Last Friday I walked 60 kilometres (more, actually; the f-ers who mapped out the course went OVER the 60k mark) in twelve-and-a-half hours, but if it had been just me doing the walking, I’d likely still be somewhere along that course, probably sleeping under a bridge or drinking at a bar.
I did all the prep work necessary: regular hikes of increasing distances, acquiring blisters that turned into hard callouses; learning the route; carb loading; getting good sleep; even abstaining from alcohol the week before. The weather cooperated too: there was rain forecasted that was replaced by wind and clouds, that Friday the lone dry day surrounded by thunderstorms the rest of the week.
But still, on trek day, my legs felt like lead. My team seemed to be practically jogging even though we were travelling at our usual pace. I wanted to quit so badly. I could imagine myself just lying down–on the beach or in the middle of the street, I wasn’t picky–and surrounding to the aches and pains. Just letting go.
Instead, somehow, I kept going. I asked God to throw me a bone and make it easier. He did not. What he did do was open my eyes to the people who showed up along the way: teammates’ families and friends who brought food and massage sticks and Gatorade; kids who cheered us on and held out ice water; my own friends who waited patiently at the top of a hill I swore was designed to kill me and gave me an extra boost of love; and my boys, The Husband and The Kid and Little Brother, en route to McDonald’s, who pulled up beside us and grabbed my hand.
About an hour after that encounter, we crossed the finish line–the four of us, my team, together.
At the end of our first and only half-marathon together, TH turned to my excited face and announced, “That was terrible. I hated it.” I’ve always laughed at him for that, until now. Now I know how he felt. “Enjoy!” spectators cheered at us along the course as I wanted to vomit and die. I did not enjoy. But I didn’t want to be the weakest link (which I surely was). The pressure felt insurmountable, like the hills along our path. I surely would have quit were we not required to finish together.
What I’m saying is that I’m not a hero, but I am done. Blistered and sore and done, with a medal to my name and two boys who saw their mother make it across the finish line, and that is something. A lot of things, in fact. And our quartet stuck together, supporting each other, even when I seriously considered jumping from the Harbour Bridge.
A lovely friend of mine refers to her family, and mine, as “Team,” and not in the sickly sweet way that makes you want to gag, but in the “Hey, Team!” way when she and hers see us walking into school, or like, when I told her last week that I was going to lose it after being home with a sick kid for days on end, she commiserated that it can be tough having the team all together.
It can be. We know waaaaay too much about each other: how to push each other’s buttons, how each other’s farts smell. Togetherness can be exposing and hard, making us vulnerable and so seen–whether on a trek course or at home. It can be…chafing, physically and emotionally.
I took my yearly sojourn to a hotel by myself on Saturday, with my sore muscles and gaping wounds, and when I entered the blessed room I noticed how quiet it was. I lit a candle, popped the bottle of champagne TK had waiting on me (#grateful), and got to writing. It was glorious.
And annoyingly incomplete. So I texted friends. And FaceTimed my family. Apparently I can’t go eighteen hours without my teams.
“I’m so glad we get to be a family,” TK said on the way to school this morning, and it took my breath away. He is so aware–he and LB both–of being a member of this unit of four (five, when they count Google Home, which they often do; guess we don’t need a dog?), of their place in it: of being sons, and brothers. Of being part of a team.
A college friend used to joke that “there may not be an I in team, but there is an M and and E,” and it’s the me part of the team that I struggle with the most: my temper, my mistakes, my role. Along with making time for me so I don’t forget who I am, when I am so embedded in others. Others who both pull me out of myself and away from what I know of me into new places, paths that lead up hills and through forests and along spectrums and into classrooms and somehow end up making me more myself than I ever was. With the medals and chafing and heart to prove it.