WordSisters

Author: Elizabeth di Grazia

  • Only In My Dreams

    Only in my dreams do I sprint toward the hurdle. When I’m two feet away, I bring my right leg up to my butt and quickly extend it over the bar. It’s a beautiful thing, a split in midair. I continue scaling hurdle after hurdle until my final sprint across the finish line.

    I’ve never done hurdles. I was the high schooler who after running the anchor in a relay or the 200-yard dash, went to the restroom, pulled a cigarette out of my gym bag, and smoked in the last stall.

    Last week, I didn’t smell the tell-tale odor of cigarette smoke at Juan Jose’s conference track meet. No girl was hiding in the last stall.

    I love watching Juan, Crystel, and their teammates run. I’ve known most of the team from kindergarten. At the meets, I can tell who the runner is by their body build, their stance and style before they even hit the straight away, their legs pumping up and down, their breath filling their lungs, and their arms propelling them forward. I stand twenty-five or fifty yards from the finish line, hollering, “Go Richfield, Go!”

    It doesn’t matter to me where the runners place. It’s their heart that I love. I’m drawn to the winners and the losers, who give every ounce of energy that they have to the race. I’m drawn to the runners who strategize in the 800 and mile, who plan their break away, two hundred or a hundred meters from the finish. I’m drawn to the runners who starts at an all out run in the 200 and 400-meter dash, who have expended it all by the time they cross the finish line.

    That is courage.

    This track year, I was particularly drawn to a little guy with red hair, a sixth grader, who lined up for long distance races, who had to know that he was going to end up last or second to last and ran every race anyway. He stayed true to his nature and when he was one hundred meters from the finish line, he sprinted as if he was going to be first. I imagined him levitating, running on air those last one hundred meters. His feet were no longer on the ground, he had sprouted wings.

    I remember that feeling. I quit smoking my 2-pack-a day habit in my mid-twenties, and started running marathons. I was like that red-headed sixth grader. Regardless of where I would place, I sped up towards the end of a race until my feet were off the ground and I was flying into the finish.

    My days of levitating are most likely over due to a knee injury.

    I’m okay with that. I can push myself in other arenas.

    I’ll cheer on others. Celebrate with them.

    The 200-meter race, is usually one of the last events of the meet. It was wonderful to witness the Richfield runners being first in every heat except Juan who was second in his.

    Placing last, first, or second, it doesn’t matter. What matters is heart.

  • Lock Your Car

    October 2008

    I’m a Police Reserve Officer for the city of Richfield.

    Is that why, I want to shout, “No, Don’t Leave Your Wallet There!” to the lady who has her billfold sitting on the ledge in the coffee shop. Anybody could open the door, grab her billfold, and be gone.

    Or, is it because I’ve stolen before?

    In my teens, I did a number of things that I am not proud of. At one point, taking blank checks from my parent’s checkbook, signing their name, and then retrieving the cancelled checks from the mailbox. Our life was so chaotic that I got away with it for … awhile.

    I want to holler to the woman who is walking to the shower at the YMCA, “NO, don’t leave your iPod sitting on your gym bag. Cover it!”

    While still a teen, I opened the back of a car, once, and took the person’s groceries. Not because I was hungry but because it was there and because I could.

    I often tell Juan Jose’ and Crystel to care for their belongings, that they could be stolen.

    Soon after getting her phone, Crystel left it at our table in the restaurant, while we helped ourselves at the buffet. It wasn’t until we were walking to the car that she realized that it was gone. I saw her startled face. She was stricken. I pulled her phone out of my pocket. Told her that as far as a thief was concerned she had just laid $500 on the table and put a sign out that said, Take Me, when she walked away from the table.

    Jody, Coach Marty, Beth

    When I first put on a Police Reserve jacket ten years ago, it felt very comfortable. After a moment, I realized why. I had stolen a similar jacket from a river bar when I was seventeen. The bar had live music, dancing, and it was sticky hot. People piled their jackets in a corner. I eyed the pile, picked out a dark blue jacket that I thought might fit me and walked out of the bar. I wore that jacket for a couple of years.

    Sunday evening, I was helping Scouts with their personal fitness badge. A billfold and phone were laying in a pile amongst papers and pencils on the ground. “Someone is going to stay here, with their stuff, right?” I asked. The Scouts had walked across the street to a park to run a mile. Still, I was nervous. I reached down and put the billfold and phone in my pocket for safekeeping.

    This morning I got a text from our neighbor: FYI: someone rifled through my vehicle (on my driveway) last night. It was unlocked. I think only took some cash. I reported to police. They said at least 5 people from Morgan to Logan area reported the same thing.

    I’ve sat in many police reserve trainings, and we discuss car break-ins. We provide a Theft from Auto Prevention Program by conducting a risk survey of unoccupied vehicles, in hopes that drivers will think about what they are leaving behind in their unlocked car. We tuck the result of our inspection under windshield wipers.

    I text her back: It happened to us as well. Too embarrassed to report. Jody and I are Police Reserve Officers.

    I also use my past as an example that people make mistakes and can change.

  • Living Like You Are Dying

    Living Like You Are Dying

    When the buds begin to show in springtime, I think of my mother. It was the season she learned that she was dying. I wonder what it would be like to learn that you won’t be present by year’s end, yet there is the promise of life all around you. A promise in the buds on fruit and maple trees, woodpeckers drumming, and robins with pieces of grass or a beakful of mud. Crocus with its purple and white flowers peeking out of the ground on the sunny side of the house and in the air the smell of rain, soil, and grass.

    In a way, I do know. I didn’t think that I would live to be twenty-five. I didn’t have any hope for the future. I’m still surprised that I created a loving family. A safe home. And, my children and their friends, teens in their own right, still want to hang with the moms for a game or two of Monopoly.

    Though that time of turmoil, chronicled in House of Fire, is long gone, I still live as if I’m going to die.

    I make a great effort to live with no regrets. I’m already planning our families next Guatemala vacation in June of 2018. It will be our 5th visit to Juan Jose’ and Crystel’s birth country. I have my sight set on a sailboat river tour of the Rio Dulce, Lake Izabal, and Livingston before spending time anchored alongside an island jungle and beach.

    Fortunately, Jody saves for the future. She packs away items from one holiday to the next. If it was up to me I’d just go out and buy the same thing year after year.

    It’s helpful to live like you are dying. I’m at every track and cross country meet with the kids that I can attend. Though, I did hold back from going to their Nordic ski events. Somehow, I didn’t think that I’d regret standing in the cold waiting for them to come to the finish line. Maybe, next year.

    The lilacs haven’t bloomed yet. But, they will. Their green bud promises us that.

    The robins will strengthen their nest with mud. I’ll do the same showing up for my kids.