The phone rang early this morning. It was Lyla and Josie, my granddaughters, calling to say hello and tell me that I still have very funny hair. Which I do. Because I can. I used the moment of laughter to lace up my newish speedy-go-fasters and get after a hill workout. While I was out there I found myself lost in the memory of another early morning run years before that turned out to be the beginning of the end of my hard times and the beginning of a none-too-easy journey to here.
sunrise
Years ago, I thought this morning, I met the ghost of myself talking aimless in anonymous streets across America. I never did meet “the best minds of my generation” while running down the “Negro streets” of Terminal City at dawn. I was not the best mind of my generation but, yeah, I was there looking for an “angry fix”; there was “madness and I was starving, broken, naked.” And then it ended with me on my knees praying to a god I had never believed existed and with whom I was interminably angry. I heard myself ask to be allowed to go to sleep and a while later to be allowed to wake up. The sun rose that morning as always. I put on a pair of rarely used running shoes and went out into the wreckage of my life piled up on the front stairs of my house. Without a glance back I took off down the street, made the turn to 4th avenue and stopped running – maybe I had run 100 yards.
I found my way to the back door of Jacques’ cafe – sort of next door to my running store of choice and directly across the street from the new Spandex garden of a gym for those with too much money and time on their hands. Jacques asked me how I was, and when I told him I was okay, he shrugged in his Gallic way and gave me a bowl of his excellent French pea soup. When I asked him for a couple of eggs, he asked me if I had any money. I said grandly, “Put it on the tab, please.” He said he couldn’t do that until I brought the total down. He seemed almost apologetic. I did not get angry – I was too tired and, amazingly, grateful for his kindness over the previous months. I had been in what turned out to be the end stages of my crack addiction; he had seen it, called me on it and kept me fed until as he put it, I got my head out of my ass. I was so messed up (read selfish) and using all my money for drugs that I had taken unholy advantage of his kindness and run up a big bill, way too big for a small cafe. I said thank you for the soup and went out into the sunlight.
I bumped into a guy who had been a lifelong friend with whom I had fallen out not a couple of years before. He was with his soon-to-be new wife, and they both greeted me with sweaty smiles and hugs, having just “trained” over at the gym across the way. “You look fabulous,” said they to my crack-racked, disappearing body with its unused running shoes on full display. “You have lost a lot of weight – you look great” ( I, fyi, call that phrasing the traditional Jewish greeting). I did my imitation of a smile and nodded enthusiastically at the great virtue of being crack-cocaine wasted and apparently stylin’. We had been friends since we were teenagers 40 years before. I turned to go home, mumbling about finishing “my run.” I made sure I was out of sight before I broke down and wept for the simple sadness of the deception, the total waste of it all.
I had kept everything hidden from nearly everybody for all those years, lived easily with being thought an asshole and worse. My old friend had his own troubles and, unbelievably, would contract a bug that inevitably became Acute Myeloid leukemia (AML) and he died 3 years later. I was clean and sober as that happened and we got in touch, he from his hospital bed, me from my new home in North Texas. He was unabashedly pleased to hear my amends and delighted to hear that I was finally clean and living decently. His happiness for my recovery seemed pure and without hesitation. I could not get to his memorial but he is always present in my life. We were friends for a long time through some very difficult circumstances. And so we shall remain.
Shortly after I got out of treatment, I arranged through a friend to get Jacques the money I owed him. I never heard from him although my friend said that Jacques had smiled when he took the money and asked if I was doing okay, and when she said I was, he shrugged as if say to I’m glad it worked out; it doesn’t always.
I walked this morning up the steep hill outside my front door – up the hill and north over the next hill and back, and I finished with a short jog up the little hill that runs directly in front of my house. The great adventure took 35 minutes. I was able to do a little lifting when I got back from the “hills”; then I took the car to get it washed, for the first time in a year, and bought myself a skinny cappuccino on the way home.
I checked out my shoe rack, which sits near my font door, and yes there are many pairs of unused running shoes waiting for me and my physical recovery to show up and take them out to do what they do so well.
This morning has been a long time coming and as they say, it will be a long time gone. I couldn’t be more grateful. Or more humbled.
shoes
Image Credit
Photos by Michael Lebowitz. All rights reserved.
Recent Michael Lebowitz Articles:
- Tarmac Meditations #205: Images in the Sunrise
- Tarmac Meditations #204: Images From the Road - Smoke Risin'
- Tarmac Meditations #203: Images From the Road
- Tarmac Meditations #202: Images From the Road
- Tarmac Meditations: Haiku # 42
Please Share Your Thoughts - Leave A Comment!