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.