We meet daily for an Old West style shootout. Sometimes at 1:00AM, sometimes at 5:00AM, sometimes mid-day. Just me and Him. No red strings or lucky eye charms. The God I meet is not a Cracker Jack kind of being. No superstitions or silly wand waving. It is just us.
Everyone loves looking at the underside of the stingrays. They have those goofy grins. They look like they’re gently smiling at the world, happily floating along the water. But they always look like that. Their faces are frozen in place like Wybie in Coraline. They look like that all the time. After all, the stingray that killed Steve Irwin was also smiling.
We gather together at an ungodly hour to reenact the original 26.2 miles run by Pheidippides which, fun fact, he wound up dropping dead from.
I lost patience for the inane conversations I used to be a part of and I’m way more judgmental of people who can’t handle the simplest situations. I wouldn’t call those lessons as much as I’d call them side effects.
I finally understood the myth of Sisyphus when my son was diagnosed with a brain tumor two years ago. And like the legend, we were faced with a huge mountain, a massive, incomprehensible rock, and a job that no one would ever sign up for.
It’s my birthday. The anniversary of when I showed up in this world and a nice reminder that I’m still here. Also a nice reminder that I’m older and that much closer to not being here.
Somewhere between closing the metaphorical door of any traumatic situation and getting sucked into the constant vortex of pain and victimhood, there’s a middle place of relative contentment. Of just understanding that it is what it is.
