There's a lot of things to love about living in the greater DMV. No, not the real estate prices or the traffic or the humidity of summer. But the ability to be in a major urban area and still be super-close to a lot of natural beauty is!
Me, Mr. Every-Body-Run and Tiny Overlord love to take advantage of both the state and national parks within an hour or so of home for hikes (and stuffing pockets with leaves and rocks for Tiny Overlord). But when this Sunday approached sunny yet blissfully cool -- a reminder of how few days we will get of this before we turn back into the swamp we truly are -- both Mr. EBR and I were feeling surprisingly cranky. We sat on the couch Saturday night, batting ideas around but feeling a big ol' MEH about just about every choice. We'd done a family run in Rock Creek Park that day. Enjoyed the free National Zoo. Fixed up the yard and our garden box, and grilled out dinner. I mean, A+ weekending, right? What else do you need?
But we were both still in what I call our Middle-Aged-Mope mood: this is where we start thinking about how much darn time we spend working and whether that work actually matters, how suddenly it feels like all our choices are constrained by the elder-care/toddler combo, how "tired" has become our most frequent (and most honest) response to "how are you doing?"
I know, for me, part of it was the very sad news while having lunch with a beloved colleague that another beloved colleague's husband was just diagnosed with cancer ... only a year before they are both set to retire. I know, for Mr. EBR, part of it was the sheer overload of work he faced as he prepared for a conference while also dealing with several non-crisis-but-still-hard moments with his dad's care. We know we are lucky; we both have jobs that not only pay us a livable wage in our ridiculously overpriced city, they also are filled with co-workers we like and work that gives us meaning. But when you pass the big 4-0, when you have both family and friends dealing with the inevitable health declines of old age, even "incredibly lucky" means you wonder a lot about not making the most of your time. About being "stuck."
If these are some of the best years physically, why are we spending so many of them in front of computers and crossing off work deadlines? We say we love our city, but in the past decade, we have moved exactly 1.4 miles up the same road ... aren't we just running in circles?
I couldn't help but keep thinking of the closing lines from my absolute favorite poem from my absolute favorite poet of all time: Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day":
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Now, you need not be an English professor ** like me to know "feeling like my life is runinng in circles" is NOT what this poem calls you to do with "one wild and precious life." So when we woke up Sunday still in a funk, we realized we needed to take the last day of the weekend up a notch and shake it off: it was time for an impromptu beach day.
nothing like toes in the sand!
That's another one of the close(ish) natural beauties: if you hit a good traffic moment, you can be at Rehoboth Beach Delaware in just two and half hours. While not something to do every day, if you have a Tiny Overlord with a 6:30 a.m. wakeup and have mastered the art of the quick pack, you can be on the beach before 10, enjoy a full day, and back home without even pushing a late bedtime.
With it being the weekend before Memorial Day, we knew this might be one of the last "easy" drive days, and so we packed up some snacks and a boatload of sunscreen, and off we went. Indeed, it did give everyone a boost. It was cool enough with a nice breeze that you even needed a hoodie sitting on the beach, so Mr. EBR (who must have had enough heat growing up in Madrid summers and hates a sweaty day) was thrilled. The windy day created the perfect wave-crashing soundtrack, which is one of my surefire anxiety killers, so I was happy. The bar terrace where we stopped for lunch got Tiny Overlord a whole plate of French Fries just minutes after we asked, so she was happy (though, in retrospect, this may have been because we inadvertedly picked the same bar where the Rehobeth Beach Bears were starting an early beer happy hour -- Rehoboth has a long history as inclusive and welcoming of the LGBTQIA community, just another reason to love it -- and the waiter figured, rightly so, a wailing toddler might harsh the vibe).
Last year, we'd made the same day trip in early June, and Tiny Overlord was a bit scared of the water. Before July, it's really too cold to swim in, and on this pre-Memorial Day day, it was downright icy, so we were both surprised when Tiny Overlord rushed to the agua (bilingual baby has some words that are always in Spanish, and agua is one) and plonked her toes right in. While she got a bit scared the first time she felt the current sucking her teeny tooties towards the water, once she realized mama or papa was going to hold her up, she quickly began treating it as a game. She'd run into the foamy edge of the surf, yelp with joy as the water hit her toes and legs, then run back up, giggling madly.
Over and over again, we made this circle. Run to the surf, happy yelp and splash, then loop back to the sand. And then again.
Going nowhere, but going everywhere we need to be.
When papa's Spanish soul couldn't take the icy ocean and he retreated to his sunny chair, Tiny Overlord refused to be bowed, so I kept ahold of her hand as we made loop after loop.
We were running in circles. Literally.
But unlike the more metaphoric running in circles Mr. EBR and I had been feeling so funked-up about, this literal running in circles felt damn good. I don't know if you have recently heard a toddler giggling nonstop (if you haven't, call your friend with a toddler, or hey, call me -- we got you), but there is something infectious there. It's a pure sound. It's joy, unadulterated. Soon, I was yelping and giggling just as loud.
So much of my way of judging life has been about progress -- whether that is personally or professionally, or running-wise. Am I getting to the "next step?" Am I going fast enough? Am I moving in the right direction? Am I going to the right places?
For Tiny Overlord and I in those beach-running circles, we were very purposefully not moving anywhere. We were making no progress. We ran and ran, but got back to the same place.
And it was a lot of fun. And it was just what I needed.
(** and yes, I do realize loving Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day" is just about as English-teacher-cliché as you are ever going to get. But I DO love it. And yes, Dead Poets Society, too, so I guess, if the cliché fits, flaunt it )
