In a desperate attempt to keep PEACE at the table, she made a WAGER with her restless, testy 10 and 12 year old dinner companions. It would not have done to have BARED her true motivation, and so she shared with them a recent video. “I bet you can’t figure out how to
RAVEL (that’s the opposite of unravel, right?) our RAMEN. First one to knit a noodle scarf gets to pick where we go for dessert.” A few giggles, eye rolls, a fair bit of broth splashes, and using chopsticks as knitting needles, they all failed miserably at emulating the clever person in the video. And no one won the bet. But they did succeed (eventually) at having dinner. Ice cream seemed the only sensible thing to do after that.

Georg’ann

Fingers moved through the soft EARTH, lifting it up, feeling
it fall back through her fingers.
She’d RACED for the last time, crossed the finished line and fallen to her knees, spent.

There’d be time later to put it all into some tidy narrative, boxed up and sealed shut. For now she allowed the energy to slip away, like the dirt moving in her hands.

Perhaps tomorrow she’d head to the library, spend the day reading something that would take her further away than any race ever could, while simultaneously holding her steadily in place. She always loved running past the return box painted like a RAVEN, written over with a Poe quote.

Yes, life was opening. Things she’d noted in passing were now possibilities with which to fully engage. A good book and a bowl of RAMEN, simple pleasures that had no place in her race running life. It would be a different pace moving forward, the outcome of which was still unknown.

She rose from the ground and took her place on the platform where soon her final medal would be placed around her neck. She stood quietly looking forward without seeing.

Heather