Running Along the Edges

When you handle a book, what about it do you enjoy touching the most? I love feeling the edges of the pages—their thickness or delicacy, pliancy or brittleness. I often find myself fingering the pages while I’m reading, measuring my physical progress through the book, feeling how close I am to the end of it.

There’s a whole lot of magic around the edges of things—the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the week leading up to a school Valentine’s Day party, sunset on the Fourth of July, the night before your birthday. The days when earth, air, and light are bursting with the transition from winter to spring, spring to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter.

There’s a deliciousness to expectation—to not knowing how it will all play out.

I should be asleep right now, but here I am on the brink of running my first half marathon and I am wide awake.

My first response to the suggestion that I sign up for this race was, “Yeah, right. Me?” But that’s exactly why, immediately after that response, I wanted to do it so badly.

Because maybe I actually can. Because I am not quite sure what the edges of who I am really look like, but I’m learning to go there—undiscovered territory can be wild and beautiful. I need to know I can visit some of those places and survive. Because it’s on the edges that you stretch and learn and grow.

If I had not hurt myself, and then gotten sick, and watched my training schedule completely fall apart, I might feel a little more confident. As it is, I’ve managed to hurt myself a second time. All I know at this point is that I have no idea what to expect, but I’m going forward.

But did I sign up to be this far out on the edge?

Funny how that works.


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