agrarian arts

While my belly grew out of control, stretching so tight it felt it would rip with Willem inside it, I was forced on bed rest. Powerless. I thought Willem would own my body forever. In the delivery room I felt my SI joint spread apart to make room as all 9 lbs of him decended through my small frame. The pain was intense. I wore my regular clothes home and was decieved in thinking this meant my body was the same. It wasn't. It was in pieces, and composed unrecognizably. It was as if I weren't in me anymore, but inside someone else peering out of darkness into two strange peep holes. This new body wouldn't cooperate. It kept breaking down and needing fixed. Injections, threats of surgery, and several layoffs due to hips that didn't want to run. Whose useless body was this they stuck me with? I got fed up with the weakness of this strange container. Finally, I decided this new body needed a mother. It needed someone to care for it, raise it, teach it right and wrong, and ultimately to discipline it with care. So I took time to teach it how I wanted it to behave, to become what I needed it to be. That in itself took me 3 years. Three years of making running a stranger, to get to know this body. My frame allowed me visitation with running, but not full custody. Not until 15 months ago.

15 months ago. That's when I dedicated myself to peeling back the paper on my potential as a runner. 15 months ago I was flaccid and out of shape, the marks of childbirth still lay claim my physique (despite the fact that Willem was 3 at that time). It's only been in the last 3 months that have noticed the land scape of my body change. Lines began to cut their way up my thighs. Rows plowed across my belly as what fat was there melted away. Now the remaining relics of my pregnancy are the stretchmarks that climb up my lower abdomen like ivy on some stately brick wall. Those I want to keep as a trophy of motherhood. Where once I was round I am now shadowed with crevasses. Don't get me wrong. I am no Deena, or Shalane. By comparison I am girlish and undeveloped. My lines are still soft and gentle. However, they exsist and are proof of a planting and a rebirth.