Writing Reality

  August 11th, 1981 It was August 1st, 2021...as I awaited a delivery that day, I realized I might not be there to sign for it. It needed to be signed for, though.  So, I decided what will be will be. I had no control over my not being home 35 minutes of the day. I prepped to help get my oldest up at 5:15. I knew I had to also get my run in early before any delivery would arrive that needed my signature.   That day, for some reason our oldest bunny, Nibbles kept me up with her frantic thumping for twenty minutes at a time I was dozing off to sleep. I'd hoped for a six hour night's sleep, but oh contrare.  Nibbles dictated with her elderly confusion to grant me a mere four hours sleep last night.  I wondered as I lay in bed last night trying not to stare at the ceiling,  nor at the wall, could I pull off my first early morning moderately long run? Was I still motivated to bring up my best discipline, regardless of a lack of sleep? And when I finished ...

Completion of Humanness As we arrive to the completion of the first year without Norman, I had decided long before he'd passed that I would continue to do things certain things he liked yet could no longer do. I decided I would not take a day off of fitness.  I would run at least for 500 days in a row. I began that in early 2020.  I'd not be concerned with the distance I'd run. It was the very thing I convinced Norman and the thing that mattered to him, from the very first discussion we had August 11th, 1981, was fitness. I loved that he was a College Boy. He loved that I was a Marine. We tickled each other's soul with such admirations. Later fitness continued as an old discussion from 1994 ...getting outside and to run no matter what. I would say to him, "Run 200 meters, then 400 meters. If it doesn't feel good, stop. Turn around and walk back home and know you did your best. That is all you can ask of yourself." I said this,  knowing he would get dow...

 As I sit here and contemplate how others in my life attempted to stop my progression because of my gender. And think ... Right now my Dad would be thinking I'm a soft parent. He would put me down, for helping my oldest financially for her college education, allowing her to not make her bed, accepting her getting her hair and nails done. He wouldn't accept her excuse of working three jobs, working  over fifty hour work weeks, and my feeding her, taking care of her dirty laundry, staying up for her, holding dinner up for her... However, my Mother who didn't stand in my way as she knew I would be a US Marine... Which I know must have freaked out my anti-gun, anti-violence, Albert Schweizer loving Mother. Who wouldn't step on a bug, EVER. She would back me with these decisions. For she would see it as trust, hope, forward progression of a forward thinking woman. And my handing off the torch of the future to my daughters. Godspeed.---Jody-Lynn  Reicher