Osler's Razor

If I were to look back on my life and stack up all of my favorite days, many of them would be Saturdays in October. October has that sweet edge; we are drawn to the beach as the sliver between land and ocean, and October is that soft sand between summer and winter. It is a wonderful time to reflect, to feel deeply, to fall in love or to let love go, the perfect balance between the languid days of summer and the frantic holiday blur.

That was one Saturday in October... twenty-nine years ago. Grosse Pointe North High School was exceptional at one sport, cross-country, and I was a runner.

October in Michigan is when the leaves come down, red and yellow and deep maroon. We woke up early that morning, and walked to school. We got on a bus full of runners and friends and a few coaches here and there, all of us nervous and quiet. We got to the course, far out on the fringes of the city, and the course was laid out over rolling hills carpeted with that red and yellow and deep maroon. We set out, breathing on our hands and seeing the mist of our breath. There were sixty-some of us, pre-running the course, a river of gold because green and gold were the colors of our school, the color we wore into battle. The seven of us on the varsity ran in the front and at times I loved to look back at that ribbon of friends and teammates stretched out behind us, like a yellow cat's curving tail.

And then we would run, for real, and my seventeen-year-old body did what a seventeen-year-old body can for sixteen minutes or so, feeling my stride and fixing my gaze on the person ahead, to capture and defeat him through force of will until the three miles were behind me. That meet, we won, and we laughed as they gave us a trophy at the top of a hill and the colors of the other teams mixed together as the buses started their engines. Our bus took us back to the school, and there was a football game. This I remember clearly, surely-- during the game, they introduced those of us who had won it, had us step out on the field one-by-one with two girls so we could wave as they shook pom-poms and smiled, and the football players glared at us through their face masks: nothing felt so good as their jealousy.

I walked home, and my dad was laying down bricks, so I helped. We talked about what had happened, and he showed me how to herringbone the bricks, interlocking them on a bed of sand, and they are still there (both the bricks and my dad). Evening came; there was a dance, and I took a girl in a green dress. There was a song, later on, a slow dance, and I tentatively kissed her neck and she kissed me back with warmth and passion and that mixed with everything else into something like joy. I came home, and my mom was at the breakfast room table, reading, smiling back at me because she felt what was in my heart, and there was never a house so warm and loving and kind and good as that one, that moment, that day, that October Saturday.