My father is an early bird. Always has been.
On Saturday mornings, when our neighbors were pressing snooze or brewing their first pots of coffee, Dad was lacing up his running shoes. If there was a chill in the air, he’d have on the same nylon pullover he wore in the days he pushed me in my stroller.
I woke to join him when I could.
Sometimes we’d run around Reservoir Park, alongside Nick’s Creek or through the Sandhills Horticultural Gardens, breathing in nature’s gracious offerings. Aromas of flowering shrubs, longleaf pines, the very soil beneath us.
We ate our share of spiderwebs too, plowing face-first through the silk-spun wonders of the night.
Many times we ran Dad’s favorite loop.
When I visit home, we still do.
My father knows the route by heart — how long it takes to reach each bend, every landmark. He knows every change in the terrain and patches where the woodland critters like to graze.
There is a pond beside the trail. Cattails and wildflowers dance along its edges. In years of abundant rainfall, the water swells with life, its surface rippling as if by raindrops from the motion beneath it. In times of drought, the pond becomes — at most — a lowly puddle.
Such is life.
When I think of this pond — our pond — I think of some of the most meaningful conversations my dad and I have ever shared. Conversations about life and death, the choices we have and the factors that are beyond our control. I think of all the stories he has told me. Stories about fishing with Papa, playing baseball, becoming a father.
They say people have different ways of expressing their affections. In daily life, my father is a quiet man. But during our runs together, I feel as though I’ve come to fully understand him. Even when no words are spoken between us.
Let’s begin here: I’ve been running for as long as I can remember.
At recess, when the other girls were playing house, I was chasing boys. And I could usually catch them. With ease.
I chased the fellows in high school, too. Nat Carter, the legendary cross-country coach at Union Pines, immortalized in my mind in his faded orange ball cap, challenged me to train with them.
The guys and I would meet before sunrise, when the morning was still and the earth wet with dew, for a five-mile loop around rural Cameron. We ran past pastures, tractors, chicken coops. We breathed in bucolic splendor. And ammonia.
I kept up with some of the boys. I even fell for one of them — the one who offered me his sweatshirt when the air cooled after meets. His scent would linger on my skin. But I never did catch him.
Numbers mattered then. Junior year, I completed a 5K (3.1 miles) in 19:25 (6.2 minutes/mile) — a school record that I am certain by now has been broken. I’ve yet to break it though.
Since high school, running partners have come and gone. Naturally, boys have too. But my dad has always been there, and we’ve put in more miles together than I care to track.
We’ve run along the North Carolina coast and over stretches of the Blue Ridge Mountains. And three half-marathons to date.
When I was 9 — a knobby-kneed, fair-skinned she-miniature of my father — I joined him for my very first 5K. Dad was 36.
It was Independence Day in Hope Mills, the place my grandparents chose to call home when Papa was stationed at Fort Bragg. Dad played baseball at the local high school.
The Hope Mills Lake glittered in the July sun that day.
I have no recollection of how hot it was or how long the race took us to finish. More than likely, I was more interested in the snow cone I’d asked Dad to buy me afterward.
Of the run itself, I don’t remember much. But I do recall crossing the finish line in perfect stride together.
And it never crossed my mind that Dad was slowing down for me.
In 2003, the Hope Mills Lake was drained when heavy rains caused the earthen dam to fail. The place my father learned to water ski, where he fished beneath the cypress trees, remained barren for five years. In 2008, a new dam was completed and the lake was restored to its former glory.
But two summers ago, the Hope Mills Lake was drained again. That was the summer Papa died.
Summer faded slowly. Dad was running more than ever.
When November rolled around, we signed up for our second half-marathon together, the annual (13.2-mile) Turkey Trot in Pinehurst. The air was freezing. Naturally, Dad wore his old nylon pullover. I hadn’t been training like he had. Running had become his outlet, even a kind of sweet salvation
Not long after the gun fired, I realized I was slowing him down.
But every quarter-mile or so, he’d offer a double-clap of the hands, paired with the phrase, “Steady Eddie, Ashley.”
I begged him to leave me in his dust. He wouldn’t do it.
“This is a fine pace,” he assured. “Nice and steady.”
But the clapping and chanting continued, and by mile four (only 9.2 to go), I knew it wasn’t fair to hold him back. I insisted that he go on, please, to see how fast he could finish.
“Steady Eddie,” I said to Dad, who in no time was a distant speck.
And as I ran, alone, I thought about the silent lessons my father has taught me over the years. Lessons of selflessness and sacrifice. Of rising early and starting the day with fresh air and exercise. Of channeling energy to good use, especially in times of hardship.
We finished the race at our respective paces. For the record, his happened to be two-minutes-per mile faster.
Go, Dad.
Perhaps I’ll never run a 5K as fast I did in high school. And unless I step up my training, I may never run a half-marathon as fast as my dad, although I’m certain he’d slow his pace down just to run with me.
But I won’t beat myself up over it.
In recent years, running has become far less of a competition and much more a means of meditation — a movable feast of quiet time to reflect, think and notice things.
On a solo run not long ago, I saw a pair of birds in flight above me. And as I watched them glide through blue infinity, I realized why we weren’t designed to be alone.
Life is best when shared. And, for me at least, running is too. PS
Ashley Wahl is the Associate Editor of O.Henry Magazine and a contributor to PineStraw magazine.
