The week we said yes

Fourfold

5 a.m. I walk into the shop and find my two most senior guys on the bathroom floor. On their knees. Shirts riding up. Searching.

“What are you doing?”

Hoss holds up the coffee pot like evidence. The tip of the glass spout is gone. He chipped it filling the pot at the sink, brewed a full pot and drank it. Now he’s sure he swallowed the missing piece and is about to bleed out before the first slab is cut.

Adam has the phone out, half-dialing an ambulance. Then he gets a better idea and opens the sink trap. Years of sludge hit the floor.

“I think I found it.”

Hoss turns, radiant. Saved.

“Oh. No. Lost it.”

I’ve never seen a face fall that far, that fast. They found the shard a minute later. No ambulance. We cut stone that day.

This is the same Hoss, braided beard and tattooed sleeves, who had a three-legged chihuahua named Taco. Taco fit in his palm. Hoss walked him at full stride with his arm swinging, so every bathroom break was a carnival ride for Taco: terror on the backswing, tongue-out joy on the front. When Taco’s heart gave out on the shop floor, on Hoss’s birthday, Adam shut down the saw and took the dog in his lap. Hoss drove to the ER while Adam gave tiny chest compressions the whole way. Taco came back. Hoss had a spiritual moment and told all of us about it.

Taco passed a few months later. Hoss got his birthday miracle, and a few more good months with his best friend.

You can’t make this up. We’ve stopped trying.

Home

We’re yes people. It’s how we keep ourselves in line. We say yes, dread it, grumble about the logistics, worry about the cost, then show up and have a wonderful time. Repeat.

So last Saturday we said yes to friends from Indianapolis and Indiana–Ohio State. Our alma mater, last year’s champions (we’re still not over it), number six against number five. We lost 19–15 when the refs ruled the last catch of the game wasn’t one. Twenty-two straight wins, over. Afterward Curt Cignetti, a coach who does not do feelings, said: “The sun will come up tomorrow.”

Tuesday we said yes to a double date with neighbors at Sur Lie, new in our neighborhood. It was so good I’m annoyed I almost skipped it.

Somewhere over dinner we told the coffee pot story, then the Taco story, and the table lost it. Four years in, the stuff that nearly broke us is turning into material.

What we learned

We gave ourselves a five-year sprint at 45. We’re in year four. It costs more than we budgeted, mostly in sleep. Sixty days ago we bought a year of material, and the bill showed up right on schedule. Nobody warns you the invoice has better follow-through than you do.

The same week, St. Louis Magazine ran Eric Schmid’s story on us. We’d been nervous for two weeks. We told him more than we meant to, he wouldn’t show us a draft, and we had no say. He wrote it more openly than we would have. He also got it exactly right. Asked if we’d do it again, Audrey said “probably.” I said I wouldn’t. Then we drove to Bloomington together, so draw your own conclusions.

People we hadn’t heard from in years have been reaching out since. If that’s you: welcome. Pull up a stool.

So that’s the week: a bill we can’t quite cover yet, a story we couldn’t have told better, and two grown men on a bathroom floor. The only thing we’re reliably good at is saying yes. We’re still figuring out what to say it to.

The sun will come up tomorrow. Coach said so.