A Simple Question

"Mama?"

"Yes, Adara."
"Why do you always want to run with us?

She asked me this question, such a simple seeming question this afternoon, mid-run. I have probably written about why I run with my kids a hundred times. My first EVER blog entry was titled, "I run to be a better mother," for goodness sake. Then why did her question stump me this afternoon?

Perhaps it was because I was running on fumes, quite literally, after a mere 4 hours of sleep last night. Perhaps it was because I was mid-hill, nearly choking for breath and simply trying to make it up, alive. Or perhaps it was because that question tugs at every fiber of my being.

"Why do you always want to run with us?"

Such a simple question posed by a 4-and-a-half-year-old little sprite. Such a simple question that sent my brain spinning, searching for an answer, the answer. How could I explain it all in one sentence. She is four. She does not yet possess the patience nor the desire to listen to a 3-Act Play, a lecture of sorts, a highly emotional mother of three young ones celebrating her fourth ever Mother's Day. She does not want nor need to hear the love story, the passion, the obsession that has unfolded between this 28-year old Mama and her fire red triple jogging stroller. She does not need care about the glorious details. She is too young to comprehend that running makes me a better mother, transforms me and bestows upon me the most beautiful sense of peace and acceptance and love. She does not know how running refuels me and exhausts me. In the same breath. How running motivates me and inspires me to be the person I want to become. How it makes me strong, internally and externally. How it makes me feel proud, for pushing through the pain, the exhaustion. How my brain spikes with an adrenaline rush after every long or hard effort. How it is the closest feeling, the nearest level of intensity that I will ever experience again that even approaches the pain, oh the pain, and the bliss that was... her birth. How I long to feel that again.. and so that is why I run.

I can not tell her that. She is only 4. Then I realize, all she wants to know is that she is loved. For that is all any of us really want to know. And so I summit the mountain, I take a long deep breath and a sip of my too-quickly-grown-warm-water and I choose my words carefully.

I always want to run with you (and Cesia and Isaac, and Daddy when he can join us) because more than anything else in this entire world, I want to be with you. And next to wanting to be with you, I want to be running. And so, Adara, if I can be out running with my favorite people in this entire world, that is all I want to be doing.

"Running with you, Adara, it makes me happy."
"Mama?"
"Yes, Adara."
"It makes me happy, too."

That made for a very happy mother and a very happy mother's day.

This, too, made for a happy Mama.
Happy Mother's Day, to me.

Cesia's Mother's Day gift, with message on the back,
"I love my mommy because she gives me kisses."
Things like this, they make me cry.

My three superheroes.

Post-sprinkler fun. Obsessed with these towels Grandma sent.

Sunny, hot, memorable Mother's Day run.

Saturday alone time with the girls. At the Mall. On the carousel.
Carousel's are magical. Pure Joy.

Little Boy gets a break from elimination diets
for his first (baby-sized) chocolate ice cream cone. : )

Chocolate ice cream is pure joy, too.

Tears streamed steadily as I watched my
eldest serve me Mother's Day Tea at
preschool last week.