Life Is a Circle

Joy. Grief. Miracle. Loss. Life. Death.

This moment contains all moments.

Life is not a straight line.

It’s a circle.

I graduated from Wesleyan University in 1986, four decades ago, and somehow found myself waking up in Middletown again this morning. I took my dog Kodi for a run by the boat house and along the Connecticut River, where I rowed. It was 2 degrees out. My face hurt on the way back because even the gentlest headwind started to freeze my nose and cheeks.

Yesterday I met my twenty-seven new students and had dinner with my students from last year. Today, I was determined to go to the basketball game where two of my former students, and two upperclassmen I have been trying to help with their entrepreneurial dreams, would be playing.

It was a grudge match. Last year, our undefeated season was ruined by Trinity. They returned all their players this year and came into the game this time around as the undefeated national ranked number 1 team. We lost two important seniors from the prior year and had lost some early games, so we were unranked and big underdogs.

Before the game I walked around the sports complex and marveled that the rink, pool, indoor track, and basketball stadium. I thought about athletic facilities in my day which were inferior to any reasonably sized public high school.

The game got off to a good start. We were up by halftime. The place was rocking.

I unfortunately had a Zoom with my parents, who are in their mid-eighties, and my siblings, to discuss my parents’ estate, medical condition, living situation, and their wishes when they die. I had screwed up the time, and there was no way I could not show up. So, I was reduced to finding a quiet hallway in the bowels of the athletic complex to do the Zoom while watching the basketball game on my phone.

My guys pulled off the upset, holding on at the very end to Trinity’s late rush. I could feel the whole building shaking above me. I was bummed not to be in the stands. And then suddenly, the whole Trinity team and their coaches were walking towards me, heads down. Massive men, swearing, crushed.

By my guys!

It felt like God threw me a bone to be able to witness up close and personal the devastation of our team’s biggest rival in the biggest game in any of their lives.

Five minutes later, one of my favorite students, Anthony, from the team came jogging down the hallway. I was still sitting with my back to the wall on my laptop, but I tried to put it on mute, stood up, and gave him the biggest hug of my life. He is a huge man with a huge heart, and I love him so much. I have never seen him so happy. And that made me so happy for him. I didn’t need to see the end of the game, I just needed to see him.

After Anthony left, I transferred the Zoom to my phone and walked upstairs and out on the court to hug the other players. Then I walked to my car to start the drive home while listening to my parents talk about their wishes for burial.

An hour later, still in my car somewhere south of Hartford, I got a message that the voice of my athletic career had passed away.

When I was a sophomore, I teamed up with three massive seniors and Karen, a freshman who served as our rowing coxswain, to finish third in the country in the four.

Karen took her sophomore year off from rowing but came back in 1986 as a junior. We were heavy underdogs against the Coast Guard in our first race, behind by a length at a thousand meters, and came back to win. For two years, we never lost another dual race. In 1987, we were New England Champions and second in the country.

In the most important, exhilarating moments of my athletic life, she was the voice I heard. She was tougher than any of us, and we knew it.

I can still hear her calm, steely instructions as we warmed up, relaxed but intense. Focused. Her whispers at the line. A tap on the bowman’s oar. Sit up. Breath. Get ready for battle, gents.

And the abandon as we went through our starting sequence to get the boat up to top speed. Half the time, I felt like she was calling the race in a way to demoralize the boat next to us, just bully them into submission. If she could have fought the opposing coxswain, all hundred pounds of her, she would have.

She loved nothing better than to call open water between our stern and an opposing crew’s bow. And she did that a lot. Pretty much every dual race we were ever in.

Karen was a born networker. Somehow, she was best friends with the famed author Annie Dillard, which led to my getting a free place to stay with the publisher of the Wesleyan Press in return for taking care of the publisher’s elderly mother. She crushed it in the business world, working at Goldman Sachs and then becoming a retail genius.

When I got the news, I cried. I cried for her kids. And I cried because all the memories came rushing back.

It was almost too beautiful to take in.

My heart hurt.

The heroic win by the basketball team.

Hugging Anthony.

Running next to the frozen river, where Karen and our team learned how to be great together.

Or, rather, she taught us.

Life is not a straight line.

It’s a circle.

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This post was previously published on Linkedin.com.