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Appearing in On a friendly footing Weary of well-wishers, a grieving widow found hope in a neighbor's simple sentiment: "We ought to go for a run." It's one of the tales in "Sole Sisters: Stories of Women and Running." |
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(from their forthcoming book, "Sole Sisters: Stories of Women and Running") Susan Pajer lived one door from Marilyn Darrows and always thought they would make good friends. They seemed to live parallel lives. Susan had remarried and was raising four sons: three from her first marriage and a two-year-old son with her second husband. She called the young one her little caboose. Marilyn, two years younger, was also on her second marriage. She had three older daughters and a 16-month-old caboose of her own. Susan was a serious runner who owned a running store in town with her husband. Marilyn taught aerobics at two health clubs. But Susan and Marilyn only had time for friendly waves from their driveways and promises of, "We should get together someday." With teenagers, toddlers, husbands, households and jobs - not to mention laundry, meals, carpools, orthodontist appointments, parent-teacher meetings and dogs - who had time for new friends? They couldn't arrange play groups for their youngest kids, let alone coffee with each other. Some mornings, Susan would see Marilyn running with her husband, Kim. He was 50 and lean. Gliding through the subdivision every day of the year, he was the neighborhood "runner." All of which made the news on that rainy day in the autumn of 1999 a bolt out of nowhere. Phone calls from house to house passed the shock from neighbor to neighbor. Did you hear about Marilyn's husband? Chest pains. Stress test. Gone. Right there on the treadmill at the hospital. Tsk, tsk. |
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Not another one, Marilyn thought as she stared at Susan with a toxic mix of annoyance and impatience. Susan held out the box. "I won't be needing these anymore," Susan stammered. "I thought you could use them." Quickly, Susan added, "We ought to go for a run." Marilyn paused and thought, Thank God for this one. She doesn't want to wallow in my sadness. All she wants to do is go for a run. "Yes," Marilyn eagerly said. "Yes, I'd love to go running." A few days later, Susan and Marilyn bundled up their little ones and tucked them into running strollers. Marilyn wasn't much of a runner, but she was fit from teaching aerobics. They looped around the subdivision. They made a date to meet every Tuesday morning after the older ones got on the school bus. And when it got too cold to run with the toddlers, Susan's husband, David, volunteered to watch them. He made the kids waffles in the shape of hearts and announced the launch of the "Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club." Susan and Marilyn started with three-mile runs, building to six miles. Before Susan had shown up on Marilyn's doorstep, her doctor had wanted to put her on antidepressants. But running, she discovered, was just the antidote she needed. "I saved you thousands in therapy bills," Susan likes to remind her friend. The women found things to talk about from the first mile. "Doesn't life just suck sometimes," Susan tossed out one run as an opener. Marilyn wanted to scream and shout. Yes, she thought, this was a woman close to my own heart. They talked a lot about their kids. About husbands - first and second. About child support. About Marilyn's attempts at middle-aged dating. About life alone. Susan was good at helping Marilyn to focus her energy, deciding what to fret about and what to let slip away. As time passed, Susan nudged her friend to think about dating again and helped her evaluate candidates. And she could commiserate about what it was like to go to "Back to School" night and feel as if you were the only single parent in a room full of happy couples. "We never, ever stopped talking when we ran," Marilyn said. They jogged all over Doylestown. To onlookers, they seemed a little like a Mutt-and-Jeff couple. Susan was blond and willowy; Marilyn was brunette and pint-size. If it was raining or too cold to run, Susan and Marilyn would go down to Susan's basement and run on the treadmill, taking turns running and talking. One morning after a long run, they trotted up to Susan's driveway only to find David with the car running and both kids buckled into their car seats. "We had a little accident," David explained calmly. Marilyn's daughter, Mikayla, had fallen and sliced her head. They raced to the pediatrician's office, still sweating and wearing their running bras and shorts. In an examining room, the nurse looked at them and asked, "Aren't you the ones we just saw running outside?" Marilyn was thinking, "Yes, that's me, the bad mother who left her child to go running." But all the nurse wanted to know was how they could run and talk, talk, talk all the time. Marilyn got so good at running that she decided to join Susan in a local 5K race. As the owner of a popular running store - the Training Zone - Susan was a fixture on the local running circuit. She wasn't as competitive as she used to be, but she could hold her own at the front of the pack on any day. On race day, Marilyn was nervous and having second thoughts. "I kept thinking, I have no business being here with all these runners," she said. But a funny thing happened on the way to the finish line: Marilyn beat Susan in an impressive kick in the final yards. She finished in 24 minutes. "She's got those little legs that she can turn over quickly," Susan said with pride for her friend. As the years have passed, Susan and Marilyn have had to make some adjustments in their running schedule. They still try to run every week, but some mornings it's only a short three-mile jog before the kids are up. "We create the time for running," Marilyn said. "I've never found another sport that gives me the same lift. You can solve life's problems and you get a workout." And on those days when Marilyn gets cranky and irritable, her daughters might gently suggest, "Mom, maybe you need a run?" That would be all she'd need to hear. Reaching for the phone, she would call Susan. "Ready?" Solesisters -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- April 21 |
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