Looking on the bright side of staying young at heart

As I race - literally- across Manhattan's subways and streets to get to pick-up at the very last minute, my mind is clear and I can't help marveling.

Here I am, racing yet again. I am no longer a high school kid late to school, or a single in Berlin dashing into the cold to meet someone for beer. 

I am a well seasoned mom, with some grey hairs, a very established job. I'm someone who cleans dishes every night, looks at bathroom renovations with interest, can't fit into size 6 anything.

But I'm still running to get there. Sure, there is a new desire to stop every few blocks for breath that makes it physically clear to me that I'm also different than I once was, but - as I run through the premature darkness at 5:55 pm on a mild New York November evening- I feel like nothing has really actually honestly changed. 

And because I'm in a good mood today, I want to read that positively. I want to embrace the running-late soul that is deep inside of me and that makes the 41-year-old Rebecca so fundamentally like the 15-year-old one. 

So much around me has changed- starting with the world (the Wall, the presidents, the technology), my context (the job, the family, to some degree my convictions), and my own physical self. 

But some things have not. Likely these include my ideas. But if who-I-am is measured by what-I-think-- it's simply harder to remember to what extent i have stayed constant or changed. Or have I only changed marginally as new experiences have layered one on the other? Is there something like an ethic or an impetus or a vision that stays the same? But if I want to learn, don't I want to change, and so not be like my younger self? The level of ideas and identity is deeply complex. There's nothing intuitive about it.

But some of these most basic feelings and even more, some of those scenes I've been privy to before- I recognize them. I know in my bones what it feels like to run- and to feel for a moment late, yes, but also free in some strange but real way. Free to pass everyone else, to be one with a beautiful night, to move my body as fast as I am able. 

I'd like to capture those moments that are quintessentially me. To read a book on and on and it feels like time is stopping - it will be irresponsible in the morning, but in the middle of the night it's just quiet and endless and all-absorbing. To ride a bike and feel my small revolutions set off larger gears and pull a huge wheel across the road at my bidding. To laugh hard. To run late.