Mother’s Day

Waking up to streaming sunlight, the smell of coffee and no pattering of small feet. Ah, it must be Mother’s Day (or I went to sleep in the wrong house last night).

My husband and daughter insisted on making breakfast for me this morning, which is a nice treat. The funny thing is that now that our daughter is four and a half, I no longer get to choose my breakfast. Well, I can choose it, but it should be along the lines with what she wants. Who said mothers have pull on this one day?

Anyway, that sunshine and brisk temperature was calling my name along with my sneakers. So on they went and out the door I went, confident that my eight miler would be just the right thing before banana pancakes and bacon.

Now my husband and I have a tacit agreement about my long runs: I can do them as long as I am back for breakfast or by the time he’s back from hauling Elizabeth to gymnastics on a Saturday morning. Bottom line, I have a decent window depending on what time I haul myself out of bed. Today, I needed to be back by 8:45 or so to get the pancakes while they were still hot and bacon while it still lasted on the plate.

I remember when I lived on the Upper East Side and would do the Mother’s Day run in the Park – I remember when the run was a half marathon put on by one magazine or another (who else remembers those days?). I think the race in 2003/2004 was the first time the Flyers volunteered as a group – we were race marshalls and also timers (you know those people who stand at the mile markers and yell out the splits). Those races always seemed to be hot and humid, not exactly today’s weather.

I went out for that eight miler in 44 degree temperatures this morning – anything but hot and humid. It was also a bit breezy (ok – make that howling wind) straight out of the northwest, which made me wonder why in the world I didn’t wear gloves. But gloves? In May??? You would think I lived in northern Minnesota (they had four inches of the white stuff on the ground last night – honest) and not Fairfield County, Connecticut.

The nice thing about running in the suburbs on Mother’s Day? It’s quiet. Really quiet. You don’t have to worry about traffic and getting run over by all those mom’s in their SUV’s rushing to some lesson or another, perpetually five minutes late (disclosure: I drive a Volvo cross country and strive to be five minutes early). You do have the dads rushing to pick up that one ingredient they forgot to get yesterday and the card and flowers that they also forgot about, but they seem more sleep deprived then anything.

So it was a quiet run, a little hard with the breeze against me on a few stretches, but peaceful. Not that different from a morning run, but nice because I knew that I didn’t have the responsibility of getting breakfast on the table, packing a lunch, getting said child out the door so that we weren’t five minutes late or just getting home in time for hubby and said child to be home after gymnastics. It made the run ever so more peaceful and relaxed. Just the right way to start mother’s day and another year of being “Mama”. - The Gabster