Sandbags

There are three guys I know, all very integral parts of my recovery, whether they realize it or not. Amazingly, all four of us can find ourselves in the same isolated, foul-minded, discontented state at the same time. All four of us in our own personal brains for four totally different reasons, none of us very eager to share with anyone else how we're really feeling, to verbalize what's really on our minds. Of course, I speak for myself only when I write this. Chances are, the other three look at things very differently.

Recently, one of the three lost his job and fell on trying times. He found himself behind on bills, failing to make the payments that he'd been so consciously endeavoring to continue making for so long before. Restless and irritable, he didn't let his negative outlook stay framed in the black for very long, and he has been continually out, pounding the networks and seeking something in the form of culpable and lasting employment.

Saturday night was one of those nights. Yes, it was Halloween, and the costuming was fun, and there were high hopes for the party. Unfortunately, some of us left the party in a less passable and uplifting state of mind... anything but hopeful... really just wanting to go out to our own personal spots in the middle of nowhere to contemplate who's bad and what's what, looking for places to shift the blame. I came home and took photos of my bath water after scrubbing off the fake blood and layers of grey all over my face and eyes. After drying off and helping my mom with a computer issue, I received a phone call from Trish. Eager to spend some time with someone who always leaves me feeling a hundred times better, I invited her over and welcomed her at the door with the cold, end-of-autumn night at her back. We sat at the bar in the kitchen, drank lattes, and talked. We watched the news and saw the reports about the multiple local bodies of water that are at or near or above flood stage and rising. We saw that one of them had broken, flooding nearby neighborhoods and promising more proliferating waters in the coming hours and days. After a wonderful visit, Trish left and I poured myself into bed, ready to sing for the sandman to bring me a dream.

Sunday, I met Victor and Sllim and Lisa at the clubhouse where we pulled every speck of dust and beyond from the recesses of a storage closet. We tossed things, cleaned things, catalogued things, and set up a whole new avenue for storage. Just something to make sense of what we have and to prepare the next ones for what to do. It was nice, superceding our meeting with idel talk about who's who and what's what and the final steps we're taking to clear out the end of our commitments and the beginnings of new lives.

Sllim and Victor were in great spirits, smiling and happy, joking around and picking on us and on each other. Of course, they were both exhausted because they'd seen the breach in the water barrier and the orange jumpsuits bent over bags, with shovels in their hands, piling scoops of sand into bags to line against the rapidly approaching waters as they neared nice neighborhoods lined with nice houses inhabited by nice families. Sllim and Victor weren't alone when they saw the inmates performing the task, and as they passed and saw the men performing something that could have been their own fate, there must have been an instant of gratification that they were in the warm vehicles traveling on the road to transferring their anger onto something else, but the instant passed and the moment set in where they remembered that if life were fair, they would all (we would all) be under the jail, never to be seen or heard from again... dead and buried without a trace, for no one to ever know for sure, only to assume that we'd all gotten exactly what we deserved.

Sllim and Victor and the other party pulled up and spent the next several hours alongside the men in the orange jumpsuits, bagging sand and issuing orders and being grateful to help, being grateful to feel like they were doing something that really mattered. The party was forgotten, the angry feelings vanished, the men were men, and all found a resolve to those negative feelings that had been so insistent as they pulled away from the fete.

Altruism. When do we know when we are really doing the right thing? Is it when we're doing the things that we do for awards and recognitions? To be handed the plaques and the trophies that are inscribed with lists of our accomplishments and beyond-the-call-of-duty endeavors? Or are they in the quiet moments in time when we pull up behind a stranded motorist and offer him or her a lift or a cell phone or a jack?

I hear that the guys all had to ride home from sandbagging in their underwear. Cold and sweaty and dirty and layered with a fine film of Red River water and clay, they drove home in skivvies, happy to be done, feeling as if they'd done the only thing, the right thing. They knew that they had done the right thing to do for all the right reasons with no expectations, no eyes on the future, no hope for recognition or reimbursement, just helping out some guys that could have been their cell mate, their sponsee, their brother, their son...knowing that it was mere luck that had them passing in their vehicles, when they could have been watching the vehicles pass... and looked on as it kept going...had it not been filled with a bunch of recovering addicts.

Going on very little sleep, tired muscles, induced fatigue, and the memory of a commitment, Sllim and Victor still showed up on time for their commitment at the clubhouse. And they smiled. And they were proud of themselves, with good reason.

They were two of the three... which were actually all part of a group that grew in size when others of their family arrived to invoke whatever assistance they were able to generate.

There are no coincidences... there is only God.

After completing our work at the clubhouse yesterday, we all sat down and smoked cigarettes and talked. The best kind of talks. The talks that usually precede late meetings when everybody sits there and promises to smoke just "one last cigarette" until almost the entire pack is gone. Everyone expresses their fears and their resentments and their hopes and their values. No gossip or hurtful words, just sharing among friends. Getting to know each other a little better. Realizing that we all think very similarly about some things, and will never agree on others. Realizing that the disagreements don't really matter because they are what makes the us in us, the things that make us fit as irregular pieces of a great big jigsaw puzzle that we won't ever see totally put together and framed until we're long gone from this tangled life we lead.

Monday was here. Manic Mondays. Mundane Mondays. Monotonous Mondays. Microbiology Mondays. Mondays suck.

But I had a phone call this morning. It was Tricia Davis, calling to ask me about the party and to tell me all about the wonderful weekend she had, finally having the opportunity to do something she'd always wanted to do before she died, and she got to do it with her family, the people in her life who are the most important to her. We laughed, and I smiled at the excitement in her voice, and we made plans to talk later.

The morning was over. The men were outside and I could hear hammers and drills and saws and the regular buzz of power and progress. I had another call. This time, it was Amy. She was calling to tell me that she had blown her interviewers out of the water, exceeded their expectations, exceeded hers, she'd followed through and pursued her dream and achieved a goal... ready to set one hundred more. She was buzzing and elated and happy and empowered and ecstatic. We laughed, and I smiled at the excitement in her voice, and we made plans to talk later.

The afternoon set in, along with the reality that Microbiology was approaching and I really needed to prep a bit futher for the quiz. After going over notes and reviewing the material, I was preparing to walk out the door when the phone rang. This time it was a male friend, the one I mentioned earlier. The one who lost his job and had fallen down on his luck and was struggling to stay afloat, put his head above water. After leaving a Halloween party on Saturday night, he had been with two other guys, and the trio had spent the night and early morning hours with the inmates filling sandbags and being grateful for what they had. And they'd done it for all the right reasons. And that afternoon, my friend had received a phone call from a man who told him to be at work in the morning, who was calling to answer his prayers without even knowing what they were. We laughed, and I smiled at the excitement in his voice, and we made plans to talk later.

Micro was a drag. My professor is a typical PhD in Microbiology...pompous and arrogant and intimidating. And I feel lost in the class. I feel behind and lazy and dumb and average and not worthy. But I kept taking notes and some of the information actually made senese and we were eventually dismissed with the knowledge that we do, in fact, have our third exam next Monday night. I drove home listening to the OUTQ Sirrius Satellite station that I got free from VW until the beginning of January. I thought about dinner and Micro and Trish and Amy and Sllim and Victor. I thought about the sandbags and perseverence and honesty and willingness and hope and redemption.

I told my mom my stories about this weekend, and all the wonderful things that had come to pass for everyone I care about, all these people who have been struggling and pushing. All these wonderful things that came out of a weekend that began with tornados and lightning and thunder and floods. All these wonderful things.

I called Mariann in Vegas and I told her about everything. I'm sure I was talking at a mile a minute. I always do. Especially when I talk to her. It might only be three days after our last conversation, but I'm so anxious to tell her everything, tell her who's who and what's what, let her know what I'm experiencing, what everyone else is experiencing, tell her what's happening in every possible facet of my life. She asked me about me and I told her about me and we talked about me. I asked about her and she told me about her and we talked about her...and Tattoo and her furniture and her new glasses. She gave me advice on handling Micro and how the knowledge of cellular function will actually, honestly, realistically come back and be useful for a variety of things in clinical practice and application.

Mariann is my sponsor, a second mother, a second sister, a best friend, a wise teacher, a leader through steps and traditions and recovery, a beacon at the top of a lighthouse, the shelter from a storm, someone who really seems to have a direct line to God the way Catholics say the Pope does. Well, maybe not comparable to the Pope, but pretty darn close. She advised me and gave me suggestions and gave me more hope. We laughed, and I could hear her smile at the excitement in my voice, and we made plans to talk later.