I blame my wife.
I wouldn't have even been out there inviting heart attack in the dying squall of an Alberta Clipper if not for the fact that the woman I married looks almost exactly like she did when we made our pact 23 years ago. I, on the other hand, look like that recliner you've been meaning to toss out.
If I had recourse – a quick wit, perhaps, or Gene Kelly's feet or the ability to fix a stubborn faucet or to build a sunroom – I suppose I could rely on it to mitigate certain physical imperfections that age has wrought and that, like dandelions, seem to multiply overnight. But I can barely drive a nail and have all the grace of a two-by-four. Furthermore, all of my deficiencies have long since been exposed. The woman by now knows me for what I am, and who can blame her if from time to time, she finds herself wondering what possibly possessed her on that consequential March day in 1985.
It is this realization that prompts me each winter about this time to find my running shoes, dust off the cobwebs and hazard the snow-covered streets of Sioux Falls
Now before I continue, I should note no word exists in the English language that accurately defines the speed at which I run. Jog, plod, trudge, lumber, shuffle – all gross exaggerations. Even plug and slog are going too far.
I also should note that to this day, I still carry with me two items from my freshman year in college: an appreciation for Chekhov and 20 extra pounds. At least it was 20 extra pounds. Or at least I thought it was 20 extra pounds. When this month I stepped on the scale that a certain someone frequents regularly while I visit but once or twice a year like some holy pilgrimage, I discovered those 20 pounds had company.
An entire troupe.
A good Catholic family.
A small French village.
Which brings me to Karl Kreutzmann and the other day. It was a miserable morning to be out. But I didn't mind. The weather matched my mood. Runners often say running gives them time to think. In that regard I'm no different. The thoughts that course through my mind often have an unfortunate redundancy, however: "I hate running." "That Yukon
No doubt I was in the middle of some such deliberation when I stumbled upon Kreutzmann building a snow fort. The Alberta Clipper had deposited a couple of feet of snow across the driveway of his Sioux Falls
It is not often one encounters a grown man constructing a snow fort. The 43-year-old physician's assistant at the Orthopedic Institute, however, is an old hand at it. Raised in the small town of Oconomowoc , Wis.
By the time I hit their street, Kreutzmann and his children – 12-year-old Sydney and 10-year-old Travis – had blocks of snow stacked several feet high. Kreutzmann says when finally they finished five hours after they started, each of the four walls of the fort stood 6 feet high and 15 feet wide. He figures they ferried almost 2,000 pounds of snow that day. "It was pretty darn cold, but it was fun," he says.
In the frigid February days since wheezing my way past Karl Kreutzmann, it has occurred to me that he and I were out that morning for similar reasons. Both of us were attempting to recapture a bit of our youth, to rein, if even for a moment, Time's wingéd chariot.
It is a most cruel irony: Time quickens, and I slow. It seems like only yesterday that I, too, was a father surrounded by children building snow forts in the yard. But it couldn't have been only yesterday because two of those children are gone now in pursuit of lives of their own, and before summer is out, the third one – the final one – will join them.
It will just be my wife and me then.
I pray I can keep up.