Some days you simply don’t see coming. They’ve got your name and there’s nothing you can do about it. Today has made me feel like a paper shell.

I’m sure there’s a more artful way of saying everything I have to say, but I’m spent and simply want to get this down, tuck it away until I’m ready to look at it again, so I’ll just start at the beginning.

I drag myself from my cozy bed and shower early, as I’m on the schedule as a parent helper at my daughter’s preschool today. Halfway through, she walks in and flops down on the rug in front of the sink and as I turn off the water, she asks what the wet stuff in her underwear is.

Okay.

So she’s pooped in her pants a little and we get her on the potty where she finished her business, business which is so massive that it barely flushes and once it does, lodges in the inner workings of the toilet.

Okay.

So, water will fill up the bowl but not really flush. Merely drain out. But I can’t really worry about that now because a) the plunger has run off somewhere mysteriously and b) I still have to get everyone dressed, fed and out the door.

Eventually, I have everyone dressed and eating, lunches packed and snacks tucked in the car with backpacks. I run upstairs to grab something for the boy when I think “Hmm. That toilet has been running an awfully long time.”

I walk in to find water flowing out of the toilet, spilling across the floor and spread to the far corners, going into the closet and into the bedroom.

Fuck.

I wade in and turn off the valve. The chain on the flapper in the tank had hung and now water is flowing down into the floor and walls. I throw a dozen towels on everything for damage control but have to get out to the bus stop. Downstairs, water is streaming through the ceiling in the kitchen and spilling across the floor. My son is eating breakfast and completely oblivious to all this.

Sigh.

Okay, get everyone dressed for the Arctic tundra that is the Midwest in winter. A glance at the clock reveals that, in all likelihood, we’ve already missed the bus. I put up the garage door and start pitching kids in car seats. Fortunately, my neighbor up the street has stalled the bus driver and convinced them to wait. “But look! He’s right there!” I throw it into park and get the boy out and on the bus with a hug.

Phew!

On the way to preschool, I remark to myself “Not even 9am and I’ve already gotten in an entire day’s worth of crap.” It can’t get any worse, surely.

But I am a fool.

We park and go in. I kneel down to help my dear little daughter out of her coat when my phone rings. It’s my mom.

My Grandmom died.

I’m not ready for it and just start mutely sobbing, tears blur my eyesight, my chest shudders with little paroxysms. My sweet little daughter pats me on the back as I try to gain some bearing.

I manage to get her to her room and then head outside to the car. And I grieve. I can’t seem to manage an upright, restrained cry; this is a loud, sobbing, bent-double wail. And I think I’m better for it.

The rest of the morning is playing with preschoolers and trying to hold it together and the intermittent phone calls. I’m blessed that a friend of mine invites my little girl over for a playdate for the afternoon. I take a few minutes to flip laundry, vacuum cat puke, poke at the wet ceiling.

Then I put on drawerfuls of bike gear: long underwear, wool socks, winter pants, base layers, jersey, hat(s), shoes and shoe covers, helmet. With fresh air in the tires, I put on my rose-tinted glasses and head out the door.

For the past decade, cycling has given me a kind of therapy I can’t really explain. Perhaps physical pursuits, be they exercise, sex or sports, allow us to tap into that animal brain we all possess. To simple “be” rather than to constantly think about being. Run. Hit. Kick. Kiss. Move.

I’m on the bike and I’m moving. Moving through the bitter wind, moving past houses and fields and frozen waterfalls. Moving past beaver dams and bridges. Trying to move past a hole that opened up inside me this morning. The wind whips at me, literally whistling across the handlebar tape. I’m past the river and headed around the lake, hearing the wind and the sound of a very big bird very nearby. I look up. Above me perched on a branch is, stunningly, an American bald eagle.

And I stop moving.

At breakfast, before the phone call or the toilet or the dash for the bus, I was in the kitchen making breakfast. Rebekah asked me, “Daddy, are you gonna die?”

“Well…” I began. How much do you explain to a three-year-old? “Yes. Someday. Everybody dies sometime. It’s a part of living.”

“But not me,” she tells me, very matter-of-fact. “Girls and mommies and princesses don’t die.”

How does one argue with that?

As I stare at the bird and out across the partially frozen lake, I think about the pieces of my ancestors, all these people coming together across time that just happened to make me and for me to make my children. How we carry those pieces and how they live on in us, even if generations removed and long forgotten. How we may very well owe our existence to our great-great-grandparents doing the deed at this time rather than that, to a quart jar of homemade or a hot summer’s night that—long before air conditioning was dreamt of—simply would not abide a stitch of clothing. In that light, it seems like a miraculous fluke to even be here at all.

I fight the knifing wind to return home. I put the bike away and take off the rose-colored glasses. And I am.

Postscript:
It is hard enough to lose somebody once. But there is an even crueler cut, I’m saddened to say. About a decade ago, my Granddad had a minor stroke. So small that it was barely noticed, but it did take away his short term memory. When my Grandmom was recently in the hospital for a broken hip, he would realize she was gone and then start looking for her around the house, wondering where she was, only to be told that she was at the hospital.

While he was able to be at her bedside when she passed, he won’t remember it. He’ll have to be told–repeatedly–that the love of his life has died.

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