The Sun Behind the Clouds

When its no longer sunny… there’s the sun behind the clouds.

I awoke this morning with half-dread feeling of another somewhat foggy and rainy day. I guess I could never want to whether Washington State. Although I’d never been there. People I know do live there. The other day I thought back to 1986 when I seemed to hit an involuntary athletic rut in the road. No, it wasn’t my internal birth defects, nor the leg, foot and back injuries or my allergies that I’d dealt with that year. Neither my asthma-like allergies I’d had since 1977, that began increasing in 1986. I’d waited to deal with my asthma and finally tended to it in March 1995 when suggested by my running coach Tom Fleming. I’d dealt with many an asthma attack; it’d worsened by 1992. And in 1995 Tom and the guys were sick of hearing my increased wheezing at certain parts of our running together.

I once again had been fighting through this odd-slog feeling since September 2017. Then suddenly I had a few excuses to train less with no particular injury or illness. It was late November 2019 as my husband of nearly thirty-six years became terminal, our children were now both were in high school. That was one excuse to reduce my training. Which truly was logical and caring, which is my nature. The other excuse arrived soon after my husband’s diagnosis, which was the pandemic. Seemingly, I knew it was about to happen way before the shutdown. I had nightmares about it beforehand. I have dreams like the rest of us. It’s just that some of them arrive at odd times in real life months or many years later.

So, this morning as I did chores. Getting our youngest up for school I stepped outside. I was cleaning our pet bunny’s hay boxes, hanging their fleece pads out onto our back deck. I saw the unpredicted sunrise occurring. I breathed a sigh of relief. The weather app on my phone had shown four days of precipitation. And it wasn’t the type I’d preferred in New Jersey in January like a snowfall. A snowfall seems to always brighten my day, no matter the temperature. I’ll still get outside for a run, train; then shovel and enjoy all that goes with a snowy winter day.

As I ponder these thoughts of my wishing for a snowy winter day, I do know that the sun is behind the clouds. It has to be. That’s how we rotate. But today I will take the unpredicted sunrise for what its worth. For I would have had an odd-slog day regardless of it. It’s just how I have rotated around the sun every 365 days, 6 hours, and nine minutes in this life.---Jody-Lynn Reicher

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