Bridging

Gabe’s last day of preschool is today. He has a program tonight for a farewell thing; they’re staging a play of “The Little Red Hen.” (Oh, the initial drama, when he discovered that he couldn’t be a dragon in the play! He shouted at everybody, including his teachers, sobbing hysterically. Eventually, with encouragement, he came around to accepting, and finally being happy about, the fact that he was to be a mouse. ) It’s a different-feeling milestone than it was with Sam; with Sam, it felt bittersweet to see my “baby” growing up so fast, but with Gabe…he’s already moved on, mentally, to the next big thing, so this is no more than a tiny road marker along the way. “On this spot, in 2009, Gabriel attended a year of preschool.” Okay, what’s next?

I signed both boys up for the summer playground program yesterday, something Gabe’s been eagerly anticipating for a couple of years. He’s finally big enough to attend! He’ll be in a different program from Sam, but they meet at roughly the same time and at playgrounds that adjoin each other, so I can pretty much drop them off together. That’s four afternoons a week of organized large-motor play! Yay for summertime exhaustion! (And coffee breaks for Mama! )

So now we’ve got this gap, during which Sam’s still in school, but Gabe isn’t, and summer hasn’t officially begun, but both kids think it has. We’re rubbing our hands together over activities to come that aren’t yet here, even while we stare down the ends of schedules that still need to be completed. The urge is heavy to rush through things so as to move on to the New.

And then there’s me, still officially in “recovery” from the race, according to Hal Higdon, and yet his “recovery program” has me doing speedwork – something that the marathon training program didn’t. The idea, I think, is to keep me from losing motivation, and he encourages doing a 5K at the end of recovery, in fact. But I think that in this case, too, I might be rushing things. I obeyed and did mile repeats this morning, doing each of the miles at a quick pace…and my IT band, which had been improving, became quite angry. Too soon. The plan doesn’t know my circumstances; it’s my fault, not Hal’s.

So I’ll follow my common sense here, take a step back, and both acknowledge and try to appreciate where I am instead of rushing into where I’d like to be or what I think might be an exciting next step. You can’t go sky-diving without packing your parachute. If anybody needs me, that’s where I’ll be.