Merry Christmas

On Mother's Day every year, well, for the last 8 years, the boys and I have run a 5k.  Rockies HomeRun for the Homeless.

You get to run downtown Denver, you get to run in Coors Field (Denver Rockies Baseball Stadium).  The race starts at 8am.  By 9:00 am you are sitting in the stands eating a hot dog and drinking a beer.

We started this tradition by ourselves.  Then we another family we knew ran with their three sons.  Then my mom walked one year.  Then another family and their two boys ran that year.  Then their parents joined us. Then, on and on and on.

Springtime in the Rockies is a very unpredictable thing.  It can be 90 degrees one day - then 40 the next.  Everything can be in perfect bloom - the grass is green, the apple trees have blooms on them - then BOOM - it's snowing.

We had a very mild winter.  The boys didn't have one "snow" day. I think, maybe, we shoveled the walk once.  It was cold and dreary, but not snowy.  The mountains?  They got snow.  Lots of snow.

This year?  It was in the seventies yesterday.  It was perfect.  Then it was cloudy.  Then it was windy.

It rained all night.  We awoke to drizzle this morning.

It never rains in Denver in the morning.

I wake the boys up.  I get a text from my friends whom we now all do this together.  Me, my sons.  My girlfriends.  Their sons.  Their sons friends. One husband.  One boyfriend.  One mom & dad. (meaning mom & dad of us moms).  Our own little tribe.

Are we really doing this?

Even me, I didn't want to do it.  It was 37 degrees raining and starting to sleet.  But, yet, it was still not bitter cold - (until mile 2, then you turned and it was pelting you in the face).

I answered the text:  "Please tell your children labor was harder than this".

We all did it.  We all ate our hot dogs (no beer this year - it was just too cold - the weather, not the beer).

Then, at the end of the day we have our "cook-out".  The tradition also started 8 or so years ago, where the kids cook.

It's ebbed and flowed.  The crowd has changed, some have been added and some have left, but there is a group of us - well, make that 20 of us that make this happen every year.

The kids cook, the moms are served, then everyone else is served too.  It's a potluck cook-out with all of us, together as families.

This year, as the boys were cleaning up, we are laughing about the snow and the feeling of community when people gather.  We were joking that it was really hard not to say "Merry Christmas" when everyone left.

As it was a sense of community and family and gratitude, with snow on the ground.....

Happy Mother's Day.  Or Merry Christmas.  Or whatever this means to you.