better day

The rain has stopped and I don’t smell like soy sauce anymore. And Faryn’s saved us by getting a lot of baking done in the last two days. And my darling friend Sarah offered to find me 70s clothes.

And I got a great email from Phil last night where, among other things, he said: “…the struggle is part of the dream, enjoy being a struggling baker, and don’t worry about tomorrow being better because tomorrow has no logic…” And neither does today, I thought.

Late last night, I found myself in a strange neighborhood in Brooklyn. I’d had a meeting with Harvard Sailing Team on the Lower East Side that ended half an hour earlier. Afterward, I’d gotten on the nearest train because it was pouring rain and I had no umbrella and a lot of heavy bags. It’s a train I never take and I ended up somewhere I rarely go. I was on the hunt – desperately searching every grocery store I passed for a specific ingredient. At 10:30pm on a Tuesday. Needless to say, I couldn’t find it. I was exhausted, lost, and feeling pretty pitiful.

As I hiked toward another subway station to make another transfer to another train that still wasn’t going to take me home, as I lugged heavy bags filled with all-purpose flour and paperwork, as I felt the water seep through my first layer of clothes and then my second, as I thought about how much there still was to do when I finally got home at whatever o’clock – I suddenly remembered Phil’s email: The struggle is part of the dream. Enjoy it.

And like a weird, wet bag lady, I started laughing. Here I am, I thought. Yup. It’s actually sort of awesome. Someday I’ll tell my grandkids.

Thanks Faryn, Sarah and Phil. And thanks, Grandpa, for having such unbelievable stories about your life with which even my most harrowing could never quite compete.