Ewte Talk

Dear Lover,

I want you back. At the risk of seeming a desperate woman I write this letter in hopes of winning your sympathies and your ultimate return. It is true I am a proud woman, a strong woman. Some people (my husband included) refer to me as a stubborn woman, and I would go so far as to agree, but in this instance I am willing to suffer insult to my pride, a weakening of my strength if I am forced to take up a grovelling stance fit for nothing more than the gutter-dweller I would become should it lead to our reunion, you and I.

My first taste of you was when I was but a girl and that was a long time ago. I saw you on our family’s one small television through a show on Babe Didrickson Zaharias. The show portrayed this spectacular woman’s athletic life, and how she had carried the U.S. Olympic Women’s Track and Field team by herself. I was smitten. With her, and with you. At the time I was perhaps eight or nine years old. I could run faster than every girl in my class except Amy Rogers, and sometimes I beat even her. She and I could also beat most of the boys, which I imagine gave her the same satisfaction it did me. I remember those days fondly. It was a time of fantasy: high hopes of marrying Derek from The Bay City Rollers and running hurdles in the Olympics. My father would run the high school track a couple miles from our rural home and my sister and I would come with him. I remember the sting of the evening air on my lungs when I’d pushed too hard for my unconditioned little body. I remember goofing around with my sister on the pole vault landing pad. I loved the track. I loved you: running.

It wasn’t until later, when we had to run in my other sports, that I remembered my allegience to you, and I switched out of field hockey and into track. From the time of my freshman year in high school I have been with you in one form or another: track, cross-country, road races, triathlons. What started out as sport, moved to a way to keep in shape, eventually became a way of life and a way to deal with life. You are so much more to me than the physical now, after twenty seven years. Our time together is spiritual, as lunatic as that may sound to the uninitiated, but if they only knew just how extraordinary your breadth is. You address my physical, emotional, and spiritual concerns with your one simple motion, all sweat aside. I’ve read that even the Buddhist monks access their spiritual reach through your efforts. Fantastic. The more the merrier.

My problem, of course, is that you and I have been separated now for the better part of eight months, which, if I’m not mistaken is our longest estrangement to date. Our separation indeed put me into a tailspin and before I got too low to pull myself out, I finally sought medical intervention. I was under the assumption that you and I were through for good, the party was over. Back at Thanksgiving my father-in-law made a valiant attempt to get things going. He is an ace at steroid injections in the knee, after having done a million over the course of his orthopaedic practice, and he sat me down in his daughter’s office as I crossed my fingers. I love that man almost as much as I love you, but, sadly, his cortico-boost was for naught. I was left high and dry.

This was indeed hard to stomach. I got up on my treadmill for repeated test drives of the “new” knee only to be driven off after half a mile. Slowly I spiralled down again. But my tolerance for dogdays is about the length of time I’m willing to stand in front of a grocery check-out filled with covers of Hilton or Brittany: not long. I got up. Again.
There is a big running club in this town and I called them, looking for you, or, more specifically, looking for a sympathetic orthopaedic and physical therapist, people who might bring me ever closer to your good graces. And guess what, honey? It’s working.

While I can’t see you or feel you, I can smell you in the air. I have been going to Farouk’s office twice a week for almost six weeks now, he crunching my scar tissue with his mighty arms, me panting back and forth all around the office. Inch by inch, I can now run two and a half miles. That’s nothing to sneeze at, considering, though I practically sleep my way through it given the pace I’m forced to maintain: sloooow. As I peek out the window, I can see the runners taking up the trails in this most glorious of seasons, and that’s when I divert my eyes because it’s more than I can bear.

But I’m making a come back. Make no mistake. In the meantime, I am doing my homework, crosstraining, and finding it rather satisfying, rather fulfilling. How does this strike you? I actually like my cycling class. In fact, my dear, I love my cycling class. I try to go to every one that I can.

Are you jealous? Maybe you should be. One never knows.

Until then,

Yours,

Stephanie

Babe Didrickson Zaharias