Closed.

4/11/2020

Soft padding on the ground. Three count in. Three breaths out. Up ahead. I see someone. A woman walking. I plan my steps. Count them out. Pull up the cloth over my mouth. My nose. Jut out into the street. Careful of cars. Sunglasses fogging up. Making me nervous. I can’t see and don’t want to fall. I speed up. Counting again. Back on the sidewalk. Pulling the cloth down to my neck. I breathe in deep. Waiting for the condensation to evaporate away. Off my glasses. And off my face.

A few more times this happens. Into the street. Pull up the cloth. Glasses coat. Speed up. Back to the sidewalk. Cloth down. Breathe deep.

I run for a while. No one is around. No fellow runners. No one walking their dogs. No families on bikes. It’s a beautiful sunny spring day. But. I am in another world.

Using my elbow to push the walk button. No germs on my hands. I cross the street. Wondering. Are the people in the cars looking? Judging? Because I am outside?

It hits me when I get to the park. Yellow caution tape. Surrounding. Encasing. The red and blue toys. An orange sign on a metal easel. Closed. The same orange sign. On the basketball court. Closed.

Closed.

I slow down. Take it in. Maybe for the first time. Closed. We are closed. The world is closed. I am closed.

The brightness and warmth of the sun. After days of rain. Feels normal. Yet. The yellow tape with black letters. The orange rectangle. The emptiness and quiet. On a Saturday morning. That. This. Is anything but normal.

I turn the corner and keep running. Down the hill. Watching. Scanning. For any sign of life. In case the street and cloth are needed. But my mind. My thoughts. Are elsewhere.

I can feel my lungs burn. My stride lengthen. My quads tense. But I wonder if this is real? Am I really running? Or is this part of the dream? The one where we are inside and isolated. The one where I miss hugs and my learners and my friends and my mom.

Or is it the opposite? Is my run in the sunshine with the burn and the lungs and the tense and the muscles the dream? And the other. Inside and missing and staring out from a bubble. Is that the real?

Or is it both? A sunny run after being inside. And going back home. To hide inside.

And as I sit and think. My hands on these keys. Struggling to tap out my feelings and thoughts. I breathe deep like I am running. And focus. Thankful for my run and the sunshine. Thankful for my home and my family. Thankful for my job and Zooming with my students. Thankful for FaceTime dinners and coffee with my friends. Thankful for “air hugs” and Starbucks.

Closed. Though I feel closed. And maybe we are closed. Thankfulness will never be closed.