Water logged

I collect all my thoughts in the shower. I make lists, wherein I solve all the world's problems one step at a time.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Sometimes I wish my thoughts were always as orderly as the directions on shampoo. But I don't mind a little less clarity here.

Here, in the shower, is the one place I can bunch up all cares and shove them aside as my kids have done with their soggy washcloths.

Under a sunflower sized spigot, I stand almost immobile for what seems like an eternity as steam and spray dance around me.

But it's not an eternity at all. It's just a ten-minute ritual entirely circumscribed by the small hand of time, which has realigned temporarily with how slowly the faucet can move leftward in the chase for just a little more hot water.

Of course, I find other problems there, too.

The amount of hair I find in the drain makes me take an inventory of my stress levels before I take a moment to wonder if all of it's mine.

Like how the washcloth mountain stands majestically in the corner. Its sedimentary layers mark the number of tourists who haven't received the gospel of Leave No Trace.

A musty washcloth mountain, though, is not a hill on which anyone should choose to die.

There are so many other things that could kill us.

Is that a new mole? Should I be suspicious? How can I not be when it's shaped like Iowa?

I wash my hair with something called "Snow Fairy" gel to take my mind off this new and alarming discovery. The bottle lifts too easily and dispenses too sparsely. Ordinarily, the sweet smell of bubblegum mixed with wintergreen would offer just enough comforting confusion to distract me. Still, I can't stop thinking about the Iowa-shaped threat on my forearm.

Why does it look reddish?

I'll try and calm myself further by noting the color is uniform before I run my finger overtop and find it feels different from skin. I use my nail edge like a chisel, and the whole thing flakes off like paint.

Was it paint? It's possible, but I know I didn't use that color. Maybe it was a scab from a burn I only this moment vaguely remember? How many times have I accidentally touched the edge of a hot cookie sheet with my arm after I'd take it out of the oven? Too many to remember precisely.

Should I be worried about my memory now?

Conditioning. That's all that's left. I squeeze a quarter-sized dollop in the palm of my hand and massage it into the thickest part of my hair: the tangle at the nape of my neck.

Leave it on for at least three minutes for shiner, and silkier hair instructs the label.

The water is cool now, which is perfect, according to another person that visits my shower in the soapy bubbles of memory. "Never wash your hair in hot water," this gruff and bearded apparition says in my brain. They were the words of wisdom he learned from his mother, a hairdresser.

I clawed through the tangle with my fingers as the water grew cold. Reality interrupts with the sharp discomfort of icy pinpricks. 

I turn off the tap and reach for a towel.

Note to self: we're out of shampoo. I should make a list.

TLDR

A royal blue-lettered envelope embossed with the school's insignia arrived in the mail, indicating a more important communique than what usually appears on the pastel-colored pages that make their way to the bottom of a school bag, never to be seen again.

It is the scholastic equivalent of a tree falling, unwitnessed, in the forest: If a homeroom teacher sends a note home to parents, asking them to send in a snack before Thanksgiving recess and they don't read about it until Valentine's Day, did it really matter?

I don't think so. 

In fact, this year's inattention saved me $75, NOT ordering Yankee Candles.

But a letter, on official stationery with metered postage? This must be serious.

Important looking letters are the kind of things that strike fear in the hearts of parents like me: We who do not rifle through our children's things looking for unfinished homework, evidence of poor grades, or notes from teachers that require an authentic signature.

We who get our need-to-know information through the filter of our kids' badgering. If they want to participate in a particular thing, they have two options: they can either let ME know in a timely fashion … or they can skirt the issue entirely using forgery.

Not that I expect the latter.

"What could this be?" I wondered as I stood in front of the post office box, keys still dangling from the lock. I turned it over to inspect the back, deciding whether to open it immediately or wait until I was properly fed and caffeinated. Which -- truth be told – could happen next Tuesday in Never.

The last official letter that arrived via post had standardized test scores tucked inside. I would shred them in secret, and nest the strands at the bottom of the kitchen garbage, lest anyone  accidentally piece them back together on purpose and have to live with the fallacy such numbers actually "count."

Of course, it might have been an optometry referral for nearsightedness ... or it may have sounded an alarm that the health office didn't have the proper documentation on one kid or both.

Schools understand that a single page doubled spaced letter sent through the USPS, will have more of an effect than seventeen thousand words printed on a half-dozen sheets of multi-colored paper jammed into the knapsacks of teenagers. Knapsacks, I might add, which also likely contain smashed bits of snack crackers, as well as a wad of fermented gym clothes. 

But I digress.

Whatever it was that concerned the school enough to pay the price of postage rather than entrust the Backpack Express, the note would be brief and to the point, and it would possess enough formalized authority to spur me to action.

I would shred... or make the necessary appointments ... or have the doctors' office fax the school nurse post haste.

Or, in this case, in a few days it would make me open my phone and add a date-not-to-be-missed into the calendar so I might witness an accolade earned by my eldest. 

"Might" being the operative word.

My daughter took the letter from my congratulatory hands for inspection.

My sudden revelry turned to guilt.

"You didn't RSVP, did you?"

"Well, no one reads those bits at the end."

Hope, more squeeze than a hug

I felt a hand grasp my thigh, and everything in my body -- including my breath -- tightened.

In that instant, my son had the ball, and, without hesitation, he had launched it toward the basket in a one-armed hook that had no business making it to the hoop, let alone through the net. The ball, closer than it had a natural right to be, glanced off the rim and bounced back into the boxed defense of the visiting team.

Another kid dribbled it away.

My neighbor in the bleachers - another team mother whose son has long ago proven his ability to dunk - let go of my leg as if it were hope itself.

"So close," she said without fanfare. It's a tone I instantly recognized as one that was ready, willing, and able to celebrate if there had been a swish.

I nod and start to breathe again. There are worse things in life than never scoring a basket during a game though I would never use those exact words with him.

In the years I've been watching him play, I've seen the other boys gain speed and the precise amount of aggression necessary to get ahead of the play and change the direction. They charge in and foul out.

My son lopes along to his position and adjusts his hair.

I elbow his father, sitting on the other side of me, as he shouts the things everyone shouts: "Hands up ... Get ahead of them ... Turn around."

It's no more helpful than me letting out the sign of pent up breath the moment the ball ricochets off the rim into the hands of the other team. I keep reminding myself that disappoint FOR them sounds the same as disappointment IN them.

It is best to try and be silent.

His need to make points in a game has a direct correlation with the time he spends in the driveway practicing free throws. My need to point out the cobwebs hanging from the net usually has the opposite effect of what I intended.

Silence is hard.

There will be more games. More chances to be in the right place at the right time and make his shot. He doesn't need me to say the words "It will happen," though I say them anyway. Filling the air of the car with the participation trophy of encouragement.

The truth is, I already marvel at my kids' ability to try new things or stick with them no matter how futile it all seems. His skills move - not by leaps and bounds - but in increments.

When I was his age, I never gave any activity in which I didn't immediately excel time or attention enough to improve. I always quit post haste.

This kid clings to every moment of half-hearted, trying with his game face on.

None of which will change two games later when the basket he finally makes slips through the net silently.

The crowd didn't go wild. The team didn't hoist him onto their shoulders. It was just a little bump in a game they wouldn't win.

But the kid didn't care. He quietly celebrated by sitting smack dab in the middle of the bench, leaning back with a huge grin ... and adjusting his hair. He had made his basket, and it counted.

The sound of progress

Oh, my nerves! The beeping!

What is that beeping sound?

I follow the noise to a dead end.

It could be anything.

Everything is plugged into something, or powered by batteries, or animated by the collective evil of a thousand big brothers floating somewhere just out of sight ... in a cloud.

Of course, it's an alarm, but for what?

A digital monsoon?

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeep!

Nine-fifty-five in the evening. Past bedtime. The house is mostly quiet save for the whirring of gadgets that give us the pretense of silence.

It's not a watch, or a phone, or the smoke detectors. It's not a video game or sound effect on the television. It's not the ghost of a toddler's toy.

It's just a soft, lethargic alert that seems to be coming from everywhere … or nowhere in particular.

My best guess is that the sound is coming from somewhere in the bathroom ... some battery-operated thing is possessed.

Since I can't locate the origin of the alert, I cover my ears and resign the search until it stops. Which, thankfully, it does is short order.

Add it to the list of mysteries of the modern age.

The mid-evening series of assertive beeps, which is the harbinger if nothing, go silent as fast as they made a sound. They repeat only once a fortnight, so I have not wasted a moment on an investigation.

Just another modern inconvenience brought to me by so-called progress.

You know … like e-mail and e-bank. All those excellent services that seem so simple until they go haywire. You know … like your e-address gets filled with junk mail or gets a virus, and the e-medicine you subscribe to can't give you e-ntibiotics without an international scene.

Did you back it up?

Errrrrr.

It turns out we never have the right backup plan.

Of course, in some cases, I've learned to adapt.

I can set the clocks on all of the devices that keep track of time. 

I can usually connect my gadgets wirelessly to other gadgets. 

I know exactly where to place the digital bathroom scale, and how to stand on its glass surface to ensure the readout shaves off a few pounds.

I know that Siri won't respond to questions asked of Alexa and vice versa. I don't try to force them into some awkward friendship, though I wish they'd put their petty rivalry aside and do a better job of snooping on my son's conversations. 

I'm reasonably certain all e-mails of importance find their way into the trash folder based on an inverse ratio of my need to see them, so I check there as regularly as my primary inbox.

A strategy helps even if it's not enough for mastery of all these bells and whistles.

When I find it difficult to adapt, I simply employ avoidance.

Avoidance, it turns out, is the easiest way to deal with so many mysteries of modern life. Real problems won't let you dodge them. But for all the rest, especially the infernal noise of modernity, the batteries will give out eventually as we weather this storm.