Park the Car in Harvard Yard? Good Luck With That

This is what Harvard Square looks like - for the non Mass readers

In Harvard Square – Cambridge – there is a restaurant on Brattle Street, about a three-minute walk from Harvard Yard. Yes.  That Harvard Yard.  If you aren’t from this area, you should know that you will never park your car there.  Ever.  The restaurant is called Toscano, one of my absolute favorites.  An Italian joint with homemade pasta, tablecloths, and those giant doors that open up so that you can feel like you are dining on the street when the weather permits. 

The calamari isn’t fried. Instead, it’s grilled and rolled up.  So you have to cut it yourself, then dip it in their mustard sauce.  It’s the only place I know of that serves it that way.  That’s where I was and what I had last night…for starters.  And, under old circumstances, it’d be accompanied by anything Piedmont – a Barbera, Barbaresco, or a Barolo (Italian Reds).  While there, I was presented with the opportunity to either flex the muscles of 85 days of not drinking or head back to square one.  Let it be known that today is Day 86 of not drinking. 

Photo compliments of Yelp

I went so far as to hold the glass, smell it, and then hand it back to its rightful owner.  Could I have had just one?  Maybe.  Anyone could.  But not me.  Saying “Not today” felt like a rep at Planet Fitness – just like those “one more bite” battles I still have with my son. A thing I still do today – telling him to take one more bite before I take it away.  That’s how I get him to finish his chicken. I remind him of how important it is for an athlete to take in protein, then do the one more bite thing…again and again until it’s gone.  It worked with veggies when he was a baby and still works with protein now that he’s a teen. 

I think in all aspects of life, it is hard not to think about all of the pages that make up the never-ending story.  Books without final chapters take forever to read, and with no end in sight, the only place to begin is the page that you’re on.  This Easter, I realized that every morning is a resurrection of sorts.  Because, when I woke up this morning, my first thought was about the private victory of not taking even one sip last night.  This probably seems stupid for some people, but for some of us, not taking that sip is a physical, mental, and spiritual victory. 

I was 10 years old when this one came out

Look, renewal isn’t just biblical.  Steven Covey wrote about sharpening the saw in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  That book is an oldie but a goody.  So is the Alchemist.  I wrote about that one before – the whole thing is about self-discovery.  More importantly, and easier to digest, particularly for the non-readers, is any Rocky movie – now the Creed movies. 

Even The Godfather ends with the renewal of the Corleone family’s power – Michael’s enemies wiped out while he stands at a baptism, making a bunch of promises to God.  Rejecting Satan and all that. 

Renewal – not just a theme for Sunday sermons or bestselling self-help books – it’s the quiet, ordinary miracle that happens every time you make the harder choice. Whenever you say “not today” when everything in your body whispers “just one won’t hurt.”  None of this has been as dramatic as Rocky chasing and catching the chicken in the first movie, or climbing the mountain in Russia before kicking the shit out of Drago in the middle of the Cold War.

I used to think victory looked like a trophy or a headline. Now, I know it sometimes looks like handing a wine glass back across a white tablecloth, waking up and realizing you made it another day, or telling your kid one more bite and realizing you just took one yourself.

Easter isn’t about the lilies, sermons, sugar high, or egg hunts. It’s the revival that happens in silence. In private. In the little wins that nobody feels but you. The kind that piles up like pages in a book with no final chapter, just a better story every day, and you keep writing it.

I’m a guy on the outside of his career, looking in – with no job, no certainty, and every reason to be curled up in stress. And yet, somehow…I feel good. Not anxious. Not panicked. Just good.

I don’t think I ever expected Day 86 to feel like this. Maybe it’s not a destination, perhaps it’s just a way, way better Day 1.