Cynthia lived alone with her big dog, Sugar, a white husky whom she sometimes brought to class. Cynthia and Sugar would walk in the Vermont woods every morning while Cynthia foraged for wild mushrooms. For my birthday dinner we ate steak with mushrooms cooked in bacon fat. Sugar sat under the table and gnawed on the extra fat. Cynthia’s floors were hardwood painted poppy blue. I’d never seen anyone paint color over hardwood floors before. She told me that the plain wood bored her.
At the time, I was Cynthia’s most devoted poetry student and I was planning on pursuing a graduate degree in poetry. I had recently gotten the news that I had been awarded a full scholarship to three of the top MFA programs in the country, a dream come true for any aspiring poet. At the same time, I was also in touch with coaches from the University of Oregon, who were offering me a spot on their legendary cross-country team to run as a fifth-year super-senior. This offer was by no means a guarantee of an Olympic future, but it was definitely an opportunity to contribute to an NCAA championship-winning team and also explore where my running could take me—many great pro runners had come out of the UO program. I asked Cynthia for advice about which path I should take. Without missing a beat, she looked straight at me and told me I should use my body as best I can while it’s still at my disposal.
I was in shock. I pushed back—surely, she couldn’t be serious? I expected a creative mentor to nudge me toward the arts. But instead, Cynthia smiled and said, “Alexi, I think you should go all in and pursue running. You can write the rest of your life.” When she smiles, it is in a way that makes you realize how little you truly know about her. She was battling the onset of MS, rendering her whole body very frail. You could tell when you looked at her that she’d led a wild life, and now her body, which had done so much living, was trying and failing to stand its ground against this disease. I felt sad for how imbalanced the picture was: me all potential at the beginning of my adult journey, she nearing the end of hers.
So when Cynthia advised me to accept UO’s offer, I listened. This conversation was about more than what classes I might take or what kind of boy I might date; we were making decisions about my future. And I could feel that she was giving me advice from a place of deep, true understanding. She knew better than I did not only that this athletic opportunity was rare and fleeting but also that it would complement my creative career. Even if they seem totally unrelated, becoming great in one discipline will always help in another. It is a gift to receive advice from someone who is fully grounded in themselves like this, and it was Cynthia’s wisdom that gave me the courage to turn down my MFA scholarships and commit to an uncertain path toward the Olympics. For dessert Cynthia made me a birthday cake topped with a generous shelf of buttercream frosting. It was the best cake I’ve ever tasted because I knew she had made it just for me. I haven’t had many homemade birthday cakes, so this meant a lot.
For breakfast we ate bacon and eggs cooked in bacon fat. I drank coffee from one of Cynthia’s mugs, which was my favorite shade of matte red, and she told me to keep it. When I got back to campus, the sleepover felt like one of those experiences that must have happened to someone else. But I know it happened because I still have Cynthia’s mug to prove it. It is my writing mug.
I realize that the stories in this chapter revolve around food, sewing, and beauty—but it was never the actual act of baking a cake or cooking a meal or sewing a dress that affected me, it was the confidence these women brought to their actions, confidence that was so strong and deep that I couldn’t help but absorb some of it myself.
* * *
A good mentor is a living example of the type of person you’d like to be, and you can learn from them simply by being in their vicinity and paying attention. And the older I got, the more my hunger for mentors grew. I was always on the lookout.
The summer after college, I spent several weeks in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with my friend Abbey’s aunt Mary and Mary’s partner, Marion. Mary is a clothing designer and Marion is a painter and they let me fold in with their life. They woke me up at six o’clock and took me swimming naked in the ocean where we’d see famous writers standing on their decks writing their first pages of the day. Marion and Auntie Mary were in their sixties and had the vibrancy of teenagers. I felt lucky to be allowed into their space and I was happy to make their routines my own. I sat at their kitchen table like a kid after school, eating blueberries and listening to them talk about their artist life and their sugarless diet and their outdoor shower. They wanted to hear about my silly little movie, Tracktown, which at the time was just an idea. But the way they asked me about it made it seem like it could be real, like my idea wasn’t silly and that I should take myself seriously. They never told me this directly—they didn’t have to.
When I moved to Eugene, Oregon, to start my year at UO, I continued to consciously put myself in spaces with people I admired. To me, it was more important to be around the right people than anything else. During my time in Oregon I soaked up everything I could from my teammates, coaches, and the environment of a world-class athletic school. I was nervous to be competing in such a serious environment, which felt like a different world than Dartmouth running, but then before the NCAA Cross Country Championships in the fall the team captain pulled me aside and told me that I could do it. I ran an incredible race and we won that championship. I learned that I thrive when I’m around people who believe in themselves and in me.
After my fifth year at UO, I began life as an Olympic hopeful. I often took extended training trips to Mammoth Lakes, California, just to be closer to my biggest athletic role model, Deena Kastor, an Olympic bronze medalist and the American record holder for the marathon. I had always admired Deena from afar, but when she and her husband, Andrew, invited me to visit and train with the Mammoth Track Club, their training group, I leapt at the opportunity. When a woman you admire that much gives you the chance to get close to her, you take it.
I got nervous for every single long run and workout that I did with Deena, and there was one particular two-hour run that felt especially daunting. It was the longest run I’d ever done, and a long run is a hard thing to fake. The distance and pace were ambitious, but I didn’t want to drop out early; I wanted to be alongside Deena for as long as possible. Sure enough, about an hour and a half into the run, I sensed the hurt coming on. My legs felt like two cylinders of canned cranberry sauce, splatting just a bit more with each step. If I had been alone, I would have slowed down. But that wasn’t an option here. So I shifted my attention away from my own pain and instead focused on Deena. Specifically, I focused on her breath, which was calm compared to mine. I pretended she was breathing for both of us. She sensed my pain and distracted me by pointing out a passing hawk and trying to guess where it came from and where it was heading. I held on to our pace for the sake of hearing the rest of Deena’s hawk fable. No one had told me spontaneous stories like this when I was a child, and I relished it deep in the youngest place in my heart.
Deena made me feel like a more capable athlete and she also made me feel like a more capable person. She pushed me from a place of magnanimous love. To be pushed by someone who truly believes in you is a huge gift. It is like they’re pushing you and pulling you at the same time. It is a love that comes from a place of wanting you to be there with them.