May the road rise to meet you

The pain is minor. It's just a pinch at the top of my hamstring that feels like a muscle pull. It hasn't been obnoxious even if it arrived unannounced and lingered for a day before it slowly started to nag. It hasn't even been hanging around long enough to even make me consider consulting with the Dr. S.C. Connally School of Medicine at Google University, let alone panic-dial a real MD.

I do not stop running. Slow down? Yes. Take longer walks between intervals? Maybe. Stretch a little longer and more often once I get home? You bet. 

I've felt this before. Lots of times. I'd call it a grade one tear that Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation should take care of in a couple of days. It's the same direction a real doctor once gave me right before she suggested I run in a serpentine fashion on a less busy roadway. 

Not that I do that. It's crazy enough to be running every day on the same roads, I'm not sure I could handle the stares (let alone the beeping of car horns) were I to slither from one side to the other. 

I blame the roads, especially where they heave in the center, having succumbed to the forces of the universe and four seasons of weather, which conspire to make a runner's one hip work harder than the other.

I am almost at the end. 

I will lay on the floor later and think about this as I perform leg lifts and deep knee bends and side angle lunges. I don't know for sure if any of these exercises help me, but they don't seem to be hurting any. Unless you count my pride when a kid of mine will ask if I need help to my feet as they stumble across me accidentally.

They probably guess that I will be the proverbial Old Woman who will lay there for days, not wanting to admit that she's found herself in a pickle. They check on me now and again just for practice.

Maybe it's all the groaning I do during transitions: going from standing to sitting, sitting to standing ... or just the act of thinking about kneeling. Standing up from the position takes more thought, surely, but it doesn't take an assist. Not yet. 

Truth is, the best years are coming. That's what a recent story in the New York Times said anyway, as it refers to runners who get their starts later in life. 

They have mounds of statistics and data to back up such claims, of course. But I'd believe it without a shred of proof.

I speak for myself when I say, we older folks are grateful for just being able to put one foot in front of the other; our goals aren't that high. This starting from zero and getting incrementally faster is the polar opposite of what my track star friends seem to experience. 

At some point, though, we all meet our apex. That highest point in the journey, where we look out over the top and marvel at the majesty before we turn around and make our way back down. 

Some of us don't recognize it and fail to take a few extra moments to take it all in. 

I'm not sure where I am on that journey, but I know to mark the milestones. Today I finished 365 days of consecutive running, amounting to fourteen-hundred-and-forty-five miles during the course of one year; at every time in the day, in every sort of weather. I ran through shin splints and blisters and headaches and allergies. I ran through local streets and unfamiliar cities. I ran around my pool as my kids doused me with water soakers just to keep the streak going. 

And as I stand here on this mountain looking down at my accomplishment, I'm filled with gratitude and a sense of completion. Enough of each to stop, on my own terms, without injury, and without regret. And rest. 

And for anyone out there starting their streak again, I hope that the road rises to meet you just as gently. 

Self serve

 Lost my wallet again. 

It has a tracking device inside it, which has a dead battery inside it, too.

Who knows where it is. My best guess? It's in a parking lot somewhere, having tumbled from my lap where it had balanced, forgotten between errands, for who-knows-how-many miles. 

This is usually how it happens.

Though I also leave it at the checkout quite a bit. Forgotten between slipping my credit card into the mouth of the do-it-yourself till and the moment I reach my car and start unloading the bags from the wonky-wheeled cart into its trunk.

If I am lucky, I notice right away and not five hours later, when I go back to the store for the thing I went for in the first place.

I used to love the grocery store. 

When my kids were little, their father would tag in so I could make a little vacation at the market. I'd start at self-serve coffee and spend an enjoyable hour sipping as I strolled through every aisle. I'd stop long enough to kvetch with my brethren browsers about how management must move half of everything at least twice a month, just to ensure we look close enough to forget our lists and tip a few new things into our baskets. 

On the hottest summer days, I'd orbit the store to stay cool. Studying the ice cream with the doors open, leaning into a tower of mint chips until the glass fogged. ... Or until people came.

I hear my mother's voice inside my head: What-do-you-think we're doing here? Heating the great outdoors?"

People. "Perfect strangers," she'd call them, emphasizing the perfect part. 

I remember her chatting with some of the less-than-perfect ones in the dairy aisle: catching up on the news as she inspected her would-be purchases for cracks.

"Good egg, that one!" She'd say about her friend as we headed for the butcher shop.

She snorted the words "Butcher Shop," as we stood in front of a refrigerated shelf of stretched-wrapped meats painted an impossible red. They were the only two words that could transport us to a place closer to home. It was long gone now, but the memory of the shop was still fresh. The specter of a man in a straw hat still vivid as he cut a steak to order, wrapped it in brown paper, secured with a string, handed it to my mother, and added a folded slice of bologna for me. 

I'd like to think my kids will have a random memory of me float back to them, and they will smile fondly. But it won't be any of me in the grocery store. Especially not the time someone admired my boots.  

"And there she was ... in the pasta aisle ... balancing on one foot as she handed her shoe to a stranger who only wanted to know if it was heavy." 

In my defense, the boots were new, and compliments seemed novel. I can admit I got carried away. 

And then they stopped going with me. But not because of that.

In pandemic times, it's been safety first. 

Things seem different now. 

Perfect strangers don't talk to each other anymore. We barely exchange glances. When we do, we only see something to judge or some fresh hell to catch. Stranger danger is infinitely more frightening than ever before.

If silence was golden, avoidance is now platinum.

I try not to worry about a future that's unprincipled. Just like I try not to think about a future that's unpeopled as I check my own groceries through self-serve.

But sometimes it's hard.

I wish all of our troubles were as easy as not finding lost wallets. Cancel and start over.

Pet Peeve

 IT was a mystery addressed to me: A plain brown, double-walled corrugated rectangle emblazoned with silhouetted illustrations of batteries. A flat-packed box had arrived two days after my birthday after numerous anxious inquiries from my husband.

“Any deliveries today?” he asked with a conniver’s grin.

“Not today,” I lied and left the box on the porch.

This gift wasn’t exactly for me.

"Anything liquid, fragile, or potentially hazardous?" I imagined a postal clerk might have asked the sender.

To which my husband - had he been there to witness the standard business shipping exchange - would have joked about the message inside being the most incendiary part of the delivery:

A printed note that said simply: "If you don't tell me what you want for your birthday, you get a vacuum cleaner. I don't make the rules."

Inside was an automatic floor cleaner. A circular robot with sensing whiskers roams the house in search of debris to sweeps into a central chamber.

Its motor whirrs at a decibel that annoys more than it disrupts, though it seems to have a proclivity to find all the cords and draping fabrics the instructions suggested the "We" (in the most royal of senses) remove.

To the casual observer, this might seem an indictment of my housekeeping skills, although my husband might tell you his Interest in buying me floor cleaning devices and gadgets of the utilitarian persuasion it's merely an assuage of his own guilt for lack of helping. His contributions toward the load he rarely lightens.

Moreover, this cursed device startles the cat, which, if my husband's extensive, giggle-filled research of cat-mocking videos of late is any indication, the gift was not merely to delight but to lightly introduce torment as well.

He is positively gleeful as he pours over the instructions I would have recycled unread.

"It's got Bluetooth," he gushes as his fingers tap the glass of his cell phone repeatedly. "It will send me messages!"

I roll my eyes as this gliding ashtray scuttles around in an erratic trajectory, the adult equivalent of a remote control toy. It's clear for whose amusement this gift is intended.

Purse my lips as the cylinder cyclone bumps into the dining room table, recoils, and tries again four inches further, only to be thwarted once again from sweeping under the table by a tight cage of evenly spaced chairs.

I move one of the seats to allow the vacuum access to the dust bunnies underneath and am met by my husband's horror.

"How will it learn to navigate our house if you keep changing the furniture?"

I have to admit I have no snappy answer, just stunned silence as stare at him while I slowly lower the chair.

But my perturbation is as much of a put-on as his theatrical showcase of abominable gift-giving.

We both understand that he is resurrecting a memory; one in which we already danced on our gender roles’ grave.

That time, long ago, when he came home from lunch to find me sitting on the couch watching a movie and eating bite-sized morsels of chocolate like a replicate of a ‘50s era storyline.

“What? I’m vacuuming!” I retorted as a robot vac chugged on by.

But eventually, I will have to explain that the joke has played out. The machine knocking off the faces of radiators and getting stuck under couches will get old.

But not just yet. …

"Oh! Just got a text!!! It's trapped in the corner! Needs assistance!"

He jumps up to rescue his new pet.

Siobhan Connally is a writer and photographer living in the Hudson Valley. Her column about family life appears weekly in print and online.

Reconnecting

 I bought a cassette tape at a yard sale about five years after I got rid of the last device I owned that could play one. 

An impulse, borne of the promise of an author and activist I adored, reading to me from her work as I carried on with the more mundane moments of my day. Driving from here to there and back again, waiting around, during the interstitial moments of life. 

Somehow, in the excitement, I had forgotten all about the technological advances to which I'd already adapted. It took only three cars to go from cassette to CD to some wavy blue lines that work like magic.

And here we are.

I still have the tape sitting in a bin by the side of my bed where so many good books go to be read but, through no fault of their own, face only neglect and a thin layer of dust.

A reminder of little heartbreaks that await beneath unexpected excitements that at first delight. It's not the worst thing that could happen.

Just as things slowly returning to normal may not be the best thing.

How are we to know?

Idling in the drop-off line at school while we await our turn. A staff member, clad in a face shield and mask, will aim a temperature gun at my passenger's forehead and let us know what kind of day we'll be having. 

A smile and a "have a great day," prompt my boy to shift his weight in the seat and groan, as if the transition from car to the classroom wasn't even anticipated let alone expected. He lumbers out of the car and rifles through the backseat to collect his things: a trumpet case, a backpack, a binder that won't fit inside.

I can't tell from his expression how he feels I can only intuit from the calm of his demeanor that he is content to move along through the day as expected. 

 Not that I know what is expected.

I have stopped aligning his schedule with the steps of my day. I have no idea if his math class corresponds to my 10:30 mail run or whether he has English or Health when I go on my "rounds. "And though I receive reports of the occasional missing assignment, I have stopped breathing down his neck while looking over his shoulder.

I barely remember to pick him up on Mondays, which has recently been added to my to-do list. His sister’s review class after school has kept her from toting him to and fro through May.

Usually, I meet him as he’s already walked a half-mile from campus, still wearing his mask as he juggles an armload of things.

Neither of us seemed to be able to plan ahead.

"What's Ruth's phone number?" He asks me. 

I stare at him in the fog of disassociation. "Ruth?"

"The town historian? You know her, right?"

"I've met her. We've spoken. But I don't really know her."

"Well, I'm supposed to call her TONIGHT and do an interview for school."

 I don't say what I am thinking: those things we are supposed to feel about planning, and common sense, and the unbearable disappointment of one's own shortcomings leading to natural consequences. 

I just send off an email with our phone number and the hope that she's online and willing to speak to a 13-year-old boy at 8 o'clock on a Tuesday night. 

In a few minutes, the phone rings and the boy picks up. 

"Thank you for calling."

The call doesn't take long. I see him in a half-hour's time as he rummages through the kitchen, looking for a snack.

I asked him how it went.

"Did you know she didn't go to school for history? She got an English degree and started doing historical work when she moved here and discovered that Dutch influence seemed to be largely overlooked in the stories of the founding of the country."

In the time it took him to toast and butter bread, he had conveyed the bulk of his 20-minute inquiry about careers. In between bites, I could sense the satisfaction.

"Sometimes not having a plan becomes the plan."

A desk job

 The lady at the Post Office smiled a little when she saw me at the counter, a slip of yellow card stock in my hand and a glimmer of hope for a special delivery of caffeine. Hope that was instantly erased by the question she asked of me:

"I hope you brought your car," she said before turning away and heading to "The Wall," where all the oversized packages are stored.

Alas, the box that had arrived didn't contain the tin-capsule encased coffee pods I had been expecting with anxious mint-flavored breath. Instead, the Post Office Lady lugged a door-sized, flat-packed box into the lobby. Something clanged metallically when she tipped it sideways to slide it through the door.

"It's heavy."

For a moment, I blink repetitively into the blinding light of the unknown.

The package is non-descript. A beige box, without pictures, inscribed with the name of a beige company that doesn't give away any secrets about the product contained within.

The label has my son's name on it.

A memory floated back to me from within the window of shipping possibilities: it was of the boy visiting me on the living room couch late one evening as I filled myself with warm caffeine and fiddled with something or other on the computer.

"I have some money saved up. Is it okay if I buy something online?"

I usually ask him about whatever it is his heart desires, and we chat for a bit about computer games I don't understand. The discussions have evolved over the years from extracting from the boy an accounting of the level of aggression his games would engender.

Back then he would assure me that nothing on his wishlist had been rated M for "mature."

On this evening, however, I had been preoccupied. I hadn't stopped to converse. I'd just nodded my head and shrugged my shoulders.

"Sure, go ahead," I had said, assuming the biggest inconvenience would be a momentary lag in broadband as whatever graphics-heavy game he wished to own took its sweet time downloading. "Just leave the money in my jacket pocket. I'll get it later."

It occurred to me, as I wrestled the box into my car, schlepped it up the porch steps and into the house, that I'd never even checked the deposit to see what he'd spent. I dipped my hand into my pocket and came out with a fist-full of crumpled cash. Much more than the ten or twelve dollars I'd expected.

I called up to his room:

"There's a delivery on the porch for you."

And then there came a thunderous trampling of feet down the stairs, his tousled head tilting as he skidded to a stop in the kitchen.

“Which porch?”

I tilted my head ... “Side.”

“What did you get? It was heavy.”

“A new desk! I wanted something more modern and without drawers for my computer. Want to help me put it together?”

“No. You'll just have to wait until your father gets home. I'm going to wait here for my coffee.”