I quietly did not run this past weekend.
I’m in limbo for a day or two while I determine whether running ain’t my thang or I will up the ante and bring my gear to work and run during part of my lunch hour. I hope its the latter. I’ve actually never liked the foot-strikes inherent in running, as I mentioned before, and prefer the fluidity of sailing on self-propelled wheels. So, why not just ride through the winter out in the country instead of running? Cuz I have worries: The road shoulders out our way are soft – packed sand and grit mostly. Bike tires will dig into it (as they have in summer) and give me grief; they won’t be plowed in winter forcing me onto the road with stoopid drivers, or if plowed, will be slicker than cat sh*t on linoleum. I rode my bike in Toronto year-round for seven years and know a thing or two about balance in winter, but I’ve found the country is a little more like Texas than I figured (without the heat, of course) – people do pretty much what they like. Isn’t that the way it ‘sposed to be you ask? Well yes, I would respond, except that means drive how fast you want, park where you want, be as slow as you want in the grocery store, listen to any old crappy music you want as loud as you want as long as it was published before 1979, etc etc. Can you tell I am avoiding writing about the fact that I didn’t run this past weekend?
My son is a thinker. Yes, at 5, I think I am seeing that. With thought beyond what’s next to eat in this world, come so many added-value behaviors like apprehensiveness, caution and introspection that I can no longer rely on the nurture over nature premise I have adhered to for all my own thinking life. I have honestly believed that he is so much what we have made him. But I am seeing in him so much behavior from me and my side of the family that simply cannot have been absorbed through even indirect interaction, that I despair of having him divine his own self. He will, most certainly, come into himself with the fullness of time – find stuff to read that none of us finds interesting, laugh at stuff we scratch our heads over, go places we’ll never see. But the underlying prevalences to take these broader paths I have thought come only from us. The desire to travel will come from us, I think, as will a predeliction for humour and love of the written word. The content in these various mileux will be differnt from us (me), but I still believe we have set these broader paths before him – pointed him toward. Is that not the job of a parent? I hear you ask again. Of course it is, but I gag at the thought of a carbon copy of either of us as parents. We have so many faults and I think they are already in him. He’s too little to be saddled with rigidity of ideas, certainty of self-correctness, sensitivity to remarks. It could very well be that these are all innate character traits of human beings in general, and if that were the case I should then be profoundly grateful. Mothers talk to one another; fathers often do not or have no venue in which to do so. We rely on our partners to clear up observances and quietly wrench over concerns regarding our progeny and try to be close to them as much as possible.