Transition

A double whammy!

You may be forgiven for thinking that I only have one son, as the youngest has yet to receive anything but the most fleeting of mentions.  There are three good reasons for this.

1. He doesn't run.
2. He doesn't read my blog.
3. He doesn't like to leave his bedroom during the holidays!

But today it's all change as school reopens and it's time for him to leave the media centre that was once just a bedroom.  It is, what is affectionately known in our house as, onesie wash day!

Because Al is a teacher, either everyone's home, or no one is, and I struggle with the transition between the two. 

Added to which today is my birthday.

I find birthdays a bit like New Year, I'm supposed to look forward to them, but in truth they usually make me feel a bit melancholy.  I try to enjoy them, but when your mind is an introspective as mine it isn't long before I'm spending the day ruminating about where I'm at, and where I thought I would be and how on earth did I get to be 44?!  (A true joy to live with, and a nightmare to buy presents for!)

Without the boys and at risk of being engulfed by impending birthday blues it was time to either sink or swim. Can't expect to run a marathon if an empty house and my birthday is enough to throw me off track! Time to try a different tack. So I put on my new shoes (yes I finally found some), threw the box away (instead of storing it for a year just in case it comes in handy) and arranged for my friend to come and walk the dog with me.

A glorious spring day we spent most of the morning putting the world to rights, before settling down on the garden bench to pontificate about what age we would like to go back to, whether we would take the knowledge we had now back with us, what our lives would be like if we'd made different decisions and how, if we did go back in time, would we manage to navigate our lives back to the point we're at now? Which is when it hit me...

There is no part of my present life that I would be prepared to trade for a different past.

I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

I've had a lovely day, and thoroughly enjoyed the fact that it was my birthday! Good company this morning, cards, gifts and FB messages to remind me how lucky I am to have such wonderful friends, a very funny phone call with my sister, time sat in the garden and a lovely meal with Al and the boys...

For the first time in a long time I have banished the birthday blues.

What my friend doesn't know is that when she gave birth to her son 17 years ago today, I was in a ward on the floor above awaiting surgery to remove an ovarian cyst. We didn't know each other, we had no idea that we would meet a little over 16 years later, we would have scoffed at the idea that we would be runners!
And yet here we are, and here is a good place.

M - 743
Distance covered                 3 miles (walk)
Total distance covered    29.2 miles