When running I almost never think about Calvin. It's my worry-free, angst-free, stress-free, un-calvin-centric time, and it's good and healthy and fun for me.
But on yesterday's 8.5-miler, as it rained like hell, and gusts up to 50 mph lifted and pushed and tossed me, I thought of Calvin and of how he does the very same thing to me. And I thought of this gorgeous poem written by a mother of a child not unlike mine, and of this time in Florida thirteen and a half years ago when Calvin was six and a half and when we could more easily take him places because he was not impossibly restless. And I thought about how the beachwind and the surfsounds and the sea and the heat and/or some unknowable suffering—and most likely an oncoming seizure—was upsetting him and, as always, it killed me to see it, to feel it, while simultaneously experiencing the luxuriousness, power and love of this particular kind of messy motherhood.
If nothing else, Calvin has, does, and will change me. He makes me feel alive, and feel joy and sorrow and so many other human emotions deeply, and that is some kind of amazing gift to be grateful for.
Gentle Spirit
by Jan King
A gentle spirit has come into my life
To make me see things I did not want to see,
To make me feel things I did not want to feel,
To teach me things I did not want to learn.
This gentle spirit has hurricane force
That picks me up, turns me this way and that,
And puts me down softly in a new place,
Always a new place.
I cannot return to the safe warmth I once knew,
It is gone forever.
Because of this fragile, gentle spirit,
Joy and sorrow have become intertwined
In a fiber of life that few can comprehend.
Because of this sweet, gentle spirit,
I can appreciate what is often assumed.
