On Running

When you hit the wall and the sun is shining it's not too difficult to convince yourself to carry on and enjoy the day. But, when you hit the wall and it's 40 degrees, and it's windy and it's raining all you can thing to say to yourself is, "Why the fuck am I doing this?" But still, I run.
I love to run, but quite honestly, I am not a great runner. I'm just a little too tall and a little too heavy to be really lite and quick on my feet. I also get bored with training and quite often get distracted on my training runs, ending up inside the Art Museum instead of running around it, or enjoying a cappucino with someone I've met along the trail and with whom I found it more fun to sit and chat than run. But still, I run.
Running marathons is a test of will. Will my knees hold out? Will this pain in my side ever go away? Will I vomit if I try and suck down one more packet of Gu? Will my resolve hold out for 13 more miles, eight more miles, three more miles? But still, I run.
I've never quit a marathon I've atarted although the thought of quitting usually occurs to me a few times along the route, usually after I've hit the wall...or know it's coming and don't want to get there. The wall is an invisible, but very real place inside your body and your mind. You've been running for hours, burned up all the pasta you consumed in your carbo-load dinner the evening before, all the whole grains and protein you ingested for breakfast and depleted your glycogen stores to seriously low levels. Your brain is screaming, "Quit now before you die" while at the same time imploring, " You can do this. Only losers quit. Don't quit now". I listen to the voices battling in my head and I know I'm not quitting, and their bickering keeps me entertained for a few miles until I get bored with them too and struggle to get my focus back to the task at hand. Putting one foot in front of the other and repeating for as long as is necessary to move my body 26.2 miles. I'd like to say these runs are fun, but they're not. At times, fighting injury they can be quite grueling. But still, I run.
In one marathon I ran I finished the last eight miles running, or rather hippity-hopping like Walter Brennan having suffered a femural neck stress fracture around mile 18. What's worse is that at mile 20 I actually had to run PAST my house and continue on course. If that wasn't an act of sheer will I don't know what is. Add to that 38 degree temperatures and pouring rain and you can imagine that this was not a fun day in the city! Stoked by beer from my friends lining miles 18-21 I managed to run across the finish line with a smile on my face vowing that I would never torture myself again. But still, I run.
I have a problem "being still" so I think running in some form will always be a part of my life. Perhaps as I grow older it'll be my knees or hips that convince me to slow down, but until then, I run.

Life With Daddy–Part 1

Daddy used to say, “Words are just words. Curse words are meaningless when used out of context.” I was ten when he said it. It was giving heroin to an addict and telling him not to shoot up. I practiced my out-of-context cursing at every opportunity. Unfortunately, Mommy didn’t agree with Daddy on this subject, or for that matter, many others. Because of Daddy I spent a lot of time in the bathroom with Mommy getting a good taste of whatever bar soap had been on sale at Pathmark that week. If one were to choose their bar soap based on how it tasted, I’d have chosen Palmolive. Floral with just a hint of citrus. I eventually learned that it was okay to throw around idle curses in front of Daddy, but I needed to turn off my toilet mouth when with my mother. That’s a tough lesson in restraint for a ten-year old with AD/HD to manage.
That wasn’t the only time I was caught in the middle of my mother and father’s differences of opinion. I almost always sided with my father. I mean, I loved my mother, but Daddy was so much more fun! Like the time we got picked up for protesting the Vietnam War, one of Daddy’s many social issues of the late 60’s- early 70’s era. Daddy and a group of his hippie friends from South Street were protesting and picketing outside City Hall and Daddy had himself handcuffed to some rails that surrounded the building. I was too young to be handcuffed to the rails, Daddy said, so I needed to be handcuffed to him. They had groovy signs with sayings like, “Make Love, Not War” and “War is not healthy for children and other living things”. It was a peaceful demonstration with singing and petitions being passed. Obviously, the powers that be in City Hall don’t take lightly to a bunch of stoned out, long-haired, hippie freaks, with a child handcuffing themselves to their building, no matter how altruistic their cause. We were all busted and taken to a holding room. I assume that the police didn’t believe me when I told them Mel was my father. After all, I looked like the offspring of normal parents. When they asked for my mother’s phone number, I complied. I was still too young to say no to the police. To say that my mother was “unhappy” when she received that phone call would be a gross understatement. She was speechless. When I was in trouble, which was fairly frequent, my mother was never speechless and often was quite the long-winded orator delivering remarkably effective speeches about what was to happen to me “when she got me home”. I suppose I learned another lesson in restraint when my mother came to pick me up and didn’t murder my father as he and the Sergeant handed me over to her.
Daddy had me talk my way out of a ticket once when I was six. Really, I’m not kidding. Daddy always let me drive his cars and we had a big, black Buick Special that I loved. I wasn’t tall enough to reach the pedals, but I sat in between Daddy’s legs and I got to steer. One night coming up Roosevelt Boulevard we blew a red light. I guess neither Daddy nor I saw the light turn to red. When I heard the sirens and saw the flashing red lights I was terrified that we’d both be going to jail. Most men would have tossed their kid into the back seat before the policeman reached the car. Not my Dad. He laughed and said that since I had been driving I’d better explain to the officer why I had run the light. I remember the officer laughing when he saw me sitting behind the wheel. I launched into my explanation that Daddy and I had been laughing so much that I wasn’t paying attention and missed seeing the red light. He chuckled and said that as long as it “never happened again” he’s let me go with a warning. Daddy and I thanked him and we drove off up the Boulevard being careful to pay more attention to the road until we got home.

In Memoriam - Officer Pawlowski, Philadelphia PD (Murdered February 13, 2009)



Yesterday, I wept.
I wept for Officer Pawlowski , another brother in blue, slaughtered senselessly by someone with no regard for human life.

And I wept for his wife, who will never again have the pleasure of feeling her husband’s arms around her or hearing a whispered, “I love you”.

And I wept for their unborn child, who will come into this world without a father and learn early on that it’s, at times, a cruel and hideous place.

And I wept for the officer’s in the City of Philadelphia; who go to work every day underpaid, understaffed, undertrained and underequipped and try to put a tourniquet on a city that’s bleeding out.

And I wept for the City of Philadelphia which can never be “the next great city” until this violence and disregard for life is ended.

And I wept for the citizens of the City of Philadelphia who seem to take the news of another officer’s death so much in stride that they’re not “up-in-arms’ and demanding that something be done.

And when there were no more tears to weep, I prayed. For all the same people that I had been weeping. May God look after them in their sorrow and assist the officer’s and leader’s of this city in their mission.

On Names...
Cindy Newman Campling Newman Frenier Newman Frenier Newman Wakeley – my brother-in-law actually begins his weekly telephone calls to me with this greeting. Really, every blessed time. Each one of my divorces and marriages just succeeds in lengthening the time from his “hello” to actually getting a conversation started. He has advised in the past that perhaps I should keep my maiden name and forget taking my husbands, reminding me that the ink is barely dry on my new driver’s license and social security cards when I’m already requesting to have them changed back again! He’s never suggested that I stop marrying, which would get me off this name-change seesaw – I suppose because he’s been married to my sister for 33 years and wants the same type of life for me. I’m thinking that the next time around, although I’m hoping that with age I’ve become wiser and there won’t be a next time…this time…I may just take his last name, Portnoy, and really give him something to dwell upon each week when he calls.
Now, please don’t think that I’m particularly proud or boastful of my four marriages, or is it three? I married the same man twice so I count that as one marriage. Two horrifically bad experiences wrapped up in the same name and drama. Nor, do I take the institution of marriage lightly. I love the idea of being married. It’s just that I’m a fly- by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of girl. Today I believe they call it hyperactivity disorder, and while that lifestyle can lead to a life full of fun and adventure, it also opens you up to making some hideously poor and ill thought-out decisions.
I met my first husband hitchhiking down the Shore when I was seventeen…he was driving a fast car, was in the Air Force (oh, how I love a man in uniform) and was willing to share his weed with me. What better reason is there to get married! I was now Cindy Campling and the only good thing that came of those nine years was my son Aric (yes, ARIC, and don’t ask me because I don’t remember). He, A-R-I-C, still teases me that if I’d spelled his name in the common fashion he’d have had more dates in college because the girls thought Aric was a geeky name. But, since every time I visited him there was another cute coed camped in his dorm room, I hardly think his name held him back.
Husband two – also became husband three- hey, he was cuter than Gig Young and had the charisma of Jim Jones. I was now Cindy Frenier. We traveled the world, had lots of adventures and I followed him anywhere, including to the altar twice! Unfortunately, so did all his other women…although not to the altar, just to his hotel room. If he was the chief lemming we’d have all gladly jumped off the cliffs with him and fallen to our deaths. Or, would he have stayed up top and pushed us? I couldn’t wait to get out from under his name, literally. In a moment of hyperactive madness I had paid $100.00 to have his name tattooed on my ass. A quite appropriate place. It then cost me $400.00 and a lot of tears to have it lasered off! My only satisfaction from those seven years is that my name, Cindy Ellen, is STILL tattooed on his left bicep, he being too much of a wimp to withstand multiple sessions under the laser. His fourth wife must be a very understanding woman.
Now, I’m still Cindy Newman, although married (for the 3rd or 4th time depending on how I’m counting) and should be calling myself Wakeley. I’ve chosen this time not to use my husband’s last name, which is too bad for him because if any of them deserved for me to take their name, it’s he. No new driver’s licenses, no new social security cards with ink that takes too long to dry. After thirty years and three, maybe four marriages, I’ve finally listened to my brother-in-law and taken his advice on this issue. I know he’s relieved that I finally listened…when he called me last week he just said, “Hi Cin”.