One: A Terrible Blister
One day last summer, Bethany and I decided that we would take a long walk. At first, it was unclear how long this long walk would be, but we knew we wanted to take it anyway. My dream was to go on a walk, have a picnic, and then walk more and then eat more. The perfect combination of walking and then eating is maybe the only physical sensation I prefer to sitting down in an Amtrak Roomette at the beginning of the journey. Sorry “having sex” and “swimming in the ocean”: You’re great, but walking a lot and then eating a lot is the king of the activities.
Ultimately, since sometimes Bethany and I like to talk about spirituality and the Great Unknown, we decided to walk to the Baha’i House of Worship. Did you know that there is only one Baha’i House of Worship in all of the United States and it just happens to be a few miles north of Chicago, Illinois? The temple is so exquisitely designed and executed that it feels simultaneously like it must be a cult, and like it couldn’t possibly be a cult. (It must be a cult: there are precisely nine sides and nine sets of pristine stairs and quiet gardeners who constantly prune the quiet gardens that surround the temple, while bright blue fountains thrum like rhetorical fountains or fountains from books. But it couldn’t possibly be a cult: No cult has been so successful as to have inspired a work of architecture this meticulous or massive or intricately carved. Try to argue with me about that if you want, but only if you have been the the Baha’i House of Worship, because I am not doing it descriptive justice.)
As a spoiler: I like the Baha’i. Their dogma is basically that all the religions so far in the world have been the same. They have always been a diverse community, since way before it was acceptable (much less hip) for communities to be diverse. All the quotes on the wall of the visitor’s center are about community and service and taking care of the world, and I can get behind all of that.
I got a walking app and mapped out a course that we could take that would loop over to the Baha’i House of Worship and take us back a different route. The walk would be fifteen miles. That did not feel like too many miles at the time.
My shoes were last season’s Nikes — I’d bought them nine months before at a TJ Maxx, which is a good place to get discounted running shoes. I ran in them on the treadmill a lot. They seemed like pretty good shoes. My denim shorts were imperfect and I knew that immediately, but it was that muggy Chicago weather that makes you forget it’s Chicago, and I didn’t want to wear anything tight or spandexy. Bethany had on good shoes too and she also picked denim shorts. We made a sublime picnic from stuff at Trader Joes. Lots of dips. I will name that I have mentioned two very White Girl “T-J” institutions in a single paragraph, and it is true that I am embarrassed about that, but this is also a true story, and you deserve the facts.
The walk was great, but my blisters started to materialize at mile three. Here is every person with a new blister: “This will probably pass, and I can just keep walking in these shoes.” Here is every blister: “You leave those shoes on and I am going to grow and grow and grow until you forget you have other body parts and you are totally subsumed by me.” So you know what happened and I don’t have to tell you, right? By the end of the walk, the blister had a mind of its own and probably its own YouTube channel, such was the throbbing under my sock. Both feet technically blistered, but one was worse, and it was so bad that I could not sleep.
Nor could I realistically put on shoes in the morning. Bethany told me that we were going to have to get me some new shoes, and I took this personally, as though Bethany had said, “YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT SHOES, YOU ARE STUPID AT SHOES,” which was not what she said at all. Bethany is a lifelong athlete, and I was the kid for whom all the other kids quite vocally “moved in” when playing kickball. So then of course I internally bastardized the already phony “YOU SUCK AT SHOES” into “YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BODIES AND HOW THEY WORK; I KNOW ABOUT YOUR KICKBALL PAST.” And poor Bethany thought she was just being a good friend who was looking out for my feet.
Then we had an argument, and I was on the wrong side of the argument. There was no way around it. I was insisting on living in a story because something about that felt safer than taking Bethany at her word and believing that my very close friend did not want me to suffer subsequent painful blisters.
For over a week, I couldn’t go to the gym.