Sunday, February 16, 2014

41






Faithful readers know that each year for my birthday, Jacob learns and plays a song of my choice. This year it was "Wagon Wheel" and although I got an 'official recording' with all the editing, I love this version I shot on my phone.

Training Day

The last time I was "a runner" was my senior year in high school. After not having done anything athletic for two years, I decided I'd run track my senior year (full disclosure: this was after flaying really badly at badminton try-outs. It turns out some people take that really seriously!).

I started running a solid couple miles every few days and considered myself in pretty decent shape, so it was a big surprise when I showed up for the first day and the warm up was a mile - half my total workout! Those of us who planned on running "the mile" competitively were sent off to run FIVE miles for our daily workout. After already running a mile! There was no way I was going to go five miles. Despite the encouragement of my fellow teammates, I bailed off the course after a couple more miles. I think I gave a couple other track sports a go (discovering I had developed a healthy fear of hurdles) before bailing on the idea of competing in track altogether.

Fast forward to now when I have no heart/lung capacity (but knees that will go the distance!). Vaughn announced he'd like to start running and running competitively. I figure, unlike basketball, with a little effort I can do this in at least the very minor leagues. We decided we'd set a goal for a 5K exactly one month from now. Today was our first day of training and although we walked/ran the 3.1 miles, we felt so good after that Jacob got on our pavement bandwagon and all three of us are signed up for the Shamrock Run. Our goal is to be able to actually run the whole thing without having to walk.
Pre-Run!


Saturday, February 8, 2014

Memories

I have loved Vaughn at every age. Watching him grow and unfold - I remember clearly the feeling that he was a book we had no idea what it was about. We watched him take shape, develop personality, things he was good at, things he gravitated toward.

In some ways, I love this age the best. At eleven and a half, he is polite and genuinely caring with a quirky and off-beat sense of humor that makes me so proud.

So it's fair to say that I was totally unprepared for the intensity of emotions elicited by watching old baby videos. Videos we haven't watched since we filmed them. The people in the videos are almost strangers to me. I recognize these younger, smoother versions of Jacob and I but I do not connect us to them. Such is the disconnect that I don't see the baby on the screen in the child sitting next to me and it fills me with an unexpected pain and longing. I watch the video of Vaughn and I in the tub, blowing bubbles and practicing letters and I ache to hold his chubby body and breathe in the baby smell. I don't want Vaughn back as a baby and I certainly don't want ANOTHER baby, but I can't reconcile the sadness. The baby on the screen seems like a separate person - a person who is irretrievably gone. I think, "I had a baby once - where is my baby?" I imagine my loving, sweet boy playing with the baby on the screen. I guess it is just one of those maternal things that happens as we get older and watch our children grow.