From his birth, and for the first several years of my nephew's life, he and I were specially bonded.  There was nowhere in the world he would rather be than Aunt Kat's house, and there was no one in the world who could bring me the kind of joy I found in his little smile.  Those years hold some of the most precious memories of my life. 

As Charlie began to grow up, however, I noticed that we were losing that bond.  He was maturing and changing, and I didn't have as prominent a place in his life.  I continued to attend most of his year-round sporting events, and interacted with him minimally in family settings, but any meaningful connection seemed to have disappeared or at least  had become obscured.

Understanding that children grow up, and that their many phases are natural, I accepted my new role as a loving observer of his life, elated to take advantage of any rare chance to bond with him, and of course I prayed for his maturity and for a new discovering of our bond, in its time.

Well, I had no idea when I started to run that my running might be the answer to my prayers!  I invited Charlie to run a 5K with me last July, his first distance race and my second.  Charlie was as gifted an athlete as an 11-year-old could be, in football, baseball, basketball, and anything else he decided to try, but endurance running was new to him.  I was just learning to run distances, and we both had to walk a short distance of that 5K, but surprisingly he finished only 12 seconds behind my 34:35.  Exhausted and not accustomed to not being a "winner", I wasn't sure he'd ever want to run another 5K.

One weekend last December, however, I mentioned to him that I was running again the following Saturday, and did he want to join me.  "I might," he said.  Within the next couple of days that became a yes, and we began to make our plans.  I picked him up after work on Friday to spend the night, and it was like old times.  We loaded up on pasta to be all "carbed up" for the run, and then we had a movie night (Nacho Libre and Polar Express). 

On Saturday morning we got up to 30-something degree temperatures and laughed together at how crazy we were for going out to run in the cold.  But it turned out to be a most wonderful experience!  He won the pre-5K half-mile "fun run" for ages 18 and under, and then he stayed right beside me throughout most of the 5K, keeping up with my pace until sometime in the final mile, when he fell back.  It wasn't long, however, before I heard running shoes approaching, and just as I hoped, Charlie was in them!  With the finish line about a tenth of a mile away, I said, "Go for it, Charlie!  I don't have any energy left to sprint it out.  Go get it!"  He sprinted about a step and admitted "I can't do it either, Aunt Kat," but I knew he would.  As we neared the finish, he grinned at me as he yelled "bye", and  turned it on full speed to beat me to the finish!  And we finished in 29:34 and 29:36, a significant improvement from before!

He was awarded a medal for winning the "fun run", and a trophy for placing 3rd in his age division in the 5K.  He couldn't stop talking about it all, and the first thing he said when I took him home was "I want to do the next one!"

We're now anticipating "the next one!"  April 28 we will run together again, and I'm sure my days of being able to keep up with him are limited!  I'm enjoying them while I can!  Running has restored our bond.  We never know how God will answer our prayers!

CHARLIE then and now: