Running Barefoot

My heart pounded and my blood felt icy in my veins. Reverently, with shaking hands, I opened the one on the top of the pile. It picked up where his last letter, so long ago, had left off. He confessed his agony at not being able to respond to me, asking me over and over again to forgive him. Samuel had written me dozens of letters. Most of them were from the first year - maybe that was when he felt the most alone. But they continued on, though the following years. There was a letter written on 9-11-2001. I had thought of him when the towers were hit, wondering where he was, or if he would be sent somewhere. When the U.S. had invaded Iraq, I had watched the television - wondering if Samuel was among those first Marines sent in. Apparently he’d thought of me too.

I read several of Samuel’s letters, standing there on the front porch, and marveled at the places he’d been and the things he’d seen and done. He told me about the books he’d read. I noticed many of them were ones I had read, and some of them were books I hadn’t heard of. There was a definite loneliness in many of them, but a confidence and sense of purpose was present as well. I abandoned my run and went back upstairs to my room. Running could wait. I had some catching up to do.

I walked out into the front yard a few mornings later, the screen door banging behind me. It wouldn’t wake Dad - he was already up looking after the horses. I sniffed hopefully, trying to smell fall in the air, but sadly got a whiff of summer leftovers instead. I leaned down and re-tied my running shoes, wiggling my toes.

I meandered out to the road and faced my mountains wreathed in sunrise. I breathed and raised my arms high above my head, stretching and arching and working out my morning kinks.

“You look like Changing Woman greeting the Sun.” A voice spoke immediately to my left.

I was startled, and my arms dropped to my sides as I whirled around. “Oh! Samuel!” I cried out. “You scared me!”

“I’m a sneaky indian, what can I say?”

I looked into his face. It was the kind of thing he would have said at eighteen - but it would have been laced with bitterness. This time he just smiled a little and shrugged. He had on a pair of faded Levis and his worn cowboy boots again. His black t-shirt, with Semper Fi written in white print across the front, fit snugly across his powerful chest and shoulders. His dark hair, military short and spiky, was still wet like he’d just climbed out of the shower. He looked like my Samuel, but not. For many months after he left the first time, I had quietly cried myself to sleep, unwilling to admit to anyone how my youthful heart had ached in his absence. I had missed him terribly. I’d had so few friends, and I knew how rare he was, this friend who was truly a kindred spirit. When he’d left the second time, I had been hurt and angry and had done all I could not to think about him. My heart twisted painfully at the memory, and I swiftly redirected my attention to the man who stood before me, in the present.

“Changing Woman and the Sun ... is that a Navajo story?” I resumed my stretching, trying to portray a casualness I did not feel.

“It’s a Navajo legend. Changing Woman is thought to be the child of the Earth and the Sky. She is closely tied to the circle of life, the changing of the seasons, the order of the universe. She was created when First Man shook his medicine bag repeatedly at the holy mountain. Days later, Changing Woman was found on the top of the mountain. First Man and First Woman taught her and raised her.

“One day Changing Woman was out walking and she met a strange young man whose brilliance dazzled her so much she had to look away. When she turned back towards him he was gone. This happened two more times. She went home and told First Man and First Woman what had happened. They told her to make her bed outside that night with her head facing east. While she slept, the young man came and lay beside her. She awoke and asked him who he was. He said, “Don’t you know who I am? You see me every day. I am all around you. In my presence you were created.” She realizes he is the sun’s inner form. In order to see him each day, she went to live by the Pacific Ocean so that when the sun set on the water he could visit her.”

We were quiet for a moment. The birds started warbling, and I wished they would be still. The silence was silky without them.

“She must have been lonely waiting for him to come see her.” I hadn’t meant to speak out loud, and wondered where my sentiment had sprung from.

“She was.” Samuel eyed me quizzically. “According to legend, she was so lonely for companionship that she created the Navajo people from the flakes of her skin, rubbed off different parts of her body.”

The story was strangely sensual, the beautiful young woman, waiting each day for the Sun to come to her. I gazed up at the rising orb and closed my eyes as I lifted my face to its warmth.

“What do you listen to while you run?” Samuel nodded towards the ipod strapped to my bicep.

The memories of sharing my precious symphonies with him on that bumpy bus bombarded me. I remembered our heartfelt and intimate discussions of ‘God’s music,’ and I turned from him realizing I didn’t want him to know what I listened to when I ran. I stretched back and pulled my right foot up behind me, stretching my quad, pretending I hadn’t heard him. He reached over and took the phones from my ears, stuck one in his own, and pushed play on the iPod. After a moment he grimaced.

“This is electronic music. The kind you’d hear at a club or an aerobics class! Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom.” He pounded his foot for effect. “The same repeated phrases over and over again. Synthesizers!” He said in mock horror.