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.

Mothers Beach

 My wrist started buzzing. 

It was my watch alerting me to the fact that my daughter was calling.

I was somewhere between Harris Drive and Great Hill, halfway through a three-mile beach run on a waning family vacation. 

Modern technology can be a miracle or a curse, and my brain was still wrestling with which type this would be as I went digging through pockets for my phone before my daughter's call went to voicemail. 

Curses. 

Panic was in her voice.

A week-long, feeling-off sort of stomach had graduated from the female relegation to an urgent concern.

"I feel like I'm dying, and I can't move. I need you."

She hung up.

When I called back, the hollow sound of her retching answered. 

I had left her father and dog on the sandy beach only 15 minutes earlier. The pair had probably managed to lumber down to the surf, maybe a quarter-mile from the car, at least by my panicked calculations.

He answered on the first ring. 

I told him about the call and my Gray's Anatomy mind going straight for a ruptured appendix and a mother's intuition that erring on the side of caution would mean an Emergency Room visit just to be safe.

Head toward Mothers Beach. I'm headed your way.

I was running again, only faster. My throat now filled with anxiety as all my huffing and puffing stayed cordoned off from my surroundings behind a mask. I have grown accustomed to laboring in filtered air. 

The watch on my wrist is alerting me to intervals that I ignore. I only turn it off when I'm finally seated on the passenger side as we speed towards "home." Only I hadn't been effective in turning it off.

As we pulled into the driveway, the watch congratulated me on having beaten my fastest 5k. 

I make the beeping stop as I sprint up the pathway and into the house. Her grandmother is already there as I pinball around the house, gathering supplies.

I am surprised my bag already contains all the things a mother would need for just this moment - including a thermometer. Another miracle, since I was never the mother who prepared. 

We are on our way to the car as she holds the magic wand in her mouth until it beeps ...

And once again, after I switch its reading from Celsius to Fahrenheit, so I can understand she hasn't got a fever without Googling conversions. 

"That's good," I tell her confidently without knowing for sure that it is.

Her father makes it all the way to the driver's seat before I send him back into the house for a bucket, just in case. We have a half-hour's ride ahead of us.

I seem calm, though I can't see it for myself. I feel like static electricity and chaos combined. I am just glad not to be driving. 

I am sitting next to her in the backseat as she writhes around, seeking a position that provides some comfort. Eventually, she lays down as I stroke her forehead and press on her side. 

We breathe together to stave off panic: inhale deeply, try to match the same length of exhalation. Inhale. Exhale.

We are two minutes away from the hospital when she finally vomits and realizes the pain receding.

When the nurse asks about the scale of discomfort, she 

subtracts eight points from the car ride, leaving her with a manageable in not slightly embarrassing 2.

They take blood and vital signs and wait for results. The rule out the bad and the ugly, though the doctor returns to the room with an ultrasound machine to screen her kidneys. They seem unremarkable.

After a couple of hours, we are released with an advisory to check in with her primary doctor and repeat a specific test in a few days.

The chances are high, the doctor tells me, the reason for her pain could remain a mystery unless whatever the ailment gets worse.

It's all spelled out on the sheets they handed us before they sent us on our way. We followed the exit signs to the parking lot and drove back to grandma's house. 

I am thankful my mother's intuition isn't usually right. 

A bicycle built for two

 Visible steam and foul language circled the air around his head, so we knew to make ourselves scarce.

It T minus Go Time and "The Dad" had started a "little project."

Therefore, we were avoiding "The Dad."

Our vacation was happening as per usual, now that Maine had lifted its ban on visiting New Yorkers, though our usual holiday calls for a fair amount of isolation anyway. 

But his sister had raised the stakes in their rivalry by announcing her family would be bringing bikes as a way to keep our vacation exciting while socially distanced.

So in the hours before we would leave and after he had packed, her brother dragged a collection of moldering bikes from the basement and lined them up on the driveway according to workload.

Two of the bikes were his and would require oil, new handle grips, and two new tires and inner tubes. (And he'll have to go back to the bike shop for a third inner tube because he'll forget to set the psi.

Our daughter's bike - the pink and yellow beach cruiser - needed all of that and a coat of paint so as not to be an embarrassment. She has become so much more sophisticated the five years since she picked out those candy colors. The worst part, of course, is that the bike's seat barely required adjustment. 

My bicycle - a relic of my early adolescence - just needed air in the tires and a dusting. My father had made its repair one his projects a few years ago as a surprise.

The last two bikes on the driveway were our son's and would require a little cleaning before they got handed down to someone they would fit. 

This development was just one of the things weighing on The Dad's mind. 

Bike shops have been cleaned out of inventory since April. How would he get the newly gangly teen up and rolling?

"He could use my bike," I said, thinking it's shade of blue could counterbalance the sway-barred center that indicates its gender role in the bike world.

The Dad works through the details in his mind before he sells our boy on the difficulties of riding a real racing style bike.

"Don't worry if you can't get it down right away ... racing bikes are temperamental."

Maybe it worked. 

After his test spin, the kid left the driveway and disappeared for an hour tooling around in the neighborhood. 

But maybe it was just the slightest taste of freedom on a bike that economized its user's energy instead of trying to spend it thoroughly by bedtime. 

Also, he hasn't left the house on his own since March.

"They don't call them "girls" bikes anymore," he instructs. "They're called Step-Throughs." 

Clearly, he wouldn't let seemingly arbitrary gender norms such as color selection or bicycle design determine his enjoyment of the open road.

Of course, this moment's progressive beauty would be lost once The Dad released a new stream of expletives into the air:

"@!)#% the bike rack doesn't accommodate step-through bikes. We'll have to improvise!"

We are still avoiding The Dad. 

Sound and furry

The house is too quiet. 

Morning came and went, and the boy didn't wake. 

The dog stretched out in front of his closed bedroom door, waiting for the day of dropped foodstuffs to begin.

Waiting on the boy has become a kind of part-time job to supplement her meals.

Cheerios for breakfast. Sandwiches for lunch. An untold number of crumbly snacks, some of them just before dinner.

She sees him and her pavlovian response is to lick her lips.

Not that she doesn't love him with all the tail-wagging love dogs have for their boys, it's just that her loyalties are multiplied by four and divided by an infinite number of snack breaks during any given moment of the day. 

She can always rely on him.

After all, he's the last person in the family who isn't really leaving the house. He's barely leaving his bedroom unless it's to poke his head into the kitchen to rummage through the refrigerator and cabinets.

She approves of his new appetite. She does not approve of his sleep pattern.

She can't seem to settle at night until the technical screens that illuminate his room go dark. 

All morning I've been rummaging around. Banging pots and pans as I shift them from the dishwasher to the cabinets. I am dragging laundry baskets up and down the stairs, letting the phone ring a little longer than is innately comfortable. 

Nothing.

It's noontime, and the room is still silent. I open the door and creep in. The dog paces along behind me. 

The floorboards creak, but he doesn't stir. He is wrapped like a caterpillar in a cocoon of blankets. The room is icy from the air conditioner in his window churning full force.

I touch his forehead, holding my breath. He is warm. But not too warm. I relax a little.

Don't worry, mom …. is forever a contradiction in terms.

It's summer. Let him sleep, I tell myself as I back out of the room, taking the dog with me by her collar. She wants to stay. I should let her. If only she could tell me how long he'd stayed up last night. I know he won't.

When he finally makes an appearance, still sleepy-eyed and slow-moving an hour or so later, he looks taller to me. Even apart from the shaggy hair that points every which way as if it woke up on fire.

He doesn't speak for a while.

There are no "Good mornings," just the sounds of cereal pellets falling into a bowl and a spoon being plucked from the drawer.

I continue to put away dishes as he fills his mouth with sweetened and fortified colorful cardboard. Some of it sloshes out as he drags the spoon across the bottom. The dog is waiting to clean up after him.

I wonder about his mood. His initial quietness isn't as good an indicator as to the angle of his eyebrows. But if it lasts much longer than a second breakfast, we could be in for a very long day.

There is nothing worse than the silent treatment on a hot summer day.

"Did you know that wombats have cube-shaped poop?" 

That's the noise for which I'd been waiting.