Life is full of inverse relationships

            Running is the reason for my sanity in so many ways.  The main reason though, is that running serves as a cathartic release for me at the end of each work day.  From 7:30 in the morning when I walk into my classroom until 4:00 in the afternoon when I leave, my mind has one whole and complete focus.  Work.  26 first graders.  Teach them.  Help them.  Reach them.  Wrangle them.  Assess them.  Reteach them.  Herd them to lunch.  Counsel them.  Plan for them.  Make copies for them.  Sharpen pencils for them.  Talk to their parents for them.  Care for them.  Love them.  Shuffle them onto the bus.  And then what?  Forget about them?  That is not how this job works.  My day begins with one deep breath followed by an adrenaline rush until the end of the day when I finally breathe out.  I cannot simply flip the switch off and forget about these living breathing children that are my life for so much of the day. 

            However, to be sane and to live a productive life, I must be able to forget about them.  I need to enjoy my dinner without thinking about what they are eating for dinner (or if they are even having dinner).  I need to be able to see my friends and listen to them without constantly planning quietly in my head what I will teach the next day.  I need to be able to fall asleep without thinking about what social skill Johnny needs to work on tomorrow or how I’ll help my brand new student make new friends.  I need to be able to put my students into a pocket in the back of my mind, only to be pulled out the next day.

            My first 2 years of teaching, I struggled with this.  I could not forget.  I did not know how to forget.  I brought work home every night.  It wasn’t until I found running that I finally figured out how to put it all away.  I can envision a line chart of what is happening in my brain as I run (I was a nerd and actually made this chart in Excel but stupid blogger won’t let me post excel stuff).  As the amount of miles or distance covered increases, the number of thoughts in my brain about work slowly decreases until the end of the run where work has disappeared.  Or in other non-nerdy terms: the further I get into my run, the more I forget about those 26 children.  By the end of my run, I am relaxed and thinking about my life.

            Something similar to this happened when I moved to Seattle.  Sierra, Lucy, and I drove cross-country in order to transplant my life into my new city.  We took my little Honda Civic, packed it as full as we could without completely boxing Lucy into a tiny corner in the back seat, and drove from our hometown in Rochester, NY all the way to Seattle.  My mental graph is the same here.  The distance traveled has a perfectly inverse relationship to thoughts about NYC life.

            We took 5 days to make the trip, stopping at as many sights as we could while keeping in mind the separation-anxiety-ridden dog in the car.  It is very difficult to drive from one side of the country to the other without ever leaving the dog alone in the car.  But we did it.  And by the time we reached Seattle, all the negativity that NYC had deposited in me was lifted.

            We started in Rochester, and left with smiles ready to conquer the world.

            Our first stop was my aunt and uncle’s house in Chicago.  My aunt is an animal rescuer and often has a variety of animals in and around her house.  On this particular trip, there were several baby raccoons in a large cage in the backyard, all named by my cousin after Harry Potter characters.  This was an exciting part of the trip for Lucy.  She got to jump at the caged and squawking birds in the house, making them lose a few feathers.  She got to play with the 3 (or 4?) dogs that lived there.  For me, I was still thinking about leaving a life behind.  I was excited for the future, but worried about the past.

            Our first official sight-seeing stop was Badlands National Park.  This was a good pit stop because Lucy was allowed throughout the park.  The beautiful views made my worries about leaving the only coast I’d known fade just a little.

            Next was Wall Drug.  This is a very overrated little tourist town in the middle of nowhere.  I in no way understand people who put “Wall Drug” bumper stickers on their cars.  I don’t get it.  This stop was particularly challenging with Lucy.  We took our wanderings in shifts…one person wandering through the stores and shops while the other waited in the car with Lucy.  Not super fun.  However, I bought a few early Christmas presents here, which helped to ease my fears of leaving my family behind.

            Next was Mount Rushmore.  Here, we could not go inside the gates because dogs were not allowed.  We stopped on the side of the road and gazed for a bit.  I was amazed at how small and far away they seemed up there.  I was similarly amazed by how small NYC was becoming in my mind.

            We also saw from a distance the in-progress mountain carving that will some day in the far off future be the Crazy Horse War Memorial.  Life is a work in progress, as it seems the Crazy Horse War Memorial will forever be. 

            As we traveled through the central portion of the US, we spent a few nights in cheap dog-friendly hotels found courtesy of AAA guidebooks.

            Devil’s Tower was our last big sight-seeing stop.  Although we didn’t hike any of the trails, we got pretty close to the base and took some pretty awesome pictures.  At this point in the trip, Seattle seemed to be looming just as close.

            In the boring parts of the trip, there were many of these pictures.

            And these pictures.  Luckily, this is what Lucy did the VAST majority of the trip.

            For our last leg of the trip, we took a detour off I90 to stay for a night in the middle of Wyoming at Sierra’s aunt’s summer house.  Pictures cannot even begin to show the beauty that is back-country Wyoming.  I am dying to go back.  And when I was there, I wasn’t thinking about being anywhere else.

            Lucy even loved it in Wyoming, but mainly because she got to swim—one of her most favorite activities.

            And finally, at the end of it all, we drove late into the night, stopping at a small motel in La Grande, Oregon (I only remember this name because it was such a small and funny little place).  We woke up the next morning and drove the last leg into Seattle.

            As we came down from the mountains on I90 (the same road we left on in New York, and the same road we took the majority of the way), thoughts of New York were gone.  Worries about leaving had abated.  It suddenly sunk in that I was home.  In a new place.   On a new coast.  In what seemed like a new world.  And I couldn’t wait to get started.