A dear friend of mine has a curious disdain--she loathes sidewalks.
Her draconian rationale follows the Emersonian notion that one should make a new path rather than follow an established one. I've certainly teased her for her insistence on following an ideal that encourages the masses to revert to a once-untrodden path, which is perhaps a Frosty treatment of my friend's insistence on opting for the road not taken.
I thought of her, then, when I lined up last Saturday morning for the Race for the Cure in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. Started in 1983 in Dallas with a humble gathering of 800 participants, the 5K road race now boasts 1.5 million runners and raises $136 million annually across the world. Its purpose is to fend off breast cancer, a disease which inflicts one in eight women. One of those eight is my mother.
She participated in her first and only Race for the Cure in 1995, just months after her aunt passed away from the disease. At the time, she was running an oft-ignored road, as only 2,500 people braved the experience. I was not among the runners that year, so I stood at the final turn, awaiting my mother's steady jog, and as she approached, she wiped her eyes and beckoned me to finish the race with her. We crossed the line together, her having run with teardrop stains dotting her white Race for the Cure T-shirt.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer that January, a battle which she has fought stringently ever since in arenas ranging from hospital beds to Church pews to, eventually, Race for the Cure board rooms. She stopped running the metaphorical race when she was diagnosed, and has been sprinting a much truer, more challenging one ever since--both for herself and for all the others she helps with her administrative involvement with the Race. She carries out those duties while others run in her stead.
At the start line last Saturday, I considered the history of my mother-a survivor-- whom I would soon be representing in the Race for a fifth time. She'd now lost two aunts and a grandmother to this disease, yet she was moving on, blazing her own pink-lined path, as every survivor of breast cancer adorns pink the day of the race.
The starting gun was fired, and I began my brief stint in racing for the cure, considering the wonderfully adept and suitable, though perhaps overused, metaphors for running and for roads and for life all the while. The course was decorated with pink ribbons, and was itself dotted with brave women in pink who'd managed to run this race, as well.
This road was packed with individuals the entire way--23,000, despite a cold and pestering rain--a site which was most overwhelming as the course dipped, showing a horde of runners on the horizon. They had followed the course set forth for them, and I'd followed the trail in their wake. That course had been set by those for whom we ran, those survivors, who had collectively stomped out their own path with the hope that others would soon follow.
So as I came to the final turn, comfortably packed in the middle of this army of runners, I strode onward, hopeful that soon this race could provide a victory for those which it honored, for those which it hoped to save.
The Race for the Cure is usually dubbed as one that everyone wins. To an extent, that is true--it is empowering as the son of a survivor to be able to not feel so helpless, to be able to pound the pavement with frustration, to join so many others in this mass of hope. And that has a made a great difference. But there are so many others who will someday be forced to take a detour from life as they know it onto a new path when they are diagnosed with breast cancer.
So I ran for my mother, and I ran for my aunts, and I ran for my friends' mothers, and I ran for all the women still running the race, and I ran for all the women who took the road to heaven instead. These are the reasons why we all ran. But we have promises to keep--to do whatever we can to support those for whom there are many miles yet to go.
I was still able to find solace in the face of the daunting uncertainty of the length of that journey, however, which may await so many unfortunate women and their families. As the participants of the race flowed to their cars, the horde of people could not walk along the sidewalk. There were too many of them for the sidewalk to hold.
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