Box Girl

by Lilibet Snellings

  The only presents my dad does like are ones that don’t cost any money. When I ran cross-country at the University of Colorado and my brother played golf at the University of North Carolina, my dad received every possible university-logoed item: socks, hats, shoes, T-shirts, golf balls, women’s-sized shoes. He didn’t care, as long as it was free. When I worked at the agency, I raided the supply room for gifts. That year he got boxes of pens, staples, paper clips, a bundle of highlighters. I’ve never seen him so proud.

  While my brother is more willing to spend money on presents, he never purchases any of them until the day before. “I’m just headed out to get a coffee,” he’ll say, meaning: “I’m going to the shopping center down the street to buy all of your presents.” Fortunately, there’s a bookstore, but aside from books, his presents are useless. Over the years, he has given me a George Foreman grill (how was I going to get it back to California?), a Slap Chop (“As seen on TV!”), foot cream, and a pair of men’s socks. His last-minute wrapping jobs are a vision as well: always an abstract experiment in torn paper and Scotch Tape. (I don’t think he’s ever used scissors.) Selfishly, I like it when he lacks creativity and just gives me money. This, however, is never your standard affair. One year he wrapped up a crumpled handful of bills—whatever was on top of his dresser, I’m sure. It totaled sixty-eight dollars. The card read: “Dear Lilibet, I hope this helps get you back above the poverty line.”

  My extended family is not into traditional gifts, either. Since I was sixteen, my Uncle Ross, who is also my godfather, has given me liquor for Christmas: a bottle of pink champagne, some fruit-flavored vodka. Because the rest of the family started getting jealous, Uncle Ross now arrives each Christmas with a cardboard box full of booze—sometimes the bottles are wrapped, sometimes not—and hands them out like Santa Claus (or maybe like a fake Mall Santa who has a drinking problem): Scotch for my dad, some obscure beer for my brother, a bottle of merlot for my mom.

  My Aunt Kirkley is also known for her gag gifts, though it’s hard to call them “gag” because all of her presents fall under this category. Because she is a flight attendant, I think she buys most of her presents at the airport. My last gift from her was a solar-powered clock in the shape of a sunflower, which bobs its head and flaps its leaves when exposed to direct sunlight.

  A friend asked my dad one year if we had any Christmas Day traditions, like playing a game of flag football. (I guess this is what The Kennedys did.) My dad thought about it for a minute, then replied, “No, we generally just sit around, drink Bloody Marys, and insult each other.” I come from a long line of wise-assess. Being funny is a must with this group. Everyone is always trying to outwit one another with the notes on their gift tags, and the more absurd the present, the better. The worst wrapping job wins.

  Sitting around the dining room table for supper on Christmas afternoons, my dad will say, “Cheers,” clinking a spoon against his wine glass. “To your mother, who managed to only burn two of the five casseroles this year.” I’ll look around the table. Yet again, my mom has found a way to put pecans in every single dish. Somehow, every year, she manages to forget that her daughter is deathly, gone-to-the-emergency-room-four-times allergic to nuts. My grandmother refuses to believe this. “That is just the wildest thing I’ve ever heard,” she’ll say, heaping a giant piece of pecan pie on my plate. Picking at the crust, I’ll decide the only way to avoid anaphylaxis is to drink my dinner. So I’ll dive nose first into a glass of Cabernet so large, a small bird could bathe in it.

  An hour later, after everyone has gone back for many helpings, and me for many refills, my teeth will be stained purple. I’ll get up to go to the bathroom and, while zigzagging back to the table, I’ll think, As crazy as they are, I love these people. I’ll plop down in my chair and put my elbows on the table. “All I have to say,” I’ll slur, “is that we are not taking a goddamn Christmas card picture this year.”

  My mom, still in her monogrammed apron, will say, “For goodness sake, Lilibet, don’t say that word. It’s Christmas.” She’ll shake the ice in her fifth vodka-cran. “Now be a lady and fix your grandfather another drink.”

  Alone

  I am a textbook Gemini, a true “twin,” which basically just means I’m schizophrenic. While one part of me—Social Me—loves to be in the middle of the action, to make an entrance, to make people laugh, the other part of me—Solitary Me—practically breaks out in hives when my cell phone rings. I met a guy at a cocktail party, also a Gemini, and he summed it up better than I ever could. He said, “Either I am running the party or I am in a bathrobe, in the dark, watching Spanish television.” (Never mind the fact that Peter and I are both Geminis, which is like four people in one relationship. On any given day, we’re never quite sure which two people are going to show up.)

  Writing speaks to this half-ness that consumes me so wholly. Writing feeds my need to connect and be alone at the same time. I want to write words that people will read, but in endeavoring to do so, I get the pure, uninterrupted luxury of being by myself. In the box, I get the best of both worlds, too: I am alone and not alone at the same time.

  Smiling

  I was wearing white shorts with pink flowers, a matching pink T-shirt, and a pair of Keds with no socks the first time I ran The Mile. My stringy blonde hair was not even pulled into a ponytail. I was in the fifth grade. This was back before we had to change clothes for gym class—that started in the sixth grade, around the same time we were told to start wearing deodorant. Running The Mile was part of the “Physical Fitness Challenge,” a national standardized test. My elementary school didn’t have a track, so a loop was constructed out of mini orange cones on the soccer field. Our gym teacher, Coach Caginello, was rotund around the midsection and always outfitted in a two-piece jogging suit that seemed to be sewn from the same material as the parachute we played with on rainy days. Coach’s wind pants swished between his thighs when he walked—on the balls of his feet, always—and were tapered at the ankle by a band of ruched nylon. (In my memory, he only owned one jogging suit. It was teal and magenta, and he wore it every day.) Coach completed the look with a pair of high-top white Avivas, not dissimilar to those Zack Morris wore on Saved by the Bell, with a swipe of white Velcro where the tongue met the laces. On the day of The Mile run, Coach had an extra accessory: a stopwatch slung around his neck. We had to run ten laps to complete a mile, and we had to shout what lap we were on each time we passed go. Coach was keeping count, too.

  I was the first girl to finish, and I beat almost all of the boys, too. I remember finishing and not being tired and wishing I had run faster and beaten everyone by even more. I remember the stunned look on Coach’s face when I crossed the finish line. He must have told people at school because, over the next few days, teachers came up to me and said, “I hear you’re quite the speed demon!”

  It is amazing how powerful positive reinforcement can be to a child. From that physical fitness challenge forward, I thought of myself as someone who was good at running. And that belief, whether true or not, motivated me to run. In middle school, I took “running The Mile” in gym class embarrassingly seriously and relished seeing my name at the top of the list, year after year. As high school approached, I knew I’d play no other sports but cross-country and track. (This may have had to do with the fact that I was also awful at everything else.)

  During high school, competitive running was a joy. I loved my teammates, my coaches; I loved the thrill of racing and of winning. I loved the freedom and independence that logging many miles alone along hilly, empty roads provided me. I even loved the excruciating track workouts. From that blinding, doubled-over pain came some of the greatest highs of my life.

  By my junior year, I was All-County, All-State, All-New England, and on an All-American 4x800 meter relay team. By my senior year, I was also someone who would stand in front of the bathroom mirror, naked, and count her ribs for fun.

  I idolized the skeleton-like elite women runners—the Olympians, t
he marathoners, the Kenyans—all sharp shoulders, shredded thighs, cut stomachs. Nothing but bone, skin, lean muscle, and tendon. So in addition to running many miles a week, I counted my calories meticulously. I would eat a half a piece of dry, whole-wheat toast before going on a ten-mile run. I wouldn’t eat any fat. I wouldn’t eat any carbs at dinner. I wouldn’t even drink orange juice—my favorite drink as a kid—because I thought it was too caloric. Sometimes my stomach would wake me up in the middle of the night because it was so empty, and I would drink a glass of cold water to make the hunger go away. My hips narrowed, my chest was concave, my collarbone stuck out so far you could swing from it. Because I had so little body fat, I stopped menstruating. My doctor also told me I was suffering from bone loss—my bones were literally deteriorating because I had such a low body mass index. With college recruiting upon me, I went from being the tall, healthy homecoming queen I’d been crowned that fall to looking like an eleven-year-old boy.

  People would tell me I was too skinny. The doctor told me I was too skinny. I would sit in her office, my hunched-over spine poking through the back of my hospital gown, and say, “Okay, I will eat more fat and carbs, I promise.” Then I would leave and drink a bottle of water to stave off my starvation and smile. Every time someone told me I was too skinny, it just motivated me to stay that way. “Too skinny” wasn’t an insult in my mind; it was a compliment. At track meets, I would push my tiny self so hard I often threw up right after my race—crossing the finish line and staggering half-conscious toward the nearest garbage can.

  I was recruited to run for The University of Colorado, which was, and still is, one of the best Division I distance-running programs in the country. I wasn’t an “official” recruit in that I didn’t receive a scholarship to be on the team. I was a “walk-on.” Based on my times in high school, I was someone they were interested in developing. An assistant coach called me a few times over the summer and told me how I should be training, how many miles I should be running. He said that when I got to Boulder at the end of August, I’d practice with the team, but in early September, I’d have to run a time trial to earn an actual spot on the roster.

  Because I was just a walk-on, I started practicing with the team much later than everyone else. Most of them had arrived in early August to acclimate to the 5,300-foot elevation, and some had trained all summer in Boulder. Plus, in mid-August, they had all spent a weekend together at training camp, running and bonding at 7,000 feet. I missed all of that.

  My second day in Boulder, I went to the field house to meet the head coach, Mark Wetmore, who is considered by many to be the best collegiate distance-running coach in the country. He was lean to the point of gaunt—hadn’t missed a day of running in almost twenty years—and his hair was tied into a graying ponytail, tucked under a black Nike baseball hat. It was immediately apparent that he was a very serious guy. The screensaver on his office computer said, “Res severa verum gaudia,” which he told me meant, “To be serious is the greatest joy.” Wetmore was intimidating, but not unlikable. We chatted for a little while but he cut the conversation short, saying something like, “Well! Get out of here! Go run!” Wetmore was short on small talk. In his world, you did your talking with your feet. Two of the freshman girls on scholarship entered the office around that time. “Perfect!” he said, “They are headed out for a run, too.”

  The three of us trotted gingerly down a hill. Wonderful, I thought, I can keep up with this pace. Then we took a left on the Boulder Creek Path, and they started booking it. As their long, lean bodies bounded along like deer, they chatted easily about training camp and what they were doing for dinner that night. It was obvious that they were already friends. They tried to include me in the conversation, but the elevation rendered me incapable of talking. After two miles, I felt like I was choking on the thin mountain air, and I finally had to stop and walk. The girls didn’t wait for me, which was fine. I knew I couldn’t keep up. They took off ahead of me, just chatting away as if that pace, at that altitude, was nothing. There was a fork at the end of the creek path, and I was so far behind, I couldn’t see which way they had turned. To the left was a narrow track ascending a steep hill. Seeing as these girls were clearly gluttons for pain, I figured this was the way we were supposed to go. Now, if altitude is a kick in the shins while running on flat ground, it is an absolute kick in the face while going up a hill. When I finally got to the top, I didn’t see them. I was happy to be alone because, like a very tall and very skinny baby, I crumbled to the ground and started to cry.

  Fortunately, acclimating to altitude is a real thing. By the following month I was able to summit that hill, and many much larger hills, without crying. I was also able to run fast enough in the time trial to make the team.

  In high school, I was one of the leanest people on my team, but in college—training next to some of the best women in the world—I wasn’t even close. Some of my teammates looked like they were going to die in their sleep. I heard a rumor that one girl, who was five foot ten, was not allowed to practice unless she weighed at least ninety pounds. Ninety pounds. Some of the girls on the team were covered in fuzzy yellow hair all over their arms, chests, and faces, and they were always complaining about being cold. I now know these are signs of anorexia. When we went out on training runs, we looked like a pack of skeletons, our size-extra-small spandex hanging loosely off our legs. The prevailing mentality was that every extra ounce on our bodies was extra weight we had to carry around the track. Thus, we wanted to have as little as possible. But with that came injuries, so at any given time, half our team was hurt, the other half winning NCAA championships.

  At the end of the fall season, the top seven women on our team (I, of course, not being one of them) competed in the National Championships—and won. By that spring, I had bursitis and tendonitis in both my knees and stress fractures up and down my shins. From the sidelines, with ice packs taped to my legs, I’d watch these women wobble on toothpick-thin limbs. I was frustrated and disappointed, but more than anything, I was disheartened. This activity that had given me so much, that I had loved so much, I suddenly started to hate.

  The following fall, I wrote a six-page handwritten letter to Coach Wetmore telling him I quit. I think I was writing it as much for myself as for him. I really struggled with the decision because I had loved running, more than anything. It had, in some ways, defined me as a human being. It gave me my role in the play. Conversations often went like this: “That’s Lilibet; she’s a runner. She probably ran, like, six miles today. Lilibet, how many miles did you run today?”

  “Eight.”

  In the letter, I told him that running was no longer making me happy. That it was no longer fun. I told him I didn’t feel like there was any sense of community on the team. These women were not supportive of one another; they were only competitive with each other. And you know what, they should have been. These were literally the best collegiate runners in the world. In individual sports like track and cross-country, your teammates are your competition.

  In high school, my teammates were my sisters. We cried together when someone on the relay dropped the baton, held each other’s hair back when someone barfed in the bathroom after a race. We yelled out each other’s splits and yelled louder to get each other across the finish line. We stretched each other’s hamstrings. That Pollyanna track team fantasy did not exist on the best Division I team in the country. At that level, it was all business. I wasn’t going to find any hand-holding here. It was the 2004 Lakers, Kobe and Shaq on the same team. No one was passing the ball.

  I bet I would have thrived on a Division II or Division III team. I would have probably been the captain. But at Colorado, I was struggling to keep up. Not to mention, I was missing college. Not classes, but everything else. For my teammates, running was everything. It was their identity. Their entire identity. This is not something to disparage. It takes an incredible amount of discipline and dedication and an excruciatingly high tolerance for pain. But for me,
I knew running was just a part of my being, and in order to succeed at that sort of program, it had to be every part of you. My teammates would eat, sleep, and breathe running. I wasn’t willing to do that.

  Wetmore would often tell me I was one of the most inconsistent runners he’d ever coached. Some days, I was one of the first to finish a workout; other days I was pulling over to the side of the road, pretending to tie my shoes while heaving for breath and throwing up. During one particular twelve-mile-long run along Magnolia Road—a dirt road along a ridge at 8,000 feet, with a rolling, relentless ascent—I was struggling to put one foot in front of the other. Wetmore pulled up alongside me in one of the university-issued vans. “Late night at the sorority house?” he said, even though he knew I wasn’t in a sorority. But still, he knew. He was on to me. He knew I was trying to play it both ways. To be the star runner and not miss the keg party.

  In high school, I could get away with this. I had enough natural ability to pull it off. But in Division I athletics, everyone has natural ability. The difference was who decided to put in the work. For Wetmore, work ethic was everything. He expected a lot out of his runners, and in turn, he showed them the same level of diligence and commitment. Wetmore would give periodic speeches throughout the season. They weren’t preachy or overwrought; they got the point across in the most straightforward way. (Not surprisingly, the one that sticks out most in my mind was given before winter break when he told us not to let ourselves go that next month, eating too many cookies and drinking too many beers.) In one of his more substantial speeches, which is recounted in the book Running with the Buffaloes, about the 1998 men’s cross-country team, he said, “Look, this is what I am . . . I don’t play golf. I don’t have many hobbies. I don’t have a wife. The bottom line is I’m here to make you guys run fast. When I go to sleep at night, my mind’s churning, thinking of ways to make you go fast . . .”