FINISH LINE
I don’t know where I get the idea or why, but one day in the spring of 2009, I decide I’m going to sign up for a 10K race. Other than during soccer games, and a few years on the track team in my youth, I haven’t exactly been a runner. Or at least not a distance runner. Ten kilometres is a lot of kilometres if you’ve never really run, are supremely overweight, and have had a baby and an MS diagnosis in the past year. But this is a thing I decide I’m going to do. Run 10K. Alone.
I go to a running store and buy proper shoes for running on asphalt and concrete. The tiny woman who works there gives me tips on how to do “ten-and-ones,” which is to run for ten minutes then walk for one, and repeat. I sign up for the 10K online and try not to be overwhelmed by words like corral and best time. I put on some yoga pants and a stretched-out old sports bra and wake up at 5:30 a.m. to run around the neighbourhood before work. I do this a total of six times before the race. To call that “training” would be generous.
On the day of the race, I’m standing in my corral alone. Well, alone in a crowd of two thousand people. I’m freezing, because it’s seven thirty in the morning in early May. I’m wearing my ratty yoga pants and the free T-shirt I got when I registered. Even though it’s extra-large, it feels really tight on me.
I’m not so much afraid as awkward. Everyone is with buddies or in big groups. They’re all wearing sporty clothes that seem to fit them properly. I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea. What am I even doing here? By myself! I put my earbuds in and adjust my iPod, which is attached to my arm on this iPod-attaching thing someone lent me. When the starting gun goes off and the crowd surges, I press play on the perfectly crafted race playlist I’ve made, and I surge, too. Maybe this is cheesy, but, in case you’re dying to know, the first song on the playlist is Kate Bush’s “Running up that Hill.”
I’m not going to lie, it’s not easy, especially considering the most I’ve ever run is four kilometres, and that was only on the last of my six “training” mornings. But I run. I do my ten-and-ones, passing the flags that mark each kilometre, through Kate Bush and Arcade Fire, K’naan and The Clash, Vampire Weekend and Magic System. I’m amazed at the people that line the streets, cheering us on, offering us water. The sun is out in full force now and it’s a lot warmer. I’m sweaty and my lungs feel like they’re going to burst but I push on. The last kilometre is the worst; it feels like another ten for some reason. My legs are rubbery and I feel like I’m looking at the finish line forever, like I will never actually get there.
When I do arrive, I see Birdie in the crowd. She’s two years old now and on top of The Husband’s shoulders, wearing her white sun hat, the one with little flowers embroidered on it. The Husband is pointing me out to her and as I’m running toward the finish line, her voice cuts through the noisy crowds’ shouts and the ringing of bells. “Mooooooooooooooooooommm!”
And I think, Oh my God, I have MS.
I don’t know why, but this is when it hits me most. Everything that has happened in the past two years just pummels me in this moment, the moment I cross the finish line. I burst into tears. Uncontrollable sobs. And the two of them run over, hugging me and cheering. The Husband’s mother is there, too, and, ever the nurse, she starts quizzing me on my vitals. She hands me a banana and a bagel, which I scarf down immediately after I stop crying. I get my participation medal and although it took me an hour and a half to do it, I’m really proud of myself. I just ran 10K. And everything is going to be okay.
Time passes. Mostly I forget I even have MS. I still forget. I mean, other than taking the daily injections and pills, there’s nothing much I can do about it, so I actually don’t think about it that much. We go on with our lives, with this new phase of marriage, the one with a child in it.
I keep up with the running. I get up at 5:30 a.m. twice a week and run for an hour all around our neighbourhood. It’s amazingly quiet, the city at that hour. There are hardly any cars on the roads and even fewer people. I sometimes pass young men, construction workers, sitting on their front porches sleepily waiting for the truck full of other young men to come and pick them up. I like that they always have a giant cooler at their feet, the kind you’d take on a camping trip, but they just have their lunch for today in there.
I also pass women, of all ages and ethnicities, standing at bus stops, going to whatever jobs they’re going to so early in the morning. They hold their handbags close, look weary. I smile at them and sometimes they smile back, but not always. I wonder if they think I must be pretty privileged, to be jogging at this time of morning, instead of already dressed and on my way to work.
These early-morning runs are the only real time I have to myself. Just me and my thoughts, me and the quiet, me and my bursting lungs as I run down streets and through cemeteries and over streetcar tracks. It’s not that I love running at all, or getting up so early, but more that I love the time alone that is so precious when you’re married and a mother with a full-time job and a house to clean when you get home.
More time passes. The Husband is still so cute to me, even though he’s changed a lot. He keeps his hair really short and spiky now, his shoulders are broader, his chest and body have thickened out with age and the diet of being married to an Italian. He’s had laser-eye surgery so he no longer wears glasses, and when he had dental surgery to fix some damaged teeth, without asking they went ahead and straightened out his fangs, a feature I loved, the way they puffed out his lip. He looks good, but a lot different than when we first met. He still wears nothing but cargo pants and monochromatic T-shirts though, dressing nothing like the cool, stylish guys I work with, but I don’t care. He is still the one I love, cargo pants or not.
Years pass. The house is a lot for us. Always a crack to fill, a carpet to rip up, a faucet to replace. Weeds in the backyard and big disgusting bugs in the basement. We’re tired. Birdie is a handful. Every day there’s a tantrum, a test of wills. We’ve become the stereotypical exhausted working parents. Our lives consist of work, the house, insane toddler, repeat. We take turns going out. He grabs drinks with his teacher friends or I hang with my media pals, while the other stays home with the insane toddler. We rarely go out together, if ever. But when we’re at the house, we are together. There are always people coming and going, neighbourhood children running around, my dad dropping by, or cousins or friends. Barbeques, beer-making, board games, crafts, trivia nights. A house full of life and energy.
And always in the crowd, I hear his laugh, or I catch his eye across the room and he winks at me, or just gives me that smirk. Our relationship like an inside joke between the two of us. I knew we would always be okay. We’d be the couple that would always be okay.
I was wrong.
ON STRIKE
Summer 2011. Birdie is four years old. The Husband and I are thirty-eight and thirty-six respectively. It’s been eleven years since he first grabbed my hand and kissed me hard in the basement of that bar. The lanky guy who is now this man before me, creeping up on forty, with broad shoulders and a beer belly, tiny silver flashes across the night sky of his hair.
God I love him when I look over at him. He infuriates me and excites me, even now, when we are tired and run-down because Birdie at age four is like having three children all screaming relentlessly at once directly in your face. We work all day and she yells at us all night until she mercifully falls asleep. Then we go to bed together and talk in whispers because we’re afraid she’ll hear us and wake up and yell at us more. We add a tiny hook-and-eye lock on our door so we can have sex at night without me worrying she’s going to walk in. We lie together and talk and giggle (in whispers) like teenagers until we fall asleep.
In
