3.2 miles
austin, mn
79 degrees
humidity: 79%
A very hot and sunny run for my birthday. Ugh! I do not handle the heat very well. So much sweating. I guess I need to start getting up much earlier for my runs, or figure out ways to handle the heat. I ran loops around the park right by Scott’s parent’s house. 2 loops = 1 mile. Listened to a playlist to distract myself. Don’t remember much. Enjoying the brief shade and the occasional breeze. Not smelling anything. My legs feeling tired. Admiring the big, beautiful blue spruces. Hearing a dog bark. Noticing a box or a bag or a bin in the outfield.
The Month of June: 13 1/2
BY SHARON OLDS
As our daughter approaches graduation and
puberty at the same time, at her
own, calm, deliberate, serious rate,
she begins to kick up her heels, jazz out her
hands, thrust out her hipbones, chant
I’m great! I’m great! She feels 8th grade coming
open around her, a chrysalis cracking and
letting her out, it falls behind her and
joins the other husks on the ground,
7th grade, 6th grade, the
magenta rind of 5th grade, the
hard jacket of 4th when she had so much pain,
3rd grade, 2nd, the dim cocoon of
1st grade back there somewhere on the path, and
kindergarten like a strip of thumb-suck blanket
taken from the actual blanket they wrapped her in at birth.
The whole school is coming off her shoulders like a
cloak unclasped, and she dances forth in her
jerky sexy child’s joke dance of
self, self, her throat tight and a
hard new song coming out of it, while her
two dark eyes shine
above her body like a good mother and a
good father who look down and
love everything their baby does, the way she
lives their love.
I love this poem. I love how she describes this experience of being liberated from middle school and elementary school. I have a 13 year old daughter and I’d like to imagine her feeling this way when she finishes 8th grade next year.