Thick Slice of Life

I went running this morning, and as I was jogging through a nearby neighborhood, I ran across something I’d never seen before. As a sometimes runner, I am accustomed to dodging trash, occasional dog poo, puddles, potholes and other small obstacles in my path. As most of what I go past is ick, I try to run around it and forget it quickly, always hoping that any rancid smells will not stay with me long for, in my opinion, running and gagging do not go well together. Today, however, I ran past a half-eaten thickly sliced piece of lemon pound cake, and I immediately thought, Oh, how sad. If it had been my half-eaten thickly sliced piece of lemon pound cake that had dropped in the street, you can be sure the cry, “FIVE SECOND RULE!” could be heard three counties over as I dove to retrieve my cake. I would undoubtedly tell myself that the black grit now on my cake was in fact poppy seeds, poppy seeds that had not previously been in my thickly sliced piece of lemon pound cake, but who am I to question God’s many miracles. All of this, I thought as I ran past the fallen cake, and as I like to think of anything but running while running, I began to wonder about all the things in my life that I have let go. Because, someone had to let that pound cake go, had to let it go and leave it behind in the street to become mush or food for small rodents or fodder for my random musings.

There are a shocking number of things in my life that I’ve willingly let go of. Things like glittery lip balm and spiral perms, an entire collection of Monkees record albums, oversized flannel shirts, hobbies and places I loved, friendships and heartbreak, maternity clothing, stories I started that never went anywhere. And as I ran and thought of all of the things I had left by the wayside, I became even more upset and thought, I can’t go on like this (which may or may not have had a great deal to do with the fact that I’d run really far by this point in time and my muscles were simply reminding me that they were not above announcing an official strike). As I slowed down to walk down the last street to my home, I switched my thinking and decided to focus on what I had held on to instead, because my hands are so very full right now and the things that I’m holding on to are precious and good and real and what make me smile. And I thought that if I never let anything go, I’d be so mired down that I couldn’t go on. I’d be stuck in one place with all that stuff and so letting go is part of holding on. And then I thought, maybe I can see the poppy seeds in the thickly sliced piece of lemon pound cake for what they really are and in that case it’s okay to let go. That, and I realized that maybe the owner of the half-eaten thickly sliced piece of lemon pound cake was okay with letting it go because someone spectacular had just handed her an entire pumpkin pie cheesecake - and a fork too.