Mile 1: Staten Island

A lot of people think about the NYC Marathon and Staten Island and think of it as simply the starting point. Mile 1. Just get off the island and onto the bridge and then the race will begin. 

This is EXACTLY how I felt in high school.

Now I can't wait to get back there. 

My dad was stationed in Bayonne, NJ. We moved from Carlisle, Pennsylvania and were assigned housing on Staten Island exactly two weeks before I started high school. We moved onto the base, Ft. Wadsworth onto Mont Sec Avenue and thought we were going to be there for two years. 

This was our house. 

We ended up living there for four years.

I lived at the top of that fire escape. 

This is actually a duplex-type house. We lived on the left side.

I loved the front porch.

 It was old and ginormous. And awesome. 

One 1/2 hour ferry ride from Manhattan. For four years of my life. 

It is still crazy to think about. 

 I played an insane amount of soccer on in high school. If you know high schoolers who play travel ball, you understand. If you don't, buckle up...because eventually you will and it will frustrate the bejesus out of you because they don't do anything other than that.

Well, that was my life in high school.
Every Saturday and Sunday morning we were on the soccer field. Or getting ready to spend the entire day/weekend/night on the field.

With that being said, we would watch the setup for the marathon the whole week. The mile long urinal, the port-a-potties, the signage, the goodwill donation boxes...it was insane! International kids at my high school would go into the radio studio and record pre-race instructions for international racers. The whole place was crazy for the marathon.

And I would have to get up super early in the morning, get across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge so that we would be able to avoid the race and get to our soccer games. Then we would have to hang out on Long Island all day waiting for them open the roads again so we could navigate the insane traffic, then back across the bridge to get home.

My mom and I would get home to be greeted by my dad and brother who would share with us the "goodwill bounty" of the day. All of the clothes that runners throw off before the race would become next years "pre-game" clothing for me. I loved old school Adidas warmups and really worn out sweatshirts and this was like HEAVEN. My dad would find all these things, wash them and have them waiting on me when I got home. 

I had two pair of Adidas pants that I wore until there were holes throughout them in college from Marathon Sunday. 

The craziest thing about running this marathon is that I have NEVER GOTTEN TO SEE IT. 

Not a minute. I always wanted to. It's like a myth to me. 

Because of soccer, I never got to be a part of this most insane race on the planet. 

Then this year, I was so excited about the marathon, just tuning into to see what would happen. 

Then the weather turned. 

It turned nasty. 

Mayor Bloomberg and the race directors were making crazy decisions because well...

people's homes and lives were all the sudden: GONE. 

These were my classmates from high school! 

Their parents, grandparents, themselves!

Facebook was crazy. 

Also, I had several friends who were supposed to run the race. 

It was nuts. 

They needed to cancel the race, but what a tough situation for everyone. 

Right then, I knew I wanted to be back there on the starting line the next year. 

2013.

One year after Sandy.

17 years after I graduated from high school. 

The place that got me off the island and into South Carolina.

Playing college soccer.

Working in ministry.

Meeting my husband.

Gaining a career.

Having kids.

So much has changed in me since I left Staten Island and so much of me was formed during my years there. I love that I grew up there and that I was able to leave to have the life that I have now. 

I can't wait to get back and hit that starting line. 

Classic New Yorkers. 

Click here to donate to Inheritance of Hope 

and help me get there! 

NYC Marathon

I all talk and no action when it comes to the NYC Marathon. Obsessed with it but not to the point of running it. Yet.

Marathon Sunday was yesterday and like all good former New Yorkers, my mind and heart turned towards Central Park.

Well, not so much Central Park-just the Verrazano Narrows. The start line for the race is on Staten Island.

It was literally outside the front door of my house when I was in high school living on the base at Ft. Wadsworth.

Unfortunately, on Marathon Sunday I always had soccer games. So we had to get up before 6am and get across the bridge BEFORE they closed it. But my dad and brother would hang around watch the start and then collect all of warm-ups that everybody ditched at the start line. We would go through it all, find the good stuff and take the rest to Goodwill.

Weeks before the start of the marathon; port-a-pottys would arrive, a mile long urinal, and all kinds of supplies would get into place. The whole fort would be a buzz. The kids in my high school that were from other countries would be selected to record arrival/start instructions in their native languages for the loud speakers.

It gets in you.

I spent some time this morning on the NY Times Marathon Blog and I just saw this video. It shows in two minutes what the start of the marathon looks like from the top of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. While you watch, to the right of the bridge on the water is a fort. Just above it is the road I lived on.

We spent MANY MANY days in high school exploring that old spooky fort. It makes you all kinds of nostalgic.

Maybe next year.

Songs that make you think

This morning was my morning off from my kids because of my wonderful co-op with my Weaverville girlfriends. And I took the morning to myself. I made dinner in the crock-pot and because I am a crack head, I decided to go running. Outside. In 35 degree weather. I was cold when I started, but by the end of the run I was a sweaty mess and felt AMAZING. I haven't run outside in months for several reasons, two of them are named Lucy and Asher. But I was rocking out to my ipod on shuffle and NightSwimming by REM came on.
This may not seem like a natural song for many of you to run to. But, I was a freshman in high school when Automatic for the People came out. I remember buying the tape at the time, and it was so cool-clear YELLOW. How original! Haha. Anyway, it was one of the first cd's that I bought when I got my first CD player. (The CD was all yellow too) I can pretty much sing every word to every song on that cd right now. It was so great to hear a song that brought back so many memories, good and bad. Some were really sweet and others were that annoying dramatic high school moments when I just needed to listen to this cd in order to FEEL deep.
Anyway, I was loving the song, loving sweating while running around a frozen lake and looking at ducks. All without my children. Bliss.

Sorry that I haven't updated the blog with anything of substance lately. I got the flu over the weekend (just gave it to Matt) and have had no energy. Along with, I have been working a lot of hours trying to close my first sale and getting it kicked off the ground. Hurray for my new job!

Anyway, here are the lyrics to Night Swimming just in case you don't know the song!

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago,
Turned around backwards so the windshield shows.
Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse.
Still, its so much clearer.
I forgot my shirt at the waters edge.
The moon is low tonight.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
Im not sure all these people understand.
Its not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water.
They cannot see me naked.
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday.

Nightswimming, remembering that night.
Septembers coming soon.
Im pining for the moon.
And what if there were two
Side by side in orbit
Around the fairest sun?
That bright, tight forever drum
Could not describe nightswimming.

You, I thought I knew you.
You I cannot judge.
You, I thought you knew me,
This one laughing quietly underneath my breath.
Nightswimming.

The photograph reflects,
Every streetlight a reminder.
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night, deserves a quiet night.

Nothing too exciting

We just got back from taking high school kids to weekend camp at Sharp Top Cove in Jasper, Ga this past weekend. It was really fun. My parents took care of the kids while I got to hang out with cabin full of junior and seniors in high school-who are hilarious really. My sweet friend from when I did YL at Dreher HS in Columbia, Megan Hafer came up to visit for the afternoon. We realized that we met almost ten years ago, when she was 14 years old. Now that's a long time! It was great seeing her and she told me that she stalks my blog, so I thought that I would give her and Cassie Markham shoutouts!

Anyway, we got back last night and caught up around the house. We found a house online that Matt and I really wanted to go look at, so we set up an appointment with our realtor today to go look at it. I have never had this experience before, but as soon as we crossed the threshold of the house, I knew that our visit was over. The house was terrible. I mean TERRIBLE. And they are listing it for $199,000. $199,000 for a crappy house. Are you kidding me??? The piece of property is lovely and the location is amazing, but NO WAY. I mean the whole house had a drop ceiling, mold was everywhere and it was made for tiny people. Ughh. I don't believe that we are ever going to figure out this house thing.

We had YL club tonight and instead of a typical club, we played Bunco and it was awesome. Kids had a great time and nine kids signed up to go to summer camp tonight. We only just told them about camp yesterday AT camp. It is really fun to do YL at a school where kids are excited about what you are doing and how you want to be in their lives. So I gave the talk tonight and I talked about when I was in high school and what a wreck I was.

I showed them my senior year report card. Yes, I still have a report card from when I was in high school. I made GREAT grades, but I had over 45 absences altogether in my classes from one semester. I had only five official absences, but I missed over 45 classes. Yes, I cut classes. A lot of them in high school. But it never affected my GPA, that's the kind of high school I went to. (My mom and dad must be so proud right now). I then talked about how everything looked good on the outside, but I was a mess. I was so nervous about getting caught or slipping up somehow. I didn't have very close friends. Basically, I had a list of regrets about a mile long in high school. And, as any self respecting high school students does...I wrote poetry to try to be deep and real about my situation. So I made an overhead of one of the poems out of my poetry book that was in fact titled, "Regret". As funny as I try to make things, this was REALLY vulnerable to share in front of 60 high schoolers. It's not a bad poem, but I had to get dramatic at the end and wrote, "My regrets leave me nothing but a trail of tears."

Yes, I am a pile of cliches all in one place.

But, the point that I was making is that all of us live with regrets basically because we are unable to live up to the glorious standard that God has set for mankind. Which in turns, forces us to rely on him rather than ourselves. Unfortunately, we have convinced ourselves that OUR way is much better than his way and thus REGRET takes over because it never plays out well when we take our lives into our hands.

So this is what my talk was all about. After club, we all go to Wendy's to eat and hang out. We gave a kid from the club a ride over there and we were just making small talk about how school was after coming back from Sharp Top and he said, "It's okay, I mean it can be pretty hard to be back. It makes me wants to cry a trail of tears." Thanks. Thanks a lot. Then he went on to quote some his poetry from high school that is over the top. My favorite line of his was about how his life was like, "eating brains in the Big Lots parking lot."

Ahh high school. Don'tcha just want to go back?

High School Phrases

I created a facebook account this weekend and let me tell you...it's trouble. I am finding it WAY more addictive that myspace has ever been. Part of the reason is that nearly every single person I know through Young Life and college are on facebook and it is really funny to see how high schoolers want to be known and be seen by people. My favorite item right now is how people will leave you a minute by minute detail of where they are all day long. One of my friends literally had this on her facebook page, "sleeping at Sarah's tonight, church at 10, home for lunch then to work by 1." Seriously? Who needs that much information?

But it brought me back to some funny memories from high school. Remember, I went to high school on Staten Island at New Dorp High School, so all of memories really are like a Saturday Night Live skit.

We used to use the phrase, "sweatin'" to describe if we "liked" a guy. We would say, "I'm so sweatin' him." or "He's totally sweatin' her."

I also remember my first week of high school where my biology teacher, Mrs. Spinelli (with the most unbelieveable New York accent you could believe) cussed out Angelo who sat behind me. No lie. She actually said, "You gonna call me a f-n b--ch in front of the class Angelo? This is gonna be one long f-n year." Yes, everything in that paragraph is true. Mrs. Spinelli. Angelo. the sentence. And yes, it was a very long year.

I remember Iris, the Samoan who wanted to fight me. And all I could do was run. I mean she was a Samoan and I was fast. Very fast.

Ahh high school. It is so fun to be a Young Life leader again and to walk alongside high school girls as they navigate the nonsense that goes on during the day to day in high school. I truly do feel like I just survived high school rather than having fond memories. It is hard to know whether that is due to my nut-job high school, if it was just me that felt that way or if my memory is skewed by time.

Nonetheless, I am so glad that I am not in high school any longer.

What memories do you have from high school that have endured???