Go. ... Be a kid ...

I made him leave the house.

It wasn't easy.

He had been happy where he was these past three days: planted in the living room, on his own imaginary island, ensconced in a chair and surrounded by all manner of creature comforts.

He'd feathered his nest with pillows, blanket, snacks ... even the cordless phone all within arm's reach.

If it were any other week at any other time in the history of the world, one might expect to find a thermometer bobbing around in his mouth, barely under his tongue, as he pitched soggy, wadded up tissues into a paper bag rolled at the top with a neat little cuff.

He might have asked me for soup, but he can make his own ramen.

Of course, he's not sick. His temperature is normal, and the skies are clear. It's vacation week, and his friends are gathered – nearly everyone he knows is already here – even though I can't see or hear them. 

The meeting space is cyber. I can only see his friends' animated doppelgangers running across our television screen. I can only hear my son shouting out warnings.

“Look behind you. Look behind you!”

I just can't bring myself to bring him anywhere. I can organize his day, but I can't make him follow that list without standing over him, tapping my foot.

“Go anywhere,” I said, assuming familiarity and reason would lead him one block to the park, or two blocks to the library, or more immediately somewhere in our narrow back yard, which opens up into the wilds of the neighboring farmland.

I'm not sure what I thought he'd do. Meet a friend? Climb a suburban jungle gym? Help an elderly lady cross a street? Borrow a book from the library? Discover a secret portal into a parallel (but inverted) universe and save all of humanity? 

Almost any reality other than the virtual kind - which involved the taking up of armchairs and the wearing of headphones to play war games on the large screen in the living room, where he'd meet other kids who were attached to their own pixilated worlds by micro-phoned headsets while their parents were working - was fine by me.

Just go outside. Stretch your legs. Move your body. Get it to make wide sweeping gestures instead of barely perceivable motions. Eye twitches don't count. Let the sun touch your skin. Let the wind rush at your face. Find-something-else-to-do-I-don't-care-what.”

I was desperate.

He didn't put up much of a protest.

I didn't tell him to make himself useful. It's not like I asked him to go shopping with me, or out for a run. I didn't ask him to pave the driveway or rake the leaves out from under the juniper. I didn't ask him to empty the dishwasher or mow the lawn. 

I asked him to be a kid … from my generation.

He put on a bike helmet, grabbed his scooter and scooted, but not without some huffing and puffing and a few heavy foot-fall stamping. He will go, but he'll be back in no time.

Blistering

"Oh good lord, Mom!" Cover those things up. No one needs to see that."

She smiles as she tosses a blanket in my direction, trying to hide the state of my post-half-marathon feet, which at that moment were propped up on a pillow and slathered in anti-bacterial unguent. The sight is appalling, granted, but even the feather-weight of the thin covering, which hasn't entirely hit her intended target, caused my poor, blistering dogs to howl.

Aiiiiiii!"

"Sorry."

I'm not angry.

I've waited two long years for just this kind of pain. 

The good kind.

The kind that lets you know you pushed something past its comfort zone, but not anywhere near its breaking point. And even taking it slow - running two minutes at a time - I can tell by the soreness - this pain will go away and in the process might also make me stronger.

If only we could transfer this kind of feeling to all the psychic pain we experience: The exhaustive, nagging agony of mistrust and futility that come from the incessant nipping of sound bites.

Bad news spirals into worse news and finally spreads with the speed of a Cloud that is so unnatural it has a trademark. Whenever it rains the interwebs overflow with toxins. 

Everything seems personal. 

Our kids feel it, too. Though I wonder if they aren't going to manage to find a balance that has seemingly eluded us?

A 2018 Pew Research Center survey of teens indicated that while most young people share a wide range of personal information online, from selfies to self-congratulation, they tend to shy away from posting their religious or political viewpoints. 

But while a vast majority say they've been bullied in real life as well as in cyberspace, the teens surveyed overwhelmingly viewed their overall online experience as positive.

In total, most viewed their face-to-face time with peers to be adequate.

Which, makes sense when an old person like myself, with graying hair and a coffee addiction, eases down the creaky stairs during any sleepover weekend to find two teens on the opposite side of a couch staring at their own phones.

To be sure, the silence is deafening at first. Not that I ever got used to the ear-piercing squeals of preadolescence.

But it becomes clear that these friends aren't ignoring each other. They are engaging in communication by wireless telephone-y instead of telepathy. In fact, it's highly likely that there are more of them in the room than I can see, by sheer virtue of some chat app. Unlike my teenage hangouts, the "mall" where our kids loiter doesn't require me to transport them.

They meet people from other schools, other counties, other countries, different cultures just as effortlessly as they watch some Youtube celebrity apply mascara to a cat blindfolded or make over a street lamp just in time for prom.

Of course, I don't understand the fascination. Maybe I'm not supposed to.

I can't really see much difference between this obsession and the most popular show about nothing during my salad days: Seinfeld. 

"There's really nothing intrinsically funny about 20 minutes of wisecracks about muffin stems," my daughter assures me, adding that she has the rest of her life to worry about politics. No minds will be changed in the meantime.

She's probably right. Though I can't help but try and engage her in all the thoughts she sensibly refuses to share online.

Sometimes she obliges, but she only lets me run with it for two minutes. Anything more will just cause blisters.

Outside interest

Her face is so familiar. I've seen her somewhere before ... more than once.

Grocery store? Maybe.

Coffee shop? Perhaps. But definitely not behind the counter.

My mind searches its archives for the possibility of a uniform she's not wearing now.

It draws a blank.

I must know her from school? Certainly. She has kids my daughter's age and older. It's there that I can place her.

But I've never seen her here, at a "watering hole," two towns' length from home.

What. Is. Her. Name?

I rake the alphabet in my mind as she starts walking toward me. I can't for the life of me remember a name or any of its parts,  either first or last. I am hoping one of the letters will stick. I gulp the air hoping to remember as our gazes connect, and the distance between us disappears.

When she reaches me ... now having taken my first sip from the dark, frothy foam atop the pint glass ... she fills in all the blanks so quickly that the blanks will remain hollow for a few heartbeats until my brain wraps around each detail.

Slap-my-own-forehead: She's one of my son's school teachers. And as luck would have it, she loves my kid and feels compelled to tell me.

Why is this so weird?

For a moment, I feel as if I'm looking at the school photograph, an official record of sixth grade, complete with this year's favorite shirt and a smile that has been cultivated for strangers.

"He's always happy," she tells me, "always enthusiastic," noting that she looks forward to his arrival during the last class of the day.

I smile, not really knowing what my face looks like for this exchange. I focus on my relief, but it doesn't keep my compulsion for honesty at bay.

"Well, that's a relief," and I paint a picture of a kid who barely speaks to me when he gets home from school; bushing in the colors of envy and worry as I try and convey the abstract quality of someone else's experience of what I brazenly consider my artwork.

I can see from her expression, she now wishes she hadn't approached me. How could she have known I couldn't accept a simple compliment for what it was?

She changes the subject, for which I am infinitely grateful. However, I will still prattle on about something I will only stop to analyze later on that evening when the not-so-instant replay will keep me awake long into the night.

I can't help myself, I will fill any and all silences with the surfeit of somewhat-embarrassing lore. It's a discomfort of the nervous sort.

It's something my son, evidently, hasn't inherited.

I wish I were more like him.

So I thanked her. It's an unexpected joy to be told something nice. I am grateful to know someone thinks enough of my boy to relay a message so charming and sincere. And that he can be just as funny and sweet, as I hoped he would be.

Impulse

Of all people, Joe Biden should understand that the recent criticism of his overly friendly ways with female colleagues, isn't entirely about him.

It's about the women themselves and the women watching. It's about an evolving understanding of consent and the conversation that drives that evolution.

If Biden had nuzzled the hair of Andrew Cuomo in front of his staff as the cameras were rolling, the story we're hearing, I believe, would be much different.

As people come out in force to cast doubt on the reasons why some are coming forward with these concerns -- that unwanted touching, even when innocently intended -- can be dispiriting and demoralizing to women, I find my own anger about to boil over.

The stance suggesting this is yet another subject that should remain taboo as we try to restore sanity in our government, makes me marvel at how little we seem to have learned from the events of the past few years.

From Hollywood to Washington, the message about women has been crystal clear: The old ways are over. 

Not everyone likes being touched, or crowded, or kissed, or having their personal space invaded unnecessarily or without permission. Not even in a genuinely paternal or grandfatherly way. Best not to assume.

Historically, women haven't had much choice in the matter. They've been treated like children who bristle as Great Aunt Gwynneth demands a hug and a kiss.

Women have tight-lipped-smiled their way through all manner of nonchalant physical liberty-taking, too. People rub our pregnant bellies, they massage our stiffened shoulders, they even pick us up and swing us around as if we were toys. 

We've also had to be silent when the touch is sinister. Those not afraid to make waves or overstep lines drawn in the sand, rarely find their lives improved. Just ask Anita Hill or Christine Blasey Ford.

The criticism against such criticism, however, sends an achingly clear message: Women are the lesser except in their reactions, which are out of proportion.

Yet, all presidential candidates - regardless of gender -- will have to deal with evolving issues of equality and fairness, especially in the age of Me Too. The one who is ultimately chosen to speak for all of us should have the best answer.

"I do not recall the incident," to quote my middle schooler: Well, that ain't it, chief.

I appreciate that Biden has acknowledged he is willing to listen and change his ways.

I hope he understands that a personal touch in politics means that others' personal space is just as custom fit.

He doesn't know the stories of the women who are talking, but it's not unlikely that their experiences as women will include some frightening moments beyond their control.

How many will have been victims of sexual harassment or assault? How many will have been reassigned or fired altogether while their alleged abusers continued on in their positions?

Of course the timing, you wonder. Why now?

Because it matters. The Big Tent demands we listen and learn. 

Electability, after all, doesn't have written-in-stone rules. Think about the "YEAH!" on a loop that sunk Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's hopes for the White House. And not even Donald Trump himself could have predicted the presidency would ever be his.

Clinton was eminently electable. Indeed, she won the popular vote. And yet we somehow ended up with a game show host leading the Free World instead.

Integrity is something that most if not all of the 2020 Democratic hopefuls possess. I would count Joe Biden among them should he choose to run. But we need to understand the past that will haunt him may have nothing at all to do with his overly-friendly ways.

If he can truly see where his hands have done harm, he may be able to keep his fingers on the pulse.