Kid pitch

I spent the morning at the ball field with D. Only his second game in kid pitch. We had the early game, which meant it was cold and damp. Team picture day.

The picture packages started at $25. D wanted his picture on trading cards. Sure, I said. Then he saw the other options available: his picture on a mug, a t-shirt, refrigerator magnets. These I wouldn’t grant, which made him pout. He only pouted briefly; then he asked plaintively, “Next year, can I get a mug?” That almost worked on me.

Walking toward the field after pictures, he told me he didn’t know whether he could play. His leg hurt. Since when? I asked him. I don’t know, he said. I told him he had to play; his team needed him.

During warm-ups, it was announced that the other team had only seven players and would have to forfeit. The teams would scrimmage anyway.

I chatted amiably with the few other parents present. We were cold just sitting around. The field is beautiful, but completely enclosed and off limits to all but the teams and the umpires; the bleachers are way out beyond the right-field fence. From that distance, it’s hard to tell exactly who is batting. We speculated that our banishment was intentional, to preclude parental overbearance. We blew into our hands, bought coffee from the concession stand, wished the sun would come out.

D was last to take BP. He looked bad, flailing blindly. I cringed inwardly. Batting ninth in the first inning, he struck out. More flailing, more cringing. I began to wish that other boys would strike out too, just so he would have some company, but everyone was hitting, even little Alex. How was it that Alex was hitting?

D’s second time up, I prayed before each pitch that he’d get a hit, or at least hit the ball. He struck out on three pitches, watching a strike then swinging badly at two balls up around his eyes. I remembered a friend's father, growing up, who never came to his son’s games, because, he said, he couldn’t stand all the mistakes.

On defense, D played right field, then left, then center, running to and from his position with a limp that came and went. Not a single ball reached him all game.

The third time up, he walked on four pitches. We'll take it, I thought. He ran down to first excitedly, and made it all the way to third before the inning ended. The next time up, he had his strategy—he didn’t swing at anything. He watched a couple of strikes, but walked again, and scored from second on an outfield hit.

He was happy with that when the game finally ended—that he’d scored a run, and his team had won. That was enough for him.

I was thankful that he had something to hold onto, and a little ashamed of myself for wanting more. Still, I felt frustrated and a little bit embarrassed, too. For him? For me? I don’t know, maybe both. I struck out an awful lot myself back in the day.

I just wished he had managed to hit the ball.

Will running make it worse?

That’s the standard for whether pain justifies skipping a run. My knees hurt a bit, like they’ve done before when I resumed running after a long hiatus. There is dull pain in the meat at the inside of the knee cap on both knees, and in the left there is a screaming pain below the kneecap when I lift the bent leg while sitting to put a shoe on. Sometimes. It’s kind of unpredictable.

The dull pain was a little more noticeable this morning than it has been, and for that reason I considered giving the knees a rest today. But I ran anyway—an easy run, with walk breaks. The pain did not worsen. If anything it grew less as I loosened up. Now it’s back as I sit bent-legged at my desk, but no worse than it was earlier.

I have tended to err on the side of caution. Discretion is the better part of valor, and all that. Now, especially, there’s no good reason to risk injury. But I’m at that stage in my comeback where I’m impatient with excuses. I’ve missed far too many turns with flimsy ones. I’m afraid if I take off one day I’ll fall behind, and worse, I’ll fall away again, break the spell. I know how those misses can snowball.

I have tended to err on the side of self-indulgence, in short, and I don’t want to do that anymore. But I also don’t want to be a fool and get hurt.

Doing the Work

Walking in today, I passed a young woman running hill repeats. She was focused and deliberate. Her form was good. She looked athletic and strong.

Doing the work. That’s what I thought when I saw her. She is doing the work that is necessary. Paying her dues. I was inspired. You start where you are, you rein in your expectations, and you do the work. That’s all. There’s no room for vanity, or self-condemnation, or greed. There’s no rushing it. There’s a comfortable tension, neither slack nor strain. You come to live within that tension, to understand when you can push it and still maintain control, and when you need to back it off. You learn to feel, and to be honest--not to cheat yourself.

At the top of the hill was another young woman, run-walking. She was a bit overweight, no athlete, but she too was focused and deliberate. She too was doing the work.

It begins with a commitment, and that, since the marathon, has been hard for me to muster. It requires a stripping down to what’s important, and immediate. Discipline is remembering what you really want.

Long Road Back

I almost didn’t run today. My knees are tender—from starting up, from carrying too much weight—and the road ahead seems daunting. To get to where I want to be, which is simply in decent shape, able to run up to 10 miles, say, in reasonable comfort, is going to take a considerable and steady effort. For a moment or two, it didn’t seem worth it. More accurately, it didn’t seem possible. The goal was too far off.

The only way forward, of course, is to put on blinders and take it one day at a time. What this requires is, first, humility, facing the truth of where I am, accepting the reality that progress happens in small increments; and second, faith that those small increments will eventually add up to something.

I have the experience of having successfully trained for and completed a marathon to bolster my faith. What may be harder at this stage is to maintain a true humility, that is, the ability to face and accept what is right now without becoming discouraged. I am challenged every time I look in the mirror, by things that I can control (albeit with difficulty) and things that I can’t. Let me accept what I must with grace and equanimity, and let me also be resolute in changing what I can.

Defenders of the Faith

They’re everywhere, and their presence wounds the Spirit. There are bishops among them, and bishops who give them succor, and also bishops who fear them like the secret police. Their cranky, hateful letters in the newspaper were bad enough, but their nasty blog comments are even worse. They are relentless, bullying, eager to pounce and to pull every conversation around to their singular obsessions, which are either homosexuality or free market economics. They boast an invincible certainty, coupled with an utter lack of compassion. And boy do they have time on their hands.

I ran into one of these lamentable creatures today on the America blog. There was an innocuous post titled, “We are all adopted,” the gist of which was that we are all God’s chosen children, and lamenting the fact that the people of Haiti have yet to be adopted by the human family. The word “adoption” set off this jerk’s radar—evidently it says to him gay parents and test tube babies—and he posted in response a gratuitous defense of birth parents that insisted on attacking and demeaning adoption.

I was sorely tempted to hit him with a blistering response—went so far as to draft one, in fact, but thought better of sending it. Then I resented the time and energy he had taken from me, the anger and hatred he had stirred. It does no good to trade punches with these troglodytes, of course. And I could summon no real charity for his sad and stunted soul locked away in its loveless prison.

Growing pains

The kid is upset and it’s hard to take. All of his little third-grade friends are caught up in the latest Youtube video sensation, and we won’t let him watch. It’s crude and it’s rude and it’s meant for teenagers. It’s not appropriate for a nine-year-old, in our judgment, and we’re holding the line.

His frustration with us is keen, colossal from his perspective. These videos are forbidden fruit, the only topic in his class right now, and he feels painfully left out. It’s on his mind all day long, but he can’t do anything about it.

There have been lots of tears, but the worst part is when he screams in his frustration, “Just stop talking about it! Pretend it doesn’t exist!” He doesn’t want to go over it yet again, not when there’s no hope of changing our minds. His inclination is rather to be resigned, to suffer in silence. It hurts more to talk about it.

We second-guess ourselves, of course; we can’t stand to see him suffering. We come almost to the point of giving in. It would be easier on us if he got angry at us and acted out, but he just walks away and cries quietly until we prod him, and that only makes it worse.

We ourselves get frustrated, with the raw power of viral Internet culture, the permissiveness or absence of other parents, the immaturity and meanness of other kids. “Should I say something to the parents?” his mom asks him gently. “No!” he wails. “Then everybody will hate me!”

God knows this is nothing—there will be a whole lot worse than this before all is said and done. At the moment, however, it feels bad enough.

Scandal

The real thing is this: For me, an educated, professional, 52-year-old man working at a large public university in a secular society, to publicly kiss a cross is a scandal. What would my colleagues say? My boss? Neighbors? Fellow parents? Friends?

I didn’t have my kid with me for cover. He was in school, and I didn’t insist on pulling him, which would have been another scandalous move. So it was nakedly me and this public display of affection.

Affection? Reverence? Acknowledgement? No other church requires such a definitive focusing act, not that I know of. And that is a reason to cherish the Church.

We endure it sheepishly, distractedly, glancingly, because to really face what we’re doing is too difficult—at least it is for me. Can others make this gesture wholeheartedly? I envy them. For me it is a mere show of piety, and this makes me deeply uncomfortable. I can’t see Jesus; all I can see is myself.

All I can do then is pray: to see more clearly, to grow in faith. To be freed from the iron shackles of self-regard. To sweat blood.

Maybe that’s all that is required.

Good Friday

I took off work and went to the liturgy, as I always do. Walking from the parking garage, I felt the familiar doubt. Why are you doing this? And the corollary temptations: No one else is doing it—only the young and the gullible. It doesn’t matter if you don’t go—it’s only a ritual. You already know what this is about. You don’t need to do it. God will understand. Then: It’s really kind of silly, isn’t it?

It’s a dramatic ritual: the altar is stripped, the priests blazing in scarlet. They come in without music, prostrate themselves, their prone bodies our confession. The silence is powerful.

That much I like. But from there it drags on, with a long stilted reading of the Passion, repeated from Palm Sunday, and an even longer litany of prayers for all categories of people. The homily seems like overkill.

The center of the liturgy is the veneration of the cross, and this is the part that really triggers my self-consciousness. Everyone files down and kisses, touches, or otherwise reverences the cross held before the altar. Should I kiss it, or just touch it? Should I kneel? Everyone is watching (and, if they're like me, judging). It takes forever. The music is lugubrious. Two attendants are wiping potential germs from the wood after every kiss, a modern touch of fastidiousness that to me is both jarring and lamentable.

It’s an old-fashioned act of piety, and it makes me uncomfortable. But of course that’s the point. The whole overlong service is an enactment of shared discomfort. We are required to make some small sacrifice, of our time, our attention, our foolish pride, to remind us, however inadequately, of the larger sacrifice. To the extent that it annoys me, makes me uncomfortable, tries my patience, and is therefore an opportunity to embrace His suffering, it is important for me to attend.

Turning Point

I have started running again, after a long absence. As I look back at my records, it’s been longer than I thought. I ran not at all between mid-January and mid-April. Before that, I missed all of October and November and most of December. So I’ve run at most four weeks out of the last six and a half months.

There are reasons for this drought, and some of them are even legitimate. I had a month or so of mysterious episodes that first looked like they might be cardiac. That was scary; I even spent one night in the ICU. Before that (and perhaps related) I had my annual mid-winter sinus problem, which seemed to linger even longer than usual. And before that, I succumbed to inertia: settled into a new department, a new office, a new routine, I fell out of the habit of running. The comfort devil took me over.

The most obvious, and painful, result is that I’ve put on weight—at 215 pounds, I’m 15 pounds heavier than I was during my last serious training, and likely as heavy as I’ve ever been. My pants are too tight. My paunch is noticeable. I can’t stand my image in the mirror. And there are other tell-tale signs: I feel old and achy in the morning, and I labor to walk uphill.

Worst of all, it hurts to run, and after running. I huff and puff. My back and hips have stiffened up. Most worrisome are my knees, which hurt and threaten to give out.

Running is not fun right now. It isn’t pleasant. But at 52, I feel like I’ve reached a crossroads. Stick with it, endure the suffering, slowly and painfully climb back, or give in to comfort and begin the downhill slide in earnest. For now I’m committed to hanging tough, but the decision isn’t as easy as I wish it would be.

Marathon Man?

I have half-heartedly committed to run in the Steamtown marathon in October. This is something I’ve wanted to do, toyed with doing, for a number of years. This year I’ll be turning 50. Seems like an added reason to try it.

I say “try it,” not “do it.” That’s a problem. I’m not fully on-board with this yet. Still testing the waters. What if I get tired of the training? What if I lose heart?

My cover now is injury. That’s a legitimate excuse for dropping out, right? I say to myself doubtfully, well, I’ll try, if my joints hold up, but I’m not sure they will. This weekend I said this to my parents, half to cover myself, and half to ease them into the idea of me running a marathon. I hadn’t planned on telling them anything. I had told Lori of my tentative plan, and sworn her to secrecy, but she forgot and told my mother!

My mother’s reaction was surprisingly positive, considering her propensity to worry. “Well, it’s a goal,” she said. “If you want to try it I’ll support you.” I don’t think she even said “Be careful.” My father’s reaction was similar. They respect my running, and have for some time. My father has even asked me in the past whether I ever thought about running a marathon. The idea intrigues him.

I wouldn’t even have considered it up until about two months ago. For the past several months, maybe a year, until then, my running had been desultory; I had felt heavy, sluggish. I wasn’t enjoying running much at all. Of late, though, there’s been a change for the better. I don’t know what occasioned it—was it slowing down my pace? Losing a few pounds? For whatever reason, I began to feel a marked improvement and, well, I ran with it. As I started to feel better and better, Steamtown began to seem like a real possibility. I looked up Hal Higdon’s training plan for novice marathoners on the Web and saw that I was just in time to start training, so I fell into it.

Already, I’m in the middle of the fourth week. It hasn’t even grown hard yet, but already, I’ve had to fight off some internal resistance. What do I want to do this for? I’ve asked myself. It’s too much of a commitment, I’ve complained. I don’t feel like it. I’ve anticipated other people voicing the same thoughts. But so far, I’ve made the effort to stick to the training, and I think that with every week I put in, my commitment will grow along with my investment.

Formidable

William F. Buckley died today, aged 82, at his desk. His cook found him at 10 a.m.

I found myself drawn to his intelligence, energy, immensity of output and influence, charm. By the greatness of the life he lived. By the idea that he was not like today’s conservatives, bullying, nasty, bankrupt, partisan, that he treated his opponents with respect, was decent, gracious, large.

This is the impression I’ve formed from a distance, not paying much attention. A certain fondness, even though I had no affinity for most of what he stood for, and to pick up a copy of the National Review made me clench my teeth with fear and loathing. To me Buckley was like a pope—his presence forced me to give consideration to what I didn’t agree with. He had that kind of ballast.

We grew up watching Buckley perform on Firing Line on our black-and-white TV, that sprawling presence, the darting tongue, flashing eyes, feral smile, the evident joy he took in measuring, pouncing on and dismantling his opponents, the sheer style and humor with which he did it. We didn’t like him, but we were mesmerized by him.

Our father expressed admiration for Buckley, along with amusement at his mannerisms. This led to a period of years when a Buckley book was regarded as the logical birthday and Christmas present for Dad; when these events came around we pooled our money and bought him one, until at last one Christmas, after he ripped off the wrapping paper, he couldn’t help exclaiming, in a somewhat exasperated voice, “Who told you guys I like Buckley anyway?” There was a pause for us all to gulp. Then the reprieve: “I mean I do,” he said, “but…” I don’t think he read any of them.

Here’s the other connection: Eudie, my mom’s friend from girlhood, worked for Buckley in the early years of the National Review, as a secretary. She spoke of him with reverence.

He was a figure from my childhood, one who in recent years I would turn to for a principled conservative opinion on the war in Iraq, at a time when I didn't know what to think. I probably wouldn’t agree with him but I had to take him seriously. I could trust in his integrity and had to respect his opinion. For whatever reason, I assigned him not just with intelligence but with wisdom.

Remote control

It’s a curious thing how a switch in the mind can suddenly be turned on after long lying dormant. This happened to me recently with regard to the television in the kitchen. We installed the thing when the kitchen was remodeled, eight years ago now; it perches on a black metal stand at the end of a jointed arm bolted to the wall, so that it takes up no counter space. It is a somewhat guilty pleasure, but a pleasure indeed: cook’s companion, weather guide, boon to dish-washing. Many the Phillies game I have checked on, the political debate I have sampled, the episode of Scrubs I have caught the end of. Without this television I would have no experience of either Everybody Loves Raymond or Deal or No Deal.

Placing a television in the kitchen has its hazards, however. Chief among them is food spillage, which, except on Superbowl Sunday, is not as much of a threat in the den. When a television set sits suspended above the coffeemaker, when a busy cook or a dishwasher is handling the remote control on a daily basis, problems are bound to ensue. In our case, the poor remote suffered so many wet thumbs and splashes of spaghetti sauce over the years that it gradually ceased to function. First the number keys, then the mute, and finally the on-off button became stubborn and unreliable. We were left with a crippled TV. To turn it on or change the channel required accessing the controls on the front of the set itself. In an age of fewer channels and less obnoxious commercials, this might not have posed a problem. But when you have to toggle 28 times to get from CNN to MSNBC, and 40 to get from PBS to Nickelodeon, it becomes a source of considerable frustration.

The point is we lived with this frustration for a very long time. From the first refusal of the “Previous channel” button, when I thought we needed new batteries, to the current state of all-but-total paralysis, where only the “5” key works, the remote had been in a state of advancing failure for at least two years. And for the length of that time, we had suffered with it, toggling those arrow buttons up and down every time there was a commercial or other lull.

Finally, yesterday, when Lori said she had some things to pick up at the store, it occurred to me to ask her to purchase a new remote, the kind they call a universal, that can be programmed to work for anything. The very concept is amazing.

Anyway, she brought home the device, I quickly got it programmed, and our troubles were over. After two years of struggle, we instantly had a television that was no longer crippled. What a relief!

But the question I’m asking myself now is: What the hell took me so long? Why on Earth did I keep muddling along with the damaged remote for two years, shaking my head, lamenting, cursing, before it finally occurred to me to just replace the damn thing? Why did it take so long for the Sun to break through the clouds?

I can identify the precipitating event. I had started to worry that the accumulation of all that rapid-fire toggling, that rough handling, was going to end up damaging the television itself. And the next thought was that if the set broke we were not going to replace it; we didn’t have the money, and anyway how would we manage to get one that would fit in as well as this one did? It was the fear of losing the source of pleasure that finally pierced through the inertia. When that fear became real, the idea took shape.

A trivial example, perhaps, but it shows how we fall into ruts in our daily living.

Healthy perspective

This morning it was raining, a cold winter rain to melt the snow on the ground. I looked out the glass door and felt sorry for myself, knowing I’d have to walk in this. It’s fifteen minutes from the church parking lot where I leave the van to my office, I thought, and I don’t have a damn umbrella. What will I wear on my feet? I also lack a proper raincoat, I thought. My long topcoat lacks two of four buttons and a belt loop. My rainjacket is short for me, and the rain pours off it soaking my pants front and back at the upper thigh. Why does it have to be so wretched out, I groused? And why don’t I have the things I need? Because I don’t plan ahead. Because I don’t make enough money.

So things snowballed until I had myself good and miserable. There seemed no getting around a dismal start to the day. As we left the house I braced for the cold drops from the hemlock tree above the driveway that would no doubt find their way down the back of my collar. We got in the car and drove to the end of the street.

There, struggling to get out of his car, was the old retired guy who serves as our school crossing guard. A month ago he had a knee replaced, and now I could see him wincing as he tried to stand. By the time we reached him, though, and Lori rolled down her window, he had tottered over to his post, where he stood half-hidden under a red and white golf umbrella.

“Nice day, huh?” Lori said, sympathetically. The rain was beating on his umbrella.

“It is a nice day,” he shot back. “We’re alive, aren’t we?” He was grinning.

Lori and I both stood corrected. “We sure are,” she said. “Stay warm.”

I stopped feeling sorry for myself immediately. By the time I got to the church, the rain had pretty much stopped.

Indoor track

Ran inside today, for the second time this week. There was no getting around it. We had snow last night, and this morning freezing rain. By noon it had warmed up enough to be just rain, and the roads and sidewalks were covered in slush. It was run inside or don’t run at all. Even the big boys, the Boston Marathon boys, ran inside, which made me feel less of a wimp. That left only the monotony to deal with.

I’m grateful for the indoor option on a day like today, but that doesn’t make it pleasant. I go around and around that old banked track like a hamster on a wheel, breathing the stale dry air at the top of the old gymnasium, trying to find my rhythm.

It was easier today than on Wednesday. I felt better, for one thing, a little lighter, a little less duck-footed and clumsy. My new shoes felt spongy. I put myself in a sort of a trance and just ran the minutes down, where on Wednesday I was fighting it. It didn’t hurt that there was a shapely young baton twirler practicing on the deck below in short shorts and a tube top, a welcome sight at the end of every oval.

I have taken to praying when I run on the track, as a way to pass the time. Some days I pray for other people, devoting a lap to each one. I move from family to friends to enemies to special cases, accomplishing a kind of giant rosary, and sooner run out of laps than out of names. Today, though, I lacked the extra energy to be specific. I just tried to be open, receptive to whatever message God might have for me. There didn’t seem to be anything in particular, but that was okay. I was determined to be patient, even as I fretted over the monstrous lack of humility in this attitude. Me being patient with God! Ah, but God will understand, I thought. God just shakes his head and laughs at my childishness, as I sometimes laugh at Danny’s. He indulges me. He knows that I’m a helpless mess and he gives me points for trying.

The Third Man

It cheered me somewhat surprisingly last night to learn that the Phillies had signed a third baseman. Puzzled me that I had not heard of the guy, though. He’s a National Leaguer, after all; has played for the Giants for something like seven years. His name is Pedro Feliz (“Happy Peter,” one of the message-board fans was already calling him).

The opinions on Peter are mixed. Some of the Bay area fans have terrible things to say about him; how frustrating he is to watch, flailing at bad pitches in clutch situations. His batting average is only .250, and his on-base percentage is lousy, they point out. But he hits 20 home runs a year; in Philly’s small park they say he’ll hit more. He drives in 80 runs. And by most accounts he plays a terrific third base.

The paper said Rollins was juiced when he heard Feliz was coming. I wonder how that makes Dobbs and Helms, the incumbent third basemen, feel. Both were already sounding a little miffed at the strenuous efforts of management this off-season to replace them. Good riddance to Helms, I say. He was a real drag last year, the turd at third. But Dobbs is a scrapper, and a good clutch hitter. He may not be an everyday player, but I’d hate to see him go.

Examination

What are my motivations for running?

On a good day, it makes me feel good, both while I’m doing it and after. I enjoy the feeling of using my body and being in shape. Feeling good physically makes me feel younger, and gives me hope that I can stave off aging. Being in shape makes me feel more attractive. This raises my spirits.

I enjoy running. I would not do it if I took no pleasure in it. However, that pleasure can be elusive. There are some days when I have to force myself to get out and run; I just don’t feel like it. And there are some days, not always the same ones, when running feels plain lousy, no matter how much I take it easy. If there were more days and times when it felt lousy than there were days and times when it felt good I would stop running. It is harder to get back out there after a lousy day, easier after a good day.

Running requires effort. There is no guaranteed immediate reward. But there is the possibility of immediate reward. And there is a sort of guarantee that if you stick with it, you will get better at it. You may not become a good runner, but you’ll become a better one: the harder you work, the better you’ll become.

Are the same things true of prayer? Not exactly. Ultimately, improvement at prayer is a matter of grace, not of effort. Yet effort is required. Prayer, making yourself open to grace, is a discipline, in that it’s easier not to do it. One must be dedicated. And there is no promise of reward.

If I’m honest, I’ll admit that I pray mostly because it makes me feel good. But again, feeling good is not guaranteed. Grace will come when it comes; I can’t control it. I have only to put myself in the way of it, be patient and humble waiting for it, and be thankful when it comes and accepting when it doesn’t.

Money in the bank

Okay, so the honeymoon’s over. For the entirety of my lunchtime run today, I struggled as though I was carrying a cannonball. I huffed and I puffed and I felt like quitting, even though I was wearing a brand-new pair of shoes. Why the change from the time before? The day was cold, but no colder than it’s been. Had the glass of rye whiskey I sipped before dinner last night suddenly made me turn old? Serious runners talk about the “running gods,” who giveth and taketh away, without explanation. Some days you just feel lousy.

Before I’d finished a mile, a pretty good definition of “discipline” popped into my head. A discipline is something you do whether you feel like it or not. Doesn’t that about cover it? A discipline is something you practice. You do it over and over, regularly, with dedication. It’s something you set aside time for, something you plan for and commit to. Something you do “for your own good,” that is, your long-term good, as opposed to your short-term inclination, what you “feel like” doing.

Sometimes near lunchtime I will for one reason or another not feel like running: Maybe I’m hungry, or my blood sugar is low, or I’m tired or under stress. I’ll be tempted by excuses. My calf hurts, and I might get injured. I’m coming down with something. I have too much to do. It really would be better just to rest. Sometimes I’ll actually talk myself out of running, or spend so long at trading pros and cons that the opportunity is lost.

On the days when I manage to override the temptations and get myself out the door, I am "exercising" discipline. Giving it a work-out. Making it a little stronger. And that feels good. Not like scratching an itch feels good. More like putting money in a bank feels good.

It helps to remember this.

Back on the trail

It was snowing today at lunchtime. When I went out for my run, my co-worker said to me: “Wow, that’s dedication.”

If it is, I thought, it’s dedication to pleasure. Heading out for a leisurely run around the deserted golf course, by myself, when there’s snow falling and the black tree branches jut across the gun-metal sky, is the highlight of my day. It’s solitude. It’s peace. It’s honest work. It’s cleansing.

I am used to thinking of running as a discipline, like writing, like prayer. It requires effort. You have to keep it up. There is at least some temptation, every day, to let it go. But damn I love it. Damn I miss it when I don’t do it. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to give it up.

I’m just coming back to it, after a month off because of recurrent colds and a stubborn sinus infection, so in part at least this is honeymoon talk. But I welcome the stiffness I’ve been feeling in the morning. I cherish the controlled effort of setting out from Rec Hall. I enjoy facing the cold, and coming in from it all flushed and invigorated and feeling like I’ve done something.

I think of Jim, our local astronaut. When I went down to see him at Johnson Space Center, where he was working his ass off to get ready for his Shuttle mission, he told me that his tightly scheduled four-mile run, alone through the scrub pine, with the good possibility of seeing a deer, was the highlight of his day. For Jim, running was an escape from discipline. It was his daily chance to chuck everything and break free.

Back to Cali

East Coast born and bred, I am always surprised by the friendliness of southern Californians. I react suspiciously, and then, ashamed of myself, I let my guard down probably too far.

The ringlet-headed Adonis who brings my bags to my motel room, the suntanned senior citizen who delivers my rental car: why are they smiling? Why are they happy? Why do they seem to be genuinely interested in what brings me to San Diego or La Jolla or Riverside?

Are they hustling for tips? I’d tip them anyway, just out of my overriding Eastern fear of doing something wrong—and I believe that they can smell this. Nor is there anything particular about me that would attract attention or stimulate sudden affection: I’m not a pretty girl, or a recognizable face. Why are they being so nice?

It seems to be just the norm out here, and probably I should know this—It’s no doubt a mark of my lack of sophistication that I don’t have a good handle on this thing called Western manners or California openness or whatever people call it—but still I wonder, where does it come from? What is the cause of it? When did it begin? Is it entirely a function of climate? Of geography? (Are people in Fresno and Indio as friendly as their counterparts in Laguna and Newport Beach?) Did it arrive with the gold rush? Is there some other cultural component at work?

Sometimes I think that these are the most American of Americans, suffused with optimism and tolerance, sun-kissed and feeling fortunate, living in paradise, suspended, not wanting the dream to ever end. Who can blame them? Open the motel-room door to go get breakfast and you’re blinded; you stand there blinking like an owl. As your eyes adjust, your spirit soars: Can the sky really be that blue? Can the breeze be that caressing? Is that sparkling swimming pool for me to use? How could this day not be sensational?

The stories were told of easterners (writers especially) being ruined out here, losing their bearings and their intensity among the Lotus Eaters. It’s easy to imagine. It’s easy to feel when you’re out here on assignment or vacation, and the sun warms your forearms, and you catch a whiff of eucalyptus as you cross the fresh-paved parking lot to an open-air cappucino bar where a blond-haired barista, suntanned and immaculate in her fifties, beams you a dazzling smile.

But at night in your room with the TV blaring, or sitting cramped on the plane ride back home, as you reflect on the traffic and the smog and the astronomical cost of living, don’t you wonder how people can relax out here at all?

How can they afford to be so mellow? Is the culture of the Sun so overwhelming?

Counterfeit

We were both heading to Spokane for a conference. This fellow Ron, who by chance had the seat next to me on the plane, hails from Boston, works in media relations. He’s a self-assured, opinionated presence, youngish, a bit of a hipster. He had a David Foster Wallace poking out of his knapsack, like a ship’s prow, and was passing the time by going over with a pencil a short-story draft from a fiction workshop he was taking. He paused now and then to chortle at the inadequacies of his absent classmate.

“Read this,” he said giggling, pointing at one particular howler. After I nodded and smiled appreciatively, we conversed for a while. It was October, playoff time, and he—amiably slumming—professed to be part of Red Sox nation, a diehard fan. He told of cruising through Cambridge after the last out in ’04, the year the Curse was lifted. What it was like to be in the streets, how he high-fived an overexuberant drunk leaning out of a taxi and almost had his arm taken off. What a scene!

Pretty soon, though, his story started to unravel. He couldn’t remember the name of Josh Beckett, Boston’s towering, soul-patched ace—“the big guy, the pitcher” was the best he could muster. And the awkward way he spoke about Fenway—“It’s one of the oldest ballparks in the country”—suggested he’d been there once, recently, and had known nothing of the hallowed grounds before that. I threw him a look, but we moved on to another topic.

It was not until an evening reception a couple days later that my suspicions were irrevocably confirmed. It was the day of Game 6, the pivotal win against Cleveland. Ron, craving attention, piped up about having watched the first few innings in the hotel bar. Boston had jumped out early when J.D. Drew, the underachieving right fielder, uncoiled on a 3-1 fastball with the bases loaded. “It was incredible!” Ron gushed. “The Red Sox made a grand slam!”

Made a grand slam? They made one? There was a moment’s pause. The guys within earshot eyed each other uncomfortably. No one challenged Ron directly on his faux pas: This was a meeting of science writers, after all, some of whom were on firmer ground talking about neutrinos. But from that moment on, everyone knew—I knew, at any rate—that this fellow Ron was not to be trusted.