The Teenagers Constitution

It’s only a matter of time.

We know this.

Our teenagers are going to sneak out of the house. If they don’t sneak out, they will utilize some other form of deception to not be in the place we assume them to be.

As parents, we take this truth to be self-evident.

My teenager has already told me such plans are afoot.

But since she only pretends to be the hardcore tough of her peer group, she figures that letting me know select details of upcoming tomfoolery will allow her to both save face and protect herself from the ultimate consequence every kid wants to avoid:

Our disappointment.

A part of me wants to feel snug and safe in my cocoon of parental philosophy, namely that a certain level of permissiveness leads to more open communications.

Of course, I can't control her. I can explain my expectations: “of course you can go out with your friends; of course you can stay out later than usual; of course, I trust you.”

But – and there’s always a but – “I don't know if I can trust these NEW friends, but I don't want you getting in cars with boys, but I don't want you going to unfamiliar places, but I don't want you to drink or do drugs.

None of these regulations will come as a surprise to her. Just as I understand my teenager may not be persuaded by any verbal restriction to forgo any newfound power of freedom.

I know she's going to make choices that I would prefer she didn’t make.

I know the possibility exists that by asking for the freedom to rebel, she’s actually free to rebel.

It’s a forthright way to tell me just enough of what I had hoped to hear.

I can’t think that way. I have to remember that she’ll carry my face with her… and my thin-lipped expressions of unhappiness … as well as a fully-charged wireless tether that is her cell phone in her pocket that seems to have become a different kind of umbilical cord.

Maybe she'll even check in from time to time with a note or a line like: “I'm having fun. Be home at 10.”

I know she’s not me. She’s not even “the me” I was at her age.

The truth is I don't know precisely to what I'm agreeing. I don’t know what schemes are under the surface.

But I have to worry all the same.

I'm her mother.

I have to add this to the list of choices I have to make as a parent.

Not to hover … or helicopter … or snowplow … or become a doormat.

Have I set enough boundaries? Or too many?

We the parents, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish curfews, ensure consequences, provide for some educational trips, promote the general upkeep, and secure the blessing of not breathing down your neck for ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Untied State of Adolescents.

Wrestle mania

As we sat on the bleachers watching our son race through his warm-up routine we didn't know what to expect. 

Not a clue. 

The boy had been going to an intramural wrestling program at school (for 10 weeks every spring) since the second grade, but we hadn't been allowed to watch.

This day and age such a rule usually sets off alarm bells. 

All the other sports had wide open fields and plenty of parents. 

We cheered and loud as we laughed during the penguin days of soccer. We tried to be silent in solidarity for baseball. We huddled along the sidelines for flag football. And we held our breath as if we were possessed each second of basketball when our kid had possession. 

It's what we're supposed to do. And we do it dutifully, the same way we tried not to cringe and show any disappointment during the times our son made a point to catch butterflies instead of pop flies. 

"Sports doesn't have to be his thing," we'd say within earshot of our kid who didn't let something as small as flatline stats keep him from being a team player.

Some things you just don't want to watch. 

I mean, who wouldn't want to see their little darlings tossing each other around on three-inch foam mats that have been collecting the perspiration of at least two generations of grapplers?

"You'd be surprised," said the wrestling coach, who explained that the sport can be hard to watch ... especially in a room that barely fits the enthusiastic swell of its co-ed participants. 

I could relate. The last thing I want to do is watch some other pocket-sized humanoid mop the mats with my kid.

So we dropped and skedaddled, leaving the boy with him, and about 100 other kids, and a handful of varsity helpers. 

An hour and a half later he'd emerge from the doors with his sweat-soaked hair plastered to his bright red face, which was beaming.

The coach even handled the fight every parent has had to engage with their prepubescent boys after any significant exertion:

"Coach said we have to shower, so we don't get 'bursa or fungus.'"

Which, of course, elevated the man to miracle worker of sorts. Though no one in their right mind - even at the still unripened age of 11 - would ever risk wrestling mat cooties for the price of a 10-minute shower.

Still, it seemed like ages ago. 

We couldn't even imagine what watching our kid get planted face first into a mat would look like. Or how it would feel to watch.

But in our own corner of the bleachers, holding our hands over our mouths, we stared off unblinking into this new form of wild.

And that tree we never saw pinned down in the forest following a half-Nelson reversal -- or whatever the preferred nomenclature of grappling embodies -- was still out of sight, out of mind, even as a teenaged ref tossed himself on the floor, slapped his hand on the mat and declared our son the winner.

And time and time again, our wriggly boy snaked his way out from under and kept racking up points. Not that anyone was keeping score.

Every few minutes each pair shook hands and went back to their corners.

Half crazy

I'll admit I was smitten.

A new road race had been added to the local roster in January.

It had a pretty little emblem: Mountains in the distance; pine trees on either side of a river: and the illustrated likeness of Henry Hudson's sloop, Clearwater, sailing along the waterway.

Truth be told, I loved the logo as much as I loved the trail it represented.

It probably didn't help me much that the web link to the Helderberg to Hudson Half Marathon -- an inaugural road race on the Albany Rail trail April 13th -- wasn't working.

It made me crazy. Like keep-pushing-that-button-hoping-to-get-a-different-result kind of nuts.

This was obviously a sign that I should not try to learn more, or entertain any notion that might lead to signing myself up.

This perplexity may explain how it happened a month or so later - once a live registration site made its way to that excruciating link, which I had quietly obsessed over along with the possibility of actually being able to meet the 15-minute-per-mile pace cutoff - that I signed up without ever considering the downside.

You know: the simple little fact that I have not run (or run/walked) more than four miles at any one time in almost a year. And for a year before that, I hadn't been able to run at all.

You see, the injury that heals itself in its own sluggish time - an injury that had loudly and repeatedly kept me from participating in these pace parades - had been oddly quiet.

It didn't even grouse when I had to search for my credit card midway through the transaction.

Of course, it did raise its stupid eyebrows the minute I started to train in earnest. It required stretching this way and strength training that way. And there were piffling reminders that it was always waiting in the background for its chance to charge up and take over. Slow moving pain can be insidious that way.

A part of me wishes the race officials had kept the event to the confines of the nine-mile trail maybe adding three-tenths at the end for a 15K.

Like ... you know like Schenectady's Stockade-athon or Utica's Boilermaker. Two races I've depressingly watched from the finish for the past two years.

I can almost grasp that distance now. Adding six miles to the place I can barely reach at this point seems akin to trying to go to the ends of the earth.

Which I definitely won't be able to navigate with a pack of 2,000 like-minded and able-bodied folks ambling along in front of me. (I'd have said "alongside," but even I can't spin that yarn.)

But worried though I am, I am also excited about that day in April, just four weeks away. The race has sparked excitement. A running club in my home town is sending a bus with a few dozen people to cut down on congestion and condense camaraderie. And I will be on it.

Even if I have to walk half the way, I'll be there.

I'm only half crazy.

News from the Gross-ery

"You will not believe what your mom did at the store," laughed my husband as he hauled four bags of groceries -- looped over one arm -- into the kitchen from the car.

And thus begins another episode of "Mommy-Gagging: The Curious and Mostly Believable Things People See Their Mothers Do From Behind Laced Fingers Positioned Over Their Eyes, As They Hide Two Aisles Away Pretending They've Never Seen Her Before.

He dumps the bags on the counter and backs away. His job is officially over.

The kids, brimming with curiosity and sensing the possibility of a fresh box of breakfast cereal, slither out from their individual lairs and rummage through the overpacked reusable totes.

The mission they choose to accept required they put the loot in its rightful place.

They half listen as their dad recounts the colorful tale of the rare, date-night style grocery trip with his so-called "better half."

Who, as he and his progeny tell it, is the person ordinarily tasked with trudging to the supermarket daily and yet NEVER manages to buy anything to eat.

They snicker and roll their eyes as he starts in the parking lot, describing the scene: He has had to wait

while this Magoo character he married returns to the car -- twice --looking for aforementioned reusable tote bags she had in ANOTHER tote bag dangling from her shoulder the whole time.

Then there was the argument over the big cart; a supermarket choice she refuses, even at Thanksgiving, for no other reason than vanity and the erroneous belief that "we don't need much stuff." The fact that she piles the little cart with a clown car's worth of provisions every single trip, notwithstanding.

The there's the disappearing act. Anyone in my family will tell you this is an inherited trait in which the less ambitious shopper (me) stops walking or disappears altogether for the unintended purpose of looking at something they have no intention of buying.

Lobster!!!

No, wait ... I'm gonna let your mom tell it. I'm not sure how IT really happened.

So it is near the tank of blood red crustaceans that I find myself browsing when I look down, and some man is kind of half-crawling, half-reaching for my shoe.

Now, I'll admit, this is unusual, and my first thought is that he may be trying to free me from some detritus

I have trailed in from the parking lot. Instead, the man apologizes and asks about the construction of my boot. Are the uppers really leather or a polyethylene weave?

It's hard to tell from a website, the only other place he's seen this very style he's interested in purchasing for himself.

"Are they waterproof?"

Now ... I love these boots. I practically live in them. So having a chance to talk them up seems preferable to deciding which flavor Goldfish snack crackers is the current favorite.

"The only water that gets in comes from the top because I leave them unlaced, even when I snowshoe."

"Are they light?"

And this is where my husband, having noticed I was no longer behind him at the bulk granola bins, came to find me ...

"They have a little weight to them."

... balancing on one leg, and holding out my boot to a stranger near the seafood counter.

My kids' eyes go wide.

"I can't believe how lucky we are," my daughter exclaimed as she hugs a giant box of tiny snack crackers.

"We almost went with you to the store!"

Alien comforts

We'd never been on a vacation quite like this one.

Summer in winter. White sand beaches. Tropical flowers that perfume the air. Pink drinks that flowed like water for days.

No worries.

Except for maybe the deeply reddened skin of our predecessors, who were checking out as we were checking in to this oasis of opulence carefully carved from hardscape near the sea. 

We called it Resort Land, and made like all the other manufactured natives, who -- donning color-coded wrist bands -- would belly-flop up to their corresponding swim-up bars by day, and wind their way through the all-you-can-eat restaurants by night. 

It doesn't take long to get the hang of things. 

This is what paradise looks like when photographed with a wide angle lens. 

Though, I had to admit the magazine layouts did this place justice.

The pools were blue and clear, the palm trees were tall and graceful, the clouds were white and fluffy. And it seemed like we had the whole place to ourselves as the sun came up on the day.

I had acres of lush landscape, a half-mile of beachfront, and a mile-and-a-half of running route ... all to myself between sun-up and 9 a.m. when the crowds started to meander to breakfast.

Even though it's difficult to leave the comfort of my feather-soft bed, I took full advantage of the hotel's offerings. I overindulge in the decadence of an in-room espresso machine and 24-hour room service, one of the many benefits of an all-inclusive vacation package.

The kids are also got their fill of this novelty that is "bedtime cheesecake" while supplies last.

I want to love it here. How could I not?

There is beauty everywhere I look, and not just in the fan-shaped traveler palms and the impossible jewel-toned tides. It's in the sweeping curves of the sweeping hotel edifices rising up from manicured lawns and glittering ornamental pools.

The only bodies that ever wade into these waters carry leaf nets and scrub brushes. 

I marvel most at this team of caretakers who look after this place and its guests with simple tools and complex talents.

Gardeners pruning palms, edging flowerbeds and weeding with the aid of only a machete.

A plumber comes by bicycle to fix a leak. He takes out a wrench and a roll of tape from a small tool kit. A few minutes later the drip-drip-drip is silent.

These caretakers smile greetings, and call us their "family," a construct as flimsy as ours, as we pretend to own a piece of this luxury ... referring to our hotel room as "home" for six days and seven nights. 

They belong. 

They have built this place and continue to shore it up, while visitors sip sweet drinks and crisp in the sun. 

The last day finally arrives, and we wait at a desk with our bags to check out. The changeover apparent as paler versions of ourselves line up to check in.

We make conversation the computers take their sweet time to process us. 

Did we like our stay?

I found it a hard question to answer. 

How is it possible to feel so comfortably out of place?