Today 200 people ran, cycled and swam past or near my hotel. Men and women braving the heat, to compete to win, or at least finish. I admire them and recognize the madness in them. I know all about endurance I have been in training for my own personal endurance event for some time. My event is called life.
In my endurance sport I brave the terror of regularity, the horror of uniformity, the sameness of knowing that there is no end in sight, that there is no finish line, that there is no escape. I’ve been at work every day since November 4th, it’s March 18th, a date calendar tells me that’s 136 days, or 4 months 15 days or an intolerable number of minutes. The only day off I have had was the day I drove to see my dad in hospital so my kids could say goodbye to him if he died. That stands out in my mind as the best day this year.
I drove there after work into the darkness, a 5 hour drive through narrow winding mountain roads with both my children sleeping behind me. And at 1:30am in the middle of the mountains the man who doesn’t know he loves me called me, and I didn’t get the call because I was too tired, but it woke me up and gave me the strength to keep driving. At 7:30 in the morning the man who doesn’t think that he loves me paged me to see if I’d arrived safely. He didn’t wake me up when he called because I’d woken up only seconds before thinking of him. That’s how it is, he doesn’t know he loves me, I don’t let him know I love him and yet I think about him all the time.
I spent the day with my dad, watching him lie helpless in a hospital bed knowing that there was nothing I could do, knowing that I had to pretend like everything was all right. And then we left to drive back into the night and my daughters, never really understanding that this might be the last time they ever saw their grandfather wanted to shop, and we did. We stopped at the mall and they bought me beautiful clothes that I hoped would make the man I love come back to me, hoped would make him want me again because a month before I’d said goodbye to him and I had regretted it every day since. And as I shopped I wondered why I was wasting my time shopping when i should be with my father, why I should be shopping and enjoying life when my dad could be in a hospital bed dying and I called him to talk to him guilty and sad and I wished my father goodnight like he was one of my children and I pretended that everything was alright. Because that is how you endure, that is how you survive. And I smiled for my kids and I enjoyed an ice cream because you must enjoy the moments that you can or there is nothing to go on for.
Then I drove home through the darkness wishing he would call but he didn’t. And I endured.
And then I went back to work, every day with him, and we didn’t talk and then he said he’d quit, and I kept going because that is how you endure. And my father recovered and my children kept growing. And my daughter turned into a teenager who learned to hate me, and my youngest cried every day because she was tired and sad and was at work too late at night every day with her mother. She cried because she hated school and she hated life and I told her everything would be alright and I hated myself because a nine year old should not have to be at school at 8 in the morning and get home from work at 11 pm. And it was my fault, this was my endurance event and she was only a spectator caught up in the monotony of existence.
And then we went out, he, his cousin and I and he got drunk. It was a farewell drink because he was only going to work till payday. And he got so drunk. And all his anger at me for dumping him came out, all his hate, all the hate he’d ever had for anyone who had ever hurt him, for any woman that had ever hurt him was laid on me. And I felt his words cut through my heart and then he left me bleeding. And I fired him and wanted to hate him, wanted so much to hate him. I didn’t want to have to endure the pain, I just wanted to fill the holes in my heart with hate because it would be so much easier. And I couldn’t. All I could do was think about him, and worry about him, and love him and hate myself for being so weak.
He called, he texted and I ignored him. Too busy trying to endure to need any more pain. Too busy trying to survive to want to feel anything else. Finally I acquiesced and he apologized. And said he wanted to be friends. And I drove away from him crying even more.
And then his cousin quit, my other waiter. And I had no staff left. And if felt like the end. Like there was nothing left, no reason to go on with anything. Like I’d lost my last tie to him.
And then he came back. Not every night, but enough, he’d come to the restaurant. And I knew he was thinking of me too. He’d show up and help serve clients, help make drinks. And then he said he’d come work for me and quit his new job. And I was happy. So happy. Stupid happy but I pretended I wasn’t. And then he didn’t come. And I survived, I endured as always and I hired new staff. More new staff, more new staff. I don’t even want to know their names, I don’t want to know if they have kids, I don’t want to care.
My father returned to the US and he’s fine. Except that he’s not. Not really. He’s old and he will go one day. They say he doesn’t have cancer, but is is having mini-strokes, they say his gall bladder operation went well, but he may need another heart operation. They say he needs his cataracts removed but his retinas have reattached. All I know is that he is no longer my father, no longer the man I can lean and rely on, and that soon, sooner than I wish he will be gone from this world.
Only rocks endure, and so I became. Then last week he agreed to go out with me. I asked. And we didn’t go out. We went to bed. And I was happy for the first time in three months. And I’d like to think this was the start of something new, something more but I don’t know that it is. And now I don’t know which direction the road goes from here. I only know that I will endure. I only know that the path ahead keeps going and this is not a race for winners, this is only about getting to the finish. And hopefully arriving with a life filled with more love than monotony, more joy than pain. But in the end one must brave the heat, and the pain and embrace the madness if one is to get to the end.
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