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Ending is Beginning
A Winspeed story
Sheri Bedford
12-99
"What are you running away from,
Betsy?"
"Routine, staidness, slavishness."
"But your life isn't in any way routine. You have your league
activities, garden club…You run , for gosh sake! How many ladies your age do
that?"
"Will you quit that?" said Betsy Winspeed peevishly. She
wasn't up to Esther's banter today. She felt restless. She had to get away.
"Is it because it's the New Year…New Millennium? Is that
what's getting you down?"
'Esther's known me too long,' Betsy thought. Her old friend wasn't
going to stop the questions that easily.
Betsy remembered all the New Year's Eve birthday parties she'd planned
for Ernie.
"What a great time for a birthday," Ernie had always said.
"Everyone is out celebrating it. They're full of joy and laughter."
Betsy looked at Esther…stolid, dependable, clasping her mug of
coffee in her hand, her square form planted firmly in the wooden chair. She was a
foundation that never wavered.
Betsy sighed.
"I don't know what I'm running away from. But I feel boxed into a
life I've grown out of. I'm not like I used to be since Ernie died, Esther."
"Then do something about it." Esther plunked the mug onto the
table and stared hard.
Betsy ran her hands through her short curls and closed her eyes.
"I'm going to," she said. She opened her eyes and looked at
her friend.
"Esther, I've got to run."
Esther hoisted herself from the chair, placed her mug in the sink and
picked up her large handbag.
"It's early, but I'm going shopping," she said. " Thanks for the coffee.
You better shape up. You've been depressed for weeks. It's not like you and it's no fun
for your friends."
The screen door shut with a decided click.
'She's right,' Betsy thought. 'This isn't me at all. I'm agitated,
ill-at ease, unhappy.'
She gathered the dishes off the table, rinsed them and stacked them in
the dishwasher.
'This is what I mean,' she thought. 'I'm no longer the dishwasher,
charity worker, housecleaner. At what people call this "autumn" stage of my
life, I've become someone else: an active, athletic, independent person. And I like the
new me too much to remain the retired stay-at-home
housewife.'
She laced on her running shoes, grabbed her warm-ups, and
then…stopped.
'What I need is a change…a new place to run…someplace
different from Sarasota streets and neighborhoods…a different place with a different
feel, a place away from my routine running sites.'
Betsy sat in her car and shuffled through the local maps.
What about Anna Maria Island? This run in a new venue might be a first
small step in her escape. Betsy found her key in the ignition and a smile on her face.
The drive was short. She locked the car and jogged from the sandy parking lot of Holmes
Beach.
A green parrot screeched its buzzy call from the top of a sea grape.
The tree's round leaves fluttered like fans. Betsy looked up at the bird's friendly face.
It cocked its head and blinked brightly down at her, then streaked off silently
to…where?
On a nearby wire a pair of mourning doves sobbed soulfully at each
other. Betsy frowned at them.
' That's not what I want to be anymore. I'm not a drab beige
dove-person, mourning the death of a dear one long gone. I'm a green parrot: bright, fast
moving, exploring new territory.'
She jogged slowly down the road by the Gulf. The whisper of the waves
soothed her. She ran a long time…a long, slow distance, a meditative pace, thinking
of how to re-invent the Betsy Winspeed of the past.
Pink, shell-like houses with picket fences nestled among yellow or
white clapboard mini-homes on stilts, each house a tiny individual expression of its
owner's pride. Names like Sandy Toes and Pirate's Den decorated the modest motels hugging
the beach. Early walkers called a relaxed good
morning to Betsy as she ran. Anna Maria Island seemed to emit a comforting feeling of
away-ness, of stress-less-ness instead of restlessness.
Betsy felt its warmth.
'I don't want to be a mourning dove any more. What do I need to do to
become who I want to be? Running is just the beginning. I won't play that old role
anymore…the role of the grieving widow looking for someone to make everything all
better. I may not be able to run away from the
yearning, but I can fill up the empty space Ernie's passing left with my own strength.'
'Where will that strength come from?'
Betsy ran on, listening for the answer in the rhythm of the waves on
the shore.
The ancient waves, unchanging, ever-present. She was grateful for their comforting sound.
That was where her strength lay…in gratitude! Betsy
sprang forward, a little leap of acknowledgment
'I can be grateful for the past. Rather than thinking of it as a box,
why can't I see it as a building block, a stepping stone to the new experience of me as an
independent happy person?'
The green parrot alighted at the top of a palm in front of her as Betsy
stopped, a little breathless, back at her car. She smiled up at him.
Her running getaway on Anna Maria had revealed a healing view. Loss is
really gain. Seeking is finding.
'I don't need to run from that empty spot inside me. I can fill
it with gratitude. It may not be an ending, but it is a beginning.'
Copyright © Sheri Bedford 1999
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