Existential Crises

THINGS I THOUGHT I WOULD BE BUT CURRENTLY AM NOT

• Music Professor
• Novelist
• Pot smoker
• Broke
• Sporting a kick-ass full-color sleeve on my left arm
• Famous

THINGS I AM CURRENTLY BUT NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD BE

• Married
• Mother of 2
• Runner
• Afraid
• Soccer Coach
• Psychotherapist

Search and See

6 years ago, a group of parents got together in the middle of a ruined city and decided to form a childcare center. After Katrina, there was a dearth of childcare, which posed a serious threat to the future of New Orleans. If folks couldn't go to work, they wouldn't come back or they wouldn't stay.

Abeona House was born.

5 1/2 years ago, I found myself on the front porch of a small cottage at the end of Oak Street, chatting with another parent as we sat nursing our infants. I felt lucky to be on the opening list but overwhelmed by the tasks that still needed to be done: painting, ramp building, gathering toys, supplies, furniture, wiring and plumbing, etc. Was this really going to happen? It seemed a little impossible.

5 years ago, Abeona House opened. I carried Sydney through the doors the first day (she was not quite walking yet) and left her in what was probably once a bedroom. I vividly remember the emotions in the building that morning: excitement, relief, trepidation, awkwardness, and the elephant in the room: would we be able to stay open?

4 years ago, I joined the Board of Directors. We were still open, but in order to be truly sustainable we would need to grow. Economy of scale and all that.

3 years ago, Evan came along and when I carried him through the doors for the first time, when he was one week old, and saw the sign on the door welcoming him to the world and watched how every single person in that building--teachers, kids, parents--made sure to give Sydney extra love and attention, how attuned they were to the needs of our family, it really struck me: this was our community. This was our place.

1 month ago, we signed a lease on a new property in Mid-City--a much larger building with tons of green space, a garden, and a kitchen. On the night of the first open house, I watched Sydney play with the child whose mother I sat with on that first day on Oak Street; theirs was the comfort of old friends, easy and unspoken, and when I told my kids it was time to leave Sydney hugged me and said "But why can't I go to the new Abeona House?"

Today is our last day on Oak Street. We're moving out all the furniture, stripping the walls of cabinets and decorations. The kids are excited and anxious. I'm probably going to cry all day as I move boxes and cribs across town.

Albert Schweitzer wrote, "Search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity." I have found that place in Abeona House. It's an incredible and important gift, to have the opportunity to love something, to believe in it fully, to watch it grow and struggle and expand, to watch your children learn how to develop as individuals while retaining a sense of community, of being a part of something bigger than themselves. I really have been searching for this place to invest my overabundance of passion and energy, and I am so fucking grateful to have found it.

Search and see. It really is worth it.

Monster

It started with New York. In a Spring volume of my running magazine there was an article about the famed NYC Marathon, with its spectacular crowds and perfect weather, and on a whim I entered the lottery. New York has a tiered and generally impassable lottery, which starts with elite athletes, moves on to members of the local Road Runners club, and eventually gets to everyone else. The results of the lottery would be announced in early April, and so I waited anxiously, not sure what I was hoping for. If I got in, I’d be looking at 4 months of a brutal and time-consuming training regime, in the sweltering summer heat—not to mention the prospect of another ridiculous injury and the subsequent, patience-depleting recovery. I’d had a vague notion that I would run another marathon, someday, but by all reasonable standards this was not the right year. I’d started a new job and was contemplating starting a private practice; I was chair of the Board of Directors for an organization that was expanding significantly, and had joined another Board in March. I was over-committed and ambivalent.

But when the lottery results were announced and I found out my number hadn’t come up, I immediately started looking for another race. Turned out the Savannah Marathon was the very same day as NYC, and 2 of my friends from high school indicated they’d be up for it. And so I signed up, click, and immediately began looking for a training plan.

Most runners use a plan when training for a significant distance, like a half or full marathon. Plans generally span a 16- or 20-week schedule and prescribe distances and types of runs (tempo, easy, long, speed work) to be done on each training day. I’d used a couple of plans for other long races but wanted something new, something that would push me beyond the slogging drudgery of the typical training regime. And then I remembered a story I’d read in the magazine several months before, written by a 41-year-old runner who’d set a marathon PR (personal record) by using this batshit-crazy training plan created by two brothers from Michigan. The Hanson Plan is characterized by extremely high weekly mileage (about 25% more than the average plan for regular runners) and brutal workouts (no “easy” runs on this plan). The sheer ambition of the plan intrigued me, as did the emphasis on total weekly mileage over the dreaded 20-, 22-, and 24-mile long runs that form the apex of most marathon plans (the Hanson plan tops out at several 16-mile long runs). The Hansons believe that the distance of the long run matters less than does the cumulative effect of intense and fatiguing training; in other words, in Hanson training you’re preparing yourself, both physically and psychologically, to run the final 16 miles of the race, not the first 16. Anyone who’s ever run a 26.2 will understand this distinction.

I’d read the article the first time, many months before, with fascination and fear; I’d looked at the training plan and my reaction was something along the lines of “fuck no.” But after I committed to Savannah and started seriously thinking about the training, thoughts shifted to questions of efficacy. Sure, it had a certain insane appeal, and the theory made sense, but did it work? The author of the article was a believer, after running his fastest marathon ever, at the age most runners are beginning their slow and insulting decline. I found forums online wherein scores of runners attested to the plan’s benefits (faster times, fewer injuries, increased confidence) and one night, after printing out the training plan and scouring it with a pencil, marking the dates and comparing my personal and work schedules, I realized that I had already committed myself; essentially, I’d gone from “fuck no” to “fuck it.”

And so I went about the business of serious training. First, I evaluated what had gone wrong in my previous marathon (weak hip flexors) and did some research into preventative techniques (stretching, stabilization exercises, massage). I vowed to approach my training more seriously than I had before, which meant some modifications to my everyday routine. (The heroin would have to go, obviously, but since I’d read that deprivation often leads to relapse I decided on one “cheat day” per week.) I have been a “serious” runner for a while now but I suddenly found myself rising before dawn most mornings, running 6, 8, 10, 18 miles along streetcar line, nodding companionably at the other, wiser runners in their reflective gear, or at the track at 5 a.m. on Saturday mornings, pounding out grueling speed workouts in the steamy darkness. My favorite speed workout, commonly referred to as a “ladder,” consists of fast intervals of increasing distance, starting at 1/4 mile segments and building to a full mile, then working back down (hence the name). The focused brutality of the workout really appeals to me, and on one muggy morning in early July, I ran the 1-mile segment of the workout in 6 minutes and 35 seconds, which is the fastest mile I’ve run since high school. That meant that not only could I run a fast mile, but I could run it while fatigued, which is the most critical aspect of marathon training. I was totally stoked.

4 hours later, a city tow-truck driver barreled through a red light at Poydras and Loyola, totaling our car, deploying our air bags, mangling Cade’s arm and crushing my chest and my right foot. In the ambulance, on the way to the ER, I said something to the EMT about how I was training for a marathon and he look at me with some sympathy and said “Not anymore, you’re not."

Guess what happens when people tell me I can’t do something?

I took 10 days off and jumped back in. My foot felt stiff but it didn’t seem to get worse with the training, so I continued. In August I placed first in my age group at a local 3-miler, even though I was dissatisfied with my time and knew I could do better. I switched my fast workouts from “Speed” to “Strength,” per the Hanson plan, which meant dropping the track workouts in favor of longer, even more grueling intervals. I stretched, went for a sports massage (which, along with Baskin Robbins’ Peanut Butter and Chocolate ice cream and the music video for Ok Go’s “All Is Not Lost,” ranks among my personal Best Things Ever), went to bed early, did my tempo runs (6, 8, 10 miles at goal pace) religiously, even as the temperatures soared. I got suckered into coaching Sydney's soccer team and when I realized that the date and time of the final game coincided with the date of the Savannah marathon, I quickly found another race--the Pensacola marathon--on the following weekend. I ran during vacations and tropical storms and illnesses, and in early October, I won the Crescent Connection Road Race, a killer 4-miler that traverses the Mississippi River bridge. I had two thoughts as I crossed the finish line:

1) How strong is this tape? (Do I have to lunge forward to break it, or will it just fall away?)

-and-

2) Holy shit. The plan works.

Four days later, I broke my tailbone. For the record, I would strongly advise anyone seriously considering breaking their tailbone to think twice before doing so; the pain is excruciating, unrelenting, nauseating, imposing. Sleep is impossible, as is sitting down, which makes clinical work absolutely ridiculous (imagine spilling your guts to shrink who's squirming like she has a full bladder, or is terribly bored with you). The morning after sustaining the injury I "woke up" (I'd spent the night standing up with my face buried in the side of the bed, weeping) and realized that I would not be able to run. I had four weeks until the marathon, had four months of serious, uncompromising training under my belt, and that was it. Over. The injury was monumental, impassable, like a giant boulder rolled into my path. There was no amount of chutzpah that would overcome this, it seemed. I could barely speak without needing to vomit. Sleep was out of the question. Running had become an absurdity.

So that was Friday. On Saturday, I laced up my running shoes and headed downstairs to the basement treadmill, where I sullenly walked and then wincingly jogged, finally stopping about a mile in to clear the floaters from my field of vision. That's it, I thought. At least I tried. Then Cade came downstairs and said something like "Well, you gave it your best shot" and of course the thought that sprang to mind was nuh-uh, not even close and so I got back on the treadmill and pounded out another 5 miles. But damn, it hurt. A lot.

And so, because I'm not always a complete and total idiot, I evaluated the situation and resigned myself to a period of rest--of inactivity. My friend M.A. dropped by, bearing wine and cookies, and assured me that yes, I will run another marathon--just not this marathon. I set about the business of getting my mind straight, putting things in perspective, focusing on positives, focusing on healing, etc etc etc etc etc.

In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, as I sat propped in the corner of the sofa downstairs, sobbing silently as not to wake the rest of the house, it occurred to me that if I was going to suffer pain, why not run? It hurt to sit down and to lay down and to sneeze and to laugh and to breathe anyway, so why not run? I hobbled upstairs, stepped into some running clothes, put on my shoes and headed out the door, before I could reconsider. The first 2 miles were pure agony, the next 4 slightly less so. Whatever. I chalked it up as a victory. The next morning I went out again, sleep-deprived and riddled with doubt, and ran another 7 miles. It wasn't pretty at all, but it wasn't making anything worse, so I soldiered on.

And it has gradually gotten better, the pain, although sleep is still hard to come by. This morning I got up at 4:30 and ran 10 miles, with minimal pain. Last week, I ran 20 miles in Liverpool, half of which into a headwind that left me feeling at various points like the Roadrunner--legs spinning, body standing still. But I finished feeling strong enough, though not entirely confident: I'd missed the portion of marathon training that experts point to as the most crucial--that monster week, that apex.

So here I am, 9 days from Pensacola, sleep-deprived and uncertain, resisting the urge to log a couple of punishing speed sessions just to prove to myself that I can. It's kind of stupid, right? I mean, it's just a race, after all, just a "recreational activity." But this Monster has taken a definite shape: I can feel its contours in the hours before dawn, hovering near my bed, ready to smother my ambition; I can feel it in the 6th mile of almost every run, when my legs start to feel heavy, and even after a successful run, it's there to negate my efforts, to call it a fluke, to call everything into question, whispering things like:

Why are you doing this? (Because I love it).

Why are you hurting yourself? (I'm not, not really...).

Wouldn't you rather sleep in? (Now you're just being cruel...)

Why is this so important? (...)

You do know that pain is the body's way of saying "stop," right?

(Really? I thought it was the body's way of saying "I double-dog dare you.").

To Sydney, On Your 6th Birthday

My sweet girl,

As I write this, you are sleeping soundly, in the bottom half of the bunk bed that PaPa made for Daddy so many years ago. You wanted to stay up until 9 o'clock tonight, and though you gave it your best shot ('Sound of Music' is a really long movie--good choice) you only made it to 8:18 before limping up the stairs and falling into bed. And who could blame you? It's been an incredibly full year.

Since you turned 5 one year ago, you have learned to read, to add and subtract, to jump rope and hula hoop, tie your shoes, ride a bike, snap your fingers, chew bubble gum, roller skate, and solve for x (Ok, the last one I made up. The rest are true.) You found a tiny kitten in the Spillway, hiding under a rock, coaxed her out with a shrimp you got from a nearby fisherman, and talked us into letting you keep her. You named her "Alice Sparkle," and the name stuck even after we discovered that Alice is actually a boy. You managed kindergarten with total grace and confidence. You have grown a foot taller, your hair is several inches longer, and your face has lost all traces of toddlerhood. You're a big girl now.

In many ways, you are exactly the same as you've always been, from day one: strong, loving, inquisitive, creative, fierce and passionate. You still love your baby dolls and will occasionally spend a full hour dressing, cuddling, and arranging them for sleep. You spend the majority of your free time drawing and making jewelry, and since you acquired the ability to read, your creativity has extended to writing and illustrating stories. Your friends are very important to you, and you go to great lengths to make them feel happy and special. For example, when your friend J. lost a ring at school the other day, you spent who knows how long investigating, quizzing classmates who may have seen it, talking teachers into searching the campus in spots where your subjects indicated they may have seen it. You were very upset when, at the end of the day, the ring still had not been found, and you spent the evening trying to talk me into buying J. another one for her birthday. When I explained to you that J's birthday is not until December, you went into your jewelry box, found one of your favorite rings, brought it to school the next day and gave it to your friend. So that she would feel better.

Generosity is a value we try to instill in you and Evan, but you really come by it naturally. You would give your last cookie to any kid on the street, and in fact you often do. You have such a beautiful spirit, strong and genuine and kind. Sure, you have fears, but you don't let them impede you--you walk out into the world every day with amazing confidence and a stubborn persistence that will serve you well in life.

I don't want to forget to talk about fashion. At morning meeting the other day, one of the other parents commented on how "well put-together" you always are and asked how I managed to get you looking so beautiful every morning. I had to explain that I have absolutely nothing to do with it, that you take tremendous pride in your appearance and how each morning after breakfast, you close your bedroom door and emerge 15 or 20 minutes later, impeccably dressed, immaculately coiffed and accessorized. You carry yourself with incredible poise, almost as if we'd sent you to one of those horrible etiquette courses, and sometimes when I see you walking towards or away from me I'm struck by how grown up you seem, how much time seems to have passed since I first held you in my arms.

This letting go thing is hard, Sydney, harder than I ever thought it would be. You don't need me as much anymore and though I encourage this independence and am so impressed by your incredible confidence, I just cannot believe that it happened so fast. Your friends have become the center of your world and my attention has shifted to teaching you about being a good friend, helping you strike that balance between taking care of yourself and caring for others. Though you appear to others to be indestructible, you are actually a very sensitive person, easily wounded (though quick to recover), and this makes you very aware of others' feelings. You will go to great lengths not to hurt someone's feelings (unless that person is Evan), and that extends to the way you talk about people. For example, the other day you were telling me that one of your friends has a crush on a boy in the kindergarten (gasp) and when I asked if the boy was cute you paused for several seconds and gave me a serious look. "Well," you said, "I'm sure J. thinks he is." What a thoughtful and diplomatic answer! Even in your friend's absence you were unwilling to say something that might be construed as hurtful.

Sydney, I am bursting with love for you. You have brought so much joy to our lives, it's indescribable. A few weeks ago I snuck into your room while you were sleeping and spent a few moments at your bedside, listening to your soft breathing and stroking your back. You're not a baby anymore; we have entered a new phase of our relationship. Thank you for your patience as I stumble towards parenthood, thank you for constantly reminding me to look at the world with wonder and not with fear, to face challenges with courage instead of anger, and to be the best friend I can be. I'm so proud of you. I will say that a million times over the course of your lifetime, and perhaps someday you'll roll your eyes when I say it, but for now, I will whisper it in your ear at night and before I send you off to your classroom in the morning and every possible moment in between.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful, kind, talented, fierce, stubborn, generous, amazing little girl.

Love,

Mommy

Gimme Shelter

10 years ago this weekend, I moved to New Orleans. I was a 25-year-old music school dropout, having spent the previous couple of years working in restaurant kitchens, watching my college friends defend their dissertations and move into real jobs, flirting with a running addiction. A year or so working inpatient psych in Sarasota, the suicidal kids and the overdose graveyard shift in the locked room on the ER floor, had burned me out and I had moved back to Orlando, defeated and hopeless and seriously considering moving out to the beach, where I could work on my melanoma, pick at my guitar, and brand myself an "outsider artist."

Luckily, in the summer of 2001, my brilliant and beautiful New College friends put together a grand trip to Northern California--Gualala, to be specific--and we spent a week lounging in hammocks, playing endless rounds of Spite and Malice, dipping our toes in the Pacific and floating in the more welcoming streams, acting stupidly and trading bits of our souls. There wasn't much reminiscing, as I recall; but then, there wasn't much distance between our graduation and our real lives.

On the hammock one afternoon, a third of the way through a bottle of gin with the endless blue sky stretched out above our heads, my friend H. and I talked about my shitty life and the various ways in which I had surprised and disappointed myself. Relentlessly pragmatic, my friend suggested that a change of scenery and the company of fellow travelers would help get me back on track. She had moved to New Orleans a few months before; why didn't I join her there?

And so I did. It wasn't a tough call, given my long history of visits to New Orleans, my deep dissatisfaction with life in Central Florida, and my generally impulsive approach to major life decisions. I gave notice at work, sold my old Wurlitzer (sniff sniff, sob), packed the Tercel to the gills and headed off in the darkness up I-75. It was Labor Day weekend and pouring rain in the Panhandle; in my rearview mirror I watched a car fishtail and swerve off the road and I gripped the wheel and sang The Mississippi Squirrel Revival song when I spied the Pascagoula exit. Near Mobile the rain cleared and for the first time my drive across the Bay was not obscured by fog. I drove on, through the tunnel and across the pitted roads in the East and past downtown until I found the blue arches marking my new neighborhood. My friend was out of town for the weekend and so I found a pretty good pizza place on Carrollton (Venezia), had a couple of beers on the porch of the house on State Street Drive, and slept fitfully on the floor. The next morning I stumbled around in my running shoes until I found Tulane University, went for breakfast in the Quarter, and found Southern Decadence.

I wrote in an earlier post about that first morning, leaving out the most salient memory which--as is true of most memories--is steeped in emotion and devoid of much detail. I remember the way I felt back then, the hopelessness and despair, the disgust and disappointment and fear. I was in the proverbial desert, crawling hands and knees towards the promise of some Other life, some adventure, some nourishment; I came to New Orleans dying of thirst. I had a tattoo on my forearm and a music degree. Not a great formula for success.

I wasn't used to being a loser, but I got over it pretty quickly and even learned to embrace it. I spent a lot of time at Tipitina's and one night, as I was hanging on the bar watching my friends dance, a man sidled over to me and told me I looked sad. I shrugged and drank my beer, wishing he would go away, but he persisted. "You're empty, I think. I can see it in our eyes," he said and I thought that's the stupidest pickup line I've ever heard and he said "But that's okay, this town gonna fill you up." He walked away and I took the shot my bartender friend handed me and thought well it can hurry the hell up, then.

It took a few years, a few jobs, a Master's degree, a massive levee failure, and several Mardi Gras seasons, but here I am ten years later, full to bursting, ruined on any other kind of life. New Orleans is like a member of our family, the wild and unpredictable one everyone likes to complain about but desperately hopes shows up at Thanksgiving dinner. The city has a life force--you've felt it if you've been here--it pulses with every emotion you can think of, it forces you to stay awake. And ten years later I will venture to say that perhaps, just maybe, New Orleans is for losers--for misfits and malcontents, for the ones who lost their way in the wide world and came looking for a richer life, who came crawling, hands and knees, to a place where the store clerks call you "baby" and the ladies in the grocery pinch your infant's fat thighs and there is a certain comfort in the rites and rituals and idiosynchrasies. A New Orleans existence is not something you can sleep your way through, and that's what saved me a decade ago from a life of complacent surrender.

New Orleans, I love you. Here's to another 10 years together.

Meditation from my Morning Run

I admire the sidewalk sweepers
in their crisp, clean clothes
At dawn

The world made new
by their quiet attentions
heads bowed to the task.

There are few cars at that hour.

Very little noise at all and I can hear
my labored breathing,
the press of my shoes upon the pavement

When I think to take my headphones off.

I admire their attentions.

The care placed upon appearances
The soft swish of the needles
The rhythm of the brooms.

My rhythm is more insistent--
--faster, farther, more more more--
no goal in mind but speed and
Strength.

The sweeper's goal is fraught
with failure, every day
a new mess to clear. And yet

They carry on,
Spartans at the gate
Of a sleeping city.

Horrible thoughts I have in response to an innocuous but disturbingly frequent stranger-observation

"YOU HAVE SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER!!"

• "Thanks. She's smart, too! Quick, Syd, 9 x 6."
• "Thank you! She's funny, too. Syd, tell 'em the one about the priest, the rabbi, and the goat."
• "Yes, she is, but not as beautiful as her sister, who we keep in an oxygen-rich tank and feed only blueberries and sheep's milk. Really, you should see the other one."
• "Wow, thank you so much! She was genetically engineered for optimum bone structure and flesh tone--we did a good job, huh?"
• "You should see her routine with the scarves and flaming batons--it's really something."
• "Yeah, but she's a real dud in the personality department. Oh well, guess you can't have it all."