Turn 132 of 233

In the morning ask Sina about running regularly. She agrees

The morning comes slow and warm through the bungalow windows and the prediction was right — there are three children on Lena. The three-year-old is on her chest and the ten-year-old is across her legs and the eight-year-old is sideways with the glove somehow still on his left hand. Kimo is in the car seat beside the couch and he is awake and humming and his dark eyes are tracking the ceiling fan and the fan clicks and the boy is calm. Lena doesn't move. The weight of the children is weight and weight is not uncomfortable anymore and weight has not been uncomfortable for a long time.

Sina is in the kitchen. The coffee is going and the rice is going and the spam is in the pan and the sounds are the morning sounds of the bungalow. She is still in the sports bra and the tiny shorts. She slept in them. She didn't shower. The salt lines are still there and the feet are still raw and the not-caring is still complete and Lena watches her through the doorway and the watching is the recognition of a pattern — the pattern of a woman who has stopped caring about the things that don't matter and started caring about the things that do.

Lena shifts the three-year-old gently and sits up and the children rearrange like liquid and the ten-year-old rolls to the floor and the eight-year-old stays sideways and the three-year-old is on the couch now and the glove boy doesn't wake up. Kimo is lifted and settled into the harness and the boy is against the tribal ink and the humming vibrates against her chest and the morning is warm.

"We should do this every week," Lena says from the couch. "The run. Saturdays. My place, five AM. Thirty miles. You do what you can do and I do the rest."

Sina turns from the stove. The spatula is in her hand and the spam is sizzling and her face is the face of a woman who ran thirty miles yesterday after four years of not running and whose feet are shredded and whose body is sore and who is standing in a kitchen in clothes she has worn for thirty-six hours straight.

"Every week," Sina says.

"Every week."

"Thirty miles."

"You don't have to do thirty. You build up. You did thirty yesterday but you don't have to do thirty every week. We do what your body says."

Sina plates the spam and the rice and brings two plates to the couch and sits beside Lena and the couch sags under them and the plates are full and the coffee is black and the morning is the morning. Sina eats and her feet are on the floor and the feet are raw and pink and the calluses are already forming where the old calluses split and the body is rebuilding itself the way bodies do.

"I used to run every morning," Sina says. "In American Samoa. On the beach. Ten miles. Before the kids. Before everything. I stopped because life happened and I didn't think I could start again."

"You started again."

"I started again," Sina says. The voice is quiet and the quiet is not sad. It is the quiet of a woman who is looking at the thing she stopped doing and the thing she is doing again and the distance between them is thirty miles and four years and a dead husband and three children and a bungalow in Gainesville and the distance is closing.

"Every Saturday. Five AM. I'll be there."

Kimo hums against Lena's chest and the coffee is hot and the spam is salty and the children are waking and the morning is warm and the structure holds.