Stranger in a Strange Land

He Runs. I Follow.

My son is a sprinter. I cannot run at all.

The last time I ran 800 meters on a track was in college, six minutes, and I was wrecked. So it amazes me, still, that I am now the person who sits for five hours on a summer weekend cheering for people who run, who watches movies and hunts down Japanese comics about sprinters and reads them in tears. I would never have imagined this version of myself.

What I also didn’t expect was to recognize something in him I hadn’t seen in years.

When my son was a baby, in the moments he felt truly happy, he would swing his arms and flap his thighs, mostly unconsciously, like a butterfly flapping its wings. When he became a teenager, he became the kind of cool kid who could shut down a parent’s question in three words or fewer. I once challenged him to respond to something I said with more than two sentences. He failed miserably. Before this outdoor season began, he was worried: he hadn’t made the progress he wanted; his body hadn’t grown the way he’d hoped. Then in the first week of the season he hit a PR in the 200 and the 100, and I watched him jump up, flapping his hands and arms in exactly the way he did as a baby.

I knew, instantly, that was pure joy.

I watched, and I smiled.

I thought about that kind of dopamine, and how different it is from the dopamine of scrolling a phone, the kind that gets pushed at you, forced into you. This was the other kind. The kind that comes from effort, from asking your body for something and getting an answer back. It felt very old but very authentic, the same mechanism our ancestors must have had: spend everything you have searching for food, securing food, turning uncertainty into a certain result, and let that be the reward. That is how the human brain was wired to feel good.

He is nowhere near elite (, yet). But to be honest I don’t care whether he ever runs elite. Today, after a restless night, he hit PRs in the 200 and the 100 again. I watched him jump around. And I made a small wish, almost a prayer. Please. Can his life be filled with more of this simple, pure joy. Please.

I am filled with joy too. It isn’t exactly pride, or not the usual kind. When I was pregnant, about to become a mother, I made myself a promise: I would not ask my child to fulfill the things I hadn’t. He would not have to accomplish anything for me to feel proud. I would not build my pride on how he measured up against other kids. I was already proud, deeply, that he had chosen me to be his mom. That pride alone was enough for a whole life. So what I feel watching him flap his arms on that track is something simpler. It is pure happiness at seeing him happy. It is amazement at a boy who moves through the world so differently from the way his mother does, literally and figuratively, whatever his time is vs. my 6-plus minutes for 800 meters.

This past Saturday, before his Sunday meet, we went for a jog together with our dog. He said, “Mom, I’ll pace you.” I don’t really know what the right pace is, so I just tried to keep up with him. He tried to slow down for me. My heart rate climbed past 180 and I kept pushing anyway, because following him gave me a rush I hadn’t expected and couldn’t stop chasing. We ran 2.5 miles in 30 minutes. That is probably my personal best of all personal bests. At the end he said, “Good job, Mom. I’ll train you. This summer we’ll get you to a 9.” A 9-minute mile sounds more scary than ambitious.

My son is a sprinter. I cannot run.

A heart rate of 180 is probably not sustainable. A 9-minute mile will probably make me collapse before I make it back through the front door. But none of that matters. I will follow him anyway.