“If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on, now,
‘Cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see.”
I’ve been packing up La Casa Lindgren for the last couple of days. Getting ready for a move and still not even sure where I’ll be going. Will certainly remain in Omaha until my dear sweet Katie finishes up at Millard West in 2014. It will fly by I’m sure.
“‘Cause I’m as free as a bird now,
And this bird you can not change.
Oh… oh… oh… oh… oh…
And the bird you cannot change.
And this bird you cannot change.
Lord knows I can’t change.”
It has been cathartic and liberating to throw away files and notes and pictures and assorted detritus that has accumulated over the last 12 years, the longest I’ve lived at any one address since childhood.
“Bye, bye, baby it’s been a sweet love.
Yea, yea
Though this feeling I can’t change.
But please don’t take it so badly,
‘Cause the lord knows I’m to blame.”
It has been a love affair with 18312 Ontario St. But I’m too restless to consider staying here very much longer at all. Part of my final decree, I insisted, out by Dec. 1st. Too many memories, many good, but the bad ones still reverberate in the bones of the house, reminding what brought me to this point in the first place.
“But, if I stayed here with you girl,
Things just couldn’t be the same.
Cause I’m as free as a bird now,
And this bird you can not change.”
And ain’t that the truth. I’ve tried to please others by attempting to change my nature, only to return to my one true self. The one I can accept and live with. WYSIWYG, I’m done pretending to be something I’m not and can never be.
Those that know me, those that love me, those that get me, they understand. The rest can go their own way and please stay out of mine. I just want to spend the next couple of years doing what I love to do, what I am meant to do. Finish raising my Katie, run most every day, do some coaching and road race management, guide Team Nebraska, enjoy good food, an occasional beer, and feel free and alive. Stuff the drama, the cliques, the whispers, the malcontents. I’m done with that and petition for reciprocity. Life is too short as it is and at my age each moment becomes cherished, not to be wasted in a cage.
Working in a running store has its bennies. A couple pair of Mizunos, the Wave Rider 16 and the Wave Precision both seeded by our shoe rep. Free Birds indeed, I’m digging the feel, function and form. Non restricting, non binding, freedom on the open road. ‘Cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see.
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