There will come a day when I can no longer run. Today is not that day.
~Author Unknown
Newlyweds are dreamers. My husband David and I were no exception — envisioning our perfect future with two kids and the stereotypical house with a white picket fence. Life might throw us challenges, we understood, but we were strong and smart.
We had life figured out, and six months into marriage we had begun building our family traditions. Our first one, we decided, would be running the annual Thanksgiving Day 5K Turkey Trot. We believed it was an event we could share with our future children — pushing them in jogging strollers, and then years down the road all running together, side by side. It was our beautiful dream.
Three years later, on Thanksgiving Day, instead of lining up for the annual Turkey Trot, I was lying in a hospital bed in the middle of a different endurance challenge. After six excruciating days of trying to stop labor, our identical twins, Hayden and Holden, came into the world through emergency C-section almost 10 weeks early. Immediately, the boys were whisked from our arms and began a five-week stay in the NICU. We learned they suffered from a condition called Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome.
We watched as their little bodies endured tests and blood draws every few hours. Because of their fragile state, we could only hold them a few hours a day. Their weights dropped day after day — little Holden barely weighed three pounds. The first time Holden’s monitor blared, I stood in horror as a nurse stimulated his little body to start breathing again. The boys fought every day against numerous problems. We fought with them. Life was not a dream but a nightmare — one we could not outrun. By the time they gained enough strength to come home, we were empty — physically and emotionally drained.
Bringing the boys home brought little relief as they were only slightly improved. My husband had gone back to work, and the twins’ older sister, only eleven months old, now demanded more time and attention. Suddenly, we were raising three babies, two of whom had significant developmental delays. Three sets of diapers to change, three to comfort, three to shuffle back and forth to doctors (where we spent the majority of our time). For a marriage only three years in the making, it was daunting. The twins would not be comforted as they were sick and frail, while our daughter entered a period of sleep regressions and tantrums. The primary dialogue I shared with my husband was down to two-word phrases: bath time, make bottles, clean kitchen, change diapers.
Every day, we fought the hardness of life. It was a marathon of hard yards. The boys fought for life, my daughter fought for attention, and David and I fought for survival. In this fashion, winter changed to spring, which turned to summer and faded into autumn. Slowly, we found time to expand the two-word phrases into three, adding the word “please” back into our vocabularies. Our sons began overcoming some of their challenges, and I saw in our daughter glimmers of a little girl longing to be Mommy’s helper.
Eventually, one beautiful fall day, I pulled out my old running shoes and went for a jog. Soon after, we bought two jogging strollers (a single and a double) and began to take the kids out on Saturday mornings. At first, seeing happy families hurt me, but we were on our way to the same — we were recapturing a little of life’s normalcy.
Five days before Thanksgiving, with the kids recovering from their latest illness and with me ill with bronchitis and delirious from sleep deprivation, my husband asked, “Did you sign us up for the Turkey Trot?” No, I hadn’t. It hadn’t crossed my mind, but I lay awake that night thinking about that family tradition. Could we do it?
* * *
On Thanksgiving Day, I am standing at the starting line of the Turkey Trot. I am facing in the direction of the hospital. I feel a chill down my spine, so I focus instead on the man standing beside me. He looks older, tired, with a few more gray hairs. When he smiles at me, I notice wrinkles around his eyes that weren’t there only a year ago. He leans over and kisses my forehead. We look ahead and notice the race has begun. I lean down into my husband’s double stroller and kiss the boys, tears welling up as they look back at me with wide eyes. Looking down at the stroller in front of me, I ask my daughter, “Ready, baby?”
“Daddy come?” my toddler inquires.
“Yes, baby, Daddy come,” I confirm.
“Babies come?” she responds.
“Yes, Daddy and babies will be with us, all of us running together.” And with that, I feel my breath leave my chest and the tears seep down my cheeks as I push us off into the race.
The run is hard, the hardest of my life. My chest burns from bronchitis, the weight of my toddler in the stroller drags on me, and my legs ache from lack of use. My husband and the twins pass us by and disappear into the crowd. I want to quit at mile 2, knowing I’ve taxed my body more than it can bear. My feet slow. And then my daughter, who seems to have finally caught on to what’s going on around her, looks up and says, “Running, Mommy?”
“Yes, baby. Mommy’s running.” No, I correct myself, “We’re all running, baby.” We’ve all been running for a year now. I think about those hard yards — my boys fighting for life and my daughter’s desperate race not to be forgotten in the chaos. I think about us as newlyweds, three years prior, the victory we felt in our veins versus the ghosts of our prior selves that we are today.
I push the stroller faster and force my legs to burn. I feel the pain my boys felt and push harder. We go faster. I feel the defeat my husband felt and push harder. I feel the loneliness of my toddler, and I run harder still. I feel the exhaustion, the heartbreak, the overwhelming hardship of our lives. And with tears streaming down my face and my lungs on fire, I push harder and faster.
Then I push my daughter across that finish line and don’t slow until I see my boys up ahead. I gasp for air, and my whole body shakes. I feel weak, empty and raw. But in this rawness, through blurry eyes, I see my family. We’ve come out on the other side. We’ve crossed the finish line, and the hard yards have been outrun. And though there isn’t a white picket fence, there is something more: a family built of strength and love, a family tested, and a family survived. We are a beautiful dream.
— Kristin Baldwin Homsi —