Ain't No Shame

When I was in grad school, I wanted to get to know everyone, to fit in even though I was the ancient one in my thirties with a husband, a hound dog, and actual children. I couldn’t hang out late night on porches or linger in coffee shops in the morning with my peers. I commuted and went home to make dinner, bathe children, and cram my homework in late at night.

But I wanted to belong, to be an official grad student, an official fiction writer after waiting so long, with so much of my life already lived. Or at least, in those tired years of parenting, it felt that way. So, I joined the MFA running group.

I had been a runner in a past life. I had run half marathons several years before. I could do it again. Maybe. I was not fast, by any means, and I was a little out of shape. I had just come back from a visit to Italy and had brought back all the pasta and bread I had eaten that summer. But I wanted to get fit. I wanted to have a community. So, I laced up my shoes, hit the road, and began.

Michael Parker, a fiction writer and our teacher, was a fast runner, a distance runner, and we all collected around him, as if his speed and agility with writing and running would somehow transmit to us. Writers are not, generally, the super athletic type. They are known for their bad habits, their bookishness, their pallor. There is plenty of truth in those stereotypes. That, perhaps, is why Michael dubbed this running group the “Ain’t No Shamers.” As in, “Ain’t no shame in running a 12-minute mile.” Which I did at first. We all got a little faster, got better at writing, made a few friends. In short, we tried, without worrying that we might be ridiculed.

I am thinking of the “Ain’t no shamers” as the year begins. I want nothing to do with shame anymore because it comes along with its brother fear. Who has time for that? I may run again this year, and I will probably be back to 12-minute miles. The body forgets when it comes to fitness. Ain’t no shame in that. I will work on my goal of getting 100 rejections for my writing, which means that maybe I’ll get a few acceptances too. Ain’t no shame. I will celebrate my 54th birthday in February, and be thrilled to have made it so far. Ain’t. No. Shame. I will move forward, and find ways to make this year a year of play and celebration and wonder. I will, as Wendell Berry says, “Be joyful, though I have considered the facts.” Ain’t no shame in that.