Running Uphill

Parenting with a chronic illness, finding good love, and running a race with my daughter.

At 8:15 p.m. last Saturday, Olive and I gathered with a few thousand other people bundled up against the sleet and cold, and together, we started running the Moonlight Race.

We ran six kilometres (3.7 miles) in total, the darkness gently cloaking us as we left the city lights behind and descended deep into the coulees of Lethbridge. Our passage was lit with headlamps and glow sticks, our feet fell heavy in the slush.

At the bottom of the hill, we would have to loop around and run back up again, back into the warm pools of light, right to the finish line.

This was Olive’s first race and she hadn’t ever expressed an interest in running — I’d just signed us up on a whim. I had no idea I’d be so glad I did.

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I sometimes get it into my head that Olive and I need a thing to do together—a hobby, a shared interest. There are dozens of things we love doing together, but there isn’t one singular thing we do to bond (Playing hockey! Mountain biking! Making miniature dollhouses!), and sometimes, it worries me.

I haven’t really had to try to appeal to Olive. I’m her mom, and she’s my daughter, and we find each other mutually delightful. So far, that’s been enough. I worry, though, that one day, that enoughness will fade, and without a shared interest or a reason to spend time together, our closeness will, too.

It’s hard, this shift. In the beginning, I was everything to her—life itself! I was a source of sustenance, safety, and comfort, with arms that rocked and kisses that healed wounds. My role as “Mummy” has always meant that she wants to be around me and confide in me, prefers me over anyone else.

Sometimes, when she was younger, the sheer force of that preference felt suffocating. The incessant talking and relentless need were exhausting; her dependence and insistence that I do everything sometimes required more than I had to give. I knew it wouldn’t last forever (and it hasn’t) but you’re never quite ready to move on to the next stage, you just suddenly look up one day and realize you’re already there.

That’s the bargain you strike in motherhood. Children grow up and, if you’ve done your job well, they grow away from you.

Sometimes, their small acts of independence take you by surprise. I remember volunteering in Olive’s preschool a few weeks after she’d started attending and watching with surprise as she moved so confidently through a world where I existed only on the periphery.

She knew all the different activity stations, the predictable classroom routines, and all the words to all the songs. It was wild to see her exist so comfortably in a place I didn’t know and hadn’t created.

She had the beginnings of her own life.

Now, at 11, her life is so much more fully formed. She has best friends and inside jokes and a shelf full of books I haven’t read.

I love seeing her step so boldly towards independence, but every so often, that tiny, panicked feeling sneaks up my spine, and I worry that one day, there will be nothing left to tether us together.