After the Race

For the past few months, my mom and I have been looking forward to this week. On Tuesday, she got a new hip. On Sunday, I will run my first marathon.

There are staples running along her right side, but she’s doing fine and can still wax metaphysically.  When I visited her yesterday, she said, “I had March 22 in my head for so long, I’m not really sure what comes next.”

I feel the same way. For the past 18 weeks, this race has entered my head one way or another. And two days following the race, I’m going to Portland for a week. I must have thought I would just fall off the calendar after the marathon and my trip, because the rest of spring feels distant. Plans for mid-April feel a dream.

Until spring feels real, I recommend the Haruki Murakami short story “U.F.O. in Kushiro,” reprinted in this week’s New Yorker and also available in the short story collection After the Quake.