This Is Not the End (I Hope)

So, maybe it’s bled through into the writing: I’ve been pretty sad this year. (One comment on my entry “Why Am I Here (in Luxembourg)?” offers “a reward of $20 for anyone who can find a more blue blog of travel to Europe that doesn't involve jail time or a hospital visit.”) It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and if I started listed reasons for gratitude, I could fill up a “gratitude journal” in a single long entry. Then I might look at my list and wonder, with all that, how could things not be all right? But most of my questions lead back to the same answer. The problem is me. I haven’t figured out yet how to fix that.

I started the marathon season with a run in Myrtle Beach, and that evening I drove through a mountain pass into a sudden snowstorm, where I contemplated the likelihood of careening off the road. While I was thinking about my own death, death came for someone in my family.

At my next marathon, I enjoyed a thrilling race, buoyed up by the Wellesley Scream. I crossed the finish line, got my medal, boarded a train out of the city. I still can’t watch news footage of what happened at the finish line while I was on that train.

And then I retired from running for two and a half weeks to sit in St. Louis and ponder what it is all for (see “Interlude, or, Thoughts from Code Name: Prison”). I can still taste the relief I felt when I left the treatment center, bought a six pack of Diet Dr. Pepper, checked into a hotel, and ran 10 miles on the hotel treadmill. My world seemed restored to the simple and the clean.

Four weeks later I ran my third marathon of the year, in Luxembourg, and by then I was sad again, with my illusions of control smashed by a postmarathon club sandwich in the hotel bar.

What is it all for?

I stopped writing. I stopped taking pictures. I didn’t stop running.

In September I traveled to the Hamptons to run my second Hamptons Marathon. This time the T-shirt was much better than last year’s. Woohoo! And I got second place in my division, a result I found out after I’d returned home. Guess what? The marathon committee mailed me a little plaque to commemorate the second-place finish. I didn’t bother to check again how many women in my age group finished that marathon. I’ll just let the plaque speak for itself!

Earlier this month, my friend boosted my morale enough for me to complete the Richmond Marathon: she picked me up at 5 a.m. to drive me to Richmond, then cheered me on at mile 15. I skipped out of Richmond last year, when I woke up in the November night and couldn’t face the prospect of the lonely, dark drive to the marathon start. This year, although I ran the marathon alone, I didn’t get there that way.

In my office at work, I have three Post-It notes stuck to the wall next to my chair: “Boston,” one reads. “Hamptons,” says another. And finally, “Richmond.” Reasons to keep going.

Still, there’s the question—what is it all for?

When I started running, I loved it. It made me feel good, physically, mentally, spiritually. It gave me new confidence. It made me braver. It opened up the world. And then, for a long time, running was a guaranteed fixer, a medicine that never failed. Running was always transformative. It brought peace and rational thought, two things I couldn’t seem to hold onto without it.

But there’s this cycle: push, push, push, and it feels good. So push more, more, more, and it doesn’t feel good anymore. Push again, again, again, and maybe it will get better. Fight, fight, fight, and go nowhere. Smash. Chaos. Reset. Start over. Repeat.

It hurts.

I’ve been through this storyline before. So the other day I was remembering my thirteenth marathon, back in 2009. I felt awful. I felt heavy. I felt slow. I finished the race, but during my next run, I got a shooting pain in my ankle. I couldn’t run consistently for the next several months. I felt so defeated. That year, I faced some of the lowest moments of my life. And looking back, I wish I could reassure myself on that marathon day, “This is not the end. There may be some bad times ahead, but you are going to run strong again. You are going to run more marathons, you are going to travel, you are going to have fun again.”

This month, when I ordered new running shoes, I decided on orange ones. For zest.

I don’t know … I don’t have the surety of hindsight here and now. But what I can hope is, “This is not the end.”

The plan is for South Carolina in December.

Some smiles after Richmond, thanks to my super-Starr friend

On the Verrazano Bridge

It costs twenty-five dollars in tolls to cross onto Long Island and back by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

I may not have believed it if I hadn’t made the journey myself. The twelve dollars I paid on my way to Long Island was the highest toll I had ever encountered—of course, that was before I paid thirteen dollars to head back toward New Jersey.

I approached the bridge fresh off the New Jersey Turnpike, with my notebook open to handwritten directions I tried to skim in quick glances as I proceeded through the “no-stopping zone,” the portion of my trip that involved skirting New York City via a succession of different roads. I had crossed one bridge already and was squinting at my directions (“What was the name of that other bridge?”) when I saw the massive structure looming up ahead of me.

The Verrazano Bridge has more than one level, and so did the course of my thoughts.

Why, I wondered on some level, do I let trips swallow me up like this? Why do I let this loneliness set in? I could feel my identity blurring, the edges of my self-image dissolving like the Wicked Witch in a rainstorm. But the parts that fell out the holes or evaporated into mist were the best parts, and all the bad, the fears, doubts, the bad habits, remained and grew concentrated.

Why, I wondered. And I knew it was because I couldn’t see my reflection. Because I rely too much on external reinforcements. Because there were no familiar sights or faces to reaffirm to me, “Yes, Roo, you know who you are.”

I grew stern with myself. You have to be present here, now, I thought. Embrace this moment, hurtling over an unfamiliar road under a bank of angry-looking clouds.

On a level above this muddy brooding, I listened to an NPR broadcast. A “Science Friday” feature that day came from a university in Idaho, my home state.

On yet another level, I stewed about tolls. I had just paid a so-far record-setting amount to exit the New Jersey Turnpike. My cash reserves now struck me as inadequate. I gulped as I read the sign announcing the twelve-dollar price to cross the bridge. The “no-stopping zone” might have to be amended to the “look frantically for an ATM zone,” I worried. And then I remembered that I’d stashed some additional cash and forgotten about it, until now.

I began to drive up.

Up toward the crest of the bridge. All the levels of thought flowed into wordless awe. Something about grandiose bridges takes my breath away. I don’t know if it’s the contrast in size, as the structure towers above me while my car and I shrink into specks, or if it’s the beauty that I never expect to find in steel and concrete. I felt myself being swallowed up again, but not into emptiness this time. My stomach fluttered with the kind of butterflies I felt when my mom would drive fast over a certain hill in the countryside of southeastern Idaho. The thrill zinged out toward my fingers and down to my toes.

And then I noticed the signs: “Life is worth living.” One, and another and another. “Life is worth living.” Space. Next sign. “Life is worth living.”

To discourage suicides, I realized. Because this is a big bridge, and people would come here to jump.

“Life is worth living.” Under the prominent message, the signs offered a phone number. A hotline.

I felt solemn again, and happy because the bridge was so beautiful, and relieved because I had more cash than I’d thought, and still peeved because twelve dollars is simply outrageous.

Split into all these emotions, I was nevertheless present, there and then, when I came off the bridge and read “Welcome to Brooklyn.”

On the way home, I wondered if some of the would-be jumpers were just shocked at having paid out the two biggest tolls of their lives. The thought made me smile a few days later, when I was back from my trip and deep in my usual postmarathon slump. I was casting about for reasons why “life is worth living.”

There, I mused. A memory, a smile. A gift from the Verrazano Bridge. So I got something for my twenty-five dollars, after all.

Life is worth living

Brief Tour of the Hamptons on a Cloudy Day

For the race ...

Elementary school hosting packet pickup and race start and finish, East Hampton. Bathrooms inside had toilets for small people.



At the beach ...

Not open for snacks after the race? (Maybe the Beach Hut opens on days NOT requiring outerwear.)

 

Family at the beach with black SUV: a moment where all is right with the world.

In the neighborhoods ...

Required elements include greenery,

a few hedges,

flowers in red, pink, and/or purple,

dashes of blue or yellow siding,

liberal doses of House of the Seven Gables gray,

and throw in some history.

Around town ...

Painted M&M sculptures, a Body Tech club, and an American flag--why not?

This way for some Ayurvedic treatments.



The line of carts suggests you are going to want A LOT of fresh produce.

Presbyterian church, in yellow with blue trim.

Inviting shop entrance or portal to a witch's lair? Come in and find out.



Main Street, Amagansett

 

Winter rentals available ... ah, yes, to stay a little longer!

Weekend To-Do List

To Do

1. Run Hamptons Marathon (drive to Long Island, find packet pickup site to get race number and timing chip, locate shuttle pickup point for race morning, find dinner, find the hotel, check in, get some rest, wake up on time, drive back to shuttle pickup site, ride to race start, run marathon [take a moment, take a breath, take in the scenery, keep moving{DO NOT stop, DO NOT cry}], cross finish line, collect medal, ride shuttle back to parking lot, clean up, take ibuprofen, take pictures, start home, find lunch, stay awake, stay alert, pay the tolls, fill up the gas tank, stop at the grocery store, unload the car, unpack, do laundry, take a shower, eat dinner, take ibuprofen …)—done!

Parking by the "No Parking" sign at packet pickup

A Sweet, Searing Pain

Countdown time for the Hamptons Marathon: it is now less than two weeks away. To get in the mood, I’ve been watching the “Barefoot Contessa,” Ina Garten, on the Food Network, as she visits farms, markets, and beaches around East Hampton (that’s where I’m headed!). She searches for fresh cheese or produce, or in the beach episode, she joins Elmo on a play date for a cooking-with-children theme, and she wears a windbreaker while she unpacks frozen fruit smoothies she whipped up for the Muppet. Fortunately, Muppets never get cold. All that fur, you know.

So it’s the Hamptons, but I can’t really see anything. I’m not going to remember that shop where Ina’s husband, Jeffrey, stopped to pick up wine and bread, or the name of the farm where they make cheese. And anyway, perhaps there’s not much in common between a cooking show and a marathon, in spite of the location. And then again, perhaps there’s a reason they are playing on the same channel in my mind.

It’s not just Ina—there’s also Giada, dicing up green apples and goat cheese and tossing around cinnamon and dried cranberries, and Paula and Ree and plenty of others with their skillets and food processors and zucchini and cumin. It’s words (“crostini,” “tartelette,” “pancetta”—never mind that I wouldn’t eat the meat … or touch it); it’s colors (green, red, purple, orange, green, did I mention lush, lush green?); it’s impressions (beauty, life, sun, friends, art, playing and then resting, feeling happy-tired). It’s memories. One of my grandmas used to serve me apple slices topped with cheddar cheese as a snack. I haven’t had that combination since I was a child. But suddenly I could taste it, and I knew for a moment it was the only food in the world I wanted. I could see her kitchen again, and the family room that opened right off it, where I’d sit in the rocker with the footstool and watch TV.

It’s a sweet, searing pain: a fleeting image, a moment of beauty you can’t capture or hold onto. You can’t close your fist around it and press it against your heart for later.

Last year, when the pumpkins came out for Halloween and the fall harvest spilled into grocery stores and roadside markets and the high school fundraiser down the street, I whirled into my usual tizzy of excitement, wanting … wanting … I don’t know, to rush out and purchase school supplies (ah, how I loved the fresh clean notebooks in the old days). Acting purely on my whims, I could have bought up a carload of pumpkins and various fall-themed decorations, not to mention jars of preserves with fetching labels, so quaint and so, frankly, un-useful to me. My practical side reigned. “Buy a pumpkin?” I scoffed at myself. “For what?”

“Well,” I might have answered myself, staring at the ground and poking a toe at the pavement, “I could carve a jack-o-lantern.”

 “Hah!” Guffaw.

“Well …”

“Come on.”

“Well, I could.” Only I wouldn’t. And I knew it. I sighed, but I left the parking lot at the pumpkin patch with my wallet unopened. Ultimately, I felt relieved at the ability of my common sense to adhere to the budget, but I was filled too with something like … like a sweet, searing pain.

Finally I realized I couldn’t “have” all the beauties and wonders of fall around me, but I could photograph them. That helped. I didn’t buy up produce that wasted away while I contemplated what to do with it. Still, maybe because I was paying more attention to the world around me, I kept seeing beautiful things that pricked at me even as I enjoyed them. They were ephemeral. I couldn’t bottle them up or take them home. I wanted to fill myself up with them, but I knew their moment would pass and leave me empty again.

Passing moments: that’s all a marathon is. I remember the glimmer of water during the Richmond Marathon. Running through a cheering crowd in Dublin and seeing the one spectator pointing out the mile marker in the midst of the chaos. Catching my breath—from exertion and awe—as I crested a hill and burst into a field lit with the rising sun outside Charlottesville. Passing a boy wearing a giant red claw at a water station in the Haunted Hustle Marathon in Wisconsin. Hearing the rhythm of my feet on the slats of a wooden bridge in a forest … somewhere. Huddling inside a port-a-potty while the wind howled outside, summoning me back to the course in Stockholm, Sweden.

You run for a long time in a marathon, but it’s just a series of moments. Some of them are brutal. Some of them make me shudder to relive them. Some are amazing. All seem to be elevated by the sense of an epic undertaking. To succeed in that undertaking brings a thrill that can’t be strung onto a ribbon or emblazoned on a T-shirt. You can’t touch it or hold it. Time passes, carrying your moment away. Leaving perhaps a sweet, searing pain.

Here it is autumn again, and the pumpkins are appearing. The light is shifting, taking on its golden tinge that strikes me as poignant, because winter is coming. I look forward to the joys of sweaters and candles, chilly mornings, maybe even a jack-o-lantern this year. Beautiful moments to store up in my memory against the darker season that follows.

Because all those moments we remember aren’t really gone—they’ve become part of us. When I think about past marathons and past trips, the moments that stay with me always seem inevitable, as if I can’t imagine not having been to Norway or Dublin, I can’t imagine the Stockholm Marathon of 2012 working out any other way (than bitterly cold and grueling and triumphant).

Sometimes I wish I could freeze time, or I wish I could string all my good memories onto ribbons and hang them with my marathon medals; I wish in looking at pictures I could recreate rather than merely remember, and knowing that I can’t—that I can never again sit in my grandma’s family room eating apple slices with cheese while she dances around in the kitchen, that I am never again going to stand on a stool at my other grandma’s kitchen sink to help her wash dishes while her bread dough rises—it lends sweetness, I think, as well as pain.

If I could have the past with me, could I look to the future? Last year’s autumn is gone, and this one is just arriving. Moments have floated away, and new ones have yet to be lived. I am craving that marathon feeling. It’s time to do more than remember what it’s like to cross the finish line. It is time to go out and cross one again.

Whatever happens on September 29th, I expect I’ll find myself watching the “Barefoot Contessa” again in the future, and it may occur to me that once upon a time I had never been to the Hamptons. What?! I had never been to the Hamptons? (Just as I had never been to Iceland or the Netherlands, way back when.) How odd. How almost unimaginable. I may not recognize any of the places Ina goes, and if I want to experience her food, I don’t think I will find it among the postrace refreshments. But I do think her art gives me other moments to look forward to … and future moments, perhaps, of sweet, searing pain.

Some charmers to admire, if not to possess: