SOFT MUSIC

The snow falls in white sheets, draping the brown stick trees, the beaten hedge grasses and the slow moving stream water. The flakes stick to my eyelashes. My vision blurs for a second and clears, blurs and clears.

I fight through thick white curtains of snow. I am determined to run at least three miles today. I lengthen my stride and tell my mind to be quiet. Focus, I whisper fiercely, aloud, into the light wind and the drifting snow. Be quiet and let go.

Snow muffles sound. The wet tar trail makes a curving border on a huge marsh. There is a discordant shape at the line of maples trees edging the marsh. A square shape turns into a deer. One deer turns into two, then three standing and staring at me. Snow flakes coat their backs. The trail is far enough away to reassure them. They bend and graze while I run by.

The trail goes straight into open prairie. The wind slaps flakes against my cheeks. Bundled in layers, I feel like an island of warm life. I run on, enjoying the energy in my legs.

I love running when it is an effortless movement through space. There is music composed of the sound of my breath, the beat of my heart, the connection of my feet with the ground against the sounds of this storm world flowing past me.

Last night, I read the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk. He was imprisoned for three years and exiled from Vietnam for thirty years. The air is free, he says. Choose to breathe deeply. Enjoy the gift. I breathe in, feeling the air expanding in my chest.

I am having a good day with loss. I woke up this morning to a more distant grief. My pain was small, manageable. I even had energy to make a cooked breakfast and tease my daughter on her way to basketball practice.

Waiting for my daughters’ basketball practice to end, I had wandered down the hall of the elementary school. One big bulletin board was devoted to examples of the children’s writing. The assignment was to write a poem or paragraph starting with “I am from.”
Some of the children wrote I am from pancakes on Saturday mornings, staying in pajamas until noon, playing in my yard and sliding down our hill. One little girl wrote I am from my bed with a pink bedspread and window looking out to the tree in the backyard.

What am I from today? I am from white flakes, wet trails and brown lines. I am from breathing and moving with ease. I am a series of notes; a dark shape against a paper white world. I am from music.

Why do you run? My children ask me on snowy days like this. I have an answer. Because when I run, I am from music.