Give Yourself Time

Today is Thursday, July 24th. I mention that because I had a migraine that started last Thursday and only wrapped itself up yesterday morning around 8 AM. Usually my migraines last three days - they're a special sort - so I think this was actually two migraines back to back. Clint had a migraine at the same time in those last three days, so I should probably suspect something. COVID? Carbon monoxide poisioning in the house? Some other weird thing? Alien probes? All are equally as likely, to be honest, which is to say: probably not. Regardless, I felt miserable. Then we felt miserable. And in that time I didn't run or workout.

I did, however, pull all the damned weeds along our front brick sidewalk, edge the front lawn, and weed out the maple saplings and lilies on Monday. That wasn't the stroke of genius I thought it was. My migraine was like, "Sigh. Ok, Burg. You really don't learn, do you? Fine. Here." Near crippling nausea, photosensitivity, cold chills, oh and right side head pain.

I'm not looking for sympathy. Hardly ever is that the case. What I'm getting to is that finally today I went for a run. If you've talked to me or read my blog, you know I'm a writer (obviously) and a runner. They keep me sane. Today, I needed to get my trail shoes on and get into the forest. Thankfully, it was 65 degrees - though the humidity did crank up a bit between when I left the house and when I got to Petersburg Battlefield. Oh well. My rule is that if I've gotten my running clothes on, I'm going on the run no matter what.

No matter what, for real.

When I pulled into the parking lot at the trailhead, there were two parked pickup trucks that I had never seen there before. Both older, and paint-bare in spots. Not rusty, per se, but in need of some brush strokes. The red truck had a back window sticker of a person kayaaking. The blue/grey truck had several bumper stickers: "Guns Save Lives" (and it had the annual number of defensive situations along with a website), an official NRA sticker, one that said, "I'm a member of the NRA, I own a gun, and a vote", a U.S. Army sticker, and then a FOLAR sticker. For those of you not from Petersburg, FOLAR is Friends of the Lower Appomattox River. They're a local conservation group that tends and improves trails, paths, riverways, etc. Their headquarters recently moved down the street from my house.

I'll admit: my prejudice about the kind of person that feels the need to announce their gun ownership with so many stickers was confused by the FOLAR sticker. Somehow, the FOLAR sticker softened my concerns a bit. I also considered that some stickers could have been from a different/former owner of the truck. You just can't know a situation entirely.

That said: As a female going into a forest alone, the look of a vehicle and the owner's choice of personal reflection via bumpersticker matters to me. I circled back in my car around to see if any weirdos were in the trucks - maybe having slept there or still in there being a creeper. Since the trucks seemed to be empty, which isn't necessarily a good thing because that meant the people were out in the woods I would be entering, I parked. I got out of my car, keeping my eyes on the trucks, and went to the back of my car and opened the hatch. On the way around, I removed the wine shop key from my carabeener and decided to keep my long pointy car key in my hand.

At the back of my car, I dug into my running back, pulled out my leg roller, and rolled my leg muscles as usual while also considering it a potential weapon should the need arise. Looking deeper in my bag, I lemented having taken out the knife I've had in my water vest since 2020 when I first moved to Montana. At first, I thought I might use it against bears, coyotes, or the random wild turkey. Wild turkey indeed. My knife was always in my hand along certain trails, not for the wild animals, but as protection from the sketchy men.

And there we were again.

But, I refuse to live in fear. Just awareness. If I had decided not to run all the times there was a potential for a weirdo, I literally never would have started running.

With my key in my hand and my side-eye firmly attached to the trucks, I walked past them while doing my warm ups.

As a aside: I don't know if I'm overly self-conscious, but I really try to make sure I look plesant and non-Aryan Nation when I do, what some gyms call "Frankensteiners". With arms outstretched, you walk and kick your toes up to meet your hand. I try my best to not look like a goose-stepping hater doing the Nazi salute. My guess is that my entire running attire, pigtails, and deep tan likely keep people from thinking that, but I never want someone to make that mistake.

While I was doing my Frankensteiners, a old man with a walking stick came out of the forest. He saw me and before I could say or do anything, he gave me one of those floppy hand waves.

"Good morning," I called back.

He said something to me.

"What's that?" I asked. I kept walking toward him, he walked toward me.

"Keep doing what you're doing," he said. He pointed at the place I had just been, when I was doing my warm ups. "Keep exercising, keep moving. I've had two knee replacements and a hip replaced, but I'm still outside every morning. Keep it up. I'm 87. I don't want to get old but my body keeps aging. And don't fall into the habit of sitting around watching T.V."

He continued on by telling me about his wife who had aged must faster than he because she's not active. She uses a walker. He has to help her, so he gets the morning until 10 AM to himself, and that's it. He told me that he biked, went on walks, and helped FOLAR with their trails. He asked if I knew about FOLAR.

"Yes, I do," I said. "I live in Petersburg. Their headquarters is right down the street from my house."

He grew up in Petersburg, he told me, and lives in Colonial Heights. He wore a U.S. Army hat.

"If you don't mind me asking," he said, "Where are you from?"

"We moved here from Montana," I told him.

"Montana!" He smiled. "Just the other day I was thinking about Montana. I've never been there, but I've got some gun writers out there. I'll bet it's cold out there."

For the next five minutes, he and I talked about living in the Rockies, his wife, her 67-year-old bum of a son with a gambling problem that lives with them, and how he puts up with all of it to keep his wife happy. Though he hadn't been to the Battlefield in a while, he decided to come out today.

"I usually walk with my dog, Cooper, but he's 14-years-old now, and can't make the walks. I found him in a forest, though." He smiled. "He's white, and thank goodness because if he had been brown, I never would have seen him in the leaves. As a matter of fact, I thought he was a white styrofoam cup!" He held up his hands to show me how small. "I reached down to clean it up, and it scurried away from me, yelping! I crouched down and saw that it was a little puppy. He ran away but then stopped, turned around, and came back to me. And we've been together ever since." He clasped his hands to his chest.

My running watch beeped a few times warning me that it was going to power down from the trail run I said I was going to run, but clearly wasn't doing soon. I ignored it. I had no where else to be for a while. I'd get my run in. I was already here. Talking to this man was far more important at the moment. We kept talking. It was clear to me that he needed the conversation. He needed fresh human contact. In a bit, he'd be back home tending to his quickly aging wife and managing the emotions from having her shithead of a son mooching off them in their final years. Mostly those were his words. And he didn't say any of this with malice. He was just factual. The least I could do was give him my time. And it was an easy thing to give.

While the man told me about his wife, I quietly put my long, pointy car key into the back zipper pocket of my running shorts. I wouldn't need it as a weapon today. The other truck, with the sticker of the kayaaker, was hardly a concern. Eventually, the man said he wouldn't keep me any longer, gave me his name and his hand to shake, and we parted.

On the drive back from my run (which was three miles, exactly what I needed, and all I could do), I passed a motel where a woman stood next to her car, in her underwear, sorting out her trashbags of clothes. In the spirit of checking my pre-judgements of people, I considered that perhaps she was also a trail runner. Far be it from me to assume someone was a prostitute or down on their luck just because they were changing in a parking lot. I've done my fair share of that, believe me. When the only place to change is a nasty port-a-john and the line for it is long anyway, you just say, "Screw it." Soon, all these people in the parking lot will be my new best friends once we spend some hours on those crazy trails.

I mean, I don't run in a cheetah print sports bra and purple spanks, but I'm sure there are some gals out there that do.

What struck me as I continued my drive home was just how set on leaving the house I was this morning. I wasn't oozing with energy or anything but also that little voice in my head wasn't telling me all the reasons I shouldn't go. If there's no good reason not to, then I do. And what a good thing that I had. I may never see that man again but I'm glad for our momentary interaction. Prejudical fear didn't stop me from doing something I really wanted and needed to do. It was mostly unfounded anyway (I suppose he could have been a weirdo). It was nice to talk to someone with the same love of the outdoors (and puppies) as me. And he got to pleasantly vent and have a stress-free conversation. He had just thought about Montana the other day (though he never told me why) and then he meets a girl from Montana. What are the chances of that?

Life is interesting, and I find that it gives you what you need if you let it. But, you have to be open to it.

This is the first week of letting the women that work for me finally work without me. Being away from the shop feels like handing my kid over to the kindergarten teacher. My kid's going to have experiences and grow without me. But that's what needs to happen! Customers need to meet my team, and my team need to work on creating their own relationships with the customers. I've got mine. They need to build theirs. I want customers to come in because of them - and that's already happening!

Funny thing about naming a shop after yourself - it really isn't yours. That may be my name on the window, but you and I both know it's also Clint's, Cindy's, Deans, Bob's, Teri's, Essie's, Janell's, Hanna's, Isabel's, and everyone else that helped to bring this wine cafe to life. And we all know there is no way in hell this thing would be successful if I was only doing this by myself. ~psht~ It wouldn't even have opened.

Here's the thing: Just this morning I looked at the schedule and felt I needed just one more person as a filler and for weekends. Today, while I worked on ordering wines that were purchased from the tasting we had last night, a young woman walked in looking for a job. Everything about her felt right. And now, Mia is starting on Tuesday and because of her graduate school schedule at VCU, she prefers to work weekends. Hu-freaking - zzah.

Now, I've got my time back to create fun workshops, write, and do the things I want and need to do for myself and for my business. It's better for me, it's better for my team, and in the end, it'll be better for the customers.

It's been a long time since I've invoked my yoga past, but something I used to say to my students keeps coming up: you can't pour water from an empty pitcher.

What's funny is that one of my favorite things about owning my yoga studio was doing the workshops and retreats. I don't know about doing retreats for the shop, but it's the workshops I really want to do. To inspire myself using my own words, I wore my old retreat t-shirt today. Man. It takes me back. But that's the thing: my old self knew. I know. I just need to listen. And I'm trying. (Very trying, as my mother would say.)

There's such a freedom in letting go. And it this case, letting my team take care of the shop. It's like a monkey trap. You know, the situation where there's a banana under a cage, the monkey reaches in and takes hold of the banana, and now it's trapped. To be free the monkey just needs to release the damned banana. But because he won't, he's trapped. And he's not even in a cage.

In letting go, I go back to being the Burgundie that dreamed about opening this shop. That's the Burgundie I want to be. And that Burgundie has time. Time to write, time to run, and time to talk to lonely strangers on the trails.

SIDE NOTE: My thesis is due Tuesday, August 5th. Once I've submitted that puppy, I'll be writing posts more often.

Related: On Sunday August 17th, we'll have our first Writing Club meeting at 2 PM. All writers are welcome. Keep an eye out for more details about that. Soon, I'll also start some writing workshop-y type events (all free). If you are interested in writerly things, let me know what days of the week and times work best for you, and we'll see if there's a general day and time that works for the majority. Message me via comments in the blog, or via Facebook or Instagram. Or email: burg@burgundiesplace.com.