running again after more than ten years

+ introducing field notes

field note # 1

Photo by Rohan Britto on Unsplash

For the first time in a decade, I’ve started to run. The surgery to remove my womb has made this possible; the teeth grinding, breath-taking ache has gone. The running has been a remarkable experience. A form of time travel. Something about moving the way I did before I had children has been like shaking a snow globe. So many versions of me coming to the surface at once.

I used to run most week day mornings with a friend, knocking on the door of her squat terraced house in the pre-dawn light, the two of us taking off through the city streets and up into the deer-strewn Phoenix Park. The two of us talking, talking as our legs covered miles, of the men we loved, of the babies we would like to have. Her boyfriend would have pears fried in butter and silken porridge topped with almonds on the table when we returned.

We ran races on Achill Island in the west of Ireland, ran races through the park. We were training for a marathon - my friend ran it, I ended up moving to Berlin two weeks before. I ran one race in my new city, past Check Point Charlie, down Unter den Linden, under the Brandenburg Gate. After that though, the running petered out. I got pregnant, had a baby, my stomach and womb-space grew very sore. I’d pick it up intermittently over the years, running for a week or two around the park opposite my apartment, padding round naked sunbathers, jumping over hipsters having a beer in the late afternoon sun. But I never kept it up for long. The womb-ache and my bone-tiredness always eventually won.

Photo by Setu Chhaya on Unsplash

I started again in earnest about a year ago. I was far from home and it was hot and I took a notion to run down a white beach in a red bikini. Broken shells, licked smooth by the ocean, were scattered about. White dots on purple, yellow, green tiles. Amongst them crabs had left patterns like wifi signals all over the sand. I had just spent some minutes watching my children and my husband B paddle out into the water in three red canoes, silhouettes against the sun. I remember thinking - they are all happy out there, at sea, without me. There they are, the shadows of my four loves. And then I turned and began to run. The snow globe shook. 

I am 33 and
running in Berlin through
blue evening snow. 

I am 30 and talking/laughing/talking 
with F as we run
with the deer in the park. 

I am 25 and
running down a corridor
just for fun.

I am 21, and running on a tropical island, 
aware of the eyes of
each man I pass. 

I am 20 and running to
pound out the heart break 
of a man who never called.

I am 19 and dancing
in the rain
on a street in Naples

I am 11 and running with
abandon into the waves
at Magheramore.

Running now, down the beach, through the woods, it is no longer the men who lift their heads to look. I don’t draw their hungry gaze any more.

Running now, it is the women who see me - white haired older women, walking in twos and walking solo, in bare feet, salty toes, shoes in hand - none of them in a rush. It is these women who notice. Who raise their eyes and pause in their conversations to smile and say hello as I pass.

Here I am.
A woman in her forties, running through a snow storm in a bright red bikini on a hot summers day. 

Here I am.
Flesh wobbling, scar tugging, legs and breath slowly remembering the rhythm of a jog. Songs I used to listen to – Manu Chao, Primal Scream, Faithless - pulsing in my ears.

I am all of these women, at 11, 19, 25, 30, 33, 45. Flakes of them settle between my ribs, catch in my teeth, count down the vertebrae of my spine. 

I am happy to carry the snow globe of them all.

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