Sign of the Times

The sign confused a lot of folks.

At first glance, it resembled a Gadsden flag: a coiled rattlesnake – often associated with distrust of government and the defense of individual liberty – on a bright yellow field.

Only the snake wasn’t arranged like a sprung spring … it writhed in the shape of a womb.

My husband had painted the sign a short time after the Supreme Court rescinded the understanding that women were considered equal under the Constitution and deserving of autonomy. 

He called it a gift and posted it in front of our house next to a sign I had painted two years earlier, (kNOw Justice, kNOw Peace).

The signs had lived at the edge of our driveway for about three years withstanding all kinds of weather, including the furtive complaints to town elders about its potential to violate ordinances concerning political signage.

Elders, to their credit, who would tell them they didn’t have to agree to understand the difference between the enforcement of general guidelines for electioneering during a cyclical “silly season,” and what is required for the preservation of protected speech.

It enticed people to honk their horns in solidarity … or rage … at all hours of the day and night.

Until, in the wee hours of the new Trumpian term, the sign disappeared. 

I presumed it had been carried off by one (or more) of the previously affronted. It was impossible to know for sure, since our neighbors’ American Flag, blowing in the wind that night,  obstructed the field of vision of their Ring camera, which had reliably shown the edge of our yard, and often revealed the unsavory truth about which of our “neighbors” gave middle fingers to the signs and which of our damaged packages had been perfectly fine until they had been literally kicked to the curb by the delivery driver.

Not that it mattered.

When the world didn’t stop on its axis at the idea of women’s private health decisions being criminalized, how could I be surprised by an overheard offhand comment: “I wouldn’t want to be married to the woman who makes him live with a uterus sign.”

In place of umbrage, I felt something akin to agreement.

“The feeling, I can assure you, is mutual.”

Not that it mattered what he thought. 

I wasn’t married to him. 

Still, it made me realize how nice it is to live with a man who isn’t squeamish about his partner being just that -  a partner. He is a man who believes that feminism simply means women are human beings deserving of self-determination.

He brought that same philosophy to parenting; we didn’t always see eye to eye but we hashed out disagreements with love and civility. 

We didn’t always put up a united front, but we could always talk it out and if nothing else, agree to disagree. 

Which, according to a new Gallup Poll, the gender gap between important rights like abortion is increasing by its widest margin yet.

I can’t imagine a world in which our children don’t see their partners as deserving of basic healthcare. I do hope they will be better, wiser, and more compassionate because they had parents who were true partners.

Happy Father’s Day to the true partners among us.

Mama bear

I want to eat something.

Something that perturbs me.

Or worries me. Or makes me enraged.

Tear it stem from stern.

Devour it in three gargantuan bites.

It won’t make me feel any better, I know.

If it doesn’t trigger a gag reflex the feted feelings will just lead to more agita.

Its acids will burn in my gut until I regret every morsel I’ve ever wolfed down.

Keep me up at night, pacing the floors just like when they were small.

They are only with me in my imagination as I meander. There is nothing in my arms but a thickening layer of my own flesh. I wonder when that happened? Probably the same time as the proud flesh spilled over at the waistline and hem edges, reminding me of the dichotomy that comes with aging - the comfortable discomfort of whatever gets tacked on as extra.

Even though we always know what’s coming it’s always a surprise.

Middle age is a wonder.

At least it feels that way to me.

Especially now that I know aging is not a mystery. It isn't something so foreign that I almost expected never to experience its effects. 

“La dee dah dee dah.” And other lies we tell ourselves.

“We’ll never grow up.”

“We’ll never find love”

“We’ll never get married.”

We’ll never have kids.”

“We’ll never get old.”

Of course, we thought we’d never get old – we’d never have hot flashes or brain fog, or the sinking feeling that we would be losing the plot of our own stories – not one of our mothers ever spoke about menopause.

But here it is … The Change.

Still, it’s hard to wrap our Present heads around the Future.  

You know there will be graduations, and weddings, and retirements, and maybe a few grandkids. Not that I am pushing any such agenda.

Instead, I spend that time in hopes that funerals are few and far between; and that they don’t directly involve myself or any of my loved ones.

We may feel like we have all the time in the world … but the clock is ticking faster.

Or maybe, I just want to sleep through this part of the season.

Hibernate while the cubs go off into the scrub.

The last baby has his first mortarboard in hand and is almost ready to motor.

He has plans that go beyond childish dreams.

The world is waiting. But I know it won’t chew him up. Or at least I hope it won’t.

I remember that feeling of wanting to eat him … that strange expression of early motherhood that translated into some unspeakable emotion - like loving a thing so much that, with heart filled, teeth clenched, adrenaline pumping, you might just gobble them up.

I wish I could still be that mama bear.

Yet despite how tempting that might be, now is the time for that impulse to hibernate. 

Above and beyond

The day wasn’t much more than halfway over, but my eyelids felt excruciatingly heavy. 

The to-do list still had a few more loads of laundry; some weeding of a roadside flower garden (that I have been meaning to do since the school stopped requiring the interception of a parent or guardian to meet the bus); and a trip to the grocery store, which, once accomplished, would be my third visit of the weekend.

The store is only three miles away. Five minutes by car. But somehow those first few steps of putting on shoes, finding my wallet and keys, then locating the reusable totes I never manage to bring into the store anyway, make me feel like I should take a short break … maybe have a glass of cool water, sit on the couch, commune with my phone for a bit … just to be sure my list is complete  … before I make another arduous journey.

“I’ll go.”

My son was standing in front of the refrigerator, holding on to the doors and staring into the abyss long enough to make me wonder if I would have to summon the spirit of my mother and holler something in his direction about “not heating the great outdoors” or “refrigerating the kitchen.”

He closed the ice box with a shrug and deciphered my puzzled expression.

“To the store. I’ll go. What do you want?”

I don’t know how to describe the feeling …

You know? Like when the kids were tiny tots, and they were both sick with some vomit-y plague, and you were a zombie because you never got sleep, but somehow you are resignedly prepared to clean up whatever surface gets splattered?

And then one of the pukers actually makes it to the toilet!

For a brief moment, orchestras play and angels sing. 

You feel re-energized.

… It kind of felt like that.

Wide awake now and enthused by the prospect of not having to circle the store’s aisles until I’d had gathered almost everything I’d come for; finding out in the checkout line, or when filling the trunk with the haul, that I’d forgotten something integral …. maybe the meat for dinner or the eggs for breakfast.

I thanked him as I tapped out a list on my phone that I would send to his phone in the time it would take to drive the two miles.

He would be irritated that some of the items on it were intentionally vague: Meat for dinner, a selection of bread, something for snacks, cat food. But he wouldn’t complain.

Upon his return, he stopped by the garden where I was haphazardly weeding and let me know, enthusiastically, that he had procured a rack of ribs and was planning on slow-roasting them so dinner might be a bit late.

I laugh when I wonder aloud if I should send him back to the store for a lotto ticket.

“You'll have to ask me again in a few weeks when I’ll be old enough.”

The care we are not taking

There I was, absently scrolling through my email’s inbox when, among the flotsam and jetsam, I saw a name that I thought I recognized.

But when I clicked on the email from “Alex” and saw a few hundred words highlighted like a striped shirt, alternated between the paragraphs in either plain or bold-face fonts, I realized my mistake.

Yet as I kept reading, I realized the mistake felt so much bigger.

It wasn't selling anything but a little humanity; Correcting a mistake that we all share some part in creating.

The press release told the story of Senate Bill S3781 in which the New York State Senate (joining Texas, Maryland, and Oregon) took “a powerful step in returning dignity for the roughly 13,000 children in New York’s foster system.”

By guaranteeing that the Office of Children and Family Services provides proper luggage to youth transitioning between foster homes.

INSTEAD of TRASH BAGS.

The background explained that out of roughly 13,000 children in the state’s foster care system – who, on average, experience three different placements while under the government’s care –  fewer than 3,000 (and none of those residing in New York City) have been supplied with anything more than a trash bag or a cardboard box to transport their belongings between dwellings. 

What is the projected cost of providing a suitable bag or case?

A paltry $15 per child.

I don’t know why that surprised me.

There has never been a shortage of disdain for those among us who need assistance in this country. We expect people to jump forward through hoops for basic necessities, and back again to show their gratitude even when the things we donate are substandard.

We will pay for a billionaire’s infinite tax breaks but we don’t want to pay a few hundred dollars to make sure a struggling family has food in their cupboards. The poor, we seemed hardwired to believe, are not worth the investment.

Nor can I explain why a well-intentioned state pilot program called “My Bag,” in 2023 delivered none of its 2,700 bags to children in New York City — which is home to more than 7,000 foster children, yet saw zero luggage bags.

But picturing a traumatized child clinging to all their worldly belongings in a bag that the rest of the world registers as trash, is as clarifying as a gut punch. 

Or at least it should be.

And while I applaud New York’s 57 Senators voting in unison to ensure that children in this unenviable position are afforded this one small comfort, I am bothered that it hasn’t been the norm.

I’m just sad that every right to which we are entitled is afforded to us only if we haven’t been entirely worn down from the continual fight. 

This one seems easy.

Undoubtedly, it’s been hard fought.

I wish we would reject the very idea that suffering builds character and realize that education, housing and food security, as well as access to basic medical care, are the building blocks of a healthy community.

I hope we take stock of the situation in which we are finding ourselves. We need to reject the cruelty we so absently inflict.

On every front, kindness and care are what we need.

Summer, a time for processing

In the waning light of two fortnights, I will no longer be the mother of children.

If this had not been evident by the passage of time itself (despite my refusal to allow developmental classification to rob me of my children when it switched them with “adolescents” a handful of years ago), it was apparent by my soon-to-be-graduate son’s increasingly sheepish grin.

When prodded for the reason behind his bubbling mirth, he just shrugged and admitted that his REAL plans for the summer were still in flux.

Really? Now, I had known there were college orientation days, and routine doctors’ appointments that had been committed to several calendars, equipped with alarms where they hovered in cyberspace and circled in red where written on the whiteboard of analog … lest anyone forget. 

Not to mention that we had ASS-U-ME-ed that at least a few of these fleeting summer days would include some measure of gainful employment. Maybe just enough to keep him flush with pocket money during his first college semester.

His real plan, he admitted, was a road trip to Canada, where he and a few friends would go on one last adventure before they scattered across the country. In this plan, they would cross a border, show their passports, and, though he did not attest to it, I knew he would gain access to a land that would let them imbibe before they turned 21. 

The flux part was turning out to be syncing the schedules of his core constituents.

Oh, how my heart leapt into my chest.

Summer … The time when all safety-conscious parents operate on high alert.

You know who you are: When you fired up the grill you made sure it was clean and clear of nearby combustibles; You chose your highway travel plans to coincide with optimal road conditions even if it meant driving at off-peak hours; and you made sure you kept your eyes on the kids at all times in the pool.

I remember thinking the only time I was able to let down my guard was when the leaves started to fall and my husband secured the winter pool cover in place. 

Despite all that angst, I’m surprised to feel as if this is truly the summer of my discontent.

That moment when you actually let go … Just before they will be out of the house and on their own anyway.

And you really just have to hold your breath and hope that you have not only said and modeled all the right things, but that your children have absorbed and adopted them.

As I read and reread official guides for "Summer Safety," complete with  "Tips For Summer Travels," it seems apparent that planning is key.

Of course, you want them to start by planning NOT to get drunk. But even if that’s their goal, you want to have already committed to taking transportation that doesn't include the keys they may have in their pockets. They should plan to use public transport or call an Uber to bring them back to their home base, be it a hotel or campsite. Not only because it’s the law, but because it’s the safest, sanest thing for everyone.

And yet, having tried to drill that into his head since the day he grew taller than me, there is also the reality that no matter how sober he might be, he must remain aware that there will undoubtedly be people behind other wheels in his general vicinity who may be sloshed.

“I know … I know,” he’ll say. “I’m a good driver. I don’t get distracted. I don’t text and drive. I don’t even fiddle with the radio. There is no way I’d drink and operate my car.” 

His voice is soft and reassuring when he reiterates with the ultimate of all oxymorons: “You don’t have to worry, Mom.”

Perhaps he’s not wrong … Planning takes many forms. Some of them are literal ones that require time for processing.

“Have you checked your passport? Getting it renewed might take all summer, not just a fortnight.”

Running down a fear

 I am an anxious traveler. 

 I like to get that out of the way whenever the topic of journeying away from one’s home comes up.

 The aversion isn’t something I can pinpoint with any precision.

 My angst at its prospect has morphed over time. Initially, it started as a fear of flying, then turned into a fear of getting lost, and finally into a general panic about being out of place … an ugly American who is functionally illiterate everywhere I go. 

 I credit recreational running for easing some of the worst of my symptoms. However, it’s been a gradual revelation.

 Initially, I’d have all the best intentions of lacing up my trainers and taking a few laps around the block of whatever hotel I found myself.

 Instead, I’d end up in a gym, starting my watch on the treadmill so at least my location would be saved in Garmin as I slogged out a few miles scribbled in one place.

 But in time, and with practice, I found following the blue dot on my phone’s navigating map wasn’t as difficult as the picture my imagination painted. All I needed to do was reconfigure how to interpret the graphic waves of propulsion … and accept that the opposite of my directional intuition would always be the path on which I should embark. 

 Not that will always be the case, but when I go with my first impression only to realize later that I should have zigged when I, indeed, zagged, I will likely pretend this trajectory was always the goal. Then I will make a sweeping turn – at a slightly varied pace that I think seems more whimsical than abrupt – and continue onward.

 Typically, I will seek out the well worn paths of previous travelers. Consulting magazines and interweb advice on THE BEST PLACES ™ … Until I realize  I would likely have to run more miles than I have in my training plan just to get there from our hotel, then take some other type of ground transport to get back. 

 Usually I will substitute that idealic plan for the subtle observation of where folks are running nearby and let my phone map guide me.

 I recently traveled to Barcelona for Spring Break, the last-minute guest of my daughter, who —  because of a combination of jet lag and the midnight wake up call in the form of a raucus city-wide celebration honoring Barcelona winning a record-extending 32nd Spanish Cup title after Jules Koude's last-minute goal handed a 3-2 win against Real Madrid — decided to sleep in instead of accompanying me on a morning run as we intended. 

 Since our hotel was located on a main road, I found that the paved median with its expansive width and rows of tall sycamores on either side was a mecca for pedestrians waiting for buses as well as runners and walkers on a mission to get farther.

 After following it to a cross street that led to Ciutdadella Park - a 77-acre greenspace that features lush gardens, sandy walking trails, a zoo, and a magnificent fountain designed by Josep Fontsere, it is also the home of the Parliament of Catalonia and other historic buildings.

 After making two laps of the park's outermost trails – passing its two arboretums, a zoo and the Parliament building, as well as climbing the steps of the ornate fountain and descending to the other side, during both of the loops – and then venturing outside the walls for a single lap around the neighborhood – I had clocked about four miles … the extra two miles arrived while I was getting happily lost on the way back to the hotel. I had lots of sights to talk about with my well-rested daughter once we get to brunch.

 I might even convince myself it was the intention all along, who knows? 

Spring Breaks

I heard the plink of the pebble as it bounced off my windshield and watched as a crack made its way down the glass. Presumably, we were both traveling at 70 miles per hour: Me in the car going south on the Pike and it flying northward presumably from an uncovered gravel truck just ahead.

I didn’t say them aloud but the magic words of doubt and superstition kept circulating through my thoughts … This was a sign of foreboding,

“You should not be here.”

There had been so many middling problems vexing me during a month that I had started calling it the “year of April.”

But there was no turning back.

In a little more than an hour, I would be at Logan Airport and heading to the Iberian Peninsula for Spring Break. It didn’t seem like real life.

My daughter called in the middle of April and asked me to join her in Spain. A trip she’d been trying to plan with friends was falling through her grasp like a handful of sand. She wanted to go on holiday but didn’t want to be alone. 

She did not expect me to say “Yes.”

And honestly, I did not expect it either.

To say that I am an anxious traveler is an understatement. I have a hard time not tripping over words and fumbling thoughts when the nice lady at the local sandwich shop asks me what I’d like and I have not so much made a decision, as I’ve mangled the trajectory of one amid all the potential choices available.

I may never be able to use Spanish effectively… no matter how many stars Duolingo shoots at me after I complete a module. And I suspect the moment I try to say “Hola” the person to whom I’m trying to address will detect “English speaker,” and will switch languages with an ease I will never possess. 

“Never say never,” my daughter wags her finger at me … Reminding me she’s always been the wiser. 

She’s not wrong … as we unpack and set about on our itinerary, we encounter a mix of languages to traverse. We point … say numbers. I know the word for orange and can tell her when she points to it on a menu. 

She answers, "No," after I stare blankly at the clerk, who is calculating the price of a t-shirt I am trying to buy, had asked if had a member's card for discounts.

And we are not alone. All around us, there are people just quietly enjoying their lives and their surroundings.

The last Monday in April, when Spain and Portugal experienced a catastrophic power outage that disrupted mass transit and communication networks for most of the day, we were among them. Jockeying for space on the narrow sidewalks, throngs appeared from the shuttered subways, hoping for a seat on one of the buses that had also seemed to appear out of thin air.

Travelers from all over the world were walking through the wrong doors, and asking for the wrong things. Many were flummoxed. Put out by the interruption and circumvention of plans.

But they were also calm. They acted as if this was just another Spring Break … where things may not be working, but there is also room for a workaround. They sat at street-side tables as servers exited darkened restaurants carrying orders of whatever was available. Cash was king.

I was grateful we hadn’t taken the train to the mountains as we had planned. But I worried, after overhearing some women on the street surmising the power would fight its sabbatical for as many days as we had plans.

Soon, a ring of people had gathered at the corner. In the center was a boombox and the voice of a broadcaster explaining the situation. Strangers coming together to share information the old-fashioned way.

We joined fellow travelers in line at a darkened patisserie, where a woman behind the counter was busy portioning cake. She popped two slices into waxed paper sacks, twirling each end of the bags into little dog ears for closure before handing them to us. She asked for three Euros and smiled as she made change, thanking us for our purchase as we mused she had saved our lives.

How lucky were we to have cake for dinner?

Of course, the worst never came. The lights returned, cell service was restored. And the girl reached her father by phone, which made his world a little brighter, too.