far.
Well, except for that one time. Like last Saturday.
Twenty-three (or eleven) of us were piled into a Jeep headed back toward Manizales. The treasured front seat had finally eluded me, but I managed to score the outside seat in the back. You know, the one where there’s less fresh air and more dark smoke blowing out of the muffler that makes you feel like it’s actually possible to suffocate in an open space? Yeah, that one. Still, it was better than being trapped in the middle of said Jeep with no convenient projectile vomit escape route.
Or so one would think.
Buried further inside the sweat wagon there was a precious little Colombian girl. Her hair was carefully braided and her pre-ride smile was infectious. I gave her a piece of green gum and we laughed at the face she made when she tasted it. She sat comfortably in her mother’s lap.
And then we were moving.
With every turn and twist and tiny incline her sweet little face went a little more pale and then a little more green. Her mother pulled a bag from her purse. The girl cringed and then quietly purged into the bag her mother held. And she did it over and over again. Her precious braids bobbed as her head drooped and rolled until inevitably her face was pointed toward the bag again.
Her mother helped her turn her head away as she tried to spare us all. Then, she’d carefully roll the top of the bag down trapping the smell, the liquid, the results of her daughter’s misery.
She slept restlessly with little droplets of sweat gleaming on her forehead. She was understandably exhausted and my insides were twisted for more reasons than one.
By the time we’d made it home, that poor child had vomitted more times than I could count. Admittedly I might have missed a few. My head was, after all, sticking out the back inhaling that muffler smoke- my own stomach frighteningly close to exposing everyone in the Jeep to a grown-up style of upchucking.
At least her mother was there. There to pull back her hair and wipe her face and hold that plastic bag.
And if my mom had been there? Well, she would have probably been saying, “Alright, that’s about enough of that.”
Sometimes I feel like a ten year old girl trapped in a grown up body.
I still dream like a child and every so often I cry like a child. The thought of Christmas mornings still thrills me and I still want to grab a Mason Jar when I see fireflies. I want my Momma to be near when I’m sick and dancing with my Daddy will forever be my favorite pastime.
I wanna be a little girl forever.
I think that working at Camp Lake Stephens was one way that I channeled that inner child of mine. I played in the mud there and painted my face for capture the flag and I sang out loud with no shame as I walked through the woods there. And I sat up late at night talking to cabins full of little girls wishing that I could be more like them.
I wanna be a little girlforever.
And every morning of every summer that I worked at that camp I braided the tangled hair of each child in my cabin. Mine included. I think that those pigtails gave us all a sense of family even if it was only for six sweltering days in a Mississippi summer.
I wanna be a little girl forever.
There’s just something about pigtails, isn’t there? Something that screams innocence and hope and a little bit of mischief. (Thank you, Pipi Longstocking.) And I like the idea of all those things.
September 14, 2008 
Posted in colombia, running 
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