Time to take my best shot and see what I've got

You can tell my priorities by what makes it into my carry-on bag and stays just inches from me on the plane ride, not in the space above my head, but near my feet, where I can see the contents. Touch them if I need to.   

Here’s what was in my bag on my recent trip to Albuquerque’s Sunport: a white running cap; a spiral bound, 283-page, 102, 800 word manuscript.  The hat cost me about ten bucks eight years ago. I bought it at the Boston Marathon Expo two days before the 2005 marathon. It’s my favorite running hat, but not because I had an awesome run that year. It’s just a great hat made from a light moisture-wicking fabric. Plus, because it’s white it goes with everything. Plus, the unicorn insignia on the front, the B.A.A, emblem, makes me smile. 

Then there’s the book. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around what this thing has cost me. I’m not speaking in terms of cash either. Cash, like hard times, comes and goes and comes and goes and comes and goes again. Yes, that was a Springsteen Wrecking Ball reference.  When I think about what this book has cost me, I think about time and effort. I think about when I first sat down to write it, back at the turn of this century, before I’d even taken one step on my Hopkinton to Boston route, or even dreamt about having the guts to think that I could. 

My kids were still small. My focus was on keeping them healthy and getting them to college, years away and scarily out of reach for a single mom with a teacher paycheck and an ex whose only consistent trait was his ability to lose his job at least once a year.  So I saved a little at a time and did my best to trust the process, though I’d learned early on that the process, at least when it came to child support and fairness, wasn’t trustworthy. I guess deep down, even way back then, I knew the truth: It was all up to me. 

I wrote at one end of the cellar, a dark room: walnut-paneled walls, muddy carpet. To my left: long shelves filled with hardcover novels bought at library book sales for a buck, along with my college textbooks,  all held in place by a stuffed Babar, Madeleine, Snufflupagus, dollhouses, a Playskool work bench. 

The girls would hang out at the other end of the cellar, near the toy closet, the television, the wood burning stove I was too afraid to use. They'd read or play board games or drape themselves over the stinky oatmeal couch, the sides of it shredded bare by our attack cat, watching Saved by the Bell or Golden Girls reruns. Or they’d be upstairs doing homework or outside with their friends. 

I’d sit in the dusk on a hard kitchen chair that wobbled so didn’t belong upstairs any more, and I’d type one word then another, go back, delete, start again, and wonder why I bothered. 

I had to spend quite a bit of time last week re-arranging my luggage for my flight home from New Mexico. Southwest has a two bag, fifty-pound per bag limit. They charge hugely if you go over. I needed to pack up carefully, mete out the pounds, because I was weighed down with many marked up versions of my manuscript, the end result of a master novel workshop in Taos. My carry-on bag was stuffed. Luckily, my hat weighs next to nothing. I had no trouble wedging it between pages.   

Today, I start revising my manuscript. I’m about eighty percent done, mile twenty or so, the hit the wall point, in marathon terms. Hitting the wall means your body is screaming, “Enough already!” Your energy stores are shot. You’ve got nothing in the tank to keep you moving forward. Your legs give out or cramp up or shake.  Your brain is telling you that you are beyond done. That tendinitis you’ve been babying for months? That plantar fasciitis you thought had hightailed it out of here weeks ago? All back. Every moving part is swearing at you now, reminding you that you suck, taunting you for daring to dream, reminding you that in the grand scheme of things, you and your hopes are nothing.   

But still, you move forward. Maybe you force your brain to go blank. You somehow tune out the voices. Maybe you don’t. Maybe instead you remember.

You think of how far you’ve come. You think about how six miles is nothing. You go back twenty weeks to October, when six miles was your longest run, and how last week when you ran your tapering eight your legs didn’t want to stop.  Or maybe you picture yourself crossing that finish line and blubbering thanks to the volunteer as she lifts that ribbon up and places it on your bowed neck and you raise your head and see your own exhausted joy reflected in the gleam of her shining smiling eyes and you smile back and wonder at the flimsy weight of the medal and marvel at the aches in your legs and your grin expands like a Cheshire cat as it hits you that you can hardly wait to do this all over again.  

There’s a saying that every marathoner out there knows, about running that 26.2 mile race in sections. You run the first part with your legs (um, duh?), the second part with your head, and the last part with your heart.

I don’t write in the cellar any more. A few years ago, I turned the back bedroom into a study. The walls are sky blue. The carpet is cream. My desk and chair are white. On the wall directly in front of me hangs a framed poster from my first Boston Marathon, April 16, 2001. I can see my reflection in the glass. My eyes are level with my unicorn logo. To the right of my desk is a bouquet of ribbons and medals. On the wall behind me are my daughters’ college diplomas. To my left is a new stack of marked up manuscripts.

There’s nothing like that last six miles of the Boston Marathon course, for the most part a gentle downhill, fans everywhere, the CITGO sign looming like a promise, always just ahead. C it go. See HER go.

You hit Beacon Street, then Mass Ave, then Hereford, then Boylston where your shuffle turns to leaps even though you’re barely able to breathe because you’ve burst into tears at the sight of all these generous people who stayed to cheer you on.  You cry now because with all that’s happened the last few months, their generous spirit means more than you can ever put into words.

Saturday I ran seventeen miles. The next day, I did another five. I’d never done that before in training, run 22 miles in two days. 

I’ve never finished a novel before either. I mean really truly gave it my all and got it done. Do I have what it takes? Guess I'll find out. 

Here I go.