The Obsession of a Good Heart
I am running. I feel the slam of my feet on the concrete, the hard, aged ground my enemy as it reverberates back up through my leg: left foot pounds, sidewalk hammering right back. Left hip sensing the shock, but right foot pounds anyway. I know the sidewalk will hammer right back again as my right hip braces for that shock, the joint grinding, circling around in the socket. My feet pace the concrete one…two…three…one…two…three, but it feels more to the rhythm of a song: Oh… what… a… beau…ti…ful… morn…ing…, ,oh… what… a… beau…ti…ful… day. I feel the pace start to fall into itself as the first light breaks through the trees; my leg rotates through my hip joint like a well oiled machine, even through the pain. The whole body aware now of the pounding of the pavement as it fights back, but running on. I don’t feel the pace anymore, the counting stopped some odd steps back, and my breathing is just a current, a natural air flow. I lose the pace because I just run. It’s automatic.
Halfway down the boulevard I see another runner coming my direction. Nonchalantly I move over to the right side of the bike lane so he can pass on my left. Note: get some brighter running shirts, especially with all this early morning running. I notice the bright fluorescent green shirt he is representing this morning and the dark gray I’m wearing. It just screams to the sparse traffic “moving target, open for practice.” As he gets footsteps closer, like me, I see the foolish grin on his face. It’s the breath of an awakening morning on a runner’s face that can’t help but produce a smile as each step racks up more distance. I hear his random thoughts mimicking mine: I am a damn fool to be out this early on a Saturday morning. Kids aren’t even awake yet. Are there cartoons on anymore? Did I turn the coffee pot off? Hell, focus. This run just feels good. I figured like me his mind was racing all over the place trying not to think about his pace, or count his steps or breath. Then it is out of the corner of my eye I notice, as he is passing, his left hand, mid-swing, as it reaches the peak out in front of him, gloved in UnderArmour, jerks out. It is a small gesture. A wave. And a friendly one, which I only understand by the smile and half nod he gives me as he follows through on his steps past me. I jerk my hand out too, as a response, but by that time he has already run another half mile up the road. Idiot, you could’ve at least acknowledged him.
I continue on my run and as I round the boulevard, through stoplights, and watching the neighborhood wake up, I find green shirt guy and myself are not the only fools out running this morning. I pass a middle aged couple, pacing slightly slower than myself. Two men, trying not to outdo each other; working hard to stay at the same pace. I can tell the one on the right, in the bright blue fleece is a natural athlete; he is one step ahead but is trying to hold back. Ten minutes later I pass a woman, about six or seven years older then me, enjoying every moment of her run. That’s what I want with my running, not to dread it, but to enjoy it, even down the road. It becomes clear to me after I pass her that with every runner I have come across, their left hands did the little jerk motion. The wave. But so did mine.
It was as if after green shirt guy, I had an epiphany about running. As I came closer to each runner, I watched how their pace was, their form, and how they interacted with their partner. Then, I concentrated on how they’d react to me. It was always that wave, at the same exact moment when we all pasesd. That little wave wasn’t just two fools acknowledging each other in the early morning, but instead, two runners connecting and sharing the ecstasy of running itself. One thought came to my mind: Oh Lord, I am my father.
* * *
It’s a delicate unraveling this fact that I am like my father. Or somehow understand my father. For several years of my young adulthood I’ve wrestled with the fact that I am not like him, but I am. I am him.
My Father rides a motorcycle, but not just any motorcycle, a Harley Davidson. If I ever said it was just a motorcycle I have a feeling the big guy on a Harley in the sky would smite me with his backfire. With that bike my Father is the top of the line, true rider. He at his ripe old age of forty-five is a biker. Maybe not a Hell’s Angel, but a biker nonetheless. He first got a motorcycle when I was younger, I cannot remember how young, but old enough to know. To understand what this was bringing.
See, he is an amazing man; he is determined or a little Obsessive Compulsive or possibly some of both. When he gets ideas or goals, nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing stops him and everything is constantly about that idea. It is all he thinks about, all he talks about, all he researches until he attains it. Previous to the Harley I lived through a year or two of “boat talk.” Every conversation somehow had the dropped hint of us getting a boat. Why life would be better with a boat, why we needed a boat, the cheapest yet nicest boats he could find in the weekly trader. Needless to say in his midlife that boat idea, boat obsession, turned into a motorcycle. His first bike in fact was not a Harley but that only lasted a year; he traded it in for the king of all bikes, a burgundy, year 2000 Harley Davidson Fat Boy.
When he first got it, it took a couple of months before I could go on rides with him; he wanted to make sure he had the hang of it, before putting our lives on the line. It was a pretty big bike. After a couple of months my father and I headed out on the open road, the highway, Route 45 that passes right outside my small town of Tuscola, Illinois. We had corn fields on either side of us. It really was the open road. When we were out there for the first time, I noticed that when my father passed another biker going in the opposite direction, he would stick out his left hand in a half wave and kind of nod. At first I thought he was just being nice; waving and all. But then, it kept happening. Every time we would pass a biker he'd wave again, and they would wave back. I thought maybe it was just the nice thing to do so I stuck out my left hand, half waved, and nodded as well. I wanted to feel like a part of his bike obsession.
As I got older and got my own license, I realized it was not just my father. I would be out driving my car and watch two motorcycles pass each other. It did not matter if they were cruisers or sports bikes, they would still wave at each other. I thought maybe it was just because they all rode bikes, a little secret motion or something. Like a biker club thing.
