I met a man two days ago, a kind gentleman named Kokomo from Haiti who was advertising car detailing, and I took him up on it. I believe it’s clear now I spend hours a day in my car and well, cleaning this car myself is more than I can take and I’m willing to hand that piece over. As he was walking around the car and looking at it with his soulful, brown eyes, he ran his hand over the “California” still proudly displayed on my license plate. “I bet you miss that.”
Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I do.
Kokomo and I had good long chat about life in Augusta, Georgia. That’s where I live. I’m not sure I’ve ever actually said Augusta- I always generalize with “Georgia”. Both he and I had some mutual agreements on the place and decided it takes a fair amount of guts and patience to make a new life here. Let’s just say Kokomo misses home, too.
And in that one moment, I wanted to leave so badly I could taste it. Not even necessarily to California, it didn’t really matter, just anywhere else. Leave- running so quickly out of here that only sparks were left from my flying feet. Leave the responsibilities, the heartache of long days without adult conversations, the tedious boredom, the heat, the humidity which has turned my hair into utter nonsense, the constant messes, the fatigue.
“Aruba, Jamaica, oooo, I wanna take ya, Bermuda, Bahama come on pretty Mama”
I’m not a quitter. I don’t quit anything, well, most things I don’t, except for the 5 minutes I rage-quit laundry on a daily basis. I ran cross country and track in high school. I was so terrible, I’m very serious…..it was “my-parents-can’t-even-watch-this” terrible. Even my own Mother told me I should quit, and my Dad tried to encourage me with inspirational books about running and he would hand them to me with determination and yet that look of “please-stop-this-nightmare”. I became so committed to staying through each of those horrible seasons I became physically ill and had to run races while puffing on an inhaler. I’m a runner now- an actual physical runner not just an eyes-closed kind of runner- which is hilariously ironic. In my very humble-I-don’t-run-marathons-opinon, running is pretty much mental. And if you can’t get your head wrapped around it and get your focus (as was the case with the younger version of me), it’s an uphill, impossible battle all the way.
But I was just having my Forrest Gump moment. “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll go home now.” He proclaims this in his quiet, steadfast Forrest way at the end of his three years, two months, 14 days and 16 hours of running. You see, we carved pumpkins this weekend- the obligatory pumpkin carving I do not enjoy. It’s a mess, pumpkin guts are stuck everywhere for the rest of eternity, Pinterest has ruined everything in the world, somebody cries, I can’t stand using stencils and I want to stab my eyes out with the $4.99 pumpkin carving tools I bought at Target an hour ago because I was just at Target on a Friday night like a terrible, tired cliche mommy, there, still in my sweaty gym clothes from 7:45am that morning wishing I had more time to shower and wishing there was a moment to freeze time and truly enjoy the pumpkin-carving and not yell obscenities at awful Georgia drivers and I have to feed the kids frozen pizza now but it’s organic from Whole Foods which makes it better, I think, and my eyes are burning from my Georgia allergies and my husband is not home this weekend which means there will be palmetto bugs which I will have to fling things at and there could be potential burglars and my only defense against them will be my weak ninja skills and my 10-week-old puppy and my Orion has been missing for a fair bit, hiding in the clouds. Come on, man, shine for me.
And just when the last straw is about to snap, fold, crush and crumble…..onwards I go. Moments strung together start to form a “do not cross” barrier around me- Piper skipping down the culdesac in her Princess Anna costume with her puppy running beside her, Zoey bopping her head in the car listening to her music and teaching me what trap vs. rap is, Kai walking proudly back from his golf lesson with his tall socks, glasses and golf bag flung around his back and then telling me “I just hit farther than I ever hit because I said forget it and just closed my eyes and swung” (how did he learn so young??), Lolo snuggling into my neck, the leaves starting to change and the temperature dropping oh-so-slightly, Bodey swinging on a giant tire swing with 4 new instant friends at the park, texts with a friend who needs me and so I will be there. Because I think “I’m tired and I want to go home” for me means I’m tired of being anything other than the raw and real me. I’ll just be me now, thank you very much. The one who isn’t all that organized in Georgia yet, who has a short temper on occasion, who can’t get her showers in at the appropriate time but yet doesn’t really care that much anymore about being appropriate, who doesn’t always make the perfect meals but there are always fruits and vegetables and whole grains and wholesomeness (most of the time), who screams f*&k and throws shoes at palmetto bugs, who is standing bravely at the ready, open to something new and something scary and something that gets the fire burning in her gut again. Just close your eyes and swing, close your eyes and run.
On your mark…………..get set……………..run.
