Feeling it

"How are you feeling?"

"I'm feeling .... fine?"

But I wasn't really sure. 

I was lifting things. Tensing other things. Releasing them all at once. 

I felt like it was going okay.

My daughter was watching. Like a hawk. Pushing me past my comfort level. Out of the nest.

"No-no-no. Not like that," she said with the conviction of a cane-tapping dance instructor ... like Debbie Allen ... in the cinematic adaptation of the glamorous life of students at a famed NYC performing arts high school ... circa 1978.

If this were a dance class, I'd have already failed. I never did figure out whether I was supposed to backpack or floss.

But this is different. This looks familiar. Possible. Do-able, even. 

My new fitness guru has recently turned seventeen; jams dirty socks in between the couch cushions as she's watching TV; leaves half-empty cans of seltzer everywhere, yet can't find the remote control anywhere.

She is also a dedicated participant in all things virtual ... including physical education.

And of course, this girl of mine is my personal hero ... saving me from myself and the infinite indignities I would inflict by surreptitiously joining her virtual gym class from the next room, not nearly as off-camera as I think I am.

"Mom! People could see you!"

Instead, she promises to give me private lessons at a time when no other soul in the world could possibly be watching.

In my case, classes start at 10 p.m., after she's done with homework and most of her friends have shuttered their windows on Snapchat.

I don't mind the late hour. The darker the house is when I crouch on the floor the better. The dust bunnies under the couch won't be as much of a distraction as they would be if I could see them.

Honestly, though, I wasn't prepared for the caliber of teaching my daughter would extend in these private lessons, nor was I ready for how tough she'd be. 

As she guided me through a series of rolling planks, quickly moving from one side and back to the other, she thought she could trust me to carry on for "six minutes" while she ambled away to attend to some important conference call, to which students are apparently not privy.

"After six minutes, start on lunges."

She can't be serious. Six minutes of planking?

I do six repetitions. Two per plank, and call it: per plunked!

She frowns a little and shrugs her shoulders in acceptance.

Squats then?

She stands next to me and demonstrates: feet planted; resistance band, stretches; sit back into your squat; release.

I do exactly as she's instructed.

Or at least I think I have perfectly mirrored her instructions.

"You aren't getting low enough.

You stand like this: feet apart, resistance band above your knees, now deep bend, push your bottom out, sit down and back.

"Now, let's take it from the top. One hundred crunches!"

She can't be serious? 

I'm not sure I'll be feeling fine, tomorrow.

A parade of lights

A string of red and green colored bulbs - the plastic kind illuminated by a watch-sized battery encased in a circuit-box clasp - dangled from my neck, blinking on and off, as I jogged toward the center of town.

I sounded like a toddler running out of their bedroom toward an adult party with a Christmas toy on the fritz.

My nighttime running intention to be highly visible to traffic always gets inflated by an innate inclination towards becoming a potentially hazardous spectacle.

Maybe it was the light-up earrings, attached to the elastic straps of a face mask and tucked under the earflaps of a faux fur hat that put me on this path toward ridiculousness. But a friend bringing a stack of pajamas leftover from a family photo session last Christmas probably sent me over that edge.

"Here. Put this on," she asked politely, shoving a bright red trap-bottomed onesie in my direction. I reached out to take it, fumbling a flashlight and setting off my watch. "If we're all going out, we are going all out."

And so I did what any dutiful friend would do: I added another layer of insanity to my appearance.

Truth be told, I'd been thinking about this moment all week. Not about the outfit ... or the route, which was a nighttime tour of holiday decorations that had been mapped and cataloged by our local neighborhood association. The circuitous route would take us away from elegant loops, adding in zig-zags and even some back-tracking.

No. I was worried mostly about the wisdom of meeting as a group during a pandemic, despite being outdoors, naturally distanced by pace, and masked the entire five miles.

"Wait ... I don't remember ANYONE saying anything about five miles."

No one had "signed on" since it wasn't official. It was more like a wink and a nod with a time and a place.

The idea that "other people were doing it," as evidenced by festive photographs I'd seen running clubs post on facebonk, ran in a similarly inelegant loop in my thoughts, narrated sarcastically by my mother's voice, which was clearly mentioning something about following friends and the proximity cliffs.

No matter how we make this endeavor fit the prevailing guidance - staying outside, breaking into small groups, remaining masked and distanced the whole time - will always feel tight under the weight of the word essential.

I've done little in the last nine months that feels as essential as running alone.

No one needs to run at night with their friend who may or may not be wearing elf ears.

And yet there we were an irregular parade of moving lights headed in various directions on the same path.

A few bobbing noggins track light beams straight ahead. It relaxes me to realize I'd have to sprint to catch them. Another few keep a similar pace a half a block back. 

Fifty minutes pass as quickly as the five miles of light strings, inflatable winter scenes, and sparkling paper luminaries. We all leave without hugging or even high fives and head back to the comfort of our own homes.

The elation I feel as I walk home feels like more than enough to get through the rest of this dark winter.

Winter wonders

 I trace the delicate glitter trails that line the shiny baubles as I hang them from the porch railings. The sensation is oddly pleasing, as the warm, sandpaper scruff of a cat's lick. I worry, though, I may absentmindedly rub away too much of the holiday sparkle.

The wind threatens to upend my designs, crashing the orbs into each other and maybe into oblivion, a place we all seem to have forgotten to fear until lately.

Now that we are hovering on the edge of more isolation as this new wave of pandemic settles in. 

It's like a malevolent stalker made even more powerful by our tendencies to put as much

of the onus on the victim as we can pile. 

You can feel its putrid breath on the back of your neck, and the pointy fingers of blame jabbing in all directions.

The squirrels in our minds frantically scramble to hide precious nuts so's we can find them and feast one dark winter night in our not-to-distant future.

None of us want to recreate the patterns we adhered to last spring when we hunkered down behind locked doors, many of us with lofty goals of learning a second language or baking the perfect loaf of sourdough. 

A few weeks later and we

were all measuring our success by whose supply closets still bulged with the most toilet paper or which of us had drained our own personal swamps of booze. 

My online language teaching app has sent me a letter outlining how much of an actual disappointment I turned out to be as a virtual pupil.

But I have excelled in some efforts. 

In addition to the nightly cocktail, I have picked up another addiction: a daily run known as "streaking" to its devotees and "an-injury-waiting-to-happen" to just about everyone else. 

My kids have picked up cooking for themselves and answering the phone when it rings, two seemingly dissimilar pastimes that have roughly the same level of chaotic aftermath: the former in the shape of literal mess from dishes and spills left to harden; and the latter in the form of potentially important messages left unrecorded and unremembered.

Until several nights after it may have been relevant: 

 "Oh, mom. Some doctor's office called like three days ago. Said something about confirming an appointment for someone. I don't remember."

I don't have the stamina to hang on to anger, which may be the direct result of the five-mile run completed on day 196. 

We did manage to plant the light cannon in the front yard so it can shoot dancing pinpoint laser lights onto the house, and we can pretend we exerted some measure of holiday effort. We forgot to turn it on that first night, having lost both the instructions for programming and daylight for inspecting the switches.

A few days later, after fixed the short circuit, our light cannon's green and red lights flickered like fireflies on the ceiling, delightfully dancing a technological tribute to a different kind of holiday sparkle visiting us now from our memories of the summer sky. 

The warm up

I have reached the age when all the things that could misalign seem to do so midway through slumber.

Thankfully, I have also reached the stage of development when my body tends to wake me up before that fateful twist or turn in my sleep, presenting me with the insomniac assisted ability to thwart fate.

I'm not sure how it is that I can also drink fully caffeinated beverages before bed and still manage to fall asleep at will.

But that is for another time, perhaps.

Maybe you don't need to know this either, but it is 1:30 a.m. where I am now, in bed staring up at a ceiling, contemplating a shift in position that could have a far-reaching impact on the remainder of the day.

Two and a quarter minutes ago I was fully asleep. And two minutes from now I might be heading back to dreamland or I might be heading into a world of pain. It all depends on a rotation I literally used to be able to do in my sleep.

But no longer.

Before reaching for the pocket research library ... the thing that I typo-away on for most of my waking existence ... I will first make some tentative stretches of the arms and legs, including a more deliberate run-through of the alphabet with both feet.

I carve lowercase and uppercase letters into the air, just to be safe.

I press down on what I imagine is my seventh cervical vertebrae, though it could be the last one of the thoracic, I've only surveyed Anatomy at the M. Siobhan School of Medicine at Google. I haven't committed to immersive study. 

It turns out I only dreamed it was stiff. 

I continue on with the small movements, the ones that I imagine are oiling this old machine.

My left ankle makes a satisfying snap as I exhale. My right ankle never makes any sound at all, which is probably best but ultimately a letdown.

I turn my head and experience a painless line of crackle, like school children lining up for dismissal. It seemed so exciting once. 

I am ready to attempt the toss part of my turn, which starts with an assistive propping of weight by my right elbow.

If I am successful, my hips and knees will come along without complaint.

There aren't miscalculations so much as always ready to “tear” part of “wear and tear.”

I hold my breath and, keeping caution out of the wind, I tumble slowly into this practiced roll.

I land in my new position without any more trauma than just the realization there are five more hours of sleep and counting. 

If I am lucky, I will get back to it momentarily without the added chore of visualizing and accounting for a long line of woolly farm animals leaping over fences.

Occasional bedtime coffee, I'd like you to meet my daily run of arbitrary distance …. let's see who wins this race.

On your marks.

Labor cost management

 The hollowed-out pumpkins on our side porch turned from plump grinning orbs to melted, mold speckled blobs that even the squirrels stopped gnawing.

For a month we passed them, my husband and I, each of us considering who would finally put their squashed carcasses to rest on the compost pile and when.

I, of course, was holding out hope for him.

Rationalizing that since I'd already put away all the other decorations, the least he could do was shovel the last of the Halloween gore off the steps.

He has all the shovels ... somewhere. 

This isn't the first year the great pumpkin stand-off has happened. The neighbors make a joke of it when I finally break down and use my triple bag dog-poo collection technique on the pumpkin matter one evening just before dark.

I laugh, despite myself. 

My angst has nothing to do with keeping up with the Joneses. 

Their porch has long ago been swept of frightful things. It's just the solitary work of such disappearances that makes me dig into The Contract.

Where is it written that his once-in-a-while tasks earn more credit?

The special things ... the snaking of a drain, the patching of walls, the caretaking of a pool counts more than the endless piles of laundry, and dishes, and dust bunnies.

Of course, his artfully made fence and his painstaking patio will earn him praise and adulation. It puffs him up.

While I deflate a little more each time someone registers a complaint with the missing sweatshirts department: "Did you check the laundry? Pretty sure it's in the dryer as we speak."

Not a lot of glory in folding socks, but here we are. Calculating value based on the complexities of unpaid labor. Accepting only gen-u-ine gratitude as currency. 

The cycle continues through winter and the holidays pile on.

The tree will be here soon. 

We will take a night to bedazzle it with selections from the glitter-encrusted collection of the family history museum, which lives mostly uncategorized in a series of boxes stashed in an attic over the garage. 

In the course of an hour, the thing will seem like an old family member come to visit. Even its shape will be familiar: compact and trim, but not too tall. 

For that golden hour, the family will be together without much distraction. We won't bicker about which movie will play on in the background (tradition calls for Elf).

Our own workshop will be abuzz with light strand lassoing, ornament installation, and model train engineering. The only snipping we experience will produce paper snowflakes. 

We won't even argue our petty grievances until it's time to place the star at the top of the tree.

Three rounds of Rock, Paper, Scissors, and it's decided. 

By the time the children dare nestled all snug in their beds, the room will be festooned.

And if there is any question of who will put away all this holiday joy ... I'm seriously thinking of just leaving it up until next year. 

Family movie night

My son just got braces. The top ones right now, but more will follow. They really do look like tiny train tracks wrapping around teeth.

I don't tell him, I think so.

Something about them has made me see him entirely differently. He's not a baby anymore. 

I don't mention that either, though I think it every time he asks if he can eat something. Not that he cares much about my approval or whether his sister called "dibs," he's concerned about any contraindications with his new appliances.

When maturity hits fast, it hits hard. 

He was just in the living room. Not quite sitting on the edge of the couch. Perching more like. Ready to fly.

He looks so much like a distant cousin of that little string-bean boy who used to swoop around this very room, fanning the air with the pleather-y wings of a homemade bat costume while his too-large, star-badged sneakers slapped the floor with an odd little echo.

But this boy child has filled out and finally grown into his shoes. The echo now sounds like an earthquake.

The television was on, and things on its screen were exploding in slow motion. A woman in a short skirt and form-fitting armor jetted through the sky, straight upwards.

There was no trace of an invisible plane.

He jumped from the couch toward the ceiling, swinging a foam sword from an entirely separate franchise. His unbridled enthusiasm betrayed his deepening voice-over Wonder Woman and her value in the pantheon of Super-Heroes.

To watch him watch her, you'd get the idea they were somehow in this together.

He landed with a thud on the pale green rug in the center of our triumvirate of couches just as the Diana's broad blade, glinting emerald, bloodlessly vanquished their enemy.

The screen turned dark and momentarily silent.

He crowed his approval with a din of whoops and hollers that could raise the ceiling and a father's left eyebrow.

The one that he uses for joking.

Good had prevailed, and only the long shadow of Hollywood would leave us in this interminable pause, unable to believe what we've just witnessed.

Roll. Credits.

I drag my heels back from the place on the sofa where they've entwined with a throw blanket, one of many still being used as capes, or cloaks, or Skold Saueskinns, or what-have-you.

It makes a sound like the scratch of a record player's needle being pulled back on vinyl by an imaginary DJ, only softer. I do it again to make sure. 

My son takes the blanket I've tossed aside and drapes it over his head. In the folding, he's made a hooded, plushy cape that dusts the floor as he goes about baking freezer-section apple turnovers.

He makes a pastry for himself and one for his sister, delivering hers upstairs when it's ready. 

He returns and eats his light and flaky triangle of apple pie filling with a fork.

And when he brushes his teeth afterward, it will be the fifth and final time of the day.

His sister counted. She couldn't believe it either.

Q non-anon

We have been quarantined.

Officially.

Well, one of us has, anyway.

The one who is currently stationed in his room, playing video games and texting his mother every so often to request snacks be placed outside of his doorway. The other three-quarters of the inhabitants here are just sitting around in various television-appointed rooms, wearing masks and fighting each other on the sets' warring volumes as we consume re-runs of shows no 13-year-old would ever want to watch.

Because that would be mean if somehow the nasal, deadpan voice of Bob Belcher wafted up through the floors, and that would be cruel. The possibility exists (though remote) that the maniacal laughter of any one of the cartoon Belchers could pierce some momentary silence in his never-ending game of Minecraft and cause a revolt.

 

So we'll watch "Murder She Wrote" or some old movies from the 70s ... but not the ones where Rebel forces take on the Empire.

You know, just in case.

Because while he is sequestered in his little corner of the house, we three are allowed out into the world, where we are still limiting our interactions with other humans, keeping our distance and trying not to breathe in or out even with three layers of fabric stretched ear-to-ear.

It's a complicated equation, but it was spelled out quite calmly and compassionately by a lovely woman from the local Department of Health. 

It all boils down to which of us are contacts of a positive, and which of us are contacts of the contact of the positive, not to mention which entities of civil society have determined what their policies will be moving forward into the unknown.

There's even a whole dance about who should get tested and when. You know, since test kits are still scarce. 

Asymptomatic? Maybe you'll find out you have the virus. Maybe you won't find out you have the virus. Maybe you won't have the virus?

The order of operations isn't as important as the fact that it's out there continually breeding.

Every day in the past seven months is a new adventure in not knowing but taking as few chances as possible. 

Either way, you'll need to follow the simple instructions of mask-wearing, limiting time indoors with people outside your so-called bubble, and keeping even small gatherings properly masked, socially distanced, and entirely outdoors.

None of which is 100 percent effective, evidently.

After all, running around the neighborhood, wearing two masks each with your two best buds, staying outside as you collect candy from the end of driveways seemed to be at the lowest end of the risk scale.

Especially for a kid who has barely left the house since April. 

Did we really need to let the kid leave the chair in front of the video game console - a piece of furniture he's virtually lived in for seven months - to go and do what, in any other time in history (barring 1918, of course) would be a harmless kid-thing to do?

But here we are checking temperatures obsessively, waiting for a list of vague symptoms to appear, and hoping we get to Sunday without any of them visiting. 

Who knew we could liven things up by taking a trip to a drive-in testing site to get an answer one way or another? Even with the uncomfortable swab, the kid decided it was worth it if only to leave his room for the better part of 20 minutes.

Another Whopper while we wait

This Halloween came and went with a grand total of seven properly masked and socially distant trick-or-treaters. 

They dropped by one at a time throughout the night and waited at the bottom of our front porch steps as I sent fist-fulls of miniature candy bars down a 12-foot long chute.

When you live in a small town … in a house with a long driveway … the lack of costumed revelers doesn't seem especially novel for circumstances. But rigging up new technology for the conveyance of complementary confections was a welcome distraction.

Of course, as usual, I'd bought too much candy.

I'd mindlessly drop a package into the shopping cart here and there for weeks beforehand. Stashing them all over the house.

And for weeks, I had been dipping into the bags I'd hidden from the kids as I waited for my morning coffee to brew or as I tidied the kitchen or flitted through the house doing other chores. I'd even carefully hidden the wrappers at the bottom of the trashcan where no one would ever paw through and be the wiser.

Not that the children would care. They prefer the sugar-coated rubber products that make your mouth turn inside itself from the sourness. 

I'd bought the large hybrid bags with nuts and nougat and new formulations of old favorites expressly because they were nobody's favorites, and hidden them away to make doubly sure the candy wouldn't magically disappear during the new hybrid school days. 

And now ... as Election Day came and went, and with it the realization that an immediate tidal wave of repudiation would not wash this president out to sea. But as vote counts started to show a fuller picture as the week wore on, I understood the real horror of my situation.

No one was eating ALL THIS CANDY except for me.

Every time I walked past the bowl, I'd swipe a Snickers or a 100 Grand or four. I'd leave the Whoppers and the Butterfingers for dead. Of course, I'd wait until no one was watching, then I'd pop an entire unwrapped miniature bar into my mouth, dispensing entirely with the decorum of dispatching a confection with multiple and delicate bites.

As I watched the news breathlessly announce nothing with verifiable facts, I mindlessly crammed one sweet after another into my anxious mouth.

Had it not been the nuts cemented together by nougat, I might not have bothered to chew. And there is very little hyperbole in the idea that by the announcement of a winner, I will have eaten the same approximate weight in candy as the largest of our two cats.

It occurs to me as the week wears on, and I sift through what remains of Halloween's spoils, finding my favorites have grown scarce, that we're all just waiting to see if the winner of the election will actually win the election.

And yet nothing I do from now the bowl is empty will stop me from devouring each and every individually-wrapped candy, no matter how repellant.

"I mean … really … who would buy all these WHOPPERS if they weren't mixed in with the Almond Joys?"

A moment to savor

"So … do we have to vote for the local races at our usual polling place on November 3?"

My husband is trying to wrap his head around the nuances of early voting as I follow Google Maps to the address of the only early voting location in the county. 

"No. It's just the same as voting at the church. They will give us our local ballot."

When we arrive, the line snaked around the corner and down the block.

For a moment, as we slowed to search for a parking space, I considered turning around and going home.

"There's still time," the lethargic voice in my head whispered. "We could come back tomorrow … or the next day … or the day after that."

But the Panic voice had been cutting into my thoughts all day: "What if we miss Election Day? What if we get locked down and lose our opportunity to vote?"

"They'd never do that," contended my husband. "They'd wait until the elections were over to impose another shelter in place order."

My Panic voice wasn't talking about a blanketed end to voting; it was personal.

"I mean, what if WE have to quarantine? Our school closed this week because of one case, and authorities are still tracing those contacts. Will election officials give Absentee Ballots to the people county health places into isolation now that it's past the deadline?"

Pragmatic voice might have chimed in to say that Emergency Ballots exist for just such occasions, but Panic voice couldn't stop circling the brain.

Panic voice doesn't have an ounce of Pragmatic voice's patience. Not that one could blame her, especially now that it seems Pragmatic Voice has been wrong about so much lately.

Instead, I slid into the nearest empty spot and parked. My Voice of Reason was nothing but reassuring as I stepped away from the car and started walking. "If you go home now, you'll just have a line of dirty dishes cluttering the counter."

The night was clear and temperate. A slight breeze met us as we arrived at the end of the queue; the wait was about two persons wide and more than a hundred deep as we stood, wearing masks, at twice our arms-length apart from the next carload of voters.

I tried to estimate time by dividing the distance we moved across sidewalk slabs by the number of people head of us.

We were quieter than usual. Both of us are trying to avoid speaking about the news and its hourly astonishments just in case a poll watcher might overhear and mistake the conversation as campaigning.

Instead, we played Name That Building (wrong answers only) and What's For Dinner (alternatively known as What Restaurants Are Open On Wednesdays)? We marveled at the city's lighting theatrics against the night sky. 

When we realized the lady with a badge was waving us through the glass doors and into the final stretch, it was tempting to turn to the people behind us and tell them to go on ahead.

As if they had a handful of items while we were in the process of buying everything in the store.

At this moment, it didn't seem like a chore as much as a moment to savor. 

They ask my name and find me on the tablet. I sign my name with all the precision an electric pen will allow. A ticket appears, and then a ballot slides out of a printer. I darken four circles with a fine-tipped felt pen, and, when I am ready, a man points me toward the scanner. I feed my ballot to the machine and wait until the screen blinks. SUCCESS!

I am back outside before I know what's happened.

But it's just me and the lady who had been behind me in line. 

Our husbands are still inside.

We laugh at the coincidence.

"Something tells me they are reading the directions on this one."

The perfect cookie would bake itself

The message arrived silently and went unnoticed for more than an hour as I set about my usual morning routine blissfully unaware. 

In one fell swoop, my husband wordlessly sent a family challenge in the form of a forwarded recipe from the New York Times: "A Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie."

The picture alone set off a flurry of replies.

The boy weighed in first, taking himself out of the running: "chocolate chip cookies are gross, wake me when you bake brownies."

The girl wasn't impressed by the picture-perfect confection proffered by her pop.

"I prefer the Toll House," she typed back, referencing Nestle's premixed batter packaged in a yellow casing and found in the dairy case next to the pre-shredded cheeses. "Perhaps we can do taste test bake-off."

"If you bake them, I will eat them," came my husband's self-sacrificing reply.

"Oh sure," I type, "That sounds fair."

"I'll just cream two kinds of sugars with softened butter, add the egg (which I have weighed to make sure it is truly "Large" and not "Extra Large") and the dry ingredients (which I've sifted twice and blended in small increments until it has entirely incorporated).

"And you'll slice a loaf of chilled cookie dough, baking a tray of disks for exactly 8 minutes. And I will have to go to the store and procure all the ingredients, including yours. I predict you will even have the temerity to steal space in the oven I have preheated."

She scoffs an interruption as I open my mouth in protest. "You won't need the oven any time soon. Your recipe requires the dough sit and chill for 12 hours before baking. You are essentially making "breakfast" cookies.

I hate to admit that she's right. How can they call these perfect? Easy would be ideal but settle for foolproof. Heck, I'd even say perfect would mean finding superfine sugar without having to visit four stores. 

(I didn't find any, in case you were wondering … already we were starting with an imperfection).

As she lounged on the couch, hanging upside down on the cushions and flicking through movie options on Netflix, my arm already felt fatigued from the manual folding part of the recipe. And, with each further sprinkling of flour, my inward panic grows over whether this is the dash that will break the dough into crumbled bits.

I wondered if I'd made a mistake to eyeball the salt?

Who am I kidding?

If I were a character in an 80s movie, I'd have tipped an ash from a cigarette into the batter along with the unmeasured cascade of chocolate chunks and given it all one last half-hearted stir.

Now that instant gratification had been erased from the recipe, I had lost an equally weighted portion of enthusiasm.

I might not even sequester the mixture in the fridge for the duration. Two hours should suffice in our newly fritzing fridge.

When it's almost time (fifteen minutes is the new forty-eight hours), I pop the tray into the oven and watch the batter balls deflate into an almost perfect circle. It's center slightly domed, and its edge lightly browned.

The hunks of chocolate melting into a more artful mosaic as if hand pieced.

They slid off the cookie sheet and onto a cooling rack with ease. 

They were the most beautiful looking cookies I'd ever made.

How did this happen?

The girl's cookies, just as perfect in shape and symmetry, had been done ages ago and were already arranged on a plate when the man who started the grudge match followed his nose to the kitchen.

He didn't notice that vanilla was left out of the recipe by design. Or that the sugars had been substituted by necessity. 

He pretended he couldn't tell the difference by looking at them. ...

But when he said the "perfect cookie" had too much salt, he was just rubbing it in.

No Justice

 This week Amy Coney Barrett almost silently walked us through the complicated and tedious work of her jurisprudence as she seeks a position on the highest court of the land. While she explained how she applies a history scholar's forensic understanding of the Constitution to justify the alignment of contemporary laws, not only with the framers' intentions in mind but also the understanding of the 18th-century populace; I had an epiphany:

Originalism is racist hogwash.

A close read of words to divine 18th-century reasoning for the defense or discrediting of any particular law seems just about as helpful to modern life and communication as speaking in tongues.

Nothing more.

Ultra-educated people examining words from the public record with such surgical precision, and yet not seeming to notice the absence of opinions from those who were disfranchised from the start of this century's long experiment: The native people who were here first. People who had been enslaved and later called 3/5ths human. Women. 

History, as we have been told so often, is written by the winners. 

But who wins? What do they get?

Let's face facts: a conservative majority court is a win for some American enterprise and a loss for a more perfect union.

When they succeed in gutting protections for the vulnerable and take away a woman's right to body autonomy, when they let the polluters dump more waste into our skies and our rivers, and when they install one corrupt leader after another, what will be left of democracy?

And if anything solidified my new understanding, it was the exchange of "sarcasm" between Lindsey Graham and Barrett when he asked if she had any knowledge of any desire to go back to the "good old days of segregation."

Barrett, who is raising two Black children, said "no," with neither hesitation nor derision at such an ugly glibness.

There will always be winners and losers. 

Barrett, the law professor, explained how discrimination, as a concept, is a necessary endeavor of law.

She wants us to take for granted that she is unbiased despite all her writing and advocacy to the contrary. She wants us to be reassured that she always takes the loser's thoughts into account as she renders her decision, just like she would anyone of her children when she's taken away their heart's desire for the greater good.

It's a shame that a woman's right to choose her path in her own life is one of the shiny objects Barrett desires to snatch away in her goal of parenting of a nation.

Not that she sees it that way.

I'd like to think Amy Barrett and the people who believe in her brand of conservative domination will not prevail. I'd like to think that a body that believes itself to be just will understand that the right to self-determination for all people is no less worthy of defending and upholding without discrimination.

But I cannot pretend under our current and unprecedented circumstances with open corruption, ineptitude, and malevolence in this administration, that this president's pick for a lifetime appointment to the bench will redeem an embattled court or preserve our sullied democracy.

Just the opposite.

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Dashes circle around the computer screen as if any second now something is about to take place. That second lasts for one minute and then another. I'm beginning to wonder if progress will find me. 

Nothing yet and the meeting time is nearing. "No one has responded to your request to join the call."

Unlike a real-life room in a mostly abandoned middle school at 5:30 in the evening, I can't just sit here quietly and wait. 

Except that I most certainly can. Just sit here. Making the shapes of the alphabet with each ankle, scrolling through the news on my cell phone.

I have no place else to be.

I don't even have to worry about the dog knocking over something loud but, by the sound that carries up through the floorboards, unbreakable as she takes off after the cat.

Their primordial battle lines drawn between their respective dinner bowls.

Someone on the creation end of this middle school open house has to let me inside this virtual room in the ether eventually. 

"Eventually" being only a moment in terms of going out of ones way. It just seems excessive now that I don't have anywhere to be. 

There isn't enough time to shower or change. I would fix a drink and wait here in the dark of room - the only place I can go where the sound of down-time won't be an intrusion.

Luckily the lighting here is lackluster.

No one will see that I haven't combed my hair, or done my makeup, or changed into something presentable.

Frankly, I'm not sure how this will work. The instructions would be simple if I were looking for an available chair in the gymnasium. How do I follow a schedule in virtual school? 

Follow the link to the chat rooms? 

Of course, I haven't made the bed. Or cleared the nightstand of its buildup of debris. The cat will undoubtedly drink from my glass, half-filled with two-day-old water.

Who will notice if I just turn off the camera? They already have everyone on mute.

I am barely present anyway. We have all lowered our expectations no matter how we spin the story.

My kids show up in person two days a week, and then as blips, here and there on a computer screen for the next three days. Sometimes the youngest is done with all assignments before I leave the house in the morning for work.

I try on the most disappointed expression I can muster and resolve to call him up a thousand times that day.

The first call will go something like this:

"Hey."

"Hey."

"What's going on?"

"Nothing much."

*Electronic battle sounds crashing in the background.*

"Are you playing video games?"

"Kinda. I'm also watching 'Hamilton'"

"Are you sure you have all your school work done?"

"I'm sure, I double checked."

"Ok ... well ... Go outside before it's winter again. Maybe mow the lawn?"

"Ok. Sure. When I'm done with this game ... or after Phillip dies, whichever comes first."

The second call will ring three times before he answers:

"Hey ... how's it going? ...."

"Just kidding. I'm not here. I'm mowing the lawn for my mom. Leave a message but I probably won't call you back. I'm going to be busy until next Tuesday in Forever."

A little night music

The curtain lifted. The scent of earth and lavender wafted past me. I hadn't noticed before, but someone had left the window sash up. Now that I was comfortably in bed, the sounds of cars seem amplified as they pass on the road, and their whooshing rides the cross-draft through my bedroom toward the peepers in the backyard.

For a moment, I consider getting up to slide the window to its most silent position, buttoning up the house to keep the evening chill off my neck.

I'm still considering this when the wind howls, rattling the screens in the window tracks and dragging in a fresh scent. It's not unappealing, but it's something I can't quite identify. The breeze also carries to me the laughter of coyotes somewhere in the distance.

I have lost all desire to shutter this symphony.

Tired's warmth creeps under the covers with me, allowing the night sounds a channel into my mind where consciousness can dissolve into watery dreams. This band – Canis Latrans -- plays raucously into the night. I can't tell how many of their voices are singing in harmony, but the song rolls and tumbles with the energy of a litter of youthful Canis Lupus Familiaris.

The dark of my room illuminated all of humankind's progressive imperfections; I imagine a little pack of pups, playing some growing-up games with each other until a warble gives way to a scream. 

This scream startles me out of any desire to sleep. 

At first, I think it is a woman's shriek, and my heart starts to pound, moving up my chest and into my throat. But the utterances have a rhythmic repetition that reassures me they are not human. Most likely, they are the call of the peacocks just over the hill from here.

Up close, peacocks have the guttural sound of a truck horn. They sound alarmed from a distance, almost as if they are repeating the word "help," as it falls on deaf ears.

As I wonder if the coyotes are menacing the magnificent birds, they all fall quiet as if my mere imagination had sent them to their separate corners.

.

In this new silence, the hum of crickets – or katydids, or some other singing member of the family Arthropod that I can not identify by the pitch of its chirp – starts to tune-up.

The insects' tonal regularity – like tinnitus – soothes me as much as the steadiness of a white noise machine comforts my husband. Both drown uncomfortable thoughts quite readily. 

I imagine myself out walking. A crunch of autumn leaves rustling underfoot.

With each step, the chorus of grasshoppers goes silent. They draw their leg bows away from their body cellos and wait for me to pass. This silence created by my appearance in their hall pleases me despite its root in fear and self-preservation. I am human and detached from my long shadow, imagining I have become a virtuosic conductor of nature's music.

On being Ruthless

Aren't you tired? Don't you want to rest? Wouldn't it be wonderful to go a day without worry?

Doesn't it feel as though we've been running as fast as we can, spinning endless miles on a tiny hamster wheel? Why are we surprised we've gone backward?

Did you ever imagine that the death of a single person - say ... a petite jurist with tatted collars and a bead laser-focused on equal protection under the law - could endanger the health and well-being of millions of Americans?

Do you think I'm being hyperbolic? 

Do you remember norms and decency? Have you become numb to the constant wrangling, the grinding down of wills from the sheer exhaustion of trying to convince those who will not be convinced? 

Have you ever contemplated the idea that legislation the Grand Old Party couldn't manage to erase at the ballot box they could potentially rub out with an untold number of cynical and predictable 6-3 decisions?

Are you ready to let go of ideals and replace them with ideologues? 

What will become of ...

Your healthcare?

My healthcare?

Our children's healthcare?

Our children's education?

Equal rights?

Human rights?

Voting rights?

Our ability to assemble in peace and protest?

How much longer will we be able to keep a brave face? How much more pressure will it take to break us irreparably?

How did it go so wrong?

Have we been caught in this tit for tat loop going back generations?

When did the word "Democratic" become unspeakable in certain circles? 

How do you catch your breath when the so-called leader of the Free World said he wouldn't believe election results unless he wins? How do you hold your dinner down with his faithless trolls stir the pot?

Are face masks the armor of an ailing nation or the emblem of a failing state?

Will it matter?

How will we remove him if he can and will toss our ballots aside?

How do we live with ourselves?

How do we live with our neighbors?

How do we go on without them?

When did you realize you didn't want to know any of the answers?

How do we revive normal and still move beyond the status quo? Is that even possible?

Like why did RBG only have one black clerk in her 27-year tenure on the Supreme Court? 

Did you know Breonna Taylor would have been 27?   

Doesn't it seem like glaciers are moving at a swifter pace than American jurisprudence?

Does that sound like an indictment of a trailblazing scholar and icon? What's the saying about indictments and sandwiches?

Why do we think we shouldn't be ruthless at times like these? Why do we think nine is a magic number?

Why should we calm down and clam up?

Do you really need an exit plan?

Isn't this country, this democracy, this experiment in self-governance, worth the fight?

Could we be better citizens? Is such a thing possible?

Have you registered to vote? Do you know there's still time?

Can you stomach being ruthless for just a while longer? 

Uphill, both ways

Showered and dressed, he stood there looking like a different kid than he had in summer. Taller, broader, deeper of voice. More independent. He'd even packed his own bags while I looked on, skepticism written all over my face. 

"You don't really need to bring everything with you today, do you?"

I had used a tone that adults seem immune to, but that somehow drives kids wild with rage and indignation.

"I know what I'm doing," he barked in my direction, almost daring me to challenge him some more. "I need every binder, every notebook, and every single one of those mechanical pencils you said I didn't need."

Who would have thought you'd still need six, two-inch binders and thirty-seven-thousand tab dividers to go along with the school-issued Chromebook during a pandemic.

But here he is, trying to pack the equivalent of a Target aisle into his backpack.

There has never been a back-to-school preparation as fraught as this one. 

Of course, it had started months ago. All the planning, all the guidelines, everyone seemingly at each others' throat lumps trying to figure out best practices for a return to in-person education.

He had everything planned, too. 

Right down to the minute. He'd even taken trial runs.

He would leave the house at precisely 7 a.m., pedal his bike a mile and a half to a local breakfast joint and scarf down a buttered bagel before taking off once more. He'd wind his way north another mile and a half to reach his destination -- school. 

If his calculations were correct, it would take him exactly 32 minutes to get there. Thirty-five minutes if there was a car ahead of him in line at the "Drive-through."

And if my calculations were correct, he would be a sweaty mess once he arrived. His backpack would be heavy. The effort to get it from our house to the school complex, which is at a higher elevation and three miles away, would likely raise his internal temperature a few degrees.

Maybe he should leave at 6:45?

This would leave enough time for him to park his bike, lock it, and rest up a bit, maybe even fan himself gently, so as not to trip any of the heat-seeking devices school authorities would aim at his forehead before granting admission.

He looked at me like I was crazy: 6:45?

"If it takes me an HOUR to get to school, I might as well take the bus, which historically has seemed to circle the known universe twice before reaching its destination."

What was I thinking? Of course, it would be fine. Independence is the goal, and exaggeration is just a family trait. 

Everything would be fine. He'd get to school with butter on his shirt. He'd forget to text us his safe arrival, and we would worry until he got home, all red-faced and satisfied with himself.

He would complain about how hard it is to ride a bike all laden with books and binders. So hard that it seems like uphill both ways.

And how much he looked forward to doing it all again tomorrow.

De feet, on de fence

Running isn't for the faint of constitution. And no one needs the benefit of an iron gut more than the families of runners.

We may be able to endure the black toenails and the red chafe marks, but the people who love us, don't always see these marks as badges of honor.. 

Running a streak – a seemingly never-ending amount of consecutive days of running – takes a different kind of stamina of them, one that includes mastery over gag reflexes.

Case in point: A recent long run had left me with a blister the size of my foot … on my foot.

It was a spectacular spectacle that no one in their right mind would want to see even by accident, let alone on purpose. 

"OH my GOD, MOM! Put your feet away, they are disgusting," said a most alarmed Junior, when her elbow grazed my instep as we jostled on the couch fighting for the most comfortable spots for Movie Night.

But it's the kind of thing a person can't really hide under cover of a sock … or even under a throw blanket, since the weight of the thinnest of thin blankets could send me howling in misery.

Tomorrow, I hope it will be better, but tonight it's too painful for even the scrape of a slight breeze, let alone the giant sigh of revulsion that escapes from the girl. 

The sound of her displeasure follows me through the steps I take to treat my throbbing foot: first, when I apply a slathering of antiseptic cream and then as I wrestle a bandage from its packaging. She makes a retching sound when I switch on the sanding pumice and press it to the flesh.

"You do know how utterly disgusting that is, right?"

Little does she know, I'd be more chagrinned if she hadn't followed me into the bathroom, where I'd hoped to have enough peace and quiet to shave my calluses or pluck my newly emerging chin hairs.

I do believe you have a bathroom of your very own down at the end of the hall. If I recall correctly, I helped you paint it that lovely and sophisticated color gray. I also bought you towels that I seem to wash quite regularly.

She doesn't generally cotton my pointed jabs at her expense. And she responds by questioning my very sanity, evidenced by the state of my old dogs.

"How did you run your mile today?" she taunts, kicking her calves against the couch's arm as if to punctuate each one of her accusatory words. "I know you couldn't fit your sneakers over that foot, let alone stretch a sock over that mangled bit of flesh that's dangling at the end of your ankle."

"Now whose being gross," yelled the disembodied voice of her brother, my unlikely champion, as he yelled through the "pew-pew" sound effects of his latest transfixing video game. 

"Don't get me wrong. Her feet ARE gross," he adds, loud enough to establish that he has not taken my side in whatever battle has been waged. 

"The streak is still intact! I ran barefoot. In the grass," I expound, full of pride at the level of perseverance it had to take a person with obvious wounds to hobble around a track for 1609.34 meters.

One Hundred Nine days and still counting.

Internal drive

 She had a plan. It involved the DMV, circling around the block with the buffer of about 55 hours of parental driving lessons since she turned 16.

I had a plan; While the girl was taking her road test, I would run around the block.

I'd figured it all out. During the fifteen minutes the Department of Motor Vehicles had allotted its road testers to determine the safety and efficacy of New York's latest crop of could-be drivers, I should be able to run a mile and a half. That's fifteen city blocks and back if I were both lucky and swift.

But after she'd carefully pulled away from the curb with the examiner as her copilot - left-hand directional on as is legally appropriate - I couldn't bear to move.

I couldn't even bring myself to lift my gaze and follow the car from its starting position to the stop sign at the end of the street.

Which way did they go after that? I couldn't say for sure.

Instead, I would spend the next fifteen minutes trying to pace a groove in the sidewalk, trudging back and forth from the camp chairs Mr. R.D. Testa had so thoughtfully placed, in the shade, to the fire hydrant fifty yards beyond, in the scorching sun.

Why was I nervous?

I wasn't the one in the driver's seat, navigating unfamiliar streets with a stranger strapped in beside me. Pleasant enough fellow though he was, it would be up to her to determine what the notes he was making on his tablet as he softly clucked his tongue actually meant for her chances of passing.

I felt the centrifugal force of tension against my neck as I craned it toward each vehicle whooshing past the mouth of the roadway, tires grinding pebbles as they turned in and slowly made their way to be next in the lineup.

I checked my watch. Twenty minutes had passed, and still no sign of them.

Eventually, they would return. She would park the car, and there would be a long, silent moment where he spoke, and she looked stricken. His car door would open, and he would approach me to explain that while she did well, she did not do well enough to pass this time.

It was the old conundrum of having to choose between taking a right as when the traffic light is yellow or stopping for all of eternity (or until the light turns green again) smack

dab in the center of a crosswalk.

She chose wrong.

She calmly handed me the keys and melted into the passenger seat.

For the next 22 minutes and 39 seconds, the soundtrack inside our car was a mix of sobs and silence accompanying a repetitive chorus of "I Failed," sung with torment and a lilt of disbelief.

This wasn't part of her plan either.

All the feelings that accompany failure sit with her as we chugged along home. The defensive ones whisper not-so-sweet nothings into her ear: "That guy was just a jerk," her face-saving alter-ego hisses. "He could have passed you if he wanted." 

I find myself taking the examiner's side. "Hey, now. You know he was a nice guy, who has a serious job that he takes solemnly."

"Any one of us – even your dad – could fail that test under the right level of anxiety and one badly timed traffic light. We all make mistakes. We learn from them."

Her sobs turned soundless, and I stopped trying to make her feel better.

Only time and technology could heal that wound. And luckily, the technology she needed was in the palm of her hand.

By the time I pulled into the driveway and switched the car off, she'd booked another road test.

"Ok. New plan: Next week we'll do this again, only this time I'll get my license."

Seen and heard

 A new and unfamiliar school year is barreling toward us with some sorcery that seems like slow motion.

Maybe that's because it feels like we are stuck in the first reel of a B movie, sitting in our seats quietly, waiting for the edges burn and curl away from the projector.

As administrators push back start dates to allow for more planning, parents have received pages and pages of new procedures, followed by several preliminary schedules, and an equal number of clarifying revisions to the whole electronic handbook of confusing new rules. 

I'm not ashamed to say as I scroll through the midway point on the 14th page of The Plan on my pocket computer that my eyes start to glaze, and beads of perspiration dot my brow.

We are not prepared. And like so many things we haven't experienced before, we will never be ready enough.

I don't think I'd be far off in saying that this Herculean plan of reinventing in-person classes seems as though it has been cobbled together by people who are really good ... at other things. 

You know, like how you put a slide rule in the hands of an English teacher, and he might use it to diagram a sentence. More likely would be taking Ed from marketing and putting him in charge of special effects makeup.

Maybe get the scientists in on this one?

And as they follow the guidance put forward by the current leadership, Many of us have to wonder just how much trust is too much?

I'm mean ... I'm not sure any of my elected officials majored in epidemiology before they minored in Roberts' Rules of Order. And that school boards might have a doctor or two on their reopening committees isn't as reassuring now that we've seen Dr. Ben Carson "work" outside of his celebrated field of neurosurgery.

Also, less than reassuring is the recent report of dozens quarantined after an in-person administrative meeting in a Saratoga County school district, where school officials said they followed "restaurant guidelines."

This doesn't bode well since education's guidelines seem to bear some similarity to restaurants, especially where it offers teachers the discretionary choice of several "mask breaks" during indoor classes.

But I have to have faith that reopening guidance is based on more than smoke and mirrors or television ratings. I have to believe that we are still capable of having each other's best interests at heart.

Still, I have to remind myself that education is an essential need. And that our children need to be seen and heard, not just screened and notified.

I do have faith in face coverings. I have faith that those are working, and will prevent rampant infection. I have faith in teachers and other parents to be doing the best they can at any given moment. I believe that being outside and apart now will enable us to be together later.

I have to believe that just over this horizon … there may be just another horizon. That's life right now. The only way we'll eventually get to our destination is if we help each other over these humps now.

The rush hours

The calculations for rush hour always lasts well into two. Add vacation to the equation, and a person must factor in two more hours no matter what time they set off on their destination. 

These have always been the rules.

If you travel, eventually you will face wall-to-wall traffic. Sometimes it stops you in your tracks, and other times you may be swept up in its current, forced to move along with it like a school of fish.

It's been a while since I've rushed into the latter's dizzying fray.

Cars are jockeying for position all around me. I pass a red station wagon twice as we buzz along in the same direction. 

As drivers, we casually acknowledge the initial overtake, but then we pretend to have blinders on as we continue to go neck and neck on this track of highway. 

We are in a race to get home. And this girl in the red wagon is my secret rival.

Her car is laden with the after-effects of a holiday: Surfboards, lightly breaded with sand, are mounted to the car's luggage racks. Bicycles are affixed to the hatch at jaunty angles, their tires spinning slowly in the wind. Colorful beach stickers, stacked one on top of another, curl up at their edges. This car looks to be the well-traveled suitcase of lore.

Rust and dust mingle at the edges of everything in the girl's old rattletrap, signaling memories that have been resurrected to revisit the "good old days," people are always talking about. 

I am behind the wheel of a new car. The gears shift easily, and the ride is smooth. I am in unfamiliar territory in this vehicle - the passing lane. I effortlessly exceed speed limits as I pass car after car on the left.

The boy in my passenger side quietly plays a video game. We listen to the mechanical lady in the phone project directions through the fancy new screen in the dashboard where radios used to be.

Every now and then, he pauses to pet the dog in the backseat, who is panting uncomfortably. The dog hates the car even more when every floor space is taken up with leftover luggage the trunk couldn't store.

The dog is used to driving in the other car: the one with the seats that fold down and the epic amounts of sand from the beach. This car gives her no room to pace.

She looks at it wistfully we pass again and groans. The boy pets her head. 

The man in the passenger side of the girl's car doesn't need computer navigation. He could make this trip in his sleep. He is used to being "The Driver," and he's never once missed an exit and found himself in Cape Cod. 

The girl behind the wheel is too young to know all the secrets of her car's aged effects. But she a confidant of her competence. Her father is relaxed.

She's just a teenager who, for the first time, is driving all the way home.

And she's going to be furious when I get there first.