Celebrating in style

I think I miss holiday parties more than I should. 

Not that I miss the dressing up. Conversing with family and friends in the warm glow of festive decorations. Eating and drinking just a tad too much. Any remaining stress from the party preparation melted away with the first hardy laugh. None of that has disappeared. It's still happening, though perhaps in smaller, more subtle ways.

More ornate observances have gone the way of obsolescence. 

Those fancy fetes seemed rare in the before-times anyway. The gatherings I remember best, and miss most, amounted to an awkward pause in the workday when a few of my coworkers would chat about the things they had left on their To-Do lists as they wait in a line at the break room for a slice of pizza and a handful of sugar cookies. The parties would always last for about seven minutes before we'd return to our desks and eat in silence.

Is it weird to miss such an office holiday party?

The kind of forced frivolity at which we all used to scoff, they seemed to be just tinseled up coffee breaks designed by the very folks who may have already been working on our last, frazzled nerve. Nothing says holiday spirit like dunking on Dave from accounting.

Especially since there was always someone reminding you (usually Dave) as they filled their plates, that, in some past iteration, these parties used to be something grand. They'd be the highlight of the entire year, held in some grand hotel with catering and a cash bar. We'd go for scandal and intrigue. It would produce a story so salacious that it would be woven into the office lore and spread by successive generations of employees as if they were there.

Suffice it to say we were not our best selves.

It's a shame people don't remember how nice it was that Danielle made buckeyes every year. I hope we thanked her.

Sometimes I think when all this is over -- when we can lower our masks and truly embrace -- we may end up keeping our distance.

Eventually, we may even give up on the graduation of "normals" from new normal, to newer, to newest as we come to accept that some of the workarounds may suit us better than the old normal ever did.

I was thinking about this as I planned our running club's unofficial holiday party for the second year in a row. Unlike pre-pandemic years, where a panel of club officers voted on venues and menus and budgets, this time it was just me, plotting a course around the neighborhood for a winter evening tour of the local holiday lights. I would throw caution to the wind by bringing along a carafe of cocoa and a sleeve of paper cups. 

I hope this kind of celebration – a simple pleasure - will stick once the pall of this pandemic lifts. Because wearing a set of jingle bells from my running belt so the sound carries through the course as other like-minded friends follow along with their elf hats and Santa beards and blinking safety lights, will be a memory I cherish forever.

So you can bet when we can finally celebrate in style, I'll be there with bells on. 

All good-good

The news reached out and hit me like a fist:

bell hooks, the author, poet, professor, activist, and social critic who helped push feminism away from its white, middle-class worldview toward a more inclusive movement, died this past week. She was only 69.

The loss felt especially poignant to me as I steeled myself to celebrate the 18th birthday of my firstborn, who, on the eve of her coming of age, will come of age in a new, more unsettling time for women. She will be "Ittybit" no longer.

It seems like only a blink since this soon-to-woman joined our world. We remember how she came into it standing up. Asserting herself. How I didn't know her the way I thought I would just from having her swimming around in me for so long.

I'm not sure why, but the notion came as a surprise. As if such a thing weren't possible. That, somehow, this baby of mine wouldn't be a person separate from me starting on Day One. Or that intuition could only take me so far.  I didn't quite understand that the work of getting to know this new person would be the most laborious part of parenthood, but also the most gratifying.   

So we turned to books to help guide us on this journey. We thumbed through Spock and Sears as if they contain the perfect recipe for child-rearing. Indexed alphabetically for convenience. 

It was about this time that a gift arrived containing some of the most instructive examples of the kind of parents we wanted to be:

hooks' lyrical children's book "Homemade Love," introduced us to "Girlpie," and the trust parents can build around their families with unconditional love and forgiveness. With love, there was no hurt that could not be healed. It turned out to be one of the most comforting book we owned. The way her words came off the page and into the room helped soften the hard edges of our day. It soothed tears, lulled her to sleep, and invited pondering.


We read that book so often the pages became raggedly at the edges and the paper thinned where I'd traced the words. I knew all of them by heart. "Homemade Love" turned out to be my first and best field guide to parenthood. It was also an introduction to hooks' extensive work on the radical possibilities of feminism, race, and self-determinism and how it all interconnects through love.

For sure, her words comforted me in their artful and gentle reminders that transformation isn't all of a sudden like a bolt of lightning. It isn't delineated by things at all. It is a process of doing. A good life, while not free of suffering, has its basis in love.

"To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending."

"True resistance begins with people confronting pain ... and wanting to do something to change it."

All these years later, it occurs to me that “Homemade Love” was the parenting lesson that stuck with me best and made me seek out more. Though hooks' passing is most certainly a terrible loss, it is also a reminder that her life's work is an enduring treasure … one we can take with us wherever we go. One that new mothers will find and pass on to their children through the act of love.

She will always make you understand that it's never too late.

Elevation

Hah hah hah uhhha uhha haaaaaah.

The sound spells like laughter but it rakes through the old man's throat like cold air through a crack in the window. 

I listen for that sound the way I used to listen for silence when my kids were teacup-sized: Instinctively, hoping to avert trouble.

"Breathe through your nose."

If my voice sounds harsh, it's because I've said these four words at least forty times today and the knowledge that I will lose count of future repetitions is heavy.

Catching myself, I stop and try to practice a little of what I've been preaching. Letting a long stream of air soften my frustration, I start again:

"Dad, take long, slow, deep breaths through your nose. The machine is making the good oxygen you need. The room air isn't enough."

My father is attached to a machine that concentrates the oxygen from the air and feeds it to him from a lasso of translucent tubing. It irritates his nose and goes against every instinct he has to open a window and take long drinks of fast-moving air.

This is the new normal.

He doesn't live with me, but he's staying here while he ... convalesces.

We have no reason to believe there is a different word we should be using.

Still, it is not where any of us want to be. Complicated medical situations tend to send you on an unpleasant rollercoaster of emotions, going up and down, taking corners at jarring speed. It can be disorienting.

Everyone dies, of course. But we don't really get to choose the hill, let alone how close we'll get to the summit when that time comes. 

We don't know ... or even care to know ... how long that will be. Of course, we hope he stays for as long as necessary, but we will take as long as possible and count ourselves fortunate.

We have been fortunate.

"I'm the luckiest guy in the world," Dad tells his doctors as they help him struggle through the permanent effects of surviving lung cancer. "They found it when they could still cure it."

We knew that "cure" would come with caveats and complications that malinger: muddled thoughts, neuropathy, organ damage ... and other things that seem to come out of nowhere. 

I feel especially blessed he's so good-natured about the situation. Amazed, quite frankly, about how the darkest places make him focus harder on the tiny flickers of light. 

He's not angry at my frustration, nor is he deflated by the predicament of his child speaking to him in a parental tone. He just complies until his oxygen saturation returns and he is breathing more easily.

I relax when the panic in his voice is replaced by a story I've already heard a million times followed by a random question.

He's not a child, and my haranguing doesn't make me his parent. If anything feels familiar between caring for an elderly parent and caring for a child it;s how little confidence you have in either pursuit when you're just starting out.

"Don't get old," he tells me.

"I'd much rather that than the alternative," I sass back.

"Hey, do you have a rubber band anywhere?"

Letter to Santa

Dear Santa,

It's been eighteen years since my last confession.

Wait ... I have the wrong etherial bearded guy. Let me try this again:

Dear Santa,

I still believe. But I must confess to feeling awkward about penning an inquiry of this sort so close to your proverbial game day. But here goes:

During the last score years, I have acted as secretary and scribe on your behalf with the express goal of indoctrinating the children in my household (as well as some in the extended familial orbit) toward adopting, in their own lives, some of the essential goodness of your legendary spirit.

Sadly, a majority of my accomplishments seem to have accumulated some degree of malcontent, especially when it materializes in those I've disappointed staring into the mouths of equines.

So by way of correction, if ever so slight, I would like to highlight some free and heartfelt desires of my own this holiday season.

But before I clear the air, let me first clear the dishes. There are so many of them. 

No matter how much you are tempted, I do not wish to find a new phone, souped-up computer, or a gimmicky gadget underneath the tree. My jewelry box is already filled with gems, though I wouldn't turn my nose up at polymer clay beads or a strand of macaroni for old times' sake.

Most of us don't need things. I'm sure you would readily agree with this statement if you didn't have such binding ties with all major retailers of American brands.

Not that I blame you. Someone had to keep the lights on in Santaland.

It's not all bad. The giving and receiving of things reminds us of the ongoing need to be grateful, kind, and forgiving. To remember and be remembered.

This is exactly what I'm thinking as I unpeel the paper accordion-wrap protecting some fragile object that has arrived, anonymously, by mail.

An eerie delight.

"Cloudberry Preserves," reads the jar's label. An illustration of a dimpled, peach-colored fruit reminded me of the dogwood berries that ferment in my yard and make the squirrels act drunk as they gather mouthfuls and run off.

I can guess who sent me this sweet delicacy and relax into the charm of its name. Hovering over the words that curve elegantly around the drawing. Smiling.

Until I picture the toast crumbs and jam-slicked knives, which I can foretell will adhere to the countertops or wherever else utensils become abandoned. If there is a plate, perhaps it will turn up before spring. Likely far from the kitchen sink. Hopefully, I'll find it before it goes through the wash in a tangle of bedsheets and comes out in a thousand pieces.

I know these aren't really the things you tally to make your final determinations. I don't tend to keep track of them either, despite the fact that they tend to stack up, especially during the holidays.

But maybe you can convince the elves that we don't really need their magic as much as we'd like them to rinse a plate, empty the dishwasher or wipe up a spill now and again.

This benefits you, too. I'll have clean plates for cookies.

Running in circles

 I had dropped my son at practice and was on my way to the track nearby. While I waited for him, I had planned to run in circles.

The sound in my head wasn't music. Instead, I listed to an accounting of time: specifically, the 12 minutes it took three men to hunt and kill a human being last year in Georgia.

Twelve minutes to snuff out a life and 72 days to convince authorities to make arrests in the case.

I had already heard the news: that a jury had convicted three white men - Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William Roddy Bryan - of the brutal murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who had been jogging through their neighborhood.

Few people call it what the men's act of barbarism was on that February day in 2020: a lynching. But we all know that's what the jarring video, recorded by one of the murderous trio as they cornered their victim, had captured.

The nation learned of Arbery's killing only after pressure from family and the public forced the release of a video, put forward by those who hoped the footage would exonerate the perpetrators. It did just the opposite. Since then I have followed this case as if I knew Arbery personally. 

We had some things in common: He was a runner; his birthday coincided every so often with Mother's Day, and, as the news reported, he was curious about houses under construction. I find myself equally enthralled with the bones of a house and have walked around sites and peered through windows on runs myself.

Just the loose threads of human existence we rarely draw together to their logical conclusion. Such as the unlikelihood a gang of vigilantes would shoot a middle-aged white lady for looking around a construction site or jogging through a neighborhood on a midday afternoon

The true scandal is why this is a privilege not afforded to all.

It's tempting to think that the system worked in the case of Arbery's murderers. But it didn't really. It served the obvious. Anything less would have been a perversion like the legal circus in Wisconsin, which delivered a total acquittal for two homicides by a teenage vigilante. 

We can't keep running around in circles.

I listened to the verdict commentary as I ran in the outermost lane. I told myself I would stop when I got to his number. 

When I had run eight times around the track, I slowed to watch the distance on my watch. As the number ticked past 2:22 I slowed; waiting for 2:23 – the number that has come to memorialize Arbery. 

I have run that distance so many times; in four seasons of weather; carved it into the shape of a heart through my neighborhood. 

Today will be the last time, I think. 

My son will be done with practice soon. Together we will be home safe and sound. 

The wind sliced at me as I ran around in circles. I had forgotten my hat and gloves. 

I think about Ahmaud's mother a lot. I think about how tragic it is to lose a son so tragically; and then to have to watch as his life and death get co-opted by people like me. She didn't give him to the world. A hate crime did that. 

Race day

The alarm was set for 5:30 a.m.

I had a plan. I would wake up, stretch and shake the rust off of my barely rested muscles, and then get back into bed after having made the first of several cups of black coffee. 

If it worked correctly, there would be plenty of time to gather the gear I'd packed the night before and warm up the car. 

Of course, this hurry-up-and-wait approach works a little too well. Often I will look at my watch and realize I have lost track of time. 

When I check now ... 

It's three a.m., three-0-one, now ... and soon to be three-0-two. I'm still awake, with the imaginary screenplay of the events to follow playing on my mind in a loop. 

Why can't I sleep? Race-day anxiety, I suppose. 

Seems wasted on a person like me. 

Fast is relative. I usually finish so far from the front runners that the light from said front runners is not likely to shine anywhere near me. 

I don't even keep pace with the sweepers -those caution-cone-colored volunteers who circle on bikes with the look of concern creasing their faces. 

I read their faces: Will I be the person they need to steer toward a medical tent? "Gosh I hope not," I reply wordlessly with a smile and thumbs- up as I continue to jog along, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. 

Three-forty-five. I finally sleep. When I wake again there is only a single minute ticking down until the alarm is set to ring. 

I turn it off before the rousing clang begins. I don't want to risk waking the house unnecessarily. Not that my herd-of-elephants tip-toeing won't do just that anyway. 

As I stand and stretch in my darkened room, I run through the plan for the rest of the morning: The drive to Schenectady, the finding of parking, the warming up in place behind the start line. 

I wonder why I do this to myself. Heading off before the sun rises to run more than nine miles, alone ... in a crowd of more than a thousand.

I could sleep in and run my own race later. 

The small part of me that lacks the compulsive impulse wishes I would crawl back into bed. No one would think any less of me, not even me. I might gain a few points for the wild abandon. 

But coffee calls. 

Downstairs in the kitchen, a note leans on the coffee maker. "Coffee is inside, ready to go. Have a great race."

By the time I park my car and find my place in line, I am truly ready. I start slowly, keeping an easy rhythm through The Stockade. I find my race pace as I approach Union College, tracing my initials from Lennox to Waverly. 

The neighborhoods seem to fly by despite my slow jog. At every corner, there are people waving signs as they cheer on someone they know along with dozens of strangers. 

The city seems as warm as the morning's sun.

I am reminded why I love this course as we dip into Niskayuna before climbing back toward Central Park and into Vale Cemetery through to the eventual finish downtown. 

 It has nothing to do with the realization that I shaved ten minutes off my 15k time. That's just a bonus

The last to know

“Hey, you guys didn't tell me it was school picture time,” I yell over the sound of morning routines: the whirring of hairdryers and the pounding on bathroom doors.

"It was a shock to us, too. I didn't even comb my hair," said the boy's muffled voice.

“Mom! Can you tell him to hurry up?," his sister texted. "I'm going to be late!”

I mumble something about there still being time as I ignore her pleas and click on a link that had blinked into my email: My son's unsmiling face showed up on the screen.

His hair, newly barbered, was pushed up high on top of his forehead but still ever-so-slightly askew. It is a look he had painstakingly preened to seem like he had just rolled out of bed. Everything about it said Too-Cool for School.

Welcome to your child's high school years. That will be twenty-five dollars for two five-by-sevens and eight, wallet-sized reminders.

Of course, I bought prints of the boy in his berchon expression straight away, even though when they arrive - in six to forty-six weeks - the copies will live in a dining room cabinet, where I store the rest of the official mementos from my kids' school experiences.

His sister's progress reports and quarterly report cards occupy the top shelf. The letters and missives have been extracted from their envelopes and piled in ascending order from kindergarten onward. 

His are filed in about the same order, interleaving between notice of grades with concert programs, playbills, certificate awards, and dozens of stock-white envelopes with younger and younger faces staring out from little windows of transparent glassine.

Oversized serving bowls I've never used (lest they become broken or cracked) act as a bookend, keeping the pages upright and from accordioning out onto the floor at the feet of whoever opens the cabinet.

This is my system.

The organization of opportunity. A box here, a folder there. The common thread between them is an intention to file it for easy retrieval, should the need to access his first-grade third-quarter progress report materialize.

My system makes sense only to me.

Which is what I think, when my husband forwards a similar link for our daughter, who the school has somehow classified in their etched-in-stone recond as belonging to him first and to me as occasional chauffer and forgotten-item delivery person.

I tried to correct that record once after one particularly aggravating game of phone tag.  Failing, it would seem to have them with the order of operations from "DAD" to "MOM" -- at least on the first attempt -- since I am the parent who has the most flexible schedule and the one who isn't likely to be traveling far from home.

Evidently, they thought my acrimony was based soley in matrimony, because after that, all the official correspondence from school included me on a separate line at the same address … as if I were the Ex living with my Husband and his Mrs.

“Well, that's very big of me,” my husband joked.

I didn't know what to do besides laugh with Mr. Husband about how progressive we were as a family. 

“Laugh all you want," the girl tells us wryly as she reaches for her keys. "But this explains why I got called down to the guidance office in the fourth grade and handed an invitation to join the Banana Splits Club," she says before she slams yet another door. 

“I never understood why she didn't go out for that. She loves making desserts.”

“Uhm. ... Because it's for kids whose parents are getting a divorce. She thought they were telling her the bad news.”

That sounds terrible, but it's probably going to get worse when they find out you've been hoarding all these horrible pictures.

I wish us all nine lives

 “What's this now?” I asked my son after I turned off the road and into the schools' driveway. About a dozen people with placards had gathered on the sidewalk where the intersection jammed with cars. It was just after 7 a.m., his usual driver -- his sister -- had taken the day off.

"Anti-factsers," he said with a sigh. “They don't want their kids to wear masks or have to get vaccinated or to discuss American History, I guess if it means talking about the racism parts. But I don't think any of them have kids who actually go to school here.”

“That seems weird.”

It took several minutes to get through the line, let him off, and get back to the road where the protestors stood, waving at traffic with bare-faced, beatific grins. They were joyful in their work professing strongly-held but evidence-free beliefs.

As I waited for my chance to escape, a woman bundled against the cold wave at me, seeking some solidarity. Perhaps a thumbs-up.

I gave her a different finger. 

It happened so suddenly. A knee-jerk reaction to a cheerful wave of a sign that bore a stolen slogan, and my undeniable urge to protest gushed forth. I used the only sign I had on me.

I was angry. Civility be damned.

The face outside my window changed from a smile into a startled scowl and finally rested in a downturned slant. I recognized the person then. I knew her. From a past life. One in which acquaintances seem to go deeper into friendship than they do. 

This knowledge, I suppose, should have caused me to feel remorse for using such a base vulgarity. The telling it like it is becoming less clear when you're telling it to a familiar face.

But I had none of those feelings. I had all of the shocks of recognition and none of the remorse. I didn't feel caught in a weak moment. I felt relieved. 

I rolled down my window and made my silent protest official, albeit with more publicly acceptable words. She conveyed, with equal reserve, that our diametrically opposed disappointments were mutual. I rolled my window up again and sat in silence until a break in the traffic allowed me to merge.

I drove away slowly, letting the distance between our planted flagpoles dilute my animus.

I don't need to know why she and the others have picketed a school none of their children attend using statements of things that aren't happening there anyway. Maybe she's a true believer, or perhaps she's searching for something that's missing from her life.

Aren't we all? Missing something?

I just hope she remains healthy and that she and her family gets through this crisis without a visit from harm. But I don't have to expend any more energy changing hearts or minds.

Consistency can simply become a thing we mold around our broken thoughts, rendering it into a defective weapon or an ineffective defense. 

We may be out in the world glaring at one another, but we still fit in a box with Schroedinger's cat, destined to be right and wrong at once.

Teen spirit

 "I'm going shopping, does anyone want to go with me?"

I was talking to the air around me, fully expecting silence, when the two teenagers within earshot harmonized "Yes."

The girl is usually a coin flip, but the boy rarely obliges.

Shopping isn't his thing. He's fine with shrugging his shoulders when asked if he needs anything from the market, and then nodding or shaking his head as I press him on a list I've made on my own.

Do you need shorts? Underwear? Soap or shampoo?

What would you like for dinner? Soup? Stroganoff? 

It's so rare to hear: "I'll just go with you," now in a voice so low on the vocal register I can barely make out the words that I almost wanted to celebrate.

I even felt a little remorseful as I ousted him from the front seat in deference to his older sister, who could easily suffer the indignity of taking a backseat to her little brother if she didn't also suffer from motion sickness. A malady the boy himself didn't inherit and wasn't conniving enough to feign. 

He didn't even rhyme the words that have been used against him time and again when his slow-motion meandering makes him the rotten egg.

"You snooze, you lose."

For her part, the surprise presence of her brother on this hastily planned procurement excursion didn't phase her. She doesn't even think of him as a Little Bother let alone call him that to his face. 

She doesn't lord her senior status over his first-year lack of standing. And for his part, he doesn't pester her that he actually stands taller.

For my part, I follow them around the store with a basket as they decide on the things they'd like.

She needs shampoo and conditioner. He needs deodorant and body wash.

She opens caps and breathes in the scent as best as she can through her mask, while he tips a package straight from a shelf into the basket. 

She plucks the thing out with two fingers and an arm's length of utter disdain.

"You can't buy just anything! What if you hate it? What if it's entirely offensive? What if it smelled like a muskrat that died in a sewer?"

He takes a whiff, gags, and quickly puts the stick of odorant back on the shelf. 

"Try this one. It just smells clean."

And this is how it goes for the better part of an hour. We wind our way through clothing and accessories to toiletries. They argue the merits of one snack food over another with good humor. 

She enjoys being his personal shopper and he gains confidence through her recommendations. As I push my card into the reader, I wondered if I've ever felt happier to part with money? 

And that's when it occurred to me that we hadn't been in this particular store together in a decade when my daughter rebelled following a particular temper tantrum from her brother that brought her to tears. 

Noting small joys has been essential to me as I use them to plaster over the mounting dings of life's disappointments. It's the sweet jelly that makes the salty peanut butter palatable in my generational sandwich. 

I am particularly grateful that sometimes teen spirit seems so much more resilient.

It's also nice to know that time heals at least one wound. 

Life is too damn short

 A new Siena poll reported the nearly eight hundred or so New Yorkers it surveyed have largely accepted COVID-19, and its protocols, as an enduring part of their daily existence. 

Most of those who responded said they carry a mask with them wherever they go. And while our confidence has ebbed since the feel-good-days of summer, we are showing more comfort in our pre-pandemic chores. A majority even said they felt comfortable shopping in grocery stores despite feeling the pinch of higher prices and supply-side shortfalls. At least the aisles seem wider now that the stores have mostly abandoned their one-way traffic patterns. 

Of course, half of those surveyed cling to the hope that things will steadily improve, despite transmission rates all over the country remaining exceedingly high, and despite some officials sounding new low-level alarms about the likelihood of variants of the variants coming in via elsewhere. 

Nearly three-quarters of us are comfortable eating inside of a restaurant. We're only middling more confident returning to the workplace. 

What are the options? Quit?

Well … another study affirms there is a Great Resignation afoot, with more than 4.3 million Americans -- nearly three percent of the entire workforce - quitting their jobs in August.

Calling in sick just isn't the same as it used to be, I suppose. Neither is juggling a routine that has been anything but routine. What’s behind all these numbers is still up for debate. But life, some economists now think, is just too damn short.

I still check the trackers every day, toggling between the CDC and The New York Times. I compare their figures to those of our county health department ... and the local school district, and no matter how I figure it, none of the numbers ever make sense. 

Seventy-six thousand cases today, 36 where I live, eleven the day before that. Nine for the week at the school. The two-week average is still flat. The county health department closed its building again and the latest school board meeting attracted the twelve loudest people in the county who think masks are the modern symbol of tyranny and will disfigure the faces of their kids, none of whom go to school anyway because of things they don't understand like Critical Race Theory or things they are afraid of like Halloween celebrations not to mention the War on Christmas that's been waged since a few lovely and caring people started saying "Happy Holidays" in an effort to be more inclusive. 

Sometimes I can't believe I ever got angry trying to make this make sense. 

I have done my level best. I have enthusiastically welcomed the vaccine for myself and my family. I have rolled with the punches of sometimes convoluted and always evolving messaging. I have accepted a moderate ability to adapt as my personal savior.  And perhaps most surprisingly of all, I have stopped staring angrily at the barefaced fools.

I have pushed up my sleeves and soldiered on even when I didn't feel entirely capable. I have laced up my shoes and run my fastest race, and I have set limits. I have made more of an effort to enjoy my neighbors. I have turned the other cheek. 

Just as our parents and their parents weathered the storms of their times and were forever changed, so too are we.

Life is too damn short.

Making allowances

 My husband's nose crinkled. He fixed his quizzical stare - that of a man who has either smelled something rancid or doesn't understand the question - on me.

"Why on earth should we pay people to do the right and moral thing?"

We had been talking about the news; in particular incentives (monetary and other compensation) some employers (and government entities) are offering their workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19. 

He thinks it's wrong. That the altruism of obligation should be the only path lauded.

Suffering should be the gift for those who choose unwisely. 

Whereas I don't really see the problem with funding unpopular mandates if it has the potential to corral more of us toward herd immunity. 

For some reason this idea makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. It offends his sense of fairness.

His take doesn't surprise me. I'm the carrot, he's the stick. And fair is the thing at the end of the summer with all the rides.

He shoots me that look again. 

Discussions like these usually end in a stalemate, and have for more than a

decade as we grappled with the mechanics of how home economics

should work.

"Allowances" shouldn't just be handed to the kids, he argued. "They need to learn the value of work!"

He was also of the belief that we shouldn't pay the kids for completing household chores, seeing as how contributing to the family is an obligatory duty that is needed to advance a common goal.

 

This theory has always struck me as somewhat off, seeing as how there is only one person who ever brings the dishes and the laundry and the vacuum cleaner over the finish line. 

And it isn't him. 

"What? That knife, dangling over the edge of the sink hasn't finished it's race yet."

I don't expect miracles, not after entertaining whether it's fair that Santa gets credit for any gifts that don't fit into a stocking. 

One of the reasons our kids don't have "chores" is that we haven't managed to figure out which random household tasks fall into "job category" and which fall into the "ask not what your parents can do for you but what you can do for your parents" rubric. 

But, aside from philosophical angst and a general lack of consistency, the kids can be persuaded  to empty the dishwasher from time to time and mow the lawn once a week. I thank them by picking up their favorite snacks at the store, or springing for a trendy pair of sneakers. The timing of these gifts, often on a whim, never feels transactional. 

I can tell it bothers him sometimes they have to be cajoled or reminded. That the kindness of their hearts isn't reward enough to spur motivation. 

That it seems like it's always carrot or stick. 

Kindlyists

 It's sometimes a pleasant feeling to immerse oneself in the warm, soothing waters of fiction.

To sit in a tub of bubbling intrigue, getting all pruney, while the edges of a pulpy paperback curl in the steamy humidity.

I'm not ashamed to admit to feeling this creature-comfort envelop me as I read a certain piece of long-form journalism about two authors, their short stories, organ donation, and plagiarism. 

Though, perhaps, I should be.

Ashamed.

The tale had all the hallmarks of an impending train wreck, with too many heroes unable to decide which damsel is worthy of saving while a dark chorus is all too happy to oblige an opinion.

The piece, if you haven't read it, is a fairly clear recitation of the string of events that resulted in a years' long battle between the two women, who accuse one another of intellectual theft and public harassment in a murky soup of hard feelings about the art of friendship.

Kindness, it turns out, has many dark sides.

I wish it were purely fiction.

This battle seems to be just another indicator of the current national psyche. And as we steep ourselves in this tea of social media, we tread some dangerous waters. It's not just about physical isolation, the cloying need to be known, or the degree of difficulty we face if we want even minor transgressions to eventually be forgotten. It's also about how minor transgressions can rage into the world and light our own little corner of it on fire.

We put ourselves out there to be judged. Sometimes harshly. Unsurprisingly, no one comes out in the end as a sympathetic character.

This is why, through a series of avoidable lawsuits, a court will decide what monetary compensation should be afforded to the party that most closely adhered to the laws in question: be they concerning intellectual property or harassment. 

It's tempting to scoff at the litigiousness of our society as well as the cruelty of adults, until one realizes how little control we have over other beings and how much time we are willing to devote to revenge. It can certainly seem, despite the means of legal intervention, we often see our choices flail between the sunk costs we must accept as "water under a bridge," or a scorched earth we try our best to demolish with explosives.  
The law will take a side.

But even when a verdict is rendered, the court of public opinion, of course, will always be out.

Wherever we scroll, we'll see a new iteration of this modern-age harm. 

This week, we watched a whistleblower explain the difference between what Facebook knows to be true and what it tells us about harm its very existence causes to virtually everyone and everything ... from teenage girls to the state of our democracy.

We see the usual finger-pointing: The calls for personal accountability in the face of systemic manipulation. The demand for systemic overhaul without toppling the expectation of continued freedom of speech. I wonder if we are ready for the messy battle that will ensue in search of a cure?

A part of me, an idealistic part, hopes that the answer will be to demand MORE of social media by requiring they do LESS for us: at the very least, we should ensure they stop selling our secrets on the side. Maybe, if they aren’t allowed to track where we go and sell it at a premium to those who seek to influence, we will finally face enough of the truth to see ourselves and each other a little more kindly.

But the lesser part of me - can't wait to read the sequel.

In the shadows

 

A gentle breeze tickled the back of my neck and coaxed me out of a fresh sleep. The zephyr danced lightly around my shoulders before cognition had returned enough to help me make a connection between this strange sensation and the window I'd forgotten had been left open to the night air.

I am awake. And awake I will stay, I think, at least for a while. I angle my pillow and prop my head against it until the tension in my neck relaxes. I dismiss the idea of pulling the covers over my shoulders. This shiver I feel is not from the cold. Summer’s lingering humidity tempers the chill.

The sounds of crickets sharpen from a low drone to something that seems more defined ... more personal ... a duet maybe? Then a solo.

The sound of air seems to rush all around me. A ceiling fan keeps churning though I don’t feel any of its effects. The dog snorts and exhales every so often, startling the cat whose purr turns into a snore. All systems, normal.

I listen for air currents downstairs, but the sounds of it can't penetrate the floor. Or perhaps, the sounds I can hear wall it off. I wonder if I should get up and go down. Make sure all is right with the universe, which includes a new wrinkle.

I need to relax. But not just yet.

I breathe in, one nostril refusing at first to open. More breathing. I'm not worried. Eventually, it will soften and allow the flow of air to enter more evenly.  It's a familiar pattern I've attributed to allergies but is probably the alternate-side breathing that happens automatically, though we're not supposed to notice.   

But I notice everything about this luxury of air now. 

A machine the size of a suitcase that an airline would make you stow in the belly of the plane for an exorbitant price, is downstairs, producing oxygen for my father. 

With rhythmic frequency, it hisses and ticks as it supplies him with the most basic of needs. 

He is staying with us for a while as he adjusts to this new normal. Leashed, as he must be, to a dozen yards of coiled tubing delivering purified air.

It takes some getting used to; having to think about breathing. Having to walk slower, do fewer tasks, remind yourself to inhale. Try to stay calm.

He still tinkers: adjusting this or that every so often. Experimenting with things that are obvious to him ... less so to me. As he walks around the house, he coils the leash of tubing and wraps it around midway anchor points; the finials of chair-backs mostly, the occasional knob of a cabinet door.  

I understand this compulsion. It seems only fitting that "medical things" should be kept off the floor. I follow behind and quietly untether it before the furniture topples. This is a task I repeat several times a day.

It's nice having him here. His presence is comforting, especially when he is humming a wordless tune from his youth as he makes toast. 

But it’s scary, too. Eventually, there will come a silence that will create a hole in this little part of the universe. I listen for it constantly. ... For the air whistling around him. A wheeze or a gasp. My breath always catches when he tells me, “I’m having a problem,” until he adds a specification that lets me know whatever it is, it’s something I can fix: “Technology is such a pain in the ... My phone isn’t ringing.”

I try to savor the relief as I walk him through this valley of the shadows of his iPhone.

The ends of our rope

I feel a little guilty as I tread upstairs into my room, where I quietly perform my own version of a Mr. Rogers' quick change.

I'll kick off my sandals and trade my bland daywear for more colorful activewear. 

I'll sit on a bench and pull on my sneakers. They slip over my heels even though the laces are already tied in a standard double knot. Never untying them is a strange and satisfying little shortcut I've started taking lately as I practice this strange and satisfying ritual that is running. 

Ordinarily, I'd refer to the bright orange kicks as "shoes," but "sneaker" seems more fitting at this moment. I feel guilty because I know my casual transformation is unlikely to delight my studio audience. I happen to be hiding my end-of-day clothing change from the dog, who, despite a milky cast to her eyes, and grey hair spiking up through her soft ginger fur, is pacing near the door like a puppy.

It's early evening and time for her walk, but I want to run. Ordinarily, we'd do both. She'd start with her "other person," ambling west along the same circular route while I lope off to the east. I will have clocked a mile or two before we meet at a mid-way park, where we'll slowly circle back toward home together.

But her usual walking partner is away on business, and her kids are busy with other things, so it's just the two of us. I think she knows that her chances of being at the end of her rope will dwindle when I'm at the end of mine. 

But I can't be sure. This is all going through my head, like a puppet show, bolstering my resolve to "run off" on her. For a little while, at least. 

As I stretch, I listen for her whereabouts. With luck and planning, I can avoid bearing witness to her disappointment as I leave. All I need to do is quietly take a right at the bottom of the stairs and exit the house through the furthest door from the last place I hear her nails go click-click-click against the floor. 

Not looking back is the key. If I make it outside without her seeing me or catching my scent, I could be home, free. 

I just need 20 minutes of not stopping to smell or bark or crouch. Twenty minutes to reach an arbitrary goal, and then I will make it up to her. 

I still feel a little bad. 

She's got a hang-dog expression that, like a thermometer, measures her exact level of heated disappointment from the gradual descent of her head as it dips from her shoulders toward the floor. 

When I return, she won't even feign acknowledgment. She'll just follow me with her eyes, refusing to put forward any effort to greet me.

I won't torture her. I'll just tug the favorite leash out of a tangle of backups; the one with the plastic hydrant hanging from the padded hand loop. All will be forgiven.

Safety Third

 My kids had returned to school for exactly one day - six measly hours at most - when my cell phone pinged with the first COVID alert of the semester. 

As I follow instructions to open my email, my heart racing, I stood at the ready for the bad news. I would refresh the window until the email explainer materialized some minutes later, my stomach contracted into knots. 

We’ve gone through more than 18 months, two rounds of precautionary isolation, and an untold number of disposable masks, and the message of impending doom always throws me for a loop.

This time school officials had detected a case of COVID-19 during a routine screening of athletes, who, as a surprise to me, are not required to be vaccinated so long as they agree to once-per-week testing, which will not be conducted without a parent's consent.

So much for "safety first."

“Oh … yeah,” my daughter says, rolling her eyes and dropping her books on the table with a thud. The alert has already been the talk of the school. “It's probably a footballer," she says, noting a posse of study hall detectives are already busy sussing out dirt from the rumor mill. "It's only a school," she says with sarcasm. "We aren't entitled to facts."

This goes against everything I thought I understood about how back-to-in-person-school was handling "high risk" athletics. It also factored into the decision to allow my kid to rejoin his team. 

As I waded through the web pages about protocols and policies, which all touted the value of being vaccinated as the best way to control this pandemic, I wondered if I was losing my mind. I felt I understood, quite clearly, that the students engaged in risky team sports would be required to be fully vaccinated. It took several reads to understand that mandates were mentioned only as far as the school was investigating the potential to implement them.

Not that it would. 

Without a determination, the season would go forward and err on the side of "safety third."

So ... This is how it's going to be. 

As we mull old platitudes about how sports build character, we should consider the shrugging of shoulders about parents valuing their kids' personal goals over public health. 

The facts as stated are clear and resounding. It is in the National interest to vaccinate as many people as possible to limit infection. It is in the community interest see to it that spread is minimized to the largest extent possible, which should mean requiring immunization for high-risk activities. 

It is astounding that we are in this predicament since, for generations, schools have required a host of immunizations against communicable diseases as well as health evaluations for participation in sports.

This is not about fairness. Or rights to body autonomy. No one - and that includes my immunized kid - has ever had an unfettered right to play sports on a team. 

All the analogies we've accepted about the benefit of sports -- the need for hard work, and skill, and humility -- are empty platitudes when they aren't put into practice. Because sports only have the potential for character building when all those stars align.

And the truth is those stars rarely align on their own. 

It's a shame that our state's schools haven't moved more quickly to protect the health and safety of our communities, especially as our infection rates increase.

This is no time to take our eyes off that prize.

We should urge our districts to mandate vaccines for all eligible students and staff if we are to continue in-person learning.

Integrity isn't something we can wear on our sleeves like a number on a jersey if we are unwilling to roll up those sleeves.

Fighting fire

I woke up Wednesday to the news that Texas had effectively overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that guaranteed women the right to end a pregnancy before the fetus reaches viability. Roe confirmed that women have the right and the autonomy to control their own healthcare decisions. They don't need to ask permission or be granted it by parent or spouse or, as Texas has now allowed, some random person you've never met who has a firmly held belief, no matter how cynical, against one form of evidence-based health care. 

Roe's protections for women died in Texas because the United States Supreme Court was silent.

Like a church mouse. 

So, in addition to a viral plague that is burning through this nation, we stand here mouths agape in witness to another harebrained, fanatical miscarriage of justice that works precisely as intended: to do the most harm to women and any institution that is enabled to protect them.

So we wait for the hand-wringing and tweet churning of our more rational representatives to solidify into nothing more than shrugs. And as we dread word of this malicious sickness spreading to other parts of this nation, we are told to have faith.

Justice will prevail. Equality is still possible.

Roe, after all, has long been viewed as imperfect. Ruth Bater Ginsberg disliked the law because its sweeping nature made abortion - an important women's right - vulnerable to attacks such as this one.

But fear of losing the protections of an imperfect law meant death by a thousand cuts. Without access, the right to safe medical care for women is hopelessly impeded.

The fight is not over, but the way we battle needs to change. 

I've said before in these pages that as a young woman I didn't truly understand the nature of this fight. 

It wasn't until I became a mother that my understanding of abortion changed to fuller clarity. 

"Choice" is the word that has hoodwinked so many. It has forced us to view women as arrogant or entitled. It has allowed us to look down on one to the detriment of all. Neither should ever happen. It has also forced us to share our private and painful stories only to have them fall on deaf ears. 

You will hear these stories over and over again about readiness, about miscarriages, about pregnancies intended or not. You will hear about women whose lives are emperilled for no good reason at all. And now that Texas has added a new sick twist, the problem will only multiply. These stories are going to break our hearts in a million pieces.

It's not enough to be broken. We need to fix this now and forever. Because healthcare is also fraught with some of the same political ideologies that sully our nation's stated commitment to equality and privacy and wellbeing. 

This onus placed on women and our healthcare system should be treated like the wildfire that it is. 

In addition to using federal authority to enforce the constitutional protections that women have under Roe, we need to expand the courts to ensure this bad-faith chipping away at such a woman's fundamental freedoms becomes a relic of an abysmal history.

Until then, accrediting organizations that oversee doctors should ensure anyone in their ranks who discloses information about their patients' histories to a "vigilante," should face dire sanctions, including the loss of medical licenses. 

And men, don't think this isn't about you. Your ability to succeed almost certainly hinges on a woman who had choices, too. 

If we just let it burn, this fire will ravage us all. 

Hidden soundtrack

The cicadas are chirping, sounding the alarm on another sweltering day. Their drone is a vibrating metallic noise that shakes the trees. It rings in my ears, like a thousand whistles or a bow drawn slowly across the strings of a violin. It reminds me of a bicycle chain before it breaks free from its toothy ring.I rarely see these annual minstrels. But their symphony is unmistakable.

Harmless, like a benign tinnitus, their low and ever-present song plays in the background of my mind until my thoughts go silent.

The insects filter the world's soundtrack almost to distraction, making me pine for the churning of air conditioning and the cool, dry air of the indoors.

I feel guilty hiding here. Having banished my children into the sauna outside. They have to stretch their atrophied education muscles. Visit the library. Practice getting out of the house in the morning like it's on fire.

Schooling has already started in my house, though classes won't resume for another week or so. The noise of postponed summer projects has finally cut through the din of other distractions.

I want to rail against the last-minute-ness of this preseason panic. But I can't muster any enthusiasm for I-told-you-so.

Such a gloat would backfire anyhow. I told them next to nothing as they plodded along with their mostly unencumbered summer days. I prefer to think of myself as more of a workhorse than a nag.

The last year of high school for one; the first year for the other.

Both suddenly realizing the stakes. Though they seem like two sides of one coin.

One shuts off the world for a bit to focus while the other opens up to its many avenues of assistance. Then, like a coin toss, they flip.

Nature seems at play, even here.

The one who insists on courting perfection never leaves any room for the subsequent disappointments to morph into happy accidents. While the other reaches only for the low-hanging fruit, not exercising gumption until the effortless supply is exhausted.

I've forced myself not to worry. Not to take on the weight of a future I can't know, not to celebrate too loudly. Instead, I just plod along, trying to do my best. It doesn't feel like work when you are just standing there, lightly pushing back. And even in the perfect moments — the ones where you witness success, or progress, or just a little extra effort — the moments where it is possible for pride to drown out the low drone of life, it still feels wrong to harbor it. I'm not proud like I thought I'd be.

It's tempting to think they've won this for the team. In the soundtrack of your mind, the song of cicadas changes to the roar of a crowd. But it seems like tempting fate. 

Best to be humble and to keep plodding along with the low drone of the work at hand. Just as their failures are not entirely mine, neither are their successes. 

The struggle may be real, but it's hidden.

The summer before our discontent

My son was on a mission to find the perfect back-to-school backpack, and he was willing to comb through countless stores, be they outlet or otherwise, to find it. He finally found what he was looking for in the corner of a boutique, the name of which we couldn't pronounce despite ample force-smiled pronunciations from the sales clerk.

But one thing was clear: this bag was exactly the thing a newly minted ninth-grader needed for the year ahead. 

It wasn't flashy -- just a slim rectangle constructed of heavy-duty black canvas with brown leather accents that could be expanded twice its width by one extra track of zipper -- but it was expensive.

His father wasn't convinced that it would be big enough to tote books and binders back and forth and suggested we keep looking. 

But it was those brown leather accents - and my insistence that not all heavy textbooks need to make a daily commute - that sold it.

I wasn't quite prepared for the sight of him: all stretched out by an abrupt summer growth spurt, ready, willing, and able to do whatever it takes to get back to school.

He was finally a big kid.

And as my eyes welled with tears at the presence of my last-born child, who stood before me with a brand new backpack as if this were just another summer day before school starts.  

If his sly grin and bedraggled hair weren't enough to show me the time for grieving had passed, his misaligned socks and properly-fitted mask let me believe that we have the ability (and the peer pressure) needed to soldier on.

As we look forward to another school year in pandemic land, I want to wish us all the fortitude to withstand the shrieks and rantings of a few angry voices.

We've heard you rage, bare-faced, into the microphones insisting you will not be inoculated by common sense; nor masked by common decency; nor silenced by common knowledge. 

We know no experience from your many years upon this earth can dissuade you from blindly following your terrible intuition to its final resting place. 

But restrictions can save the rest of us.

Don't want to get vaccinated? That's fine but you won't be able to get on a plane. Or go to a restaurant. In time, there may not be room for you at the hospital.

Don't want to wear a mask? Sure, you still have that choice, but you won't be allowed into school. Or the library or your doctor's office. 

Because we do still hold some truths to be self-evident: That vaccines are still our best hope for an end to this suffering and that mask-wearing, like its predecessor, hand-washing, is an effective way to minimize the spread of infection. 

We know that when ICUs are filled with COVID patients, there's little room for heart patients, or cancer patients, or any other emergencies.

We know that children with curable diseases will be put at greater risk of death. 

And we know that our healthcare system is already strained beyond a sustainable capacity. 

At some point ... this dam protecting us will break where it has not been maintained and the floodwaters may drown us all. 

We need to use the only tools we have in our proverbial backpacks. Get vaccinated. Wear your mask. 

It is the very least thing we can do to protect each other. 

Small worlds

 My father had been taking a breather on a park bench while his grandchildren shopped for summer treasures on this unusually hot-for-Maine day. He heard the announcement before I did. I had been herding one generation of vacationland wanderers towards another and hadn't noticed my phone alerts going wild.

"I just can't believe it,” dad exclaimed after I had circled back to him. “I was sitting next to this guy from Boulder who was talking to a girl from Boston, and they were asking me where I was from and when I told them 'New York' they said, 'well, your governor just quit'."

The phones around us started to crow with the news and I handed mine to my dad so he could read the bulletin for himself.

Despite being a life-long Democrat, Cuomo-the-younger wasn't my dad's favorite. It didn't matter to him what malfeasance finally caught up with the state's highest-ranking official.

"Well, good riddance to bad rubbish."

Dad's beef with the governor wasn't about the man's treatment of women. It was about taxes, and the shady ways they are levied. And it focused on one tax in particular: He had asked a question about a charge on my mother's nursing home bill — a fully-refundable gross receipts tax only private-pay nursing home patients were charged — and it pulled a string that unraveled one of the underhanded ways the state silently slips its hand in a pocket.

"Why would you give the state a no-interest loan if it wasn't intended to be a swindle?"

The next year, when the refund was capped at two percentage points below what he had paid, my father sued for the difference. He won, but the judgment was again only personal. All the other private-pay nursing home residents that were assessed the tax would have to file lawsuits of their own to get their due.

It may not seem like much — a few hundred dollars tacked onto a bill — but to him, an elderly man watching his wife slowly fade away, it was crime more insidious than armed robbery. 

And then when the state misrepresented the numbers of nursing home deaths as a result of COVID last year, he cursed Cuomo and thanked God for taking her before a time when all these souls passed alone.

So I was a bit surprised when my father handed back my phone after reading the news and promptly changed the subject.

"Ok, do you think it looks like rain?"

That's when I realized what I dreaded most was not the noise, but the silence. 

My Twitter feed became a feeding frenzy of expectations as people opined about all the worse crimes they would attribute to the Cuomo name, it seemed clear that sexual harassment is the mail fraud of the modern era. They may not get you on murder, but it's the charge with teeth.  

We seem unable or unwilling to make a distinction between the unpleasantness of an awkward exchange, that should lead to an apology and a behavior change, and the undue difficulty of handling an abuser who exploits those same awkward moments, turning them into a pattern of abuse.

Staying quiet is safer. Abusers know secrecy works to their advantage, too. Rarely do those who speak out find their situations improve. Instead, they enter battles they might be unprepared or ill-equipped to fight. It's usually easier and safer to stay quiet and move along.

I'm grateful for people who find the strength to speak out. I'm grateful for people who do the thankless job of going against the expectation of silence and the pressure to move on. And I am ultimately hopeful that support for truth and accountability will be harder to suppress in the light of this new day.

Two paths diverged in the wood

We stopped near a small, windowed gatehouse and waited as a man arose from a folding chair and made his way to our car. 

The ginger-haired trustee adjusted his spectacles and smiled as he recited the basics we should know: there is no fee for trail use, but donations are always appreciated. So too would be any efforts on our part to park our vehicles just as conservatively, leaving as much room as possible to accommodate other motorists, since the small parking lot is likely to fill up by midday.

He didn't bother with the "thou shall nots," which are prominently displayed elsewhere though they are widely understood by most day hike enthusiasts despite their varying levels of enthusiasm.

1) thou shall not camp

2) thou shall not build fires

3) thou shall not litter

4) thou shall not bring dogs

5) thou shall not tread off of the pathway

The instructions were as familiar to me as the paper-clip-shaped gate that closed the trail to traffic but opened the parking lot to at least 20 more cars. 

Eighteen if you count ours.

The eight of us - roughly two families' worth (give and take) - had arrived in tandem. 

But the familiarity didn't lessen the dread that had kept a steady, elevating rhythm in my chest.

It was a beautiful day and the two-mile trail to the beachfront was easier than expected since the trail was a literal road in only recent-seeming disrepair. 

I wasn't sure what to expect as we headed toward our hiking destination, the least of which was how we would find it. Literally or figuratively.

Oh sure, I knew the place would be beautiful and surprising. It had come highly recommended. It would require only moderate effort but would yield maximum return for the investment. 

I knew at the midway point, there would be the prize of a long, sandy beach. We would rest there and be soothed by gentle ocean waves as we ate our packed lunches. We wouldn't even have to contend with wind gusts that might threaten to make sand an actual ingredient of the sandwiches. 

I could also guess that sunscreen would be less evenly or liberally applied since the sun hid behind clouds of murderous mosquitoes and green-headed biting flies. All of which would inflict damage to be reckoned with later. 

Before this worry, though, I had worried we wouldn't even find the place. It wasn't a foregone conclusion that someone in programming had already alerted GPS maps to be on the lookout for a small sign posted near a small road, tucked between a dense thicket of pine trees, that would lead us to the trailhead. 

A part of me even hoped we'd wind up lost. 

Expectations are like this. The things you remember later, and it doesn't necessarily matter how they measure up or how fond one is of the memory. 

My mind always goes to the problems we will encounter mostly from internal forces, like in the angry, scrunched up faces our children - not to be confused with the other children amongst us who are always more amenable - would rather do anything else but walk through a wooded path with their parents. 

Doesn't matter if that path leads to a beach of uncanny beauty or not. 

No, mostly I wondered if the familial bond would tether or fray as we enjoyed and endured the exploration together. As we silently compare ourselves and sit in our own hazy clouds of burning judgment. 

Except this time we weren't together. 

Illness and infirmity had splintered our family group ever so slightly. Free will had also been part of the calculation for the first time in my recollection. It was no longer a foregone conclusion that everyone would be expected to participate in everything.

Thus, our son -- whose sour stomach gave cover for his more usual sour experience of the great outdoors -- elected to stay home.

This was a new experience for which I wasn't entirely ready. And the fact that no matter how beautiful the trees were behind the veil of fog on that island in the distance, they were so much less because my son was not there to complain about the long car ride or the uphill climb to a beach or the relentless nature of biting insects. 

And he was happily home, resting up for his quest to lead us all down a bowling lane.

The epiphany

Elise Stefanik's incredulous statements in response to the opening day of testimony during the House select committee's investigation of the criminal events of January 6 don't deserve a reaction. 

As we see her and her colleagues twisting uncomfortably under the supposed magnifying glass of plain sight, we should all understand what’s happening. Namely deflection.

Victim blaming is nothing new. But transferring blame with such cognitive dissonance has become the ultra-conservative power play that, up until recently, has worked in their favor. 

Try to bring your mind back to all those “Pelosi” flags waving as the Stop the Steal Tourists erected gallows, broke windows, dragged police officers, and hunted down certain members of Congress who were proponents of counting votes. 

Stefanik is on stage playing a part that has been lucrative for her. The telegraphing taunts make for good headlines and blood pressure-raising retorts by a plethora of pundits, but the only purpose they serve should be deeply disturbing to us all. 

I'd caution that her sophomoric provocations directed at Democrats -- which seem slapped together with the same spittle and mud favored by the bloated, candy-floss coiffed talking head she turned by carrying bucketloads of his fetid water -- are nothing more than theater. 

But our nation seems immovably transfixed by this Debauchery Show whether it plays live or in syndication.

Little by little, trained as we are to chant along with the refrain, too many of us would sell our souls for the click counts. 

We all watched into the night as she came back from an office bunker after riding out an attempted insurrection and stood up to loudly and proudly continue pushing a bad-faith case for the subverting of our democracy.

And with this slime, she was anointed.

Stefanik soon replaced Liz Cheney as chair of the House Republican Conference after Cheney upset the applecart by voting to impeach the party's golden goose.

She knows this script as well as anyone. Deny and deflect. Take the inconvenient burden of guilt and toilet paper the nation's house with it. People will always be willing to blame the occupants for scrimping on the candy. 

I could rant forever about Stefanik and those like her whose public disservice is gerrymandered into seemingly infinite revolving terms. 

But I won't.

For far too long we have been blinded by our own brutality and acceptance of inequality because of the thin layer of politeness on the surface.

And that politeness, now stripped away, shows the ugly truth we need to address.

Stefanik represents a problem that can only be solved when the rest of us become better citizens. We the People have to demand more than this particular dog and pony show from those we elect as our representatives. We have to demand decency, accountability, and the seeking of fact and truth before it’s too late. Our leaders, the people we entrust with power, have to be more principled because when they aren't, as we can plainly see, the laws are rarely applied. 


It's time we recognize the game and refuse to play it with folks whose only strategy is to upend the table. 

Swing states

I thought I'd found the keys to the universe outside of a climbing cube at our neighborhood playground many years ago. This was back in the early-2000s when I was an exhausted, mid-30s mom with two small children who ALWAYS wanted me to play.

It was the first time that age didn’t seem like a number as much as an advancing collection of physical ailments rooted in lack of sleep.  

"Oh, moms don't play," said a gravelly voice from the park bench beside me. 

"Moms," the woman, who might have been my twin had she been a full foot shorter, explained "have a sworn duty to watch and referee. We don't PUL-AY!" 

Her children did not seem convinced by her theatrical pronunciations. 

They tried to pry her off her shaded perch and join them on the slide by calling her out on her obvious falsehood. 

"Last week you went on the teeter-totter and the monkey bars."

But she was planted quite firmly in her arguments.

"I know it's disappointing. The rule was just handed down yesterday by the higher-ups in Momgress.

"Section IV of Article IX of the Momstitution states quite clearly that children must learn the propulsive mechanisms for achieving variable pendular levels on playground apparatus with minimal guidance. And since the best way to learn is by doing, the most I can do is four pushes at the swing."

To be honest, I liked the idea of rigid roles. Especially in that moment when I didn't want to try and fit myself into something smaller or suffer the almost unbearable nausea that accompanied any amount of spinning whatsoever.

It also fits the dominant parenting philosophy that moms and their kids can't ever really be friends because the power structure prevents it.

Often, we think of this as a sad declaration on the state of the family as a hierarchal mentoring unit that's sole purpose is to apply wet blankets to the fire within. 

I think the thing we tend to gloss over is that "friends" like "family" aren't monoliths. But they aren't interchangeable either. Like the teeter-totter, it’s not just a balance. Without the highs and lows, there isn't a ride. 

This became clearer to me once my children grew into teenagers, one of whom drives a car and has a job and will be going off to college in just one short trip around the sun.

Mom, it turns out, isn't a job description. There's no real contract with codified rules. You don't get to retire. It's more like a never-ending TED Talk where you are mostly in the audience alternately fearing, hoping, or grousing about having to be on stage. 

Of course, your experience may vary. The keys to this universe are always getting lost in between the couch cushions of our communications. No matter how much GPS tracking we apply, these keys are often un-couched by memory or the retracing of steps. 

Sometimes the work at hand is as easy as asking point-blank if the help their asking for is with taking the lead or following it. 

Quitting time

It's after six. She's been waiting for an hour to hear the quitting-time whistle: which for her is the thud of my car door and my footsteps as I climb the side porch. 

My dear old floppy-eared dog, whose own workday follows a narrow patch of sun around the house until it slowly disappears into the dark of evening, is beyond ready to stretch her legs. She has a tough job, lying in that sunny spot all day, wherever it is, with only the briefest of respites to engage quite fully in her second job: patrolling the yard to chase visiting birds and resident marmots. 

I can hear her pacing and panting before I open the door. Walk! Walk! is the translation of her excited greeting. Nothing else matters, not even the sky with its ominous shade of gray. 

The exertion of her greeting isn’t enough, not when the neighborhood and all its mysteries await. There's good old "squirrel alley" to explore, not to mention a new "poop corridor."  There are homebound dogs who will be waiting to sound the alarm at the proximity of our temporary territorial intrusion.

Also known as our evening walk. 

It takes a minute to change and gather up supplies. The leash is in its usual place, but the waste bags are missing. She will bark at me accusingly as I try and locate a fresh roll.

She is so insistent on getting outside that she doesn’t notice the thickening air that is all around us.

But all I can see is a giant swirling mass of marbled fissures in the clouds when I look up at the sky. A low rumble off in the distance gives me pause. It could be a truck speeding over some neglected section of winter-heaved pavement. Or it could be thunder. 

The daily rain hasn't helped the situation. I run through all kinds of mental calculations before I commit to this practice of unwinding.  I consult the weather radar; I plan a route that builds in the prospect of temporary shelter should we get caught in a storm. If we are lucky we will be back before the deluge. 

The news has me worried about washouts. 

Before we leave, I remind my daughter, who is getting ready to start her workday, not to drive through standing water. 

"You can't tell if the road is still there. Better to turn around and go another way."

I wish we could all turn around and go another way. Toward a direction that examines the problems we face without trying to consumer-select a way out. There will never be a refrigerator efficient enough, nor a bottle recyclable enough, nor a straw reusable enough to mitigate this disaster our modern efficiency greed has rendered. 

The dog is whining now. I'm off on a tangent while she waits for the leash to come out of its basket. 

"Stupid human. You will NOT solve climate change, or any of the ills of consumerism, by grasping at straws. You cannot stop nature from taking revenge.  But you can stop me from these, my appointed rounds."