My mom says I ran out of the womb and haven’t stopped since.  It’s true.  Running, I feel most at home.  My dad, who broke the state mile record in 4:26, ran after work and I rode my bike with him.  I loved the angle of the late afternoon sun on the green grass, my feet on the bike pedals, and my dad running next to me.  When I got older, I ran with him.  I’d run next to him and I’d get tired.  I’d want to stop.  He would say, “Feel that pain? Yes, Michelle.  That pain is when you have to get your guts up.” 

The pain that suffocates you from your lungs down to thighs.  I started racing in junior high and I felt the pain.  That’s when I would say to myself, “Get your guts up, Michelle.”  I began to understand, every time I went to the start line, that’s all racing is.  The person who can take the most pain.  I knew, at the start line, I could take more pain than anyone else on that line and I would be the one to finish first.  That knowledge is when I started my racing career.

Running to me, though, isn’t racing.  Running is my passion so deep in my core, it’s like breathing.   It’s the one time of the day that I am free.  A oneness.  In earth, mind, and body.  Where my thoughts become my lungs and my hear t and my feet.  The earth, and all its beautiful elements -- blustery wind, bleating snow, simmering heat – become me, too.   I am free to be that thing I was before I was born.  I become the earth and the earth becomes me.  

Because of this passion, many of my life events have taken place around running.  Like my most intellectual and deep conversation with my equally geeky boy teammates.  Like my college weekends riding in vans to Midwest campus tracks.  Like running in practice until I would hurl and be bed-bound until the next morning.  And, finally, like running 22 miles of the women’s national marathon championship unknowingly pregnant with my soul-changing baby boy. 

My passions have not changed.  They have morphed.  Both my family and friends trump running, now.  And Memoir of Me might rank a little higher than running in a list of priorities.   But the racing lesson I learned early -- the person who can take the most pain -- is a life lesson really.  Life is pain.  In an expansive, lusty, breath-taking way.  The person who can take the most pain and bounce back and take more is the one who has the capacity to continue on their spiritual quest and become the thing that they were put on this earth to be.

This is running to me.  What about you?

This is me hugging my SCSU (where I was rently inducted in the the Hall of Fame and deemed the greatest distance runner in St. Cloud State history) teammate Darla after a race, not a run.

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I have three people I regularly kiss.  Eric.  Tucker.  Alyssa.   

Alyssa’s spirited kissing, so genuine and true, has awakened my thoughts on the topic.  Alyssa kisses me in such a way that we, together, become the kiss.  She kisses, enveloping me in her robust, full-lipped abandon.  She kisses, embracing me in her naked certainty and raw sureness.  She kisses, lacking all reservation or hesitation, wanting for nothing but the kiss itself, and basking in the beauty of oblivity to the sting of love’s pain.  I savor and cherish each time Alyssa’s lips share a kiss with me.

I don’t remember when Tucker’s kiss changed from embarking on an experience of pure sweetness into tedious obligation.   It happened, like the way September steals the primal heat of the summer sun.  Sneaky yet stealthily.  Tucker‘s sincere and generous love for me conflicts with his acute desire to minimize his display of affection for me.  Particularly kissing affection.  When I kiss Tucker, he avoids my lips altogether.  Instead, he brushes his lips across my cheek, only.  If I stick my lips out, he grazes them or my chin, hastily.  Now, Tucker kisses me out of obligation, with complete hesitation, and absolutely no elation.  I still relish each time Tucker’s lips come in proximity of any of my facial parts.

As for kissing Eric, I have one sharable kiss story out of several thousand kisses.  Our first kiss.  In high school.  At Hamlet Park in Cottage Grove.   I wore my nylon green, girl’s track, warm-up suit.  Lying in the night grass, Eric was on top of me.   He held me close, his body sliding against the slippery fabric of my warm-up.  He blew a bubble with his gum.  I popped it with my teeth.  He kissed me, twice.  One right after the other.  Eric said, “I’m going to marry you.”  He looked at me.  I kissed him, this time. 

Eric responded, kissing me again, open mouthed.  He inhaled deeply, his lips still attached to my mine.  Exhaling, he blew my cheeks full of his lung air, and with that same breath, blew his bubble gum into the back of my throat.  His gum lodged itself at the top of my esophagus.  Choking, I pushed him off me and sat up.  He patted my back.  I hacked the gum out of my throat onto my tongue.  I spit the pink wad on the ground.  Standing up, I walked away.  Eric followed behind the soft swishing of my nylon suit and asked, “So, you don’t like Hubba Bubba?”

Kiss.  More complex than a sensuous noun.  Kissing.  Not always a sensual verb.  Memoir of Me -- Personalized Books.  What about you?

 This is a pic of Eric not blowing his gum down my throat.

Yesterday, was a day that I will remember when I'm 70 years old.  A memory of my son Tucker, 14 years old, sitting across the table from the super smart, seriously sweet executive production team of Bizarre Foods as they pick his brain for the teenage perspective of a Bizarre Food show.

Tucker -- who, in his high chair, wouldn't touch his cheerios, but gnawed a red pepper like an apple. Tucker who prefers eating feta cheese on his burger to American.  Tucker -- who won't eat pizza, but sautes clams, minnows, June bugs and crickets from our backyard with "butter, salt, pepper, and sweet basil."  Tucker -- who has one of the highest IQ's I know of, but has raging ADHD.  Tucker -- who can talk about the conflict in the middle east, but can't turn in his social studies assignments.  Tucker -- who in the car on the way over to Bizarre Foods was so jittery/headache/nauseous from his ADHD medicine messing with his sensitive system that he could hardly see straight.  Tucker -- who, although suffering, by the time we got to Bizarre Foods had pulled himself together.

When we entered the studios, Tucker shook hands and introduced himself to BF team.  Tucker served his apple crisp and poured them coffee.  He pitched his ideas for bringing Andrew's world to kids everywhere in America, no matter what community or socioeconomic background.  He traded shop talk and got the inside scoop on his favorite Bizarre Foods episode (when Andrew ate a raw beating frog heart with chop sticks.) And he discussed how eelpout found in Minnesota is similar to lung fish found only in Uganda.

I sat utter awe of Tucker.  To be at the table with decision makers in an industry you are passionate about and to be confident enough in your ideas to communicate them effectively, is a skill most people struggle with (even myself as a GenX Mom.)

This is Tucker, with his friend Mason, cooking a cow tongue. Definitely a story I would put in a Memoir of Me Book.  What about you?