Uncertainty & the Anhinga

Shortly before Christmas my wife and I decided to buy an RV and travel south to wait out COVID in a sunnier and warmer location than Grand Rapids, MI. I am doing all of my work virtually right now and our kids are home schooled so we could literally be anywhere in the world with cell service and keep our life running right now. As I sat on a dock in central Florida last week I was thinking about the uncertainty of doing business during COVID as well as the uncertainty of running a small business in general. I wanted to share the journal entry I wrote on that morning in this blog post:

About 3 weeks ago my wife and I climbed in our new-to-us Chevy Tahoe (already 230,000 miles on it, but we’re hoping it can make it to 500,000) hitched to a 30ft Forest River camper and pulled out of our driveway in Grand Rapids at 8pm on a 9 degree Saturday night. We only made it 20 miles in that night’s blizzard and we stayed in the camper in my parents’ driveway in Dorr. The next morning my 8 year old son August went with a mask on up to Grandpa and Grandma’s doorway to retrieve two plates of pancakes and then we were on the road again.

We made it to Nashville late that night, pulling in to a Cracker Barrel parking lot about 1am and discovered the heat in the camper wasn’t working. In 10 hours of driving south we had disappointingly only gained about 20 degrees of heat — it was still very cold and sleeping in the an unheated camper with 4 young boys was definitely not an option. Luckily there was a hotel adjacent to Cracker Barrel and we purchased a room for the night.

Before we could get out of Nashville the next morning I discovered our brand new hitch was broken and we spent the morning in a Circle K parking lot calling down Google’s list of RV repair places. I spoke with several one-man repair businesses and there were all great. Each spoke with a fantastic Nashville drawl and seemed to have transported magically into modern life from the Allman Brothers band of the 1960s. “Can you text me a picture of the hitch?” “Hmm, looks like you need a welder. I don’t do that but I would check with Neal.” I called Neal. He was ornery in the way someone is who is so good at what they do that they are doing you a favor by taking your money in exchange for their knowledge. These interactions made me thankful that there are still businesses in America run by uniquely talented people that you can’t find anywhere else. I wish I had a Neal in my life when I bought the RV in Michigan but Neal can only be found in Smyrna, TN and that is the beauty of working with him.

As it turned out Neal wasn’t available to help me that day but I got a tip from a full-time RVer  that Candy’s Corner was the place to go so we spent a few hours roaming their wooded back lot while a new hitch and battery (now our heat would work again) were installed. Another $600 bill and we were back on the road. So far with the repairs and hotel stay we were averaging about $400 / day in expenses. Ouch.

After a night (with the heat working) in a Cracker Barrel parking lot in Kennesaw, GA and another day of driving we made it across the Florida state line and found a site at Warren Willis Methodist Camp (hence the floating cross in the lake) in central Florida. Over the next week I continued to hone my RV repair skills; oven wouldn’t light, electricity went out, hot water heater would not work, screen window broke, door handle broke, table came un-bolted from the floor, clogged toilet, clogged sink, cupboard door fell off. One evening deep into week 2 of our stay at Warren Willis my wife Cicely commented as I sat at the dining table flipping through the Audubon birding app, listening to bird calls with August, “This is the first time since we left that I have seen you relax for a minute.” Last night I went on a verbal rampage as the reality of another weekend without enough time to fix everything and have some down time set in before work duties resumed Monday morning. 

Well, Monday morning has come and Cicely kissed me sweetly assuring me, “Everything will be alright.” Now the sun is coming up, shooting rays through the clouds and the neon blue lights in the floating cross have turned off to leave only a plastic and metal structure dirty with cobwebs and the detritus of lake water.

The sun warms my face and I close my eyes thinking of Cicely’s words “Everything will be alright.” Birds call. The breeze chills my bare arms and makes the reeds along the lake’s edge wave and bend. They are moved by an unseen force. I am warmed by a sunlight I do not understand emanating from a ball of gas and explosions too big and too far away to comprehend.

“Everything will be okay.” Cicely’s lips are cold in the morning in a way that heightens the sensation of feeling them on mine. I close my eyes and allow myself to fall into my exhaustion as we embrace for a moment standing in the early morning in the camper.

There is great uncertainty in running a small business as there is in all of life. Will I find any new students this week? Will our current students re-up for another round of lessons? Can I find the time to fix the crumbling portion of the brick wall in the studio? Should I try to switch recurring payments from credit card to ACH to save on credit card processing fees? Should I pay an extra $12/month to make a dashboard with Airtable, which I know how to use well, or can I figure out how to do the same thing in my free Excel account? How can I market our lessons without contributing to the soul-crushing onslaught of advertising we live under every day?

I get out my binoculars and view a beautiful bird sitting in a bush at the lake’s edge. Razor bill, curved neck and black with white on the tops of its wings—it is a stunning creature. It raises its wings while sitting, presumably to dry itself. I’m sure this time that it is an anhinga—a bird I had never even heard of before this trip to Florida. What is its life like? It is experiencing the same sun as me right now, the same breeze. It certainly faces as much uncertainty as me—perhaps it has young to care for. Will it find its next meal? Will it fall prey to a predator today? I am too ignorant of its life to even know what other questions it may ask itself in its moments of reflection.

My attention is drawn away from the anhinga by a bird calling from the floating cross. This one I easily recognize in my binoculars as a red-winged blackbird. I’ve recently learned its call—a sound I’ve heard for years but always thought was made by some sort of insect, not a bird. So much of the challenge of life lies in learning to correctly identify and perceive what we are experiencing. I felt upset with Cicely last night: was I actually frustrated with her or was I simply exhausted and overwhelmed? Is the floating cross beautiful and luminescent or dirty and in need of some regular maintenance? Did my business make money last week or lose money? (*This question of profitability has been extremely difficult for me to get at as it is so hard to accurately & precisely allocate all of the the costs of running a business to the revenue generated.)

Of course the answer to all of these questions is that both options can be correct answers. Life is so often both things at once. Yes, I am mad at my wife and I am exhausted and overwhelmed. Yes, I am an attentive father and I am distracted by all of the obligations of entrepreneurship. Yes, the floating cross is lit a beautiful blue and underneath those lights it is filthy. Yes, I sold some music lessons last week and I also incurred many expenses. Yes, the anhinga’s life is both magnificent and fragile.

I suppose the real question that makes the most difference for us is this: What am I left with when the questions are summed against each other? Do the gentle shared moments of my marriage outnumber the moments of annoyance and frustration? Does the flexibility of schedule and joy of sharing my passion with my community outweigh the anxieties, uncertainties and stresses of owning a small business? Is the anhinga left with a joy of living—of the sun on its face and currents under its wings?

In the end, my prayer at the foot of a floating cross is that life itself will be a grace. I wrote recently in my journal: “There are very few things in life that can be controlled directly. For everything else simply wait, patiently, calmly.” Through that waiting I hope a few new students find Southtown Guitar this week. I hope the anhinga survives to enjoy the sun on its face a year from now. I hope August can hug his grandpa again without fear of COVID. I hope I can be a gentle, kind, forgiving and forgivable husband and father.

Gladly, I don’t think any of these things are long shots. Based on my 39 years of experience with life so far, my guess is that grace upon grace will continue its mysterious unfolding—sunrise after sunrise, student after student, dollar after dollar, hard-learned lesson after hard-learned lesson. And someday, whether thought tenacity, ingenuity, or simply sheer stubbornness I might be somebody’s Neal. I might be an indispensable connection to a body of knowledge that you can’t find in Smyrna, TN, Kennesaw, GA or Lake Griffin, FL. A uniquely talented (as we are all unique) guitar teacher that can only be found in one place in the world. Something so personal and special that it simply cannot be replicated and scaled up through the systematization and duplication techniques of modern business.

The sun is half way up in the sky now and a shadow is gratefully cast by my hand on the page. Birds are still calling. The anhinga continues its perch. Water laps against the dock. The reeds sway in the breeze and the floating cross sits in its drabness, awaiting the time when its sensor will once again signal its transformation to a brilliant blue.