Olly Olly in Come Free

Not a sterling week. I made some mistakes. Now, isn't that terrible? It's not so much what I do out there in the world sometimes that's so hard to bear but what I do to myself inside my head. Would any parent be so merciless? On Monday, I took prompt action when the man sitting on a chair next to me at Peets on Broadway nodded out. Yes, cigarette in hand. I walked quickly into the store and told the barrista to call an aid car. What I beat myself up about later was that I didn't know how to take the man's pulse. Turned out that the man had gone into a diabetic shock. I may not have saved the guy's life but I certainly did him a favor. I have decided my problem is not so much my high standards: it's my impossible standards. I am sister to Sisyphus perpetually rolling the boulder up the cliff in Greek myth. Imagine the poor guy. Every time thinking, "I've done it. I'm almost there. I'm almost enough." Creak. Then boom -- the boulder rolls back down the hill, likely rolling over Sisyphus as well. Someone asked me once what I would want God to say to me when I died, the very first words. I said, "Olly olly in come free." Those words, floating on the summer's twilight when I was young, signaled that the game, whatever it was, was over. I could come in and not get tagged out. I want God to make the same offer. Want to make the same offer to myself. "Olly olly in come free. Game over."