My body sagged, my hands roared with pain, as I spoke with a friend on the phone last night. A song was stuck in my head. The line repeatedly played, “…I was stuck in the rush hour… The expressway to your heart…. Ohhh, its been so long…” I thought it was a Motown tune. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Neither had I been able to—and to a point, nor was I willing to stop the song from playing in my head. It just felt right.
Too yesterday, sometimes as I pulled out old plants and
weeds, I’d sing a few words of the song. This went on for hours, after my
morning drive to an old park and old run I used to do. I knew the song meant
something. Yet, I didn’t want to dictate its presence in my life with my own
meaning as opposed to why spiritually it hung in the balance with me, for
nearly ten hours—continuing this morning upon waking.
The dreams I’d had and the goofy ‘never in my lifetime’
experiences that occurred in the past two weeks were weirdly comforting. As I’d
thought this morning, one of my husband’s favorite songs came to mind, “Truckin’”
by the ‘Grateful Dead’. It was as I’d continued to do my morning chores arriving
in our garage placing items in a comingled recycling bin.
Seconds later, as I couldn’t remember who I said this to in
the past week; however, I remember saying it. “I’m not much of a rock ‘n roller,
my husband was. I’m more of a Motown, James Brown, Ray Charles, Gladys Knight and
classical music type person. You know—like Verde, Chopin, Vivaldi, Spanish
Guitar and Beethoven?” I thought soon after I’d said that at work. ‘I guess I’m
just a mellow person. I’ve not liked loud noises. Can’t handle going to
concerts at all. It’s been like that most of my life.’ Norm would drag me to concerts;
I’d go because I was curious. Yet, I absolutely didn’t want to be there. However,
conflicted I went because I wanted to be with Norm, my husband.
Two weeks ago, I’d thought back to the various songs my
husband would possibly be playing in the car now. It was always a “New Riders
of the Purple Sage” CD. Yet, he did like Rockabilly, Ventures, Leon Russell,
Starship, Jefferson and the like.
As well, in the past two weeks dreams and things showing up
in my life like: Mountain lions, Leopards, a baby Southern Flying Squirrel
scooting across the right side of my face and then disappearing, a bee in our main
bathroom, two crickets just inside our door to the garage, and dead clients all
folded into two weeks between Wednesday, August 26th and September
9th.
The topper of the strange place I’ve been was the feeling that
I got to get back to my better roots of desiring speed in my running more than
anything. I had to crave it, to see if I still was that same determined runner
or was I just now to sit back, run, write, keep house and wait for death to
arrive in some fashion. The feeling wasn’t the desire for speed. It was the
desire to get back to where I was physically over thirty years ago in my desire
and drive of my running long distances. I could remember how excited I’d get
when my then coach Tom Fleming would give me an order of speed drills in
Brookdale Park in Essex County which was about thirty minutes from the
apartment we’d had back then, before children and pets.
I began to realize that on Sunday, September 7th that
Brookdale Park was the place I needed to revisit. However, my one fear was, how
slow would I now be? Yeah, a fear. I knew the old big loop course of at least 1.75
miles or so, I’d thought. In the past, I’d get there early before training
after work on a Tuesday late afternoon to evenings in 1990. I would run two
loops to warm up—I swear Tom and some of the guys would giggle at my warmup, as
if they thought I was insane to care so much about warming up. Only later in
the summer of 2000 did I find out what Tom really thought of my long warmups. That
occurred on a day while I warmed up around another big block for over three
miles near a Montclair track.
It was as I waited for Tom, and then what became his
contingent of a mixed bag of young high school stud-runner boys, a couple of women
who were no Anne Marie Letko’s, neither were they Cassie McDonald’s, or Melody
Reed’s or Elaine Van Blunck’s. They were your basic moderate long-distance
runners who had hope. And one had been a stud female racer before the Anne
Marie’s and so forth. Yet those two women never experienced the all-male
entourage of runners back in the mid-to late 1980’s and early 1990’s I’d
experienced. The Keith Coughlin’s, Mike Keohane’s, Mitch Barnes’, and Joe LeMay’s
of that time. They showed up with Paul Friedman, Oliver Knowlton, Barry Giblin,
as Tom Fleming was still able to do some good hammering too on his Saturday
morning 9.7 mile loop, that ran between Glen Ridge, Clifton, Montclair and
Bloomfield areas.
My pursuit of staying with the men back then was almost
laughable. There were no women yet who’d show up for those Saturdays back then.
I swear I’d drop pounds in that hammered run. I could feel the grind through my
soul. I don’t think I’d ever grinded faster than a 56:32 for that course. Tom
began calling me “The Patriot Missile”. It was because I’d chase down one of
the men who was a stud runner who’d lead. I’d catch him by two miles or so;
then only to be passed by the rest of the men at four miles, hearing Keith
Coughlin say, “Nice try kid”, as he, Tom and the other men would pass me by. My
legs were buckling by the seven-mile mark. How insanely scary at times it felt.
My right side had never recovered from the 1991 attack, nor
the subsequent 1993 eight hour spinal surgery and hip-grafting. Yet determined as
always, I would make something of the nothing I’d become as a runner.
Now, here I was yesterday mid-morning on my first drive in
over 25 years to Brookdale Park. I’d done some research of the 121-acre county
park the afternoon prior to the drive. As I drove, I told myself to remain
neither here nor there on expectations. I knew my body was still tired from the
final workday the day before at the market I’d been working at since mid-November
2024. I used the job as an experiment. Yeah, that’s why I took that job. To see
how well I followed orders in a new environment. I had and I was still me. My
husband used to call me, “The Good Little German”. Although I look like a cross
from my Viking roots and something a bit Scottish, in the middle of my tapestry
of being 14 different nationalities.
Soon, I was about to get onto the parkway, then I realized I’d
been daydreaming, brought back to before they’d rerouted how to get to the parkway
from routes 208/4. I had to do two U-turn ramps to get back onto that route that
led to the parkway entrance. The last time this happened and only time it’d
ever happened was November 22, 2019, at night. That night plays in my head
every day I’m awake. It was a horrible night, but I remained calm. ‘Cause that’s
what I usually do, after a second or two of near panic. I’ve had a number of
horrible nights, yet that one was one of the ones that took the cake. Actually,
it gradually took a part of my family. It was the Expressway to my Heart. Which
now has put me in the “Strange Place I’ve Been.”---Jody-Lynn Reicher
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