Girls on the Run

Yesterday was bearable. We went out with some new friends last night, which was a little bit of a distraction. (Although they sometimes innocently said things that made me want to scream - they had no idea.) (I felt like my smile was glued on for much of the time.) I napped in the warmth of a sunbeam for a little while in the afternoon, curled like a dormouse in the bottom of an armchair. I'm small: I can do that. I lay there, drowsing: hearing but not listening to the drone of Simon's long conversation with his parents in England. The washer was swishing away in a hypnotic manner, and I felt relaxed for a minute. Pain free and accepting. After I woke up, I lay there for a while longer, holding still to see if I could maintain the (lack of) feeling. It was a good moment, because I thought, "Ah-hah! You are doing better because you have moved into your proactivity plan and are embarking on a new service project."

Let's talk about the Girl Box. I didn't know this phenomenon had a name, but I was confounded by it when Sara started fifth grade. Up until then, the kids went out to recess and they played: ran around, pretended stuff, played soccer. Every night at supper, I would ask, "Who did you play with today? What did you play?" (This is where it all happens at school - on the playground.)

On the first day of fifth grade, Sara rolled her eyes in disgust and said, "We don't do anything at recess anymore! We just walk around, and sit on the stairs and talk."

"Oh. Well, is that fun?"

"No: everyone just gossips; and the groups just say mean stuff about the other groups."

"The boys, too?" (I got a look like, what kind of question is that? )

"No, Mom [in a long-suffering tone]. The boys are playing soccer."

"Well, go play soccer."

"None of the other girls will play!"

"Then go play with the boys."

It took a couple of weeks, during which she sat on the stairs but cast longing looks at the play field; but then she went out and asked to play with the boys. And they let her. After a while, some of the other girls joined in as well. We are halfway through sixth grade now, and they are still playing soccer.

I am not an experienced parent (poor Sara is my trial-and-error child), so I thought this was just something happening in Sara's class. Turns out it happens all over the place. Girls on the Run aims to get girls in third, fourth and fifth grade out of the Girl Box and re-focus on what they can do, rather than how they look or whether they are sufficiently conformed. The girls have a running club that meets twice a week and trains for a culminating 5k in late May.

I don't usually do volunteer work involving kids. What do I know about kids!? But I thought I would do this because Guadalupe School is going to participate and most of the teachers in the childhood programs are tired and fed up of little kids by the end of the work day. Plus a lot of them are in grad school and have to go up to the U. when school is done. Grad school has receded into my past. And I like to run. And I'm a girl.

I also teach the parents of some of these kids, and I know that the adults are concerned about high rates of diabetes and obesity; that many parents work multiple jobs and don't have a lot of time to be active as a family. Plus, the Girl Box thing irritates me. Now that I'm old and feisty, I think, "HEY! Who gets to flip a switch and kill my playfulness? Spare me." I suck at conformity. That's why I was never part of the in-crowd.

Those are all good reasons. Plus at the training yesterday, I recalled that running has been pretty helpful to me. I remember that, when I was sick a couple years ago, going back to the track at the rec center for the first time was not fun. I was dizzy from the exertion of getting from the car to the track. I sat on the bench, gasping like a fish. Walked ONE TIME around the track, gripping the rail. Then I went home and slept for about three hours. I wrote on my blog about how life was going to suck forever more! Woe is me! (I know, it was dumb.) Next day, two times around the track, holding the rail. Walking, then running gave me something to focus on and a fixed point to refer to when I thought I wasn't progressing. Now I hardly ever think about it, so when I was filling out a questionnaire yesterday and it asked, "Have you had experiences in which running was helpful to you?" I thought, "No not really. I just like it." Then I remembered: hell yeah! Not only the gradual progress at the track but the words of the people who ran there. I remember that, on one of my first days back I was staggering along, clutching the rail, and this old guy who's there a lot said,

"Well, what's up with you, Speedy Gonzalez? Rough night last night?"

"Yeah, something like that."

Generally, people don't talk much at the gym. But the regulars would occasionally pause to say, "How many laps did you manage today?" or "Pretty soon I'm going to have to get out of your way again."

I had forgotten about all that. [reproachfully intoned] How soon we forget and take it all for granted. Yeah, whatever.

At each session, we'll talk about issues that are troublesome to girls this age; then we train. There are units on friends, gossip, etc; units on self-care and nutrition; they need to come up with a community service project that we will carry out in May; then we finish with the race. It's a fund-raiser, so all you local blog-readers should cough up your $25, come to Sugar House Park and run in it!

As a bonus, the other volunteer scoaches (who are assigned to Guadalupe from outside the school community) seem cool and we had a lot of fun together. And the t-shirts are green! I hate pink girl-shit, and green is my favorite color. Portentous.

Today sucks again. I woke up absolutely miserable. But I need to stick with my plan. For today, that means a) Guadalupe administrative work; b) planning a skate night with Moira, seeing if Diane can come over on Friday, seeing if Blanks can join us for supper on Sunday; c) start the quiet phase of changing the things that I need to change. For about a week, that'll just be working through some things on my second blog and doing some research. Step by step... What else today? Everyone else is skiing. I have laundry; curried chicken pot pie; my traditional Valentine's strawberry trifle (we don't really celebrate Valentine's Day, but this boozy, lovely trifle always makes an appearance); Home Depot for the paint to finally paint Sara's room; long run. Step by step...