Star Tribune, October 2007
It’s that time of year, when the air is pregnant with the scent of sweaty socks and the weekend warriors crowd the 10,000 lakes in embarrassingly short shorts.
The countdown is on for the Twin Cities Marathon.
My childhood home was only a block from Lake Nokomis, and on a certain Sunday every October, the muffled sound of tennis shoes thumping across the bridge signaled the arrival of the greatest race in Minnesota. I’d sit on the curb of Cedar Avenue, chin in my hands and mouth agape as runners whizzed by in a stream of tight torsos, toned biceps, and exhausted grimaces. The energy was electric, as invigorating as the first gust of autumn wind. I swore that one day, I would be part of the ultra-fit pack.
My vow turned into reality last year.
I’m a low-maintenance runner. The night before the 2006 Twin Cities Marathon, I carbo-loaded with a party-size bag of Tostitos and a tub of spicy guacamole. On race day, I suited up in my $10 tank top, clearance rack compression pants, and hand-held radio. My only goal: to cross the finish line before the end of America’s Top 40.
I trusted the TCM crew to take care of me, as hospitality is the Midwestern way. There were a plethora of port-a-potties, well-stocked hydration stations, and Red Cross volunteers with petroleum jelly at every mile-marker. A bearded man handed out bananas from a wicker basket, grade-school kids gave me gummi bears, and fellow marathoners shared orange wedges without breaking pace.
Mile 21 came and I didn’t hit the wall; instead, I ran into an ex-boyfriend on his bike.
“Yeah, baby, yeah!” he shouted, his helmet trembling and fists shaking in the air.
This is what I love about Minnesota: just when you think urban sprawl has separated us, you run—quite literally—into people you never expected to see again.
I sprinted off down Summit Avenue (talk about running away from my past!) and tried not to puke up my PowerAde.
TCM is touted as the Most Beautiful Urban Marathon, and on that day, the Twin Cities was showing off. The leaves glittered gold and crimson in the mid-morning sun, the odor of roasting woodchips wafted down the parkway and the lilac bushes spread their perfume around Lake Harriet, and the ripples of the Mississippi shimmered beneath the Franklin Bridge.
I was so consumed by the scenery, I didn’t realize how fast I was running.
“How’d you do?” another runner asked as I boarded the bus home.
“3:14:10,” I said.
“Wow,” he replied, shaking a spiky-haired head. “That’s, like, an 8-minute mile!”
Actually, it’s 7:24, but who’s counting?
“Proud enough to make it permanent, huh?” my sports medicine specialist said as his fingers grazed my new TCM tattoo. Every time I lace up my Sauconys, I am reminded of the best race of my life by a miniature running man wedged between bronze and blue leaves.
“I may never run that fast again,” I said.
No matter how fast I run, even I’ll never beat the experience of my first Twin Cities Marathon. This year, I’m saving my gams for the New York City Marathon, but my heart will be with the TCM runners every step of the way.
Small Town Suburbia
Star Tribune, August 2007
With the collapse of the 35W bridge, there’s been a lot of talk about community. I recently found mine in an unexpected place.
I never wanted to be a suburbanite. Born and raised in South Minneapolis, I thought I’d live in the city my whole life. But when I married and wanted to start a family, suburbia seemed like the best place to start a family. After the dream house was built and my two daughters were born, I went in search of other moms in the neighborhood. But no one was home in the daytime; the houses in the Pulte development were so expensive that few families could afford to live off one income. I spent an entire summer doing laps around the cul-de-sacs, double stroller in tow, alone.
The house was built to last but the marriage wasn’t. When my ex and I divorced, the one thing we agreed on was remaining in the South of the River suburbs for the sake of our kids.
As a single mother, I ached for camaraderie. I found it in a quaint corner café in Burnsville. Who knows how I ended up at this particular Caribou Coffee; most likely, I had a caffeine craving between my BodyFlow class at the Y and picking up my daughters from daycare and stopped in. Now I’m not only addicted to the java, I’m in love with the location.
The café is the ideal creative haven, where I can write all day by the windows and warm my legs in the sun like a lazy cat. I’m a fixture at the coffee shop now, my presence as predictable as the morning rush of men in business suits.
“You’re not homeless, are you?” one man asked me after crossing paths at the counter a half-dozen times.
With a set-up like this, who needs to go home? The café is attached to Great Harvest Bread Company, which supplies me with the essential writer’s fuel: gooey cinnamon swirl bread, hefty pizza rolls, massive bags of trail mix, monster cookies and mud bars. Since Subway opened a few door down, I don’t even have to leave “campus” for lunch. I never knew a strip mall could feel so cozy.
There’s no shortage of witty repartee with the fellow Caribou customers. There are days when I look up from my laptop and realize with a satisfied smile that I can identify every customer and employee in the café. It’s a Generation Xer’s version of Cheers; same sense of inclusion, different addictive substance.
The morning flow of customers is comforting in its regularity. The group of raucous retirees saves a table for me until I arrive at nine. Then there’s the bearded minister and his wife, who share big belly laughs and small miracles with a rotating cast of congregants. The glamorous grandmothers always have at least one toddler in tow. Toothpick-thin Dan scribbles on yellow legal sheets by the fireplace while grey-haired Gary clambers by with his cane. John with the red sporty Saturn sips a cold press and nibbles on two foot-long cheddar breadsticks while reading the Star Tribune. The woman in the powder blue Beetle with GoJesus license plates pulls in around eleven a.m. Jeff, the roofer in holey jeans, pops in for free refills all day long. Bobby and Sheila, the brother-and-sister pair, catch up at the café on the weekends.
Then there’s the manager. Every writer requires eye candy for those stints of wall-staring that are part and parcel of the creative proves. Mine is Kelly—a man as pretty as his name implies—and my favorite table provides me with an unobstructed view of the Nick Lachey look-alike as he prepares drinks behind the bar.
“I’ve got a trivia question for you,” I said to Kelly one morning with caffeine-induced courage.
“Oh yeah?” he asked, sliding a Chapstick around his luscious lips.
“How many cups of coffee will I have to drink before you ask me out?”
Apparently, a lot. 500 cups later, give or take, and I’m still waiting for a date.
In the meantime, I’ll keep writing. Since my first published article was posted on the Neighborhood News board, the regulars know me by name.
And the community keeps growing. Where I once felt invisible, now I see familiar faces everywhere: in the weight room at the Y, in the dairy aisle of Byerly’s, at the gas pump at Super America, in the check-out line at Walgreen’s. Suburbia may not be my birthplace, but it sure feels like home.
It doesn’t have to take a tragedy to bring people together. Your community is as close as your next cup of Joe.
Remind Me Why
Star Tribune, February 2007
It's about that time of year--when the mercury dips into single digits and I swear for the 10,000th time (one for every lake), that I will not live through another winter in this tundra state.
When the snow finally sticks, my parking spot at the end of the townhome complex's lot, which was formerly labeled "Visitor Parking," morphs overnight into "No Parking."
I play musical cars with my roommates, parking behind the purple Prism in the morning and the rusty Wrangler in the evening, rotating my space based on a schedule of who is leaving first, next, last. I scrape the windshield but don't do much damage to the inch-thick frost. I fishtail my way out of the drive and curse my way down Cedar Avenue at a top speed of 10 mph.
By the third week in January, I pop the perennial question on a regular basis til the snow thaws in mid-April: Remind me why I live in Minnesota.
When I was 16, I decided that as soon as I had my high-school diploma, I was getting out of this arctic wasteland. I turned 18 and, as fate would have it, met a Mexican immigrant who had never seen snow before moving to Minnesota. Our first winter together, he shoveled the driveway with a gap-toothed smile on his face. I had never known someone so
happy to hear of an impending snowstorm (Slight aside: he was also a self-employed chiropractor and all those car accidents were good for business).
When I asked for my yearly reminder, my Mexican honey answered "Because I'm here."
So I stayed.
A funny thing happens to the cold-weather endurance experts of Minnesota: We always forget how tortuous winter here is as soon as it's over. This is what I call seasonal amnesia.
Summer days descend, so thick with humidity you could choke if you breathe too deeply. You convince yourself that all that grumbling about the insistent gray skies was exaggerated. Fall comes and the temperatures cool, but denial remains.
Then brisk winter breezes bite your lips and scrape skin off your cheeks and turn your
toes blue.
I have two new reasons now to remain here, Hannah and Montana, my preschool daughters. Despite having lived their entire lives here, they have hardly seen snow. So when I feel the urge to repeat my query, I think of their faces, eagerly anticipating the sight of snowflakes. I owe them a few more winters of Twin Cities residency in the hopes of a blizzard so big it could rival Halloween 1990.
So now, when I ask my favorite refrain, a polite voice with a Midwestern twang whispers in my head: Because this is the state where I was born, educated, married and divorced, the only environment my own daughters have ever known. It is, for all my griping and growling, the only place I've ever called home.
