To the Good People on the Arbor Trails Running Path
I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable during your exercise regimen, really.
See, I got up today and things were so totally normal. 6:20 alarm. Made lunches for my two girls. Set out outfits. Got Child 2 to show choir rehearsal. Got Child 1 to the bus. Tracked down missing item for talent show and took it up to school.
I mean, all was well, right? I arrived at the running path and set off like normal.
Except that at some point, 2 miles in, everything went wrong. One minute I’m zipping along, darting around muddy spots, and the next minute I’m bent over, sobbing my fool head off.
People of the Trail, I know this was disconcerting. I beelined for a bench, a little off to one side. I meant to sit ON the bench, really, but missed and ended up sitting in the mud with my head in my arms.
I’m sorry that it might have caused you concern.
See, today is a little harder than I’m letting on. Today Child 2 gets yanked from school, taken to the hospital, and wired up again. She is taking this too well, with a little too much shrug in her shoulders, and I hate that her sunny little life has gone so gray this year. Anti-seizure meds not working? Shrug. Failing school? Shrug. Hates her practical hair cut for the wires? Shrug. Missing the yearbook staff party, the culmination of a year’s work? Shrug.
Maybe I was crying for her, for the kid who didn’t really deserve all this disaster, who got a “bucket” from her fifth-grade class yesterday that was full of “You’re nice and kind to EVERYONE” and “Great smile, britens my day.”
But among the people trying to keep their pace up and avoid the crazy crying woman, there was that man, the one I’ve seen on the trail every day, and worried over actually. Seventy, easy, wearing a long-sleeved shirt and baggy khakis with a funny old-timey cap pulled low over his dark eyes. His sun-worn brown face always shifts into a big bright smile when we pass each other, his shabby Hush Puppy loafers shuffling in front of the other. “Buenos dias,” he always says with a nod. “Good morning,” I answer.
He thinks I didn’t know who he was when he walked up, but I knew his shoes, the pants, the shuffled step. I waited until he was gone and pulled myself together. He’d left a rose on the wet bench. When I looked either way on the trail, I didn’t see him.
I do what we do in these moments, pulled myself up and brushed dirt and wet mulch from my legs. I recognized the rose from the bushes in front of the bank, plucked, no doubt, but I had a feeling where this guy comes from, forgiveness is stored in buckets by the door.
Maybe you don’t believe in guardian angels, but I’m pretty sure I do now. Whether they are celestial beings or real people, doesn’t matter, but I know they are out there. And those of us going through whatever we are forced to endure, sometimes it just takes looking to see them, and sometimes it just takes having faith that they are there.
