The Flash

When I was young, I wasn’t a great athlete but one thing I could do- I could run.  Fast.

As a young boy, I remember summer nights dashing across the lawns of our neighborhood, the darkness accentuating my super-human speed.  Later, I remember running the curve on the cinder track, leaning into the turn, feeling as though the air was holding me up.  And then long runs through the hills of Vermont, feeling stronger as the miles unspooled.

Running has always felt natural to me.

I haven’t had that feeling since an injury eight months ago put running out of my life.   It’s not clear that it will ever be resolved in a way that will bring me back.

I tell myself, and those around me- no worries.  I can always bike and swim and so on.   But somehow those consolations wear out and the sense of loss returns.

So last evening I went to the ocean and felt the cool and foamy surf surge over and around my damaged ankle.  I watched the neighbor boys body surf with a naturalness and abandon familiar to me.  Then Sammie, our dog, joined in- bounding along and through the waves.  I looked to the horizon, felt the offshore breeze that was standing the waves up, smelled the salty air, and heard the roaring surf as it pounded to shore.

And standing there, I understood.

When I try to think my way to some form of calculated consolation for loss, I will always come up short.  But when I am just in my moment, as I was last evening, there is no need for consolation, no sense of loss, no worry about what’s to come.  I’m just there.

Although looking back, and for just the slightest moment, I was somewhere else- a boy flying across the yard on a dark summer night.

Lucky me.