My mother, a poet and surgeon, used to run a mile outside every day. She was a self-declared member of the by-your-own-honor club, whose only dictate was that every member must—you guessed it—run at least one mile outside, every day. For six years, come rain or shine, sleet or hail, international flight or minor surgery (despite us begging her not to), the woman could be found outdoors heels slapping ground for at least five thousand two hundred and eighty feet. Mom died in July 2016. Throughout my first few years of medical school, I struggled to find ways to connect with her memory. And then, one day, I found myself lacing up my sneakers and headed outside, my shoes slapping Philadelphia pavement. And then the next day, again. And again. And again.
I have long since passed the 200-day mark, and I have no plans of stopping anytime soon. And somewhere along the way, poetry snuck in. Now for every day that I run, I write a haiku in my running app. Usually they are a rather silly reflection of my state of mind; sometimes they reflect the broader world. Below is a selection of some of these verses created during this tumultuous and surreal spring. From dog-sitting for friends to (slightly inebriated) running conversations, to watching the world don her springtime cloak, these verses have been one of the means by which I have processed the Coronavirus pandemic. The first in this series (Day 221) was written on March 10.
E. Berryhill McCarty is an MS4 at the Perelman School of Medicine. Berryhill can be reached by email at [email protected].
