Thank-you notes

I’ve been looking through some letters from 25 years ago that I filed under “keepers.” They are thank-you notes, from Rebecca, my step-mother and Mary Ann, the mother of a college friend. And one from Atsuko, in her twenties, about to become my daughter-in-law.

The older women have an elegant command of the language. Japanese Atsuko, struggling with the skewed logic of the English language, had just made the bittersweet decision to leave her homeland to follow an American into the great unknown.

“It is so hard to either write down or call you what and how I think and feel now, in English, to you. But when I received your letter with present, I was so much happy that I knew you welcomed me into your family. So, I’m in the midst of happiness greatly that it scares me a lot. . . By our mutual understanding I believed that Kurt is my better half (Isn’t it funny you can’t say best half?) and on that moment I did feel I was going to marry into the James family. But quite honestly, this makes me really nervous. . .

Rebecca thanked me for birthday daisies, “my favorite spring blossoms. . . they lasted for days and I loved them.”  Failing eyesight keeps her from driving these days. “Friends say ‘Call if you need a ride,’ but I choose to call a cab even though it’s expensive. I sound sorry for myself, but I’m not. I can walk, and my ailments are just boring…My contemporaries are much worse off. . . I am ashamed to complain.”

Mary Ann’s note brought memories of my own mother, born on the same day in the same year. Mary Ann and my mother only knew each other through their daughters but discovered they had much in common. Late marriages, daughters born in the same month and year followed by two sons, about the same intervals apart—trivial perhaps, but they developed a special caring for each other, like long-distance soulmates.

“Never a January passes,” Mary Ann wrote, “That I do not think of your mother, always with the wish that she could have been alive all these years to see your family develop and go out in the world. She would appreciate the rapport you have with your children—enough guidance—never too much—comradeship even when you are all going different ways. I’m always waiting to see what you are going to do next and I know it won’t be dull.”

Why these comments about a few thank you notes that arrived the same day so long ago? Perhaps because the holiday season is upon us and it is nostalgia time. Perhaps because I can see a parallel between my mother’s journey away from her homeland and the one Atsuko is about to embark on. Maybe it is in praise of the hand-written word. Phone calls, texts, emails, instagrams, Facebook—all fine, but they are hard to save, re-read, savor and save for your grandkids.

A postage stamp is still a bargain.

Go Girls!

When I got a last-minute invitation to run in a “Girls on the Run” 5k race in Cheyenne, Wyoming, I said “Sure, as long as I don’t have to run fast.” I’m finding myself in a mellow walk-a-day, run-a-day mode after a gut-busting October. No races planned for a while, but I knew a little of the Girls on the Run organization and I wanted to support this, the first race ever for them in Wyoming.

Girls on the Run was founded 20 years ago to teach life skills through dynamic conversation-based lessons and running to girls ages eight to thirteen. It has spread steadily across the country until, in the fall of 2016, Wyoming became the 50^th state to adopt the program. Today it is in 200 schools in the U.S. and Canada and in 2015 sponsored the largest series of 5k runs in the U.S.

These 5k races celebrate the end of a ten-week program, held in the spring and fall. Aside from being a whole lot of fun, they celebrate the girls’ achievements during their participation in the program.

They meet twice a week after school for a series of activities which finish up with a training run each session. At the end of the ten weeks, participants take part in a celebratory 5k race. The organization also conducts programs for older girls where the focus on running becomes a bit more serious.

The idea is to encourage girls to be joyful, healthy and confident using a fun, experience-based curriculum to achieve that goal. It seems to be working. At Lions Park in Cheyenne, a group of 35 excited little girls from three elementary schools got their faces painted, hair-colored and danced up a storm to lively music as a warm-up for the race. Meanwhile their parents, siblings and a whole host of other supporters prepared to run as well.

I was lucky enough to shout “ready, set” and then ring a cowbell to start the race. Off they went amid dogs, strollers, walkers and well-wishers along the sidelines. Billed as “non-competitive” the races are just that. The kick comes in participating, in finishing and in, at the end of the day, feeling good about yourself. It is what running is all about.

I couldn’t have been more pleased that I was able to be part of it all.

I will add a photo as soon as it is available.

Women's running has come of age!

I was rummaging through some old scrapbooks devoted to running in times past and came across these words that I wrote for a newsletter sometime in the early 1980s. Thought I’d share it.

Women in Running

When I was a ninth grader in Seattle, Washington in 1951, the criteria for getting an A in physical education was to take 40 showers during a semester. I’m not kidding!

Thirty showers qualified for a B, 20 earned you a C, and so on. Clever kids that we were, we soon discovered that you didn’t even actually have to take a shower. The teacher only checked for wet towels and it was easy enough to wet a towel and show it to her.

I don’t even remember what kind of physical activities we participated in, but I can assure you there was no running in the curriculum. We would all have balked anyway. We were girls, after all, and girls weren’t supposed to sweat back then.

When I moved to Philadelphia in 1952, things were a little different in the women’s sports arena. They had actually girls’ tennis and swim teams and they played lacrosse, a funny game where you carried a little ball around in a basket on the end of a stick and you actually had to run with it. I tried out, made the fourth team and soon quit in disgust. Too many showers and not enough sweat in my past.

In college, physical education consisted of golf and bowling for me. I earned a C in both and learned nothing.  We had to swim a single lap in the college pool and “pass” a dreadful ordeal—the taking of a posture picture. You were photographed in the nude and the authorities then determined whether you could indeed stand up straight. If you flunked, there was a class you had to take to get straightened out and before you could graduate.

I have a close college friend who was recently admitted to the athletic hall of fame at our school. (Of course there were no women in it when we were there.) She was unable to attend the ceremony because she was busy rock climbing, necessary research for a book she was writing, but she wrote a nice note thanking the school for thinking of her 25 years later. What she did not say to the people at Ohio Wesleyan University was that all she really needed to do to qualify for this belated honor was to be “vertical and breathing” at the time.

But hey! Times have changed. Not since 1967 has a woman had to hide in the bushes and wear a hooded sweatshirt to compete in a marathon. You find us all over the place, at all hours of the day and night, running and biking and swimming and getting sweaty and even spitting when the need arises. We’ve learned that it feels good to sweat, that in fact we need to, if we are going to experience the sense of well-being that comes from using our bodies as they were meant to be used.

We’ve learned that these little 98-cent (worth at least $2.50 by now) machines that we live in thrive on use. Exercise is kind of like loving, the more we do it, the better we get at it. The more we give, the more we get in return.

We’ve learned that exercise can be a tremendous stress reliever and that it can be a time each day that is set aside for us, when we don’t have to think about our jobs, our husbands and kids, or what we are going to have for dinner. We know that after a little time away, we come back to our responsibilities refreshed and eager.

We’ve learned that it is okay to be competitive, that it does not make us less feminine, and that it is great fun to test ourselves against others and more importantly against ourselves.

We’ve learned that regular exercise can help keep our weight under control, revive us at the end of a frustrating day, improve our self-confidence, (If I can run 10 miles, heck, I can do anything!) and introduce us to a whole new set of friends we otherwise might never have known.

I am just getting started. I could go on and on. Thank goodness, most of the myths that once surrounded women’s running have been dispelled. We no longer have to worry about developing a fallen uterus, unwanted muscles, drooping breasts or a masculine personality—running won’t cause any of those tragedies. Thank goodness for the simplicity of a sport that lets us throw on a good pair of shoes, shorts and a t-shirt and hit the road, alone or with a friend, to participate in the most elemental of human activities.

A chance encounter

Last Friday afternoon my daughter Kristin and I were taking a hot, windy, humid little jog in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma in preparation for a 15k race we planned to do the following morning when we ran into a couple of guys sitting on a low wall. One of them asked if we knew where “The Expo” was, the place where you go to pick up your race number. “Right down there,” Kristin said, pointing to the Cox Business Center. “Go all the way down the main hall and turn right into ballroom C.”

“Thank you,” one of them said, looking just a little puzzled by what ballroom C might mean. And then we began to talk. They were obviously runners and so were we, and we were just as obviously all going to run in the same 15k race on Saturday morning. It took about 10 minutes before we’d become fast friends. Abraham was from Mexico City and had struggled to get a visa, then ridden 36 hours on a bus, arriving in Tulsa only the day before. Ray, a friend of Abraham’s friend who had volunteered his place for Abraham to stay, had been in the states for 16 years. e worked as a machinist, he told me H He worked as a machinist, he told me, but this guy, despite his slightly broken English, was a philosopher at heart. And he knew how to make friends in a hurry.

Abraham was shooting high. “The Kenyans will come first, then me,” he explained to Kristin whose Spanish is much better than mine. We wished them luck and saw them off on their way to pick up their race bibs. Surprisingly enough, we saw them again the next morning among 7,000 thinly-clad bodies milling around nervously awaiting the start. Just time for a high-five and to wish each other luck.

At the end of the race, as I searched among the throng for Kristin, I ran into Ray again.  He seemed happy enough with his time but Abraham was not close on the heels of the winning Kenyans. “The bus ride was too long,” Ray explained. “Abraham did not have time to recover from it before the race. Next year I will invite him to come a week early.”

It was then that I invited the two of them to come to Fort Collins next September to run the first ever Fort Collins Fortitude 10k. “It goes right by my house,” I explained. “You must come and do it and you must stay with me.”

He promised. I’m looking forward to it.

Teabag Evening

Thank goodness for used tea bags. And for Sandy Scott who is part of a group of dynamic women who get together every month for an “artist date.” They take turns planning what will go on when they get together—anything from a walk in the foothills to a session creating collages. The activity takes a back seat to the opportunity to get together, share a glass of wine and a simple meal and do something fun together.

I was out of town when an email reached me asking if I’d be willing to share my tea bag obsession with the group. “Sure,” I said. “I’m flattered that anyone is interested.”

That’s how I happened to drive over Bingham Hill Road and into the foothills to Sandy’s beautiful home on a spacious piece of land with a spectacular view of the surrounding territory and the hills to he west. The leaves were turning and the autumn sun was brilliant until it began to set over the hills.

A couple of the group had other obligations that night, so there were five of us who gathered. My first reaction was how tall they all were. At 5’ 2” I felt like a shrimp, but no matter. Height isn’t a requirement for membership in this group, though I do think they feel a certain kinship, these strong tall women.

All of them work, making their free time limited, but this group is important to them.  Each has artistic leanings which they express in different ways. And they are outdoors people who ski, kayak, ride bikes and horses and generally seem to be up for adventure.

After a homemade chili and salad supper, we stayed at the table and I brought out my stash of teabags, glitter, glue and gel pens and they set to work making notecards using the dried, emptied and ironed teabags I’d brought along as tiny canvasses. “We’re not after perfection here,” I told them. “I have this rule that I never toss one away. I prefer to figure out how to turn my mistake into something that works.”

It was such fun to see how each woman set about making a card. Some combined two teabags and then added a bright fall leaf. Others made use of the natural stain on the teabag to create a design.

And the talk went on.  We discovered connections we had, people we knew in common. Sandy shared that she is about to publish her first book. They talked about their careers, as a physical therapist, organizer of company retreats, consultant and in training and organizational development. Busy, talented people, appreciative of each other, open to trying whatever new thing comes their way.

It was a real treat for me to meet these women, get to know a bit about their lives and watch as they turned little bits of trash into little bits of beauty.