Surreal

As an analogue to my last post on reality, today life was surreal: First, we lost Will in the Bolder Boulder, a 10k race with about 55,000 runners. Second, we found him.

This day is one of my favorites of the whole year. Our house is right in the middle of the 10k route. I love to wake up to the helicopters, and then the honking horns of the cars that lead the first runners, and then the cheering and music and craziness of the participants and the watchers. The energy could light up NYC for days. At the first sounds, we run out of the house, around the corner, and catch the fast starters. Then we race back home to pack up and make a day of it.

In one form or another, we've run it for about 10 years. This year it was Jeff's turn with Will and Clara. In the first few blocks, they planned to meet at a corner, but it never happened. So Will just kept going, the whole 6+ miles. I wonder what was going through his 7-year-old head during the hour he ran on his own. He says he just assumed his dad was close behind. Luckily, he ran into some friends right before the finishing lap around the packed stadium. We got a call, and all ended well, despite some unease in the middle.

Finally, the day ended with a much smaller scale surreal scene. June went spring shopping with me at the hardware store and fell asleep in the cart, wearing a beautiful red velvet dress and tights. It wrapped our day up nicely.