Someone asked me once, why do we do all that natural childbirth
breathing during readings, all that Lamaze.
[EXHALES DEEPLY]
[LAUGHTER]
I said, I learned that from Ron Guidry,
who does that on the mound in a particularly touchy situation.
[LAUGHTER]
Maybe he learned it from his wife.
Actually, I never thought of that.
[LAUGHTER]
But I need breath for this.
"The Race."
"When I got to the airport, I rushed up to the desk.
And they told me the flight was canceled.
The doctors had said my father would not
live through the night.
And the flight was canceled.
A young man with a dark blond mustache
told me another airline had a non-stop leaving
in seven minutes.
See that elevator over there?
It will go down to the first floor.
Make a right.
You'll see a yellow bus.
Get off at the second Pan Am terminal.
I ran.
I, who have no sense of direction,
raced exactly where he told me, like a fish slipping
upstream deftly against the flow of the river.
I jumped off that bus with my heavy bags and ran.
The bags wagged me from side to side, as if
to prove I was under the claims of the material.
I ran up to a man with a white flower on his breast.
I, who always go to the end of the line, I said, help me.
He looked at my ticket.
He said, make a left and then a right,
go up through the stairs, and then round.
I raced up, moving stairs two at a time.
At the top, I saw the long hollow corridor.
And then I took a deep breath.
I said goodbye to my body, goodbye to comfort.
I used my legs and heart as if I would gladly
use them up for this to touch him again in this life.
I ran.
And the big heavy dark bags banged me,
wheeled and swam around me like planets in wild orbits.
I have seen pictures of women running down roads
with their belongings tied in black scarves, grasped
in their fists.
Running under serious gray historical skies,
I blessed my long legs he gave me.
My strong heart, I abandoned to its own purpose.
I ran to gate 17.
And they were just lifting the thick white lozenge
of the door to fit it into the socket of the plane.
Like the man who is not too rich, I turned to the side
and slipped through the needles eye.
And then I walk down the aisle toward my father.
The jet was full.
And people's hair was shining.
They were smiling.
The interior of the plane was filled with a mist
of gold endorphin light.
I wept as people weep when they enter heaven,
in massive relief.
We lifted up, gently from one tip of the continent,
and did not stop until we set down lightly on the other edge.
I walked into his room, and watched his chest rise slowly,
and think: again.
All night, I watched him breathe."