Running

"I'm really looking forward to running with you this summer," Jane says. Just home from a run, we recline at the big brown table.

"Me TOO," I say. The roads melted off just enough, me, fresh out of the chutes of pregnancy, we ran as fast as a man walks.

"It's just so fun to talk and run," she says, "and open your spirit and enjoy God's creation." I nod, each mile interlaced between us, a latticework, a netlike weave, almost alive. "And there are no interruptions," she says.

"Yes," I say. "I love that too."

We begin another season of running. We soak in the real-live-world, the sun spiking off puddles, trees velvety green, the air piercing cold, unadulterated, the real-live-world. Life increasingly eclipsed with screens, the real-live-world arrests us, soothes our tired eyes, and knits us together.





Gratitude:

6230. Lucy hums while she plays piano.

6231. Jack and Jane go thrift shopping with me.

6232. Betsy starts to dabble in potty training.

6233. Cheese, chips, and chocolate, the perfect Trader Joe's run.

6234. Joe peruses a Montana Outdoors magazine. He stops at a hunter removing the horns on a freshly shot elk. "They are cutting the beak off that deer," he says. "Oh, they are KILLING that horse," he commentates on the next picture of a deer.

6235. Gypsy cream.

6236. I try a baby sling for the first time. I had always just assumed they would hurt my neck.

6237. Another full week before us, we set our minds to enjoy each day.