I will run (carry up love along unfettered time)

The faint gold light above the kitchen sink softly shines upon me as I wash bottles for what feels like the 13th time in this day. It’s 9:58 p.m. and all is hushed except the murmuring volume of the television playing, like, the 10th season of Modern Family. The Wife is in the other room pumping to feed both The Baby and my new, necessary bottle-washing hobby. “Maybe he will make it to 11 tonight,” I foolishly think. I tacitly know I have about 30 minutes until it’s the first feeding in the period we refer to as The Big Down. I suddenly notice spit-up residing on the bottom right of my shirt. I will need to change a piece of clothing for the 3rd time this day. For now the bottles hold cleaning precedence but the squatting regurgitation flows my thoughts into what piss-dodging technique to use later when I hurry through a diaper change following the feeding. It’s a large playbook by now though unfortunately it’s about as effective as Matt Patricia’s. The cleanse continues as I wander into prayer for The Sleep Gods to bestow a seamless transition in this period; for the relieving head-to-pillow crash beckons (an anticipation that begins when I wake up in the morning, actually). My respite comes once The Baby is back down likely for a few hours (5 if I’m lucky) and then I must feed him again, further adding to the arsenal of bottles to scrub first thing in the morning. This routine occurs tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that, and ostensibly for interminable tomorrows. It is in this quietly illuminated ritual I reflect upon Dutton Road, located about a couple miles north of Oakland University.

My favorite season is the fall, a transformative time before winter’s death rattle resets the landscape. My cross country background means I spent many crisp fall seasons exhausting my body out among this transfiguration. In the foliage and I’s concurrent depletions, I admired Mother Nature’s fleeting splendor as distraction to my own fading energy. Her resplendent yet temporary autumn hues of gold, crimson, and orange provided the backdrop to my own revitalizing drain.

The fall season accentuates the grandeur in expending your body’s energy amid Oakland’s campus and its surrounding communities. Enervating run after enervating run immersed myself and teammates in trails, golf courses, sleepy Rochester Hills neighborhoods and still sections of campus that the average student rarely traverses. Some routes were repeated more than others, and this was especially the case with the Dutton Loop.

The Dutton Loop is, cosmically apt, an 8-mile route that I can’t actually confirm is 8 miles. I rarely wore a running watch in college, let alone a GPS watch. This is in opposition to Now where every run is meticulously logged on Strava — if it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen — replete with superfluous details. I just ran, unbothered by pace, time, and distance. Dutton became a default of sorts on days that were about getting out there and accumulating miles. Its repeated frequency galvanized chants of “Dutton or die” as we exited the lockerrooms for the outdoors’ vibrant expanse.

The incantation’s genesis remains nebulous to me. I can’t tell you its originator or exactly when its prevalence spread. My preferential view is it rendered as a collective manifestation — it adds romance to its lore. Whether it similarly imprinted on my teammates is also unclear. As a Sicko obsessed with foisting symbolic meaning on things, Dutton or Die furnished a Chop Wood Carry Water significance. For others it may have merely served as a fatuous slogan to yell as we embarked yet again on the loop for lord knows what time.

Through this rote I feel I could have run Dutton Loop with my eyes closed by the end of my career. Cross country, and running in general, is a sport that rewards through discipline. The demanding endeavor of sticking with your training program is an arduous process that intrinsically begets bountiful Runner’s Lows. There were forgettable miles. There were Oh God, I Really Gotta Do This, Don’t I miles. There were garbage miles. There were mundane miles. There were hungover miles.

While these lows were tough, when I ruminate upon my time at Oakland, my favorite memories substantially occurred in motion. It was an experience that gifted countless Runner’s Highs. There were indelible miles. There were Oh God, I Really Can Do This, Can’t I miles. There were treasured miles. There were riveting miles. There were tranquil, sobering miles.

Running however, as you zoom out to its whole, provides a transcendence beyond the individual moment, high or low. It’s an accumulating process over time that forges bonds: it’s a worthwhile medium for getting to know someone, and that includes yourself. Externally, the repetition and high frequency that composed my training established relationships that now extend beyond a fixed timeline and place. Additionally it allowed to dredge what flows inwardly for clearer introspection. This spiritual excavation unearths the crispy realization of a becoming amid time and place. Each run was a rung among an assembled ladder.

Every mile matters to the finish line’s path. I am nothing without each mile. Every single one. The burden of running is not the lows but rather never coalescing each run into the mileage required to cross thresholds and reach destinations. To not run is to cease becoming. Dutton or die.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: my son’s giggles as my facial hair tickles his cheek as I hold him close is the greatest sound I have ever heard in my life and I have some fucking bottles to wash.

It’s 10 p.m. as I dry my hands. I smile at the clear countertop. Shit, I still gotta feed the rabbit.