Shit You Not

Sometimes life is shit. Everything sucks and there's nothing to do but go in the corner and pout. Stuff just keeps raining down and giving up is the only option.

This is not one of those times.

A couple weeks ago around ten o'clock on the eve of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, my wife tentatively woke me with news there was standing water in the basement. She couldn't plunge the floor drain open. I got up groaning and whining and went down. I stepped into the water in pajamas and bare feet, and went to town with the plunger. Nothing doing.

And why, I wondered, is an oatmeal cookie floating here?

That wasn't oatmeal. I stepped out of fetid, fecal water and hung my head.

Still, even then life wasn't shit. Sure, sewage was floating in our basement and I walked into it barefoot, but feet clean and plumbers come in the morning. I went up two floors and back to bed.

The next morning two guys cleaned the roots out of our pipe. Water and sewage ran freely. It cost a pretty penny, but so it goes.

See, it's not all shit.

This morning, as I walked toward the office, my wife called. Sewage had pooled between the sidewalk and the road. I walked back home. No water or sewage in the basement. Just a brown puddle around the vent stack. Okay, I thought. That's enough. That's about all I can take.

But it wasn't.

The same guys came over. My wife stayed home to wait while I drove to work. Hours later she let me know they had cleared the pipe from the sidewalk to the street. All was well again. No problem, no charge, no shit.

Two weeks from now the pipes may back up again. Maybe the whole sewage line will need replacing or worse. There's no telling, but here's what I know:

• The sewage in the basement wasn't so bad and is gone.
• Sewage on the lawn instead of in the house is small potatoes.
• Many problems can be solved with no more than a phone call and credit card.
• When no one gets hurt, sick, or lost, it's not a big problem.

There are times when life is shit, but right now the pipes are clear and everything bad is flowing away from me. This is a good life. I shit you not.

The Long Run

I went for a solo run for the first time in a while. I've run a few times in the past weeks with my daughters to keep us active, but this was the first time in at least a month I've gone out alone. I ran my favorite course through the cemetery in part because it's my favorite distance, five miles. I felt great.

I'm rereading Chris McDougall's Born To Run. My daughter asked, "how many times have you read that?" Six or eight, I said, though it's more like ten. She rolled her eyes and left the room. What can I say? I know what I like and sometimes prefer rereading to reading anything new. Plus, the book is all about long runs and pushing against what's accepted. I'm at the part where Scott Jurek gets up from the pavement in Death Valley and wins the 135-mile Badwater race in temperatures no one was ever intended to survive let alone run through. I love reading this sort of thing.

Our new bathroom scale arrived. The old one gave out. I wonder if it got tired of me. I'm pretty heavy and it's not the pandemic that has done it. I gained twenty-seven pounds last year in a job that was killing me. I left the job but kept the weight. I'm 221 pounds when I should max out at 200 and really should be down at 185. I am working to be healthier, but losing twenty-one pounds, let alone thirty-six, isn't something I can accomplish in an afternoon without lopping off a limb. It's a long run I've struggled to ever finish. I tend to walk off the course and grab a hot fudge sundae.

Monday I start a new job. Last year, I ran for my life from teaching and went to work for the Syracuse Community Center Collaborative. That job proved to be the best I've ever had. I got to work with and for great people who patiently trained me, believed in my talent, and trusted me — the exact opposite of my teaching life. So why am I leaving after just shy of eleven months? I applied for and was accepted as the new executive director of the Syracuse Northeast Community Center. In eleven months on the job I have moved to the highest position. Fourteen months ago I described my life as "I'm treading water as I bleed to death." Now, I'm embarking on a fantastic adventure.

The thing about the long run is that there are stops along the way and things to see. On my solo run through the cemetery I passed a stone labeled "Abbott Costello" and for the hundredth time smiled imagining a cemetery rewrite of "Who's On First." I ran without thinking of mileage or effort. I felt no fatigue, felt like I could just keep running and running. And though I'm unlikely to be significantly lighter from one run, my spirit is just a bit lighter and maybe that will show up on the scale.

Sometimes the long run turns out shorter than I expect. Last year I decided to quit a terrible job and just see what might happen. You know what happened? One good thing and another and another. I can't see any good reason not to keep expecting these good things. Sure, there's always another long run, a finish line so far away it's hidden by the curvature of the Earth, the turning of the calendars pages. And the road can be hard. There were hills in my solo run today that took my breath, but I shortened my stride and whispered, take what the hill offers and give what you can. The top wasn't so far away.

In Born To Run, Scott Jurek falls to the burning pavement in Death Valley about halfway through the 135-mile race. He's spent. He's lost. He can't go on. Lying there he thinks, there is no way he can finish, certainly no way he can win. Unless he got up as though he were starting completely fresh. Unless he ran like he never had before. Unless he got up and believed he could make the long run. He got up and won the race.

I kind of know how he felt. I'll keep running and see where I end up.

Guest Post: Lauren

Walking the Line

by Lauren Mossotti-Kline

I still remember what day it is. Somehow Fridays still resemble normal Fridays. At the end of the day, when I hit send on the last work email and the kids have finished their school work, we ease into a more relaxed, less structured mode. A sense of release. I’m looking forward to starting a puzzle. Watching a movie.

It’s technically spring and a winter warning appears on my phone’s screen. I laugh at the cruel joke of it all. This notice comes my way just moments after texting friends about a hiking spot I’d like to explore with my family in the next day or two. Should I look into renting snowshoes instead?

The kids will be home from school for another month according to the latest news and everyone going into a space where social distancing is a challenge must wear a mask. Stores are creating new products to meet current needs. My sister-in-law found a set of three masks in trendy patterns and soft material. They are now a fashion accessory.

I haven’t been around anyone other than my husband and three children, two dogs and two cats for four weeks. I daydream about trips to the coast. Any coast will do. Give me a beach with soft warm sand, gentle waves and gorgeous sunsets. I do not need to talk to anyone but I would appreciate a change in scenery.

Even a lake up north would be fine. Bring on the sunshine and the open road. I’m not sure anyone would rent to us right now but I’d be willing to try. Heck, I’d be willing to relocate for the next month just to give us all a change. As long as we have access to a Wifi signal we could be anywhere.

I’ve said from the beginning of all this that it’s like we’re living through a science fiction novel. Someone mentioned Stephen King in a clever meme. I think about The Shining from time to time. But we — my little family in our safe home and seemingly unaffected existence — are not living through the scariest part of this story. We are mildly inconvenienced.

Today, while doing research for my book, I read about the Spanish Flu. There was a first wave and a second. We’re told that we learn from our past but history repeats itself. The second wave of the Spanish Flu was even more devastating than the first. It came in the fall, and as temperatures cooled, it continued on for a year and a half. We are only one month into our first wave.

Friends with ties to colleges and universities have shared that they are planning for the possibility of online learning at the beginning of the fall semester. If that’s true, the same will likely be true for my school-aged children. As I casually mentioned this to my oldest son who is in the midst of his teenage social ascent, he announced that he cannot miss out on his summer, that he will completely lose it if he can’t see his friends and that he’s already starting to lose his mind. “I’ve caught myself talking out loud to myself Mom,” he said with more humor than concern but I got his point.

I have everything I need right now. I’m content at home with my family. I use technology to stay connected with my closest friends and my work is moving forward and feels meaningful. I find projects and activities to keep me creatively stimulated. I’m reading. I’m writing.

While I write my husband is my daughter’s lab assistant as she dissects a chicken wing for anatomy class. This wouldn’t have happened in the absence of a pandemic. I’m not giving this virus credit, yet I cannot ignore the notable consequences. We’ve experienced our fair share of frustrations, but there have been beautiful moments mixed in. I wrestle with keeping routine and order, monitoring academic expectations while in the back of my mind wondering if any of this will even matter. If tragedy finds our family, I know I won’t give a second thought to whether my son uploaded his math worksheets.

Instead I would likely wish I had spent more time at play. Enjoying their company, talking about anything that interests them and exploring the world in ways accessible to us in this time of preventative behavior. Having a bonfire and camping in our backyard. Playing board games, hugging my kids every day and telling them stories about my youth and the lessons learned. Asking them if they have ever been in love or what they imagine love to feel like. Cooking meals together, making silly movies of ourselves doing ridiculous things and eating all of our favorite foods.

But instead I’m operating under the guise of a “new normal” and not panicking or making any sudden changes. I feel isolated from the enemy in a fake form of protection. Am I naïve? Am I ignorant? People once close to me have walked into the eye of the storm, committing weeks, maybe months of their lives to help people who are fighting for their lives. I liken them to military medics tending fallen soldiers, helping them heal or in many cases holding their hands, offering comfort as they pass from this world.

If I sit with my thoughts and let them continue to this battlefield, I see tear-stained faces, fatigued bodies and crushed souls. Hope is a distant memory and it will take much convincing and likely years of therapy to help heal the hearts that have been broken by this massacre. It seems selfish that I can just sit here and enjoy watching my daughter learn about tendons and muscles while other daughters are losing their mothers and fathers. I see stories about people who have died but I skim the headlines to protect myself from the empathy that has the power to consume me. I’m reminded of the helplessness I felt when my good friend’s cancer returned last year and she was abruptly taken from us just a month later. I think of my mom and am grateful that she did not have to live through this. The anxiety would have overtaken her every thought. But none of my sad memories come anywhere close to what I know others are feeling.

So I remain here in this odd place. Waiting. But for what I’m not sure. The great unknown lurks in the shadows, watching us, warning us, suggesting that we should be on guard — don’t get too comfortable. With every occasional sneeze I pause, then shrug it off assigning guilt to the dust bunnies that reside in the corners of our home. And I continue to walk the line between fear and content.

Mistake, Reflection, Fix

It's fitting that on the first draft of this I mistyped the title and on the second changed it completely. Between those drafts I took a break to reflect on what I'm still trying to say. Mistake, reflection, and fix.

I screwed something up and I'm embarrassed. It wasn't the end of the world, but it wasn't spilt milk either. I wanted to hide in a corner the rest of the day. I also wanted to learn from it and move on. But I wasn't ready to do either. I was stuck in a familiar-feeling place that I couldn't identify until this thought occurred:

A mistake is a tiny death. Once made, there's no returning to a life in which I haven't made it.

That helped me understand that I'm mourning having made the mistake. Moruning takes time. It is a process of moving back into balance. There's a system to it and my way forward is to reflect in writing on the steps involved. Like so:

1. Acknowledge the mistake and apologize. Yeah, I screwed the pooch on that one. Sorry, pooch.
2. Rather than beat myself up, consider how I would treat my daughters if the mistake was theirs. Alright, you messed up. These things happen. Are you okay? What would make it right?
3. Make coffee and write. Coffee improves most everything. I like the process of making it, the slow enjoyment of drinking it, the calming it brings over me, and how it goes with writing, my tool for reflection.
4. Ask what's next. What should I do right now and what should I do tomorrow to move through?

A simple plan, but it takes time to move through the steps. It was hours after I apologized that I thought to be kind to myself. It was an hour after that until I made coffee and wrote this. In between, I beat myself up, worried what people will think, and felt the sky was falling. Bad habits learned over five decades. It's tough to turn that around and plot a new course. The list above looks good, but I've been mourning my mistake most of the day and I'm not done. There are miles to go before I sleep.

I'll probably wake tomorrow still carrying too much regret even as I reflect and ask what's next. I know regret isn't useful and there's not enough time in life to waste it on guilt and abuse. But I also know balance doesn't just restore itself nor can I forget my mistake and go on like it never happened. I'm between mistake and recovery, reflecting, hoping time really does heal all wounds. What's next is to go forward, learn, grow, accept, and move on.

Thinking that's easy would be another mistake and, I tell you, I'm just not ready to deal with any more of those right now.