One day a couple of weeks ago, my sister and I started running at the exact same time, the same minute: 6:37am. We live 4 states and 16 hours driving time apart. We often run at about the same time in the mornings, mainly because we’re both moms who like getting the run done before the children wake up and demand breakfast (or avoid eating breakfast and require chasing to make them eat – whatever). That day, we were exactly in sync. We sometimes say we’re running together. 

But we’re apart. It sucks. To be fair, we live far apart, so we’d be separated anyway, but the pandemic has meant no visits when there would’ve been visits, and no runs on those visits when there would’ve been shared runs. I could’ve seen the paths around her new(ish) neighborhood that she likes to take, and she could’ve seen the ponds I like to circle to see the best fall leaves. We would’ve made it a point to choose our favorite paths during those visits and then been able to reference them later while we ran separately and talked about it afterwards. 

We are 7 years apart in age. When she was a teenager, I was the annoying kid in her house. She loved me, but I was annoying. I remember being annoying. No one disputes this. When she went to college, I was home for another 7 years before I went to college. That is such a long time for a kid. Our interests diverged, getting further and further apart. I started rowing, the first sport I chose for myself and a sport no one in my family had done or even considered. We had both played soccer growing up, but after college, she started running. Like really running. Suddenly she was training for a marathon. I’m still pretty sure I’ll never run a marathon. She’s run 9. 

When I started running longer distances to stay in shape for rowing and then transitioned to running as my main exercise after I was done rowing competitively, we had our first shared interest as adults. We ran turkey trots together wearing silly hats. We ran in the snow just because we were together. We traveled to each other’s towns for races we could run together. It became a deeper bond with each passing year. We came together through running.

And then, we had babies. We thought we had a bond before! We were brought even closer together over mom stuff – hilarious things our kids did or said, gross things that their little bodies did, scary or sad moments when we needed to lean on one another. Being moms, and specifically being moms trying to run and do it consistently, brought us closer than ever. I probably would never have thought to write this blog if it wasn’t for my sister and the conversations we’ve had about these very topics.  

So yes, we’re apart, just as all of us are physically distant these days for the most part. But I would argue that I am more connected to other humans than I have been in a long time, just because it’s become habit to be more intentional about reaching out to people. I still miss in-person human interaction, and I still miss my sister, but this is a lesson I hope to take with me post-coronavirus: we may be apart, but we can feel like we’re together. The things we share can allow us to transcend the distance between us. At this time of deeper division than ever before, we need connection and common ground.

Thanks for reading my blog. I hope you feel connected, even just for a minute.