How my Polish Grandma launched my running career
Here is my Polish Grandma Nellie with me (back left) and my siblings. Grandma was born in 1892 and sadly she’s long since passed away; however my memory of her is still very strong.
When my siblings and I were younger, we visited her every week to help her around the house since my grandpa has passed away much earlier. My Mom would talk to her in Polish to write down her grocery list and we would go shop for her and bring the groceries back. This may amaze you, but she never drove a car in her entire life. And since there were no grocery delivery services back then, we filled the “instacart” role in her life.
When we got back from the grocery store, Grandma would have a plate piled high with ham sandwiches waiting for us. The bread was lavishly buttered (with real butter of course) and a bowl of pickles stood nearby. There were pastries for afterwards – kolacky cookies if it was around a holiday and that was a real treat.
Oh how she loved to see us eat.
Every time we visited, she would remark, “Chattle, you’re too skinny, eat, eat!” Her Polish accent transformed my name Cheryl in such an endearing way – I can still hear her voice with her accent and it warms my heart.
So went the visits and always, “Chattle, you’re too skinny, eat, eat!” That is, until after my freshman year of College.
It was my first visit of the summer and I was looking forward to that lavishly buttered ham sandwich. When we arrived, my grandma pinched my cheek (as she always did) and with a huge smile on her face exclaimed, “Chattle, you finally fat!!!”
I was horrified 😲
And so began my running career.
The rest of that summer I trudged around the perimeter of the local golf course and slowly (and I mean slowly) became a runner.
Back at school in the Fall, I signed up for my first 10k. I didn’t even know what that meant but my college roommate had run cross country in High School and she became my running mentor.
Now, I’m not saying I became a good runner or a fast runner, just that I was beginning to see and feel how running could possibly be just what I needed to continue to enjoy all those college carbs without piling on the weight.
Thanks Grandma! You were my very first motivational coach 😍
*If you’re wondering what NaNoWriMo is… it stands for National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is an annual event that began in 1999 as a challenge to writers to write a novel of 50,000 words in one month! Whew, crazy right? Not everyone uses this challenge to write a novel. Take me for example, I signed up for NaNoWriMo and challenged myself to write one blog post every day for a month and that is what you are seeing in these NaNoWriMo posts!!!