Wednesday, June 14, 2006

My dad was a marathon runner and used to run all the time. My first plane ride was as an infant, going to Boston with my parents so my dad could run the Boston Marathon. I cried the whole way. The first and only race I remember being at was in Philadelphia. I don't remember how old I was, but I know I was walking and I was short enough that a runner dumped his cup of water on my head and didn't notice that I was below. I cried then too.

In all the pictures from when I was young, my dad is wearing his running t-shirts: on the beach in Cape May or Eagles Mere, running in short races on vacation that my brother and I used to do with our friends also. They hold dates like 1980, 1979, 1987. My favorite has the year I was born, 1984.

I don't know when, but after a couple years my dad, or maybe my mom, put all those shirts in a huge box and left them in the attic. I don't remember ever noticing that my dad stopped wearing them. Maybe he didn't even stop, he just had so many shirts that he had to leave some in the attic. Maybe he abandoned the shirts that were all too worn out, they were old and soft and even the colored ones had become see-through with age.

All I know is that when my brother and I got to them, my dad's shirts were amazing enough for us to fight over. I remember one day a couple years before my dad died when my brother and I were in the attic (I have no idea why) and we stumbled upon the big box of running shirts. Between the two of us, we divied them up and proceeded to wear them all the time. I was in middle school at the time, or else early high school, and my new soft, vintage-looking t-shirts became the most admired piece of clothing that I owned. All my friends loved my running t-shirts; they all asked to rummage through the mysterious box in my attic. I always said no: those were my dad's shirts, and the ones he didn't want were mine and my brother's.

In the years since our attic find, my brother and I have started to outgrow the shirts just like my dad did. My brother is larger than my father ever was, and so bulges out of the shirts and causes the tiny holes to stretch and tear more. And I've retired the more shelpy look for work and internship-appropriate attire. But the shirts are still in my drawer. Somehow over the years the numbers of them have dropped, but my favorites are still there: the one I found tonight is for the New York City marathon and has the World Trade Towers set against the NYC skyline. It reads 1984.

I've started wearing these t-shirts again now that I've begun running. I wear them more because they are there than anything else, b utmaybe also because of their symbolism. When I wear them I think of my dad and the way that he began running and trained for years and years for all those runs. I run myself and often times believe that I could never do it, the body that he left me is incapable or my discipline is just not strict enough. Sometimes I truly believe in that inadequacy, and other times I just push beyond it. Afterall, you don't get anywhere crying at races.

posted by iliza @ 10:41 PM