“That’s a lot of laps,” he said.
He was talking about my story about the pond and the things I saw as I ran around four times. He was supporting his brother, trying to encourage him. He’s been trying for so long, and all his brother has to offer as evidence is four laps around a little pond.
“No,” I wanted to say. “Those four laps were not a lot.”
Not so long ago, just a few years or maybe a bit more, I worked near this pond where I was running yesterday. The building was just down the street from where I work now, as a matter of fact. And back then, a friend and I would sometimes run around the pond after work and marvel at the stones on the path in the woods and gawk at the ducks. We would run five or six laps at great speed, sometimes tripping on the rocks, sometimes stopping early because we were winded, sometimes heading down the dike following a winding path into the woods that went who knows where.
Now those laps were a lot of laps.
Of course I love my brother, and his words of encouragement were sunshine on my heart. But let’s be honest: yesterday’s laps were not a lot. Those four times past the old Indian men walking and sitting on the bench were not a lot. The four times over the little wooden footbridge. The four times past the playscape with the toddlers screaming with glee. No, those laps were not a lot.
But they were something. And that something was something enough.