Body and soul: Adopted anniversary, stair stymied, neighborly shovel

Tuesday 2/3/26

Friday was the anniversary of the day I met my parents. Which is to say, the day they took me home from the adoption agency. My mom was telling me how hard it was to sleep the night before. She was talking about the joy I brought to her life, which I know is tempered by this awful qualifier, that I am in this position, have had what's been done to me done to me, and this isn't how it's supposed to go, how anything is supposed to go. This should be a time of one celebration after another, not a case of "Is he still alive" and "How can he still be alive."

She was saying with things being how they are right now, and have been for so long, that I am still there for people no matter how much I am made to hurt and the injustices I face.

But it's like I'm always having to rise up through these chains to extend myself such that I can, before I go back down and return to something that is worse than hell, which I'm never free of and won't be so long as things remain like this.

I have been well stymied at the Bunker Hill Monument, which was closed all of last week. On multiple days I walked over there, hoping it'd be open, including yesterday, but it was obvious that no one had been inside the lodge at the bottom for a while. Snow was still blown up against the door leading to the Monument itself where there was another small snow mound at that door.

I don't understand the closure. Come one o'clock--when the Monument opens--the temperature has been anywhere from, say, sixteen degrees to the low twenties. It's been fine. Sunny. It hasn't snowed since that morning after the storm which was, I believe, last Monday.

This has happened in the past and the Monument has basically stayed shut until the spring. I always worry about the first weather-related closure, because that has seemed to trigger a full-on shutdown for the winter in years past. It's been a while since that happened--didn't happen last year, for instance, but we had no weather basically at all last winter. But strange domino effect of one bout of weather is a concern of mine. These stairs are an important part of my days, especially now with everything like this.

And are we not New Englanders? Does anyone retain that New England edge anymore?

The winter is fine, the winter is fun, the winter is conducive to thinking and reflection and warming up in the cold air with exercise that is good for body and soul. The person who likes winter is apt to be healthier mentally and physically. Think about the person you know who doesn't bitch about the winter and gets out there in it. They're pretty okay, aren't they? But that person who starts whining (and making their bad joke) about how many years January has lasted for? Less okay usually.

I'm falling off the pace Monument stair-wise. Despite getting started in the cold months, I was on pace for 1000 circuits in the Monument in ten months. It's supposed to be 1000 circuits a year, and now I won't even be on track for that in a little bit.

I'm frustrated with myself, though some of it is out of my control. I realize, rationally, that these are the dog days of stairs. You'll rack up less of them at this time of year than you will in May. I begin work every day between midnight and two AM; that means I've been at it for at least ten hours, and often twelve-and-a-half hours, by the time I head over to Charlestown. It's cold, I'm not wearing a winter coat, and it can be easy to stand down. My numbers go way up when the thaw sets in, and can explode from there.

But this isn't just about the Monument. My stair-running, that is. The Monument keeps me on task, and it's always a challenge to reckon with, measure yourself against, and is itself good for body and soul. I also don't want to look like an alarmed puffer fish, though, so there I was on Friday morning at City Hall to run 3000 stairs--the equivalent of five Monument circuits, numbers-wise--with the feels like temperature of -11. Paging Chilly Willy. It was okay. Warmed up fast. The trickiest part was the walk over sans winter coat. I wear a T-shirt, sweatshirt, fleece. Because obviously I need to run in what I'm wearing and can you imagine a guy in a fraying pea coat out there running up the City Hall steps two at a time? That would be silly, though perhaps you think the very idea of running stairs in this weather is silly. Well, it's like Ulysses says of Telemachus: He works his work, I mine.

I did the same on Saturday, with the temperature itself being -1, but the feels-like temperature was higher, so it did feel "warmer" than the day before, despite being colder, which is how that works. Yesterday I walked back out to City Hall a couple hours before sunrise. Ran up the stairs one time and then thought, "I don't want to do this." Feels-like temperature was -8. I turned around. Some days you're just like, "Okay, that's how it's going to be."

The day prior, I learned that the Monument posts their closings online, but I had this feeling that they only did so right around the time they're otherwise scheduled to open, which also makes no sense. Because say you were coming in from out of the city to tour the historical sites--how would you plan your day? Charlestown is a bit out of the way, too, in that most of the Freedom Trail is in Boston, and smack in the middle of the Old City, before parts of the harbor were filled in.

I am a different kind of cat in that I feel ashamed of myself when "all" I've done physically on what most would classify as a frigid, stay-indoors kind of day is walk six miles, which is what I did Sunday, whereas someone else would take to social media and boast of this, receiving hundreds of likes and testimonies in the process.

I decided to test my Monument closure-indication theory and walked to Charlestown, arriving at the Monument at 12:30. it was plain that no one was in the lodge, the snow was still there, and they weren't going to open. I checked the website--no notification of a closure. That didn't come until after one o'clock. This isn't an efficient system. Anyway, walked a quick three miles yesterday. Sunday marked 3486 days, or 498 weeks, without a drink.

On Friday as I returned from running stairs at City Hall, there was a woman--let's us say, in her early thirties--on the other side of my street whose car was snowed in. She had this brush, which wouldn't have gotten her very far. I decided I'd try to help, my intentions being contingent on finding a shovel. Looked in the back past the mail boxes to no avail, and then down in the basement, also a no-go, before finding one in the alley on the other side of my building where there's a parking spot.

Headed back up the street, and told her I had just run stairs and was warm and could give her a hand if she wished. Set to work. There's a school mere feet away, and it was drop-off time, so I'd have to wait to see if a car was turning down this little lane off to the side or continuing on down my street.

The snow was heavy. With each shovelful, it was necessary to bang the shovel against the pavement to dislodge the slush that was already freezing there. Not much place to put it either, save to throw it across the road into this huge pile that the city carted away around one in the morning on Saturday. I know because I was up working. It was quite loud. Went on for a couple hours. I don't recall noticing this kind of middle-of-the-night official city snow removal before. Could have occurred in 2015.

People aren't used to be helped. They're surprised by it, especially help that takes some effort. I like shoveling. Continuing with our theme, I believe it's good for body and soul. When I think of my house in Rockport, the house I want to get back so much, I think of many things, of course, and one of them is heading outside on a snowy New England morning to shovel. Also, it's a decent workout, and as I've said, I haven't done great with the stairs of late.

Anyway, she eventually she thought she could get out, so I went back home to shower and move on with what was next. Returned the shovel to where I found it. When I got up to the third floor and had taken my sneakers off and was about to go back in, I took a last look out the window to make sure her car wasn't there, but it was, and she was still using that brush, so plainly her attempt to get out had failed.

Put my sneakers back on, stuck my head out the door of my building, called down to her asking if she was still marooned and whether she had committed to being stuck or still hoped to get out, and she replied saying she was giving it one last chance, so I said to hold on a minute, and I went and got the shovel and had back at it. This time I waited until she drove away. Success!

There's been a space saver--a basket--in that spot ever since.

Body and soul. They are separate, but not without influence on each other.