marathon runner

i met a serious woman

at a dinner party last night

who is training for a hundred-kilometer marathon.

that’s sixty-two miles, she said.

she got into running

during the pandemic.

i learned that it takes twenty-four hours and that the runners start at 5pm.

i learned that she used to carry food with her in a running backpack but now she uses the aid stations.

i learned that there were aid stations.

i learned that she had a child when she was very very young and now that child has left home.

i said to her

this is amazing

i want to ask you all sorts of stupid questions now.

and she looked right at me with her serious, piercing eyes

and said

there are no stupid questions.

so i paused for a moment

and i said ok

how do you love again after such incredible pain?

and i am pretty sure she misunderstood me, because she didn’t bat an eye or skip a beat

and she told me that after her last marathon

(which was only fifty kilometers)

her feet were chaffed and bleeding and her body was sore and mangled and she thought that she might die but ….

and i realized that she had misheard my question

and had thought i’d asked

how do you run again after such incredible pain

but i didn’t interrupt her

so

her feet were chaffed and bleeding and her body was sore and mangled and she thought that she might die but she realized

it didn’t matter.

she just really loved doing this.

she just really loved running marathons.

she said

it makes me feel alive

she said

and the act of surviving such agonizing and unbearable pain makes you so proud of yourself

and makes you just want  to do it again

so you can use all the new survival skills

you’ve learned

and i realized

that even if she’d totally misunderstood my question

she still gave it

the perfect

answer.

………………

(art…one of my favorite paintings ever, “Christina’s World” by Andrew Wyeth).