After more than a year off, I resumed running regularly last month, when Daughter 1 was 7 and Daughter 2 was 7 months. Physically, it’s been like starting all over: ragged breathing, achy legs and the inability to do anything more than plod oh-so-slowly down the road.

This time, however, I have a mental edge: I know I’ll eventually be able to run longer and faster, if I just keep putting one foot in front of the other. And I am more determined than ever to keep going.

———

I run for all the obvious reasons: my health, the stamina to chase my soon-to-be waddler, the desire to live long enough to hold my grandbabies.

Mostly, though, I run because I can.

Eight months ago, an illness complicated by my pregnancy and delivery landed me in the hospital for 11 days. I was dehydrated and anemic, even after six bags of dark-red blood and more than a dozen bags of clear liquid dripped and were pumped into any vein that would cooperate, turning the undersides of both arms into a tie-dye of purple and yellow and blue.

I could barely push my IV pole as I shuffled down the carpeted corridor in too-big slippers, bought the day I went into labor, when nothing would fit my swollen right foot but an old running sneaker with the laces stretched wide. Taking my racing pulse after four laps around the nurse’s station, I wondered when I’d be well enough to go home to my girls. I couldn’t imagine when I’d run again.

———

Today, I’m on my old loop, hoping to run just a little farther than last time. It has been a morning of small domestic challenges: fussy baby, spilled milk, lost goggles and a question, sprung by Daughter 1 after swimming lessons and before lunch: "Why do boys and girls have to have separate bathrooms?"

The road is flat, but I’m not really appreciating that right now. I’m hot, my hamstrings are stiff and I’m nearly gasping for air — yet I’m going so slow I feel like I’m not getting anywhere.

I can feel my shoulders slumping. There aren’t even any hills. If I can’t do this now, how will I go twice as far — and have the strength to run up Bugbee Hill — in a few months?

I picture myself at the top of the hill and remember the thrill of gliding down, wind at your back; the quick release, legs gathering momentum, pounding forward, faster and faster until they are almost, but not quite, out of control. I tell myself I will make it home without stopping to walk.

And I do.

———

Afterward, I gulp water, stretch my legs, wipe the sweat from my forehead. Holding my hand a few inches from my flaming cheeks, I can feel the heat radiating out into the air.

I’m in the shower when I hear a baby crying. I cock my head and listen.

The girls are in the living room down the hall, but the window is open. I figure maybe it’s one of the kids next door, turn back to the shaving cream and my thoughts.

"A-heh, a-heh, waaah!" There it is again, intermittent but insistent, and too loud to be coming from outside. I put down the shaving cream and peek around the edge of the shower curtain.

Daughter 2 is standing at the doorway in her red and yellow plastic walker, chubby legs and bare feet pushing off the wood floor in a frog-like attempt to lunge forward. But the base of the walker is too wide, and it bumps at the door jambs. She has not yet mastered backing up, and there’s not enough room to turn around. So she stands there, stuck, and whines at the pink and blue fish on the shower curtain.

A drooly grin spreads across her face when she sees me. And suddenly, I’m not thinking of the hurdles I’ve jumped to get here, or the hills that lie ahead.

In this moment, all I can do is smile.

———

Lisa Miller is a freelance writer who lives in Oneonta. She can be reached at lisamiller44@hotmail.com.