It’s inevitable when you’re divorced, I suppose, that some holidays you’ll be celebrating (if that’ the right word) without your children around. Generally we do pretty well with our parenting schedule and it’s a rare holiday that I don’t have at least one kid in the mix, and frankly, with three to go around, we should be able to pull this off, right? 🙂
Still, it’s Memorial Day and my kids are with their Mom and I’m flying solo, as if it’s just another day and not a holiday at all.
The wrinkle? Today is also the Bolder Boulder, a 10K run/walk event here in my home town that pulls about 50,000 people onto the course. Yup, that’s 50K, it’s the second biggest marathon by numbers in the United States, and the waves of people are never-ending…
I’ve lived in Boulder for years and never run/walked the Bolder Boulder. I think that’s mostly because I think about the “running” part and I’m not un-athlethic, but I’m not a runner by any means, and the idea of running 6+ miles makes my feet hurt.
This year, however, my kids are walking the Bolder Boulder with mom and a group of her friends. My son wanted to run the course with me and my ex initially agreed, but after some confusion and miscommunication, he was out of the mix and I faced the prospect of doing the 10K without any of my kids or even any friends (none of them, as far as I know, participated this year).
I could have joined the school group that ran, but that seemed even worse, being with a group of parents and kids… without my kids. That just didn’t seem right and seemed rather to underscore that my kids weren’t with me.
And so I sit here, downtown, at my usual café watching the race go past the window, thousands of people walking, running, dancing, in costume and not, kids, parents, grandparents. Looks like it would have been really fun, but this Memorial Day, this holiday, I’m sans niños.
And so it goes…