Marvy Mom Monday : Running origins

I mentioned in #5 of last week's Five Things Friday that my mom is amazing. I feel like you should know more about her so you can taste of sliver of the awe that I get when I think about her. And... there's no way to talk about my mom in one post. I'm not going to try. So what I'm going to do is tell you a little bit about her each Monday in my new theme day...

Marvy Mom Monday!

(Did you say it in a game show host voice? You should have!)

My mom's name is Hope. If I died of a heart attack right this second, you've already got a perfect sense of who she is based solely on her name. But, I'm still alive so I will tell you more. And because this blog has the word "Running" in the title, I will start there.

She's absolutely, 100%, NOT a runner. But oddly enough, it was my mom who first got me running. When I was 4 years old, she used to go jogging around the "block" near my house. (I say "block" because the village/town of Candor, NY isn't at all made up of blocks in the city sense... but there were a couple of streets across from ours that formed a rectangle, thus creating something block-ish.)

Anyway, I was child #6 (of 6 at the time) and all the older kids were in school. So, mom and I would go out and run around the block. I'm not sure why we did this... Mom weighed 105 pounds, max and, like most of her peers, smoked cigarettes. Whatever her reasons, we did it. And I don't know how many times we did it. Honestly, it may have only been once, but I never forgot it. It seemed so amazing to be alone with my mom. (Alone time with a parental unit is about as rare as a solar eclipse in a house with 6 kids, FYI!) Bless, her, she let me think that I was difficult to keep up with. The activity also had an air of maturity and made me feel like her friend instead of her preschooler. I'm not sure, but I imagine I looked pretty fetching in my velour track suits and Dorothy Hamill haircut.

I often think back to my track coaches in junior high and high school and give them the credit for starting my running life. But really, it was my mom (a mother of 6, mind you!) who started me out.

Thanks, Ma!

(Tune in next week for another episode of Marvy Mom Monday.... She gets WAY better!!)