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Running

You've never been a soccer mom. More like a library mom.

But the gingerbread boy had taken up cross-country. He stays after school for practices, takes the bus to meets, and is in possession of a jersey.

So, you, de facto, become one of the sideline moms, cheering loudly. You love it. In fact, you love cross-country more than the gingerbread boy does, whose enthusiasm has waned with each footfall, each mile run.

The home meets are at an apple orchard, where the team races through paths in the forest, around ponds, past the orchard where bees drunkenly buzz circles around the runners.

You, with your childhood in the city, can only imagine the magic of running a race through a forest, through an apple orchard, past bridges and streams, past hundred-year old graveyards, in the New England autumn.

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