I thought about it off and on.  Part of my life recedes in the rear view mirror: running. 

In my early years, those when I was a kid at play, or in the school yard, I loved to run.  Running was fun.  I always chose to run instead of walk no matter the occasional cautionary comments coming from the adults at hand.  “You’re going to fall!” They didn’t remember the joy of running.  I would run from the house up the street to the drugstore.  I’d go exploring in the woods, running on the path alongside the creek, under the tall pine trees. 

As an adult, I picked up running again when I was forty.  I ran a mile to a mile and a half a day, every day.  I realized that fitness required more than just working day to day.  The lungs, heart, the whole body demanded use, the stress of a full workout.  Running was something that I knew how to do, an activity of familiar satisfaction.  So I ran for the next twenty years until I was sixty years old.  For a few years, I’d run in two or three 5k events in the warm months of the year.  All for the joy of running out-of-doors, feeling the function of my body, the contact of the soles of the New Balance sneakers on the surface of the earth, the wind, and of course the pleasure of the sights and sounds of my fellow runners.

At sixty I ceased to run.  A diabetic for ten years, I started to feel nerve damage in my feet, peripheral neuropathy its called.  Never mind the abstract label, what was a minor distraction meant that running was uncomfortable.  The condition of nerve damage in my feet was a reminder that I inhabited an aging body.  By means of running I could no longer be in touch with that kid that lived inside of me.  So I stopped running.

Now I am seventy-one years old.  After eleven years have passed, I decided to start running again.  Never mind the weird, uncomfortable feeling — I still can run.  For the last two hot summer days, I’ve run from the house in Batavia, run along Western Avenue North toward Geneva.  It has been very hot, especially in the afternoon sun, when there are no stretches of shade.  Geneva is just over three miles away, and that seems a reasonable goal.  I’ll get there if I keep up the daily running routine.

I know that I am past the prime of youth, that the remembered luxury of a unimpaired functioning body will not be restored even when I am more fit as a result of running,   Age takes a toll, and Nature must be paid what is due. 

Yesterday on my return run, I waited at the light, so that I could cross Fayban Parkway.  I was almost home.  While getting my breath, I glanced behind me at some late summer purple thistle plants growing at the edge of the median, a spot where the lawn mower couldn’t reach.  The plants were brown, past their prime.  That’s me I thought, aspiring to be a ‘survivor,’  the last man standing.  That is why I am running.

And I felt in the blazing afternoon sun — exactly how those thistle plants looked. 

And now for a song.*

Rebel Rebel

By David Bowie

You’ve got your mother in a whirl
She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl

Hey babe, your hair’s alright
Hey babe, let’s go out tonight
You like me, and I like it all
We like dancing and we look divine
You love bands when they’re playing hard
You want more and you want it fast
They put you down, they say I’m wrong
You tacky thing, you put them on

Rebel Rebel, you’ve torn your dress
Rebel Rebel, your face is a mess
Rebel Rebel, how could they know?
Hot tramp, I love you so!

Don’t ya?

You’ve torn your dress, your face is a mess
You can’t get enough, but enough ain’t the test
You’ve got your transmission and your live wire
You got your cue line and a handful of ludes
You wanna be there when they count up the dudes
And I love your dress
You’re a juvenile success
Because your face is a mess
So how could they know?
I said, how could they know?

So what you wanna know Calamity’s child,
Where’d you wanna go?
What can I do for you? Looks like you’ve been there too
‘Cause you’ve torn your dress
And your face is a mess
Ooo, your face is a mess
Ooo, ooo, so how could they know?
Eh, eh, how could they know?

* Why did I choose this one?  I like the song, especially the guitar riffs.  This is one of Bowie’s most loved compositions.  It’s an anthem of triumph and and a defiant statement of good-by.  In this life, it pays to be a rebel; to resist, to push against aging, to run again, saying ‘no’ to a habit of inactivity.  Who cares what anyone else thinks.  Running, Calamity’s child.

Bowie was fifty six when this video was made.