but the music pervades.

The kids had nabbed my phone, their two little heads fighting for best position as they huddled around the 2" x 3" screen.  I knew what they were up to immediately.

I don't have any games loaded onto my phone, but I do use the maddening little device to snap photos and handily capture the movements of my children that I want so desperately to be able to view whenever the mood strikes.

As it often does.

The girls too like to revisit their adventures, the mysterious sounds of chirping voices that they refuse to believe as their own.  I know just how they feel.  To hear your own mutterings cast back from a recorder instead of filtered solely through your own skull is to know distortion.  Lily and Piper are truly mystified by this disconnection and I, after nearly 4 decades of pondering, still often wonder what I "really" sound like.

And so they giggled as they replayed over and over a short clip of the two of them darting about a nearby park earlier in the year.

I asked them, for the thousandth time, if they enjoyed running and they dutifully recited the "yes" that they expect I want to hear.

Later Lily asked me, also for the thousandth time, why I like to run so much and I stumbled through the clumsy responses that I have offered her before but that always fall short of fully conveying ALL of my reasons and by doing so fail to actually answer the question.  

Regardless, I know Lily doesn't actually doubt that I love running, instead, as with everything she encounters, she simply seeks a thorough explanation and a deeper comprehension.

Her follow up question was a puzzling beauty.

"Daddy, what does if FEEL like to run so much?"

There are so many words in our confounding language and endless, truly endless, combinations in which those words can be positioned, making it that much more aggravating to be unable to select the right words and/or juggle them into the appropriate order to properly express something you know so intimately.

I tried.  I really did.  But, the knit brow and pursed lips were giveaways that Lily hadn't been brought any closer to understanding.

And then I heard the answer.

And that answer answered another lingering question.

Music.

Our entire household is captivated by the music of Iceland's Sigur Ros.  Their music had helped me make sense of my existence, or at least cope with not being able to make sense of my existence, through my father's accident and eventual death as well as the subsequent slow dissolve of my first marriage.  Years later, a recording of the band had served as musical accompaniment as Lindsay progressed down the aisle to an anxious-to-marry-her me.  The odd soundscapes have proven for me to be the only lullabies capable of delivering restful sleep on long continental flights.

The music infiltrates, brings tears, cleanses and in the end elicits smiles, even inexplicable but welcome laughter.

And late in long runs, certainly in the final hours and minutes of races that have truly tested my endurance, I hear this music.

I FEEL it.

As do my daughters.

Learning that by closing her eyes and REALLY listening to the notes of Olsen Olsen she could experience what it feels like to run so much, Lily unfurrowed her brow and a smile spread across her face.  She even flushed a bit.

She felt it.

She's loved Sigur Ros from the first time that we played them for her, but she's always asked why we like it.  The dilemma is that there aren't words to explain why, only feelings, only emotional reactions not describable, not really, in words.

There is just the music.

And there is movement.

Euphoria.

Joy. 

The same joy that I experience while watching my girls run.  And smile, And laugh.

And be.