There’s only so many times, even with youth’s tenacity, that a person can run around a farm house and only come in second place. He was always fast, my cousin Shawn. And while I was happy for him, being related and all, I did want to beat him. We wore a path around our grandparents’ home. My bumper tennis shoes always just in the shadow of his latest trend from New Brighton. I mention it only because that was my first thought — it must be his city shoes that outran my local Iverson’s. Or, I hate to admit it, I did have the thought, well, maybe it was because he was a boy…even then I cringed and ran around again.

He was staying for a week. So I stayed too. Each day we ran in circles. Each day our grandfather walked to the field. Each morning we ate Kellogg’s cereal from the variety pack box. Fueled by pure sugar, we chased the morning down.

Sweaty and fed up with losing by Wednesday noon, I asked my grandfather when he returned for lunch, what was the difference between patience and enough already. He took two steps to my four and said, “work.” “I don’t get it,” I said. “You have to enjoy it somehow, the work of it, or there’s no point.” “But I keep losing?” “But are you having fun?” I started to think. I did like being here. Outside. Summer. Racing. Round and round. I did love it. I smiled and ran to the house.

I think about it now. How he never said anything about his lawn, about the paths we wore so very thin, while his patience never did. I’m sure in his head he must have gotten to “enough already,” with all those grandchildren. All those questions, but it never showed. I guess he loved us.

I can’t tell you if my blue bumper tennis shoes ever crossed the front sidewalk in first place. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. But I ran. We ran. Over and over. Around and under. Within summer’s warmth. And I won.

I’m still winning. Painting in my sketchbook daily, I suppose you could call it work, perhaps patience. Or am I carrying that farmer to his field, step by step? I have no need to finish. I keep on loving.