The "fun run"

Yesterday, Friday, was supposed to be rainy, at least if you had checked the weather earlier in the week. The pattern for the weather right now is that bad news is just around the corner—each day the weather forecast says yes, today will be spectacular, but watch out tomorrow. And they push back the nasty tomorrow each day (you know tomorrow is always a day away). Thus, every day it says that tomorrow it’s supposed to rain. And each day is magnificent.

Yesterday, then, when it actually came, was spectacular. Blue skies and hot sun—I was wishing I wasn’t wearing long sleeves when I peeled off my coat. We gathered at Campbell park (a block away) to watch the whole school doing the "Paekakariki School Fun Run," the long distance running that they’ve been training for for many weeks. The parents gathered on the hillside to watch the students—from the littlest to the biggest—run in age cohorts. The youngest ones began, and each race was a little longer than the one before it.

The highpoints of the day? Watching the entire school spread out on the field, taking a tiny corner of the huge space, and knowing that there are schools in Northern Virginia who have more kindergartners than we have kids from k-8. Watching the parents, fathers in their construction uniforms, mothers in their business suits, parents pushing prams and holding babies as they cheered on the runners. (The picture that looks towards the hills shows you the parents spread out over the hill with the kids on the field.) Chatting with people I actually know by name, and cheering for kids I recognise. And, for a totally novel experience, watching my kids race around a field and, just behind them, watching surfers catch a lovely wave. (The picture from the hill towards the sea will show you this view.)

Ok, and my favourite part of all? There were big kids from (maybe from the local “college”= high school) who were waiting at different race points to direct the kids and cheer them on, and there were two or three of those big kids who raced with the trailing runners in each group. Each person straggling behind the pack would get his or her own bigger kid as a running partner, for raising morale and keeping away the feeling of humiliation that comes when the pack leaves you behind. I’d never seen a school do such a thing before; maybe it’s commonplace. But it was so lovely that it often made my eyes tear up, as did the loud whoops and hollers from the crowd as the last person crossed the line.

My kids weren’t the ones far out in front, outstripping the rest and keeping at a breakneck pace. And they weren’t the last ones who got the escorts. They were the normal kids, joking with their classmates, starting with a sprint, ending with a stagger, hugged by classmates at the end of the race. They looked like they belonged here, here in this school by the sea, running in the autumn sea breeze of a late May day. Go figure.