When Life Gets In The Way

Only two blocks into my three mile run, I wasn't loose yet and probably looked like a Lumberjack stomping down the road. Grooving to the tunes streaming into my ears, I'm still getting into it. Typically it takes the first mile before I start feeling good and by then I'm on the beach where everything is better anyway.

The route I take leads me the entire length of the street we live on and its only five blocks long. If I miss the turn, I get wet!

I like our street. Walking out the house, if I look to the right the Marsh is half-a-block away. Looking the other way I see a canopy of trees hanging over the road. In the mornings that's the direction I head.

More than half of the homes are vacant most occupied in the summer. I know everyone who lives here year round. There's the crazy woman who gardens in her underwear, the Cat Lady next door, and the old man who walks his tiny dog twice each day. A couple has two large dogs that walk them every day, a young couple flies a Clemson flag from his front porch and at the very end of the street lives my friend Frank who lost his wife a couple of years ago and has never recovered.

Lumbering away listening to Pearl Jam, I notice a house that was there yesterday is gone today. It's still there ... just no longer put together and lays in a pile on the ground. A bulldozer is resting beside the heap still exhausted from tearing it down. I see pictures are still nailed to pieces of walls. In the distance I see the back of a house I've never seen before.

I keep running but am surprised that a perfectly good house is gone. It was built of cedar which is uncommon but I liked its rustic beach look. It had a garage apartment that stood alone next to it but it's no longer there either.

I reach the beach where everything remains the same yet changes a little bit every day. Eddy's run that weren't there. Sand dunes have grown or have been reduced in size. Horseshoe crabs litter litter the beach dead from a mad dash to float out with the tides. The shrimp boats have disappeared. Yet the ocean remains is ever constant.

It makes for a pensive run. I'm loose now, organizing the day in my head knowing full well that I won't get half of it done. Life will get in the way ... which is as it should be.

I'm not opposed to change and have had my fair share. I asked for some of it and the rest just dropped on me. It's all right. Things have a way of working out so long as you believe they will. If you don't believe they will ... well ... you're screwing yourself.

On Twelfth Street I top the cross walk and make my way home again. I hope it's still there. It was when I left. I hope Sarah hasn't regained her sanity and fled. I'm pretty sure Goddess would still wait on me but I have no confidence in Winston, the little gay dog.

Turning on the street, I breath a sigh of relief that the house is still there. Goddess and Winston, the little gay dog are too. Sarah's car is gone but she left me a note saying she loves me still. I breath a prayer of Thanksgiving. For one more day at least, it all remains the same.