A-OK

From the moment she covered her mouth and stared bug-eyed at the election results that sent her to Congress, I have loved watching Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Maybe it is the mom in me? Or maybe it is the girl I used to be. There is something about her that just sparkles.

In so many other ways, AOC seems like the proverbial girl next door. The hostess with the mostest. The woman we hope our children will aspire to emulate. Maybe even the kind of human we, ourselves, set out to become.

She is bold and bright.

She is willing to work hard and fight the uphill battles. She is quick with a smile and quicker about her wits.

She is not afraid.

From the outset of her political career, she has been providing teachable moments. From her campaign ads to her after-hours clips on Instagram, she has invited us to learn alongside her as she experienced everything from how to re-pot a root-bound plant, to how to navigate some of the more moribund protocols that keep our government's workings a mystery to even the most astute voters.

During the last two years I have told anyone willing to listen they should not dismiss her because of her fervor or youth. They should neither peg her as intractable nor as a flash in the pan. Just watch her progress. 

I can't say that I was shocked by the so-called “tense exchange” between the Democratic newcomer and Republican Rep. Ted Yoho.

In front of reporters, Yoho made a name for himself by calling Ocasio-Cortez "disgusting" for her comments about New York City's recent spike in crime and her contention that it is rooted in hardship. He called her "dangerous" presumably for her other progressive stances. And in a parting shot after she spoke up had called him on his "rudeness," he hurled two expletives at her that are verboten to repeat in family newspapers.

Words lacking self control, said in a moment of outrage, certainly exist in the world we all navigate.

I will not clutch pearls over expletives.

But it's not the words that matter as much as the tone. And the tone is only as damaging as the bravado in which it is used. And the bravado is just a cover for the kind of cowardice that is facing its own irrelevance.

Hurt people, as they say, hurt people.

The abusive man may even string together the appropriate words of apology, and meaning them or not, force another kind of diminishment through that apology's acceptance. 

Not that Yoho made a legitimate apology.

As Ocasio-Cortez rightly pointed out, he didn't take responsibility for the confrontation. Instead he claimed having a wife and two daughters made him a decent man, and a decent man who who “cannot apologize for his passion.”

He didn't admit he was wrong so much as he tried to insist that his unprovoked mistreatment of a colleague was part of a dynamic that she as well had engaged.

I am glad AOC declined to give him a pass. I'm glad she is standing up to bullies and saying loudly and clearly that neither their tactics nor their apologies are A-OK. 

Rare air

"How was your drive?"

Harrowing. How could it not be? We had ventured away from home for the first time in months. Just for fun? A little break? A visit with family? Something our minds (and the pits of our stomachs) told us we were fools to venture.

But the queasiness that had settled in on the 90-minute drive to the lake was easily smoothed by a light meal and the promise of hours spent splashing around in the summer-warmed water. 

"Car sickness is worth it," yelled my son as he pedaled his feet, propelling a bright yellow stand-up surfboard around the edge of the water in circles."

As we plunked down into deck chairs and slathered our shoulders with sunscreen, he sluiced along the water's edge testing his buoyancy. 

It had been two years since he'd visited the cousins, but he would never forget how to navigate this wondrous contraption. 

It was like falling off a bike. Only the landings were soft and wet and didn't end up causing road rash. 

"I've got it," he yelled with delight as his right hand squeezed what looked like a brake lever on a bicycle handlebar.  

He satisfactorily drifted around 

 the dock and made his way to the inflatable trampoline island just a few well-heeled foot pumps away. 

No one minded him being over his head since he was wearing a life vest. With it, he'd never be out of his depth. 

"This place is better than Disneyland," he declared with the full-throated approval only someone who knows he will never, ever, set foot in THE Magic Kingdom during his childhood so long as his parents are footing the bill for the trips. 

Stupid parents. 

His sister had reached the bouncing island the old-fashioned way: she'd swam there. Arm-over-head, digging into the water with her ice cream scoop hands, just how the swim instructors had taught her when she was just a tot.

She rolled gracefully every third stroke, adding a moment of back float during each rotation. 

This is the life. 

The cousins had places to go and people to see, so they excused themselves and offered a new toy that we might practice in their absence. 

"You know how to surf, right?"

They'd seen our Christmas cards, the kids with Santa hats pasted on their heads in our Vacationland photos of surf camps past. They could tell that the waves were real, no matter how small.

It took two men to carry the thing down a steep set of dock stairs, shuffling along the sway-backed ramp to the water. 

The cousin gleefully unzipped the insulated covers that protected what appeared to be an overturned RV dining table attached to a small watercraft propeller.

He eased it into the water before easing himself in to demonstrate. 

The table and the host quietly sped away. The next time we saw him, he and the board were quite literally flying over the water, not 10 meters away from where we stood in slack-jawed silence.

This is the stuff of legend. The stuff sci-fi and Marty McFly had promised. 

"Just play with it, and have fun. Even if you can't stand up, you can have a lot of fun just letting it tow you around."

The cousin was gone, and my daredevil girl was already in the water putt-putting around before my mind had clenched around reality. 

He just left us alone with a flying surfboard!

Before I could say "hold on just minute," my daughter had already fallen off twice and learned a terrifying lesson about losing balance, trigger grip tightness, and board bounce in that rocket-fast order. 

Soon, she was gliding around the perimeter in circles, leaning into turns, and accelerating the straightaways hoping to achieve liftoff she might sustain.

Less than an hour later, she caught air. 

Now it was my turn to feel queasy. The smile on my daughter's face told me all I needed to know. This will always be better than Disneyland.

The Extra Mile

What was I thinking? 

A Streak?

Forty-one days of consecutive running? One hundred miles in a month? Injury-prone me with the lingering specter of vice-grip hips?

I didn't think. I just did it.

I told myself it didn't matter. I could stop at any time.

Of course, it didn't matter that All My Friends were doing it. However, I didn't need the hard sell or peer pressure to sign on. I only needed one mile a day at any speed I could muster.

One mile is a tiny investment. 

It is a walk to the Post Office and back.

Four circles of the High School's track. 

Two times around the block and only 10 to 12 minutes of my time, depending on a typical average of variables. For instance, previous day distances are divided by today's index of heat and humidity and multiplied by the desire to be somewhere else ... for a little while.

It becomes a habit, similar to brushing your teeth or feeding your dog or tidying up the kitchen. 

Only it's not like a chore ... it's just a thing you do ... because.

Except, unlike brushing teeth or feeding fido, you can get out of this game at any time. 

But it's not a game; it's a matrix.

You take your mile up a hill and back down.

You sprint from fire hydrants to telephone poles and jog three or four mailboxes.

You may add on a little, here and there.

Or you may subtract when your knees start to creak or groan.

Soon you find yourself watching numbers tick past you on a spreadsheet, showing you how you got to where you are right now: 10 miles on Sunday, one mile on Monday, two-mile Tuesdays, 3, 4, 7, 5, 9, 3, 2, 1, 5, 8, 3, 7, 2, 1, 1, 1 ...

"I could keep this up forever," I start to think over-confidently. Telling myself that listening to my body will keep me from overusing it.

Then the 42nd day comes. Goal reached: Memorial Day until the Fourth of July. One-hundred-forty-eight miles in total.

Do I really need to continue?

Haven't I noticed that familiar (but unwelcome) guest, Pain poking around?

Did Heat and Humidity invite him to his party? It feels like four-thousand degrees.

I can be done.

"You can't be done," said my daughter in horror. "How can you be done?"

You'd think I'd told her I was quitting my job and letting all her dishes pile up in the sink.

"I think I am done," I typed into the ether.

"You could be done," a friend typed back by way of reply. "Or you could take 37 laps around your pool and keep the streak going one more day." 

"Just Do IT," yelled my youngest, treading water in the center of the deep end.

So I did: In 11 minutes and 12 seconds, I ran the mile while the kids showered me in encouragement (mostly with Super Soakers), ringing cowbells and hollering "Go, Runner!"

It may have taken 54 laps, but this was the best mile so far.

Maybe tomorrow I'll quit going that extra mile. 

Summertime rules

Summertime rules

I don't remember summertime rules or chores that I didn't give myself.

Once in awhile I'd clean my room or mow the lawn. But it would be out of boredom more than obligation. 

I'd leave home in the early morning and return just before dinner. I'd spend the day riding my bike, miles, and miles on the gravel roads between my past and future. 

My parents always believed I'd find my way. 

My children don't have that kind of secret life, one that is physically distant from mine. Especially now. 

It is afternoon, and my son is still asleep. His room is a clammy, overstuffed pocket of childhood in a north corner of our house. 

The things he's accumulated are archived in piles. He steps over some, drapes others in discarded clothes, the rest is hidden when his creaky old door is wide open. 

These toys from his baby years collect dust under two more sedimentary layers of playthings from his toddler- and boyhoods. 

He's not sentimental; he just has neither the time (he's fighting zombies) nor the inclination to avail himself of space. After all, his teenage self is satisfied with the two-square feet that fit his chair and desktop.

 I'm the one who's too sentimental to clean out his room and decide what fate shall befall the remnants of his playthings. Do they stay in the attic museum, or do they go to the curb, hoping for a ride to another life?

He is 13 now; a teenager still filled with sweetness, but also cultivating a kind of blossoming rage we tend to define as hormones. 

It's a combination we've come to expect, almost condone, in boys.

We have expected as much. 

Three years more than a decade ago, he came complete with a foreskin and so many seemingly unfathomable choices all of them couched in a question of parenting: Do we worry too much or too little? 

We opted for no unnecessary surgeries and anxiety as needed. He would be of the world, yes, but he would also be ours.

Nature doesn't trump nurture. 

But he's not a baby anymore.

It is nearly one o'clock. He is awake and roaming around. Searching for food that I might call breakfast. 

Though I'd be wrong if I were to ask because he would proudly say that he doesn't eat breakfast anymore, he's not hungry until lunch. Toast at lunch is neither meal. It's not even filling. 

He will graze through the pantry, proving his point that meals are a thing of some quaint past.

One-thirty. I have invited him to mow the lawn. It's going to be a hot day.

I shrink a little inside myself, waiting for an outburst or a disappointing response. 

He gives me neither. Just a happy chirp, as if it's no problem at all.

He'll get right to it after a few video games. 

Two-thirty comes and goes. 

Three-thirty comes and goes.

Four ... comes, and he still sits in front of the game with his headphones on moving only his thumbs.

Remember the lawn? You said you would mow it. I don't ask much ...

He's not as cheerful now, but he agrees. The request is not outlandish. He uncurls himself from the game and disappears to find his shoes. 

I do believe he'll find his way.