A Good Run

A dear friend just moved to Rotterdam.  I am sad, though I haven't seen Linnea in almost a year.  But my eyes burn when I think of her being so far away.  I think of her each time I take my first tentative steps out the door in the morning to go for a run.  You see, she is my running friend.  So I step out and wonder if she would be running in this heat, this rain, this....We did not live near each other or go to the same church or work together when we began running.  I was hesitant to join her for our first run.   She is lively and tall and beautiful while I am short and shy, but we had shared the same excitement for long runs while talking on the kindergarten playground.  And with children wrapped around us as if we were maypoles, she convinced me to join her, promising she could maintain my slower pace.  She slowed down; I tried my darn-dest to keep up.  Three years later, I have run miles and miles with Linnea and they were some of the brightest spots of life in Williamsburg.  We talked about the environment and politics;  we covered topics of faith and prayer. We talked about the books we loved, the food we were eating, our marriages and our children.  I can remember where we were running when she shared with me her prayers as a child;  I know the gravel path we were on when I told her I was unexpectedly pregnant.  But we could just as easily debate the value of a bikini wax or laugh about our floppy bellies as we ran with tight legs.  And we were never interrupted by phone calls or children, just stopped by our own physical limits of exhaustion and heat intolerance. Coffee was our reward;  well, until she quit coffee on me.  Then my reward was talking to her while drinking coffee and not running.

     I don't know when I will see Linnea again.  I do know that it will be great fun though;  I know that we will run and talk as if we have not missed a day, or a year, or been divided by an ocean.  Until then, I hold it as a picture in my mind as I step out each morning...talking to myself.  How much is a ticket to Rotterdam anyway?