bits and pieces from the neighbourhood.
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Month: April 2018
march started with rain and ended in radiant sunshine! we had friends over, celebrated birthdays, tried new things, improved the “garden”… it was a nice month all around. this year has been very quiet for a change, and i appreciate that.
march was also the month in which we celebrated five years of doing “one second everyday” videos, which is amazing! i’m so happy we’ve stuck with the habit for this long, and hope to keep it going for many, many years.
though we don’t do them for the sole purpose of sharing, i like that these videos function as a metronome of our life for our friends. sometimes people i haven’t seen in a while see the videos and then reach out to comment on a specific second — even if just to remark on how much food we eat, or how much the boy’s beard has grown! and it’s so incredibly nice to hear from them. :)
but what i like the most about this series is that recording the seconds has become a ritual that forces us to stop and appreciate little moments throughout the day. like kurt vonnegut’s uncle alex, i often ask myself: “if this isn’t nice, what is?”. and it is very nice indeed.
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did they tell you…?
(this story happened about a year ago, but it took some time to process.)
it started out normal enough. a small-town half-marathon that is traditionally held on easter sunday, between 11am and 2pm — an odd schedule, but the race crosses the local train tracks, and that’s one of the few gaps in which no trains go through that stretch. it’s hot for april. not that many people running, and even less cheering. i saw the boy off with my parents, and then strolled to the nearby beach for a stretch in the sun, the first proper beach day of the season.
an hour later, we made our way back and saw the first runners arrive, panting and drenched in sweat. we clapped, we waited, we cheered and waited some more… but the boy wouldn’t show up. 10 minutes after his normal finishing time, i was starting to think maybe he’d given up. he’d had a mild cold earlier that week, and though he seemed fully recovered by sunday, perhaps he wasn’t as fit as he thought.
i saw a couple of his running friends, so i asked one of them if he’d seen paulo. and he had. “did they tell you…?“, he said expectantly. turns out, he was laying on the road not looking great, around km 15. they’d taken him into hospital and the paramedics were looking for me, actually. i think my heart skipped a beat or twenty. we made our way to the emergency room at a maddening slow pace, our advance bracketed by traffic on the N125.
the boy was fine. agitated, amnesiac, dehydrated, drenched in sweat… but fine otherwise. his heart was normal, and after a while, so was the rest of him. probably the scorching sun, playing tricks. afterwards, his GPS watch told the story of a 30-minute gap, spent wandering back and forth on the side of a country road, before being driven to the hospital.
ever since then, i’ve been thinking about death and the fragility of human beings, as one does whenever things like these happen. and i understand one can’t live on a dome or in fear of the next panic, but it changes things, a bit. you’re ever slightly more careful, more attentive… and immensely grateful for every single day.