Bacon and Candy: Fall Ball

I like fall mornings – the light soft, not blinding like summer. And even here, in Phoenix, there’s a touch of cool to the air.

On the best days, I’m out the door as the sun rises. Or at least drinking my coffee by then.

This doesn’t happen enough. It’s a small life goal; to see that it happens more.

Today, though, we were out the door early. Heidi, myself, Beckett, Brody and Bob, Heidi’s father who is visiting from South Carolina.

We played disc golf in the park, met my mom, niece and nephew later and ate lunch near Tempe Town Lake, then all spent the afternoon at Feed My Starving Children – creating meal packages of protein, vegetables, soy and rice to be shipped to those in need in the Philippines.

Soon, I’ll pack Beckett up in the car and we’ll head 9 miles south for his baseball game tonight.

With any luck, I’ll be in bed by 9:30. Awake by 6 the next morning and walking shortly after; maybe up “A” Mountain, maybe through South Mountain Park.

It really doesn’t matter where; as long as I’m walking.

Being in the moment.

I like it there.

* * *

Tomorrow, too, we’re having lunch with my friend Carly. Carly, as you may or not recall, was someone we were introduced through from a friend of friend.

She got Guillain-Barre earlier this year, spent over 100 days in the hospital – where she coded, endured feeding tubes, countless secondary viruses – and then faced a long-road to recovery.

Beckett, Brody, Heidi and I would go visit her in the hospital. It was an eye-opening moment for Beckett, to experience the condition he had from the other side of the bed.

The first time Beckett met Carly in the hospital, he proclaimed, “You’re going to walk out of here.”

Tomorrow, she’s going to drive over here, to our house.

It’s pretty amazing.

Her recovery has been inspiring to watch. Even without a serious nerve-degenerating condition, regaining your movement after being more or less bedridden for three months would be a considerable challenge.

She says we were part of her healing process; but I’ve come to realize she’s also been a significant part of mine.

Recently she gave a speech that she later shared on Facebook. In that speech, she recalled to the group the idea that if you had everybody in a room write down their problems, laid them all out the table and asked people to choose, most people would probably choose to take back their own.

It’s funny that how works; but she chalks it up to a quote she encountered during her hospital stay. It centers on the idea that we get the challenges we get for a reason.

“You have been assigned this mountain to show others it can be moved.”

For me, that’s meant taking responsibility for the things in my life I don’t like.

The solution is mostly an internal one. It’s my job to show others; not someone else.

It seems so simple, like that’s something we should know.

And I have known it at times; and then forgotten it.

But now I know it again.

* * *

I have to run, get Beckett in the car and get on the road. But I don’t want to leave my seat – the TV’s playing softly in the background as Heidi and Brody nap on the couch, dishes are clinking as Beckett scarfs down whatever he can before we leave for his game, and I’m sitting in solitude as the afternoon light shifts across my office.

It’s calming. Nice.

But the baseball diamond calls.