ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 241: Listening to my Higher Power

Joshua calls, asking me to a baseball game. Today’s writing made me feel sad so I’m in no mood for a baseball game. I tell him so.

“Well, okay. Okay. Well. Okay.” He doesn’t hang up. There’s an edge to his voice.

“Is anything upsetting you?”

Then he tells me of call-backs that were cancelled and a one-line shoot ripped from him at the last minute. Rejections. He tells me that the AC unit on Charles Street was worked on — yet again — and that he didn’t like the technician’s attitude who worked on it.

“We can’t control what other people think or do,” I say. “We can only manage ourselves and how we respond to them.”

“Yeah, we can’t control other people,” he repeats. “If you don’t want to go to a baseball game, I guess I’ll take a run. I’ll get exercise. That always makes me feel better. Yeah. That’s what I’ll do.”

“Take water along,” I say. “It’s hot.”

“Yeah,” he repeats without enthusiasm. “I’ll take water. Yeah.”

I say good-by. We hang up. Then I think: I just wrote about Ernie, saying good-by to Ernie, and now I’m saying good-by to Joshua. But is how I responded a loving, compassionate way for me to respond to him just now? What can I do to help both of us, because it doesn’t make me feel good to know that he’s hurting. I call him back.

He picks up on the first ring. “Yeah? What’s going on?”

“If you want to go for a run, I’ll go with you. I’ll walk while you run. If you want to swing by for me, I’ll be here.”

“Okay. I’ll swing by there.”

We go to the park he prefers, flatter than the one near me. While he runs along an inner dirt path, I begin my walk. It’s much cooler than I thought it would be with trees shading the walkway, a breeze moving their leaves and fanning me. I think my thoughts. Walking always brings on thoughts that wouldn’t come to me otherwise. I make good connections when I walk.

Joshua comes alongside me. “Already a lap and a half,” he says. “Only a half-lap to go.” He passes me, throwing both arms high over his head in a gesture of triumph.

He finishes his run, and we meet in the middle. Now he’s walking with me. He talks, and I mainly listen. More about Christy. More about his weekend with Jodi, the country gal/nurse practitioner who lives in Lexington. More about the one-liner rejection. More about the hostile, tattooed technician cursing and banging on the valves of the AC unit on Charles Street, then slamming his tools into his truck.

“I don’t like to talk. I just like to walk,” he’d said earlier, but now he’s talking — releasing his irritation and frustration by talking to a person who loves him and is listening to him. It’s as calming to both of us as the cool breeze is.

Thank you, higher power. I listened to you. I did the most I am capable of at this moment. I am not perfect, and I will never be perfect. I will always be practicing. I will always be in training.

But I am getting better at being with myself. I am getting better at being with Joshua. I am making progress.

Hallelujah.