A Rally Cry

I’ve always been one to remember dates and (mostly useless) trivia. I can often tell you where I was and what I was doing years ago on a particular date, and I can often make odd connections between things that occur on the same date, but years apart. For example, I can tell you that the cocker spaniel my sister and I had for a pet died on the 100th anniversary of Ansel Adams’ birth—February 20th, 2002. I recently won a bet with a friend who claimed Oregon State had never played a football game on a Thursday night before they played USC two weeks ago. I knew this because I remembered them playing a Thursday night game on August 31, 2006, which was the 25th anniversary of the day I started first grade.

I’m crazy.

Today is the second anniversary of the day I went to Hawaii for the first (and only) time. I flew there on October 6, 2006, for a friend’s wedding. The wedding was in Honolulu on the 7th, and I stayed there and on the Big Island for 6 more days afterward. I had worked my ass off during all of 2006, and that was to be a week of relaxation and photography of an exotic landscape I had never seen before.

But I was unable to really relax at all. My work back home just dominated my thoughts, and I was fighting back as hard as I could against another onset of depression. I also missed my son and baby daughter tremendously. I clearly remember my son (2 years old at the time) telling me that “next time I want to go on ‘bacation’ with you, Daddy.” That made it very hard to leave.

While I was in Hawaii, I heard a country song that was getting a lot of play at the time. It was by Rodney Atkins, and the chorus went:

“If you're going through hell
Keep on going, don't slow down
If you're scared, don't show it
You might get out
Before the devil even knows you're there.

If you're going through hell
Keep on moving, face that fire
Walk right through it
You might get out
Before the devil even knows you're there.”

It was a catchy tune that found its way to my ears at a very appropriate time.

And now it seems I need to live by that song’s rally cry more than ever. The pressures are almost as high as they’ve ever been in my life, but now other problems have piled on. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have those kids there to greet me at the end of all these shitty days. But I’ll always be thankful that I still have that.