How We Define Ourselves

The Irish blessing begins: "May the road rise up to meet you."
And that's exactly what happened to me yesterday during a run as I tripped and fell, landing on my hands, one knee and then thudding onto my side. I lay on the hard-packed dirt and gravel road for a few minutes assessing the damage.

At least I didn't land on my nose and break it. I've done that before. 
And it's been 12 years, so maybe I should count my blessings that I had a nearly 7-year streak of not falling.
But the fall injured more than my outside.
I had just determined that I was going to conquer these hills we are living on for 45 more days. 
  I'd been sluggish, walking a lot as I climbed the two miles up, then increasing my speed as I went down.
So yesterday morning, I forced myself to run farther before I stopped. I took a flatish detour past a flock of sheep then headed back toward the uphill. I felt confident, unstoppable even, before a rock jutting out of the road caught the toe of my shoe.
In slow motion, I stumbled, my hands outreached. I could stay upright, I could keep going, but a few steps in I fell.
And it's hard to fail at something you consider yourself good at.
I've been running seriously for about 18 years now.

 I trained for a marathon and tore my ACL. Nevertheless, I trained the following year and actually ran the marathon. I tout the benefits of running and often claim I use it as an antidepressant.
Yet, a submerged rock reached out to tweak me.
In the past, I have bemoaned that my two hobbies -- writing and running are best done first thing in the morning and I couldn't decide which to devote myself to. Now I haven't written seriously for 18 months, since we moved to France, and suddenly my running is off too.
Who am I if I'm not a writer or a runner?
I told my friend Janine that I felt like the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz with the straw being stuffed back into me, trying to restore me to what I was before.

If a runner falls in the woods and no one hears, did she make a sound?

I had the luxury of sitting on the road a few minutes, gravel embedded in my palms and a little blood on my knee, because the road is seldom used. A fall is different when you're middle aged than when you're young.
The distance isn't farther, but the thud feels harder.
And as I stood in the shower later, trying to take in deep breaths but feeling a pain under my ribs, I played with the idea of a collapsed lung or broken ribs. But by this morning, I decided the ribs were just bruised and I would be okay.
I didn't run this morning. Instead, after I taught for four hours, Earl and I went on a hike in a nearby state park. A few times, I placed my hands across my right ribs, feeling for that tender place where I had landed.
Maybe the fear is what makes the fall worse as we age.
But I can't let fear or inertia keep me down.
Tomorrow, I'll be back on those hills, forcing myself to run a little farther before I stop and walk to catch my breath. And maybe I'll even schedule some time to sit in front of my computer to put down words that tell a story, a story about two women on a trail in France.
I'm a runner.
I'm a writer.
So I'll end with another song, this one by Frank Sinatra who sang:
Now nothing's impossible, I've found for when my chin is on the ground,
"I pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again."

Many Happy Returns

I've really been a lax blogger recently, and I apologize. I seem to be racing from one seeming emergency to the next and in between, I just collapse. No real emergencies, just everyday life of teaching college and raising teenagers.
People are emailing to say things like, "Are you going to post that review?" and "Weren't you going to send me a copy of your book?" or "Did you ever manage to download that thing I sent you?" and I realize that my to-do list may have fallen by the wayside.
However, the weekends offer a respite and I plan to take advantage, especially now that my husband has limped home, I mean returned triumphantly, from his camping/hiking/canoeing trip. I'm sure he'll have pictures that I can share once he's awake. For now, he's sleeping in a real bed and maybe remembering that camping in  your 50s isn't as much fun as camping in your 30s.
He got home sometime after 2, so I was in bed obviously. He came in to kiss me goodnight, ran into the desk chair in the hallway and bent over very stiffly to tell me he was home. Then he headed straight for the television to check "the scores." By that, he means baseball because he is a St. Louis Cardinals fan and they are in a tight race to get in .... something that could lead to the World Series.
When he came to bed later, I groggily mumbled, "Is your back hurt?"
"Shoulder," he responded. All that canoeing from lake to lake in Canada aggravated an old football injury that used to pop his shoulder out of place and they'd simply pop it back in and send him into the game again. He has a huge railroad track scar above his collar bone where the cigar-chomping surgeon worked on the shoulder injury.
I'm sure I'll hear many fun camping stories once he is up and I return from work.
Meanwhile, here's a photo that a friend just put on Facebook of me and Earl at a New Year's Eve party. Always fun to find a decent photo.

Have a happy Thursday.

A Cascade of Cards

I have a birthday -- a milestone birthday -- coming up this week. And all month my running friends (mostly Pam) have been deluging me with birthday cards.

And some not-birthday cards. As the cards started to arrive in the mail, I felt guilty. I mean, was Pam buying the cards, plus shelling out for the postage? Even at the dollar store, that would get expensive.
Some of the cards weren't about birthdays, like this one that shows a horse biting the back of a boy's head.

Or this one with the bulldog watching the goldfish.

Inside each card, no matter if the message was about the loss of a pet or getting well, my upcoming birthday was mentioned.
Today a card arrived that congratulated me on the birth of my baby, and Pam wrote "Sorry I'm late." Only 16 years too late since my youngest is 16! But, as you can imagine, it made me laugh.
The card below seemed very appropriate for my arrival smack dab in the middle of middle age, with an adorable toddler who looks better with the pudgy thighs than I do.

After Pam confessed she was behind the cards, along with Stephanie, she admitted that, getting ready to move, she discovered a closet full of cards she had bought through the years intending to send to friends and loved ones. That's why the cards had a variety of sentiments rather than just birthday cards. Pam helped me feel less guilty about all the money she might have spent on cards just to make me smile.
Thanks, friends for the birthday wishes and all the birthday cards that have kept my mailbox full every day of my birthday month.