Running Childhood Roads

Last night I ran around a section near my childhood home (a section being a square mile of land).  I parked my car at my former church and warmed up in the silent parking lot.  The sun blazed in my eyes as I huffed and puffed the first mile.  As usual, I wondered why I was torturing myself again.  But I settled into a nice, easy rhythm, and turned the corner onto the next mile road and into the shade.  The humid air sunk in around me, redolent with sweet poplar sap.

How many times have I driven these roads?  First, in the back of Mom’s minivan to and from Grandma’s house, and church.  Then, I’d drive myself to youth group and early morning music practices.  I know them so well, but on foot they are unfamiliar.  Which houses have dogs that might chase?  The roads are silent, and I can hear the slightest crash in the bush.  Probably a deer, or a bird, but what else?

“I’ve become such a city girl,” I lament.

Runkeeper tells me I’ve travelled two miles.  I begin the third side of my square.  The sun has sunk behind the trees, still sweat trickles from the knot of hair on the back of my head.  I look up as I pass by the faded red barn, and the complacent cattle on the corner.  Three miles.  I turn the corner, and can see the ancient evergreens by the church, one mile away.  There are dead garter snakes on the road, and I imagine that they raise their heads and nip at my heels as I go past.  I close the square, and walk back to my car.

As I showered off at Mom and Dad’s place, I realized just how absurd this seemed.  Never, in my childhood years, would I have dreamt about running those gravel paths.  They seemed too far to go, even on a bicycle.

Times, they are a changing.  I contemplate which miles to combine to run a 10K, or even a half marathon, and I smile.  Maybe that is not so impossible after all.

I Did It! I Completed Couch to 5K.

I ran 5 kilometres for the first time this week.

It was awful.  But I’m so proud.  I began running eight weeks ago.  That day I ran 6, 1 minute intervals.  I had such an intense stitch in my side that I thought I was going to keel over.  That whole week I wobbled around the factory on rubber legs.  By the next week, I was running 2.5 minute intervals and feeling stronger.  Three weeks ago, I ran my first mile.

As I walked home from my run that day,  I reflected on why I was doing this.

When I was in my early teens, I was at a youth conference with members of my church.  One of the chaperones met a friend there, and they planned to go for a run.  One of my friends was tagging along and I, desperate to be accepted, said “Sure.  I’ll come too.”  How hard could it be?  I was left behind in less than a minute, humiliated and unable to continue.

That Saturday, my first mile run behind me, I said “This mile’s for you,” to my friend and my chaperone.  I could keep up with them, but it was too late.

I said “this mile’s for you,” to my peers who were always faster and more athletic than me, who I couldn’t keep up with and finally gave up on.

I said “this mile’s for you,” to my Grandpa, who ran competitively well into his seventies, until an injury took him out of the sport. He now organizes races with the Manitoba Runners’ Association, and coached me through my training.

I run my first 5K race on August 17th.  My Grandpa and my family will be there to cheer me on as I cross the finish line.  Today, in the last half-kilometre of my run, I pictured their faces and heard them yelling “Go Geralyn.”  I imagined getting a surge of energy, and picking up speed as I crossed the finish.  I almost began to cry.

Running on my parents’ acreage

I’ve learned this over the past months: the power of seeing the end at the beginning.  “Greater things are yet to come,” I’d say to myself on one of my three-minute runs.  Running, which is truly only a small thing, became a romantic battle, a fight between myself and my tired legs, my burning lungs, and the lure of the couch after a long day of work.

If I can do this, I can do so much more.

Right I don’t plan on increasing the distance of my runs.  I’d rather run 5K a little faster than run 10K.  5K is still too painful to want to run twice as long!  But I’ll never say never.  These two months have also taught me that.  Because I shouldn’t be doing this.  I’m built like a Clydesdale, not built a gazelle.  I’m artsy, not athletic.  I’ve never played sports.  But here I am.  I probably won’t ever win a race, but I hope that others will look at my tiny example and be inspired to try something that, by rights, they shouldn’t be able to do.

 

A Fat Girl’s Guide to Fashion Freedom

Because learning to dress myself was only the beginning.

They were white, with purple and pink roses. No wonder I still remember them. I doubt those hand-me-down sweatpants were ever stylish, but I rocked them. When I was six I wore what I liked. Purple and pink were my favourite colours, so I wore them together, along with every barrette in my arsenal. I even had this splendid set of pearl earrings (clip-ons), which I would wear to church and embarrass my mother. Those were the carefree days, where I didn’t even stop to consider what people thought of my clothes. Would that I could go back.

Or not.

Bellbottoms, or flares, were coming into fashion as I was entering my teen years. Pants, with flared-out legs so wide that you could park my little car under them, were paired with platform shoes—the clunkier the better. And I had neither.

When my birthday rolled around, I took my birthday money and bought a pair of black flares with white stripes down the side. They were haute. I wouldn’t be caught dead in them today, but I was twelve, and anxious to fit in. I asked my most stylish friend if they suited me, and she assured me they did. Great, I had one pair of fashionable pants.

I was a chunky, acne-riddled teenager. While my friends were wearing low-slung jeans and baby tees that showed off their flat midriffs, I was wearing a hoodie and modest jeans. Stores for kids that age don’t sell size XXL, and even if they had, my allowance didn’t permit much clothes shopping. I wouldn’t have known what clothes to put together anyway. That had to be learned.

I thought I wasn’t popular because I was fat, that I didn’t get attention from boys because I wasn’t beautiful like the other girls.

I did what I could. I bought makeup and experimented with covering my acne scars until I got it right. I tried different clothes, though I refused to shop in the plus sizes because that, somehow, made me ‘fat’.  But somewhere in my late teens I started to pull my wardrobe together. I had this great jacket that made me feel like a million bucks, and some pretty tops that dressed up my jeans. I remember (and laugh) about the first scarf I bought, when they were a new thing. I was afraid that my family would think it was too ‘out there’.

I suspect growing up and gaining confidence did more for my body image than new clothes ever did. I got a job in a meat-packing facility, which is a direct route to looking like crap every day. But I was forced to associate with guys (gasp), stand up for myself, and assert myself among a group of adults that didn’t give a damn about me, or my feelings. It thickened my skin. Knowing that I could hold my own in the real world helped me hold my head high, even when I couldn’t afford to dress like a show-window mannequin.

Shortly thereafter, I began college. My wardrobe consisted of 90% MCC thrift-store items—like a ruffled ‘pirate coat’, a spangled tunic, and a never-ending supply of cardigans. I had classmates who rocked their eclectic thrift-store duds, and from them I learned that clothes were art—meant to be original and expressions of your inner self—not one size fits all. My clothes might not have fit into the prepster, hipster or sophisticate categories, but I was accepted anyway. I was accepted for being me.

I’m still learning that.

These days I work as a ‘fashion associate’ part-time, which comes with discounts that make trendy clothes affordable. I’d say I’ve found out what I would wear if I could wear anything I liked. Right now it’s purple, fish-scale pants, a wine-colored blazer, a sequined black tee, and boots that have caught my fancy (notice the reappearance of purple?). And, I’ve at last found peace in shopping in the plus-sizes. Face it, they fit me better, and they look great.

It will eventually get through to me that my clothes have never won, nor lost me any friends. Rather, it is the content of my character that attracts others. The coworkers who see me in a cerulean uniform and safety glasses like me just as well as the ones who see me in purple pants and sequins.

I can’t go back to being five years old and carefree, but maybe I’ll grow up a little more and care a little less about what people think of me.

Aunt Win’s Last Lesson for Me: a Tribute

She lives in my memory as a tiny lady with bright eyes behind her glasses, and lines around her mouth that said she spent more time smiling than frowning. Her body was slight to gauntness, but spry and active, as was her mind. She never married or had children, but I, along with dozens across Manitoba, am ‘her kid’—through her teaching, her love, and her giving.

Her life was one of courage and adventure from the beginning. In 1913, Aunt Win’s parents struck out from Staffordshire, England, to Canada in hopes of getting a good start to their family. Her dad had heard that the Canadian government wanted to bring settlers into northern Manitoba. They found themselves in the rocky, bush country of Grahamdale, near Lake Winnipeg. They had nothing of their own, except for the things provided by the government—a couple horses and cattle, and a bit of money.

With those small resources, they hewed a farmstead out of the trees, and coaxed wheat out of the stony soil. It took ingenuity to get by. To make a bit of cash, her mother took up baking for the large population of bachelors in the area, and baked bread every day but Sunday.

Aunt Win was born in the sixth year of their life in Canada.

But in 1921, life took a heartbreaking turn. Her father became very sick with Typhoid fever. Though his wife and a friend managed to convince the weekly train to take him to Winnipeg in the unheated baggage car, he succumbed to his illness. Seven months later, their second child, Sam, was born.

In 1924, Win’s mother took her two small children and moved south to Dugald. There she married a man who was renting a farm there. They all worked hard to make ends meet. Young Win fed the hens, gathered eggs and carried firewood. She was very young when she learned how to knit socks and scarves for the family.

She recounted the story to me of the first cake she baked—a white cake in a round pan. She served it at mealtime. When her brother, Will, tasted it he fell off his chair! When everyone rushed to see what was the matter, he pretended it was because the cake was so awful.

She told me about having no winter coat to wear to school until a neighbor lady altered a large coat and gave it to her. Win was very pleased to get to wear this new coat, with its fur collar and side-belt.

In Win’s teen years the family lived at a farm near My hometown. She went to school at the Beatrice school until she began taking correspondence courses in the latter grades. She loved her studies (except for history), and she loved the idea of being a teacher. She even turned the side of an old car radiator into a blackboard, and used it to teach her little sister, Sylvia, numbers, letter and arithmetic.

In her teens, Win was working to support her family. This made her studies difficult. But she was determined to be a teacher. So she saved up her money, got a job as a housekeeper in Winnipeg, and enrolled in a business course. Tenacity paid off. When the business college needed a teacher, she was ready and jumped at the chance.

Win taught at the business college for six years before becoming a teacher under the regular Department of Education. She then began teaching High School in Morris. That first day at Morris school—meeting the teachers and her new students–was a highlight. She was finally where she wanted to be.

Aunt Win loved to help her students learn. At the end of the year, when she saw those who had struggled hard to get their grades succeed, it was worth the time and energy. It pleased her to hand out report cards and think about how much she was able to teach them. She emphasized that “those were great days.”

She really missed her students when she retired in 1984. Win wasn’t ready to retire, but the school told her that she was getting to that age, so she would just have to get used to it. Instead of teaching school, she began teaching Sunday school.

Aunt Win was my Sunday school teacher. I confess I don’t remember much of what she taught, but I do remember how we got to do crafts. We would make things of wood, paper, cloth, bottles, paint, paper mache—pretty much anything. I learned a lot about painting, gluing, and woodwork from her.

I also remember her generosity. She loved to give gifts to ‘her kids’—the many children she got to teach over the years. She would buy ice cream for all the kids at church. If she came over to our place, it was often with a treat. She would give us Easter and Christmas cards (with a five-dollar bill for each of us). She would go out of her way to come to our place to hear us recite our Bible memory verses. She helped me with my writing in my junior high years—reading my essays and giving me editing feedback. If we biked over, she was ready to give us cookies and tell stories.

Aunt Win died this winter. I traveled over skating-rink roads back to my hometown so I could sing at her funeral. The picture at the front of the church was Aunt Win in middle age. It struck me as odd, because all my twenty-two years I had known her as an elderly woman. But the stories that were told were quintessentially her: adventure, fun with her nieces, nephews (like letting them drive her big, old car up and down the driveway until it overheated), great-nieces and great-nephews, generosity, love for people and her God.

Recently I was telling someone about being afraid to not get married—I didn’t want to be alone in my old age. Soon after I found the “Memoirs of Aunt Win”, which I wrote when I was fifteen, and from which the details of this article are taken. Many lessons can be drawn from her life-story, but I will point out one: she was unmarried, but she wasn’t alone. She had a family of brothers and sister, nephews and nieces, and their children who loved her dearly. They told stories about how they loved to visit her because it always meant fun adventures and good cookies, and how she cared about what was happening in their lives.

I see great possibility for myself in this, ‘cause I’d love to be the crazy, fun Aunty! Seriously, though, there will always be a demand for someone who cares, who pours themselves into others. Aunt Win was such a person.

The Cabin: An Icon of my Childhood

We call it The Cabin, and so it is. Just a hip-roofed cottage in a stand of spruce and birch trees, yet it is one of my oldest memories.

It smells like history: some combination of wood varnish, old furniture and bacon grease. It lingers on my bedding after I unpack, and links my city apartment with my happy past. We’ve been going there since before I was born.

It sounds like the rustle of the birch-leaves in the wind that is always blowing, and the creak of the wooden staircase up to the second floor. That creak that made sneaking down to the bathroom (outhouse, longer ago) so hard. They fixed the creak with carpet this year, and it seems wrong. The inane sounds of everyday life are gone—the alarm clock, the ringing phone, the traffic, the siren. The silent demands of the dirty dishes and the laundry—all gone in this peaceful place.

It looks like comfy, mismatched furniture. Everything is old-fashioned but functional—plates, cups, and certain forks and knives that are year after year. Who remembers the butter knives? I do.

It looks like silver water stretching to the blue horizon, broken by white caps at irregular intervals. The wind is strong. We smile, because that means big waves and more fun.

It feels like the rough wood of the handrail, and the pine-board walls, and the carven coffee table. Its the sag in an old mattress. My back protests until it sinks into the softness and forgets that it’s the wrong shape. It feels like sand in the swimsuit and tangled hair after spending happy hours at the beach, collecting shells, jumping in the waves, playing Frisbee.

It tastes like pancakes, and bacon, and Kraft Dinner—not most people’s idea of fine dining, but for us KD was always a treat reserved for the Cabin. We come together around the table—to eat, to laugh, and play cards. We make coffee in the afternoon and visit, because we can. Maybe a little later we’ll bike to the park and play basketball until we’re tired and sweaty. Then we’ll taste sunflower seeds and peach kool-aid from a plastic water jug, passed from hand to hand.

And then there is the sixth sense, the intuition, the essence. What does the cabin mean? The cabin means being together.