100 Words Per Mile: Reflections - 11
A lot, and very little, has changed since January 6, 2021.
Last night, I watched my daughter do her best to mimic the moves she’d seen on Dancing with the Stars. She’s taking dance classes through her daycare, and after dinner, we pick a couple clips on YouTube so she can indulge in what seems to be becoming a passion of hers.
Also last night, I read this piece in The Atlantic, detailing all the ways Donald Trump is amassing authoritarian control and spitting on the basic principles of our Constitution. I think everyone should give it a close look.
Reading this week’s entry was bizarre. So much has changed. For one, we are no longer the couple pining for a family, the one navigating the purgatory between embryo transfers. It’s almost impossible to remember my mindset as we navigated the fog of IVF. Holding hands in the hospital, watching conception videos on YouTube, assuming failure—these are the things that come back to me. I was sad then, but I wasn’t alone in that sadness.
What’s also changed is Russell Westbrook is no longer a Washington Wizard. In fact, he has since played for the Lakers, the Clippers, the Nuggets, and now the Kings. I wonder what twenty-four-year-old Caleb would think about that. His time in D.C. also feels like a fever dream.
When reading my entry on January 6, 2021, just after having read the above article in The Atlantic, it seems like nothing’s changed at all. It’s as if Joe Biden’s presidency is just some collective hallucination—a Mandela effect. We course-corrected. Then we abandoned ship. We’re as intellectually lazy as we’ve ever been.
That probably includes me, too. So, let me spare you anymore thoughts on that fuckery.
I’m flying to New York City today to run the marathon for the second time and my third marathon overall. Spoiler: the last entry of 100 Words Per Mile was written after running my first in February 2022. I’ve come a long way, which is all I can ever hope for.
Like in the first entry of 100 Words, my wife and I’ve recently made a big decision. I’m not ready to write about it yet, but I do think running the marathon on Sunday will help me sort my thoughts out. There’s some reconciliation to be done on my part.
We’re doing the right thing, and we’re making the responsible, practical decision. But in revisiting these entries, I’m reminded the emotional odyssey it was to get here.
The New York City Marathon is a race from Staten Island to Central Park by way of Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Manhattan again. It’s a beautiful run in one of the greatest cities in the world. It’s also grueling—especially the Queensboro Bridge—and you will question what the fuck you were thinking when you signed up for this. But the end is euphoric. Finishing a marathon, even when doing so slowly, is as rewarding of an experience as it gets.
However, it pales in comparison to watching my daughter dance. The joy of finishing the race and the pride of having done so dampens over time. My kids’ ability to bring me joy with the simplest of gestures—my son closing his eyes at the dinner table; my daughter pretending her mermaid threw up; my son running laps around the ottoman; my daughter covering herself with jewelry—is an eternal bit of magic.
The optimist in me tells me this moment in America is temporary, that this is a marathon and eventually we’ll all cross the finish line together, but I can’t shake the concern that optimism on its own is too passive. I thought January 6 would wake lazy thinkers up to the dangers of worshipping a conman. I was wrong.
I don’t have a landing spot for these thoughts just yet. I feel like I’m circling something—about what we owe our kids; about what it takes to preserve the successes of a grand sociological experiment; about the gratification of doing the hard work and accomplishing a goal—but it’s still a bit vague. It’s not as neat as I’d like it to be.
But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying to figure it out.