Brie showed me a video of Nathan running alongside his friend Jalen at the last mile of the LA Marathon yesterday.
They had gone to support Jalen, the dude works at Panda and his mom used to lock him out if he got home too late but she's better now and this guy just ran to the beach and beverly hills and silverlake and back, 26 miles, in five hours. I couldn't even do that in my CAR in five hours.
But this stupid shaky happy instagram video made me stop and watch, and cry because there's something about people doing hard things because they need to try things, and then to have people show up like their friends, and cheer them on, and run alongside, even though they hate running. And Brie had made signs, just crappy quick signs made in the car with a fat sharpie on big posterboard, and Jalen was running with his poster that said YOU GOT THIS JAY DOGGG and Nathan is just yelling you can do it!! you're so stronggg!! and Brie is cheering good job and they're cheering strangers too. And I cry cause he's running and he's celebrated and he tried something hard and people showed up for him.
So then my dad today sends me a video made by my nephew's mom, about climbing a mountain in Mexico because it's good to challenge yourself and be in nature in your native land, and then she finds out halfway up the mountain that she's mourning the loss of her mom and sister to cancer, and she ends up crying on the mountain and finding healing in doing hard things.
I watched this sitting by the pool with my mom to get her in the sun for 20 minutes. I had just spent a solid week rewriting an old beloved script to send in to festivals. I had been sucked into that script, 14 hour days, cutting, reading, rewriting, trimming, thinking, listening, loving, letting them talk, undamming the crap parts and watching it trickle then flow. I turned it in late last night, finished for now, in solid good shape. This was my first 20 minutes of sitting down not laser focused, and this climbing the mountain video came in and so I watched it, right there, in my sudden open time, with my feet on my mom's lap.
The second time in two days that I see people doing hard things and finding joy and themselves right in there, running alongside themselves.
The video was over, it was honest and inspiring. I got up to vacuum the pool since it needed to be done and my mom could still sit in the sun a little longer. The sun asking nothing, but laying her fingers on you from above, heating all the parts that need attention. As I cleaned the pool I thought about these years with my mom. I thought man I'm doing hard things. I wish I had a team of people who came and carried signs and ran alongside me. To remind me how lucky I am to care for an important life, and they see how hard I'm trying.
Then I laughed because I immediately got the images of the people running alongside me. It was Barry emptying the dishwasher. Nathan taking the heavy trashcans out. Bruce and Bess cracking hilarious unexpected jokes. GS and Evie leaving me books they like. My friends calling me to rant. Mom squeezing my leg and smiling at me. The horses giving me new things to train everyday, and carrying me to windy nature. B's big family showing up to eat a burrito, my dad texting a picture look at this plant blooming so many pink flowers.
A marathon is televised, but real daily life is thrown under the rug and that's where all the training for marathons gets done and that's where all the people with signs are secretly jumping up and down for us, every single day. If you can't see it it's cause it just looks a little different. Cause it's your fabric.
