Steps

It's empty in the valley of your heart,

The sun, it rises slowly as you walk

Away from all the fears

And all the faults you've left behind.

-Mumford and Sons, The Cave

A year ago, I was having one of the harder physical struggles of my life.  Day two of the Camino, Roncesvalles to Zubiri, over the hills of Basque country, up and down, up and down.  I disliked the downs, I loathed the ups.  My body was not ready for this, my pack was too heavy, I was seriously laboring up every hill, stopping about every twenty steps or so to catch my breath.  Some friendly passerby stopped to helpfully explain that it was better to keep moving at a steady pace rather than stopping on the inclines.  I had no breath for a sarcastic response, I just panted.

To make things worse, my mind was contemplating over a month of this, every day.  Somewhere, I knew it was going to get better.  Somewhere I knew that this was simply the open revolt phase of a sedentary body and life being challenged and broken apart.  But I seriously thought about quitting.  Then I thought of how that would go, what that would mean, and I couldn't deal with that sort of failure, so I kept going.

The first step was mental, I had to stop dreading every little bump we went up and over, from fairly minor hills to what one of our fellow pilgrims from Ireland would call, "a bit of a rise," which means essentially a mountain for those of you unfamiliar with the Irish penchant for understatement.

I had to tell myself again and again, "just walk, stop as little as possible, get over the fact that tourists with daypacks, joggers and wiry old men are passing you on the uphills, this is not a race."  I trudged on, and while I never really got into speedy climbing shape, even at the end, I made every step that was required of me, and we finished the Camino around the same time as people who seemed, at the start, destined to outpace us.

Sometime on this day an old Basque man, out for a stroll with his family, saw me huffing and puffing along the way, and he stopped and said something like, "En Roncesvalles, estas asi (you are like this)," he made a motion with his hand of a round belly, which I had hanging over the waist belt of my pack.  Then he said, "En Santiago, estas asi," and he made the motion to signify that the same stomach would be slightly flatter.  Frankly, he underestimated the resilience of my belly, it may have gotten slightly less over the course of the journey, but it never exactly went away.  I started a fat guy, and ended a slightly less fat guy, but by the end I was a fat guy who could lug a full pack over Cruz de Ferro and up to O'Cebriero without blowing a gasket.

Somewhere along the line, we all acquire this fantasy that somehow, someway our problems are going to be solved all in a big whirl of luck, skill and good timing.  Maybe too many of our stories employ a handy deus ex machina (hand of god) ending where everything works out just when things seem darkest.  Maybe it's just human nature to hope for a miracle rather than slog on up that hill.  I don't know for sure, but what the Camino, and life in general, has taught me is that you can only really ever manage the step that is in front of you.

Yesterday would have been my Brother Jonathan's thirty-fifth birthday.  By some cruel twist of fate, April 10 is now siblings day, an entirely contrived observance that really only has meaning in an age of social media.  Facebook is filled with pictures of people smiling along side their siblings, and it is painfully apparent to me that the only pictures I have of my brother are about 15 years old.  On this day, I look at pictures of my family and see a hole.  Here's me and my sis:

We're all smiles, but we're all grown up (Yes, grown ups wear superman shirts)

Now here's me and Jon at my wedding:

That is a couple of kids in tuxedos trying to act like they know something.

That's all these two will ever be.

The difference between the two is an empty page where there should have been more weddings, and kids and family vacations. And honestly, Jon's skinny behind should have been with me and Dad on the Camino, and not just in spirit. But that step never got taken.

Yesterday, people posted pictures of themselves as kids with their siblings next to pictures of themselves as adults.  It struck me that I only have half of that equation.  It struck me that when people ask me the fairly innocuous question of how many siblings I have, I sometimes stumble at whether to say one or two.  I stop, I pant, because I still haven't learned to to take that step as it comes.

I'm still trying to learn to walk through a contrived, made up day of observance that happens to coincide with a birthday we haven't been able to celebrate in a decade.  I'm not asking for sympathy or advice, I'll take the next step when I catch my breath.