Rise and shine

When did you know? 

You might have had an inkling ... but when did you know that things weren't as they seemed?

Some describe it as a feeling of being jarred from a comfortable sleep by something you had just accepted without examination.

Context is the alarm clock.

Maybe you were a child, riding in the backseat of the family sedan listening to the car's radio as your parents drove through a rainstorm.

Maybe it was something that went a little beyond your ability to fathom.

The announcer may have been describing the details of a crime. Maybe it was a father killing their family, or a student opening fire in a school. 

Maybe you didn't say anything. Just sat on the leatherette seat in stunned silence, wondering if you could ever find yourself in a similar situation.

You were, after all, a child. How many times had you already been told that your imagination was getting the best of you?

I remember the first time ... and the second time ... I was nudged from the safety of my cocoon and arrived into a world as others might have experienced it. Some of these awakenings were amazing, while others seemed rude and unjust.

Eventually, I lost track, as if nothing could surprise me.

Of course, the lessons don't just stop in childhood. They follow you throughout life.

Maybe you were an adult and you'd somehow gotten through all of your formal education without unearthing buried histories that would have tarnished the general understanding you'd adopted. 

Maybe you experienced something traumatic and it shaped you.

Maybe it was a more glacial awakening. The slow melt of time against the pressure of change. 

For me, it was witnessing the arrest of a coworker who had committed no crime, but "fit a description." How many men like him get taken away from their lives on a whim? Perhaps taken away forever? Written off to mistaken identity, or the high cost of being cautious. 

Why did we just accept this as the norm?

It changed me. 

Something probably changed you, too. 

Whatever it was once you see it, you can't unsee it, no matter how you try. We tend to divide much of our time between pleasure and pain. We mark the hours, days, weeks, months, and years in a kind of blinkered forbearance, biding time until we reach some ultimate destination. It's never quite clear. but you don't need clarity if you have some kind of faith, be it agnostic hope or religious belief.

This happenstance of life might make us feel lucky or it might make us feel unlucky. And the genesis story comes to life. It seems there are so many of us who think innocence is only for those who have no prior knowledge. And that in times of upheaval, we try to expel understanding whether it's thoughts, books, or beings. 

 As I watch people rail against context and understanding, I feel sorry for them, and angry for the rest of us, who wonder what life might have been like if we actually had the justice we believed in so fervently.

Of course, it's not over. There is still time to rise and shine and be the people we thought we were.

Hard telling not knowing

"Why didn't you tell me my brother has a girlfriend?"

That's a loose translation of the message I had to decipher by squinting at a string of so-called words - not a vowel in the lot - comprising a single sentence with too many exclamation marks.

"B Cool, YDU?"

"Mom! Are you having a stroke?"

It was my college-age daughter, texting at 2:44 a.m. on a Wednesday demanding to know why I had failed in my unsworn oath to be her personal and immediate connection to news of home.

"I didn't want to gossip," I replied, trying to prop up all my good intentions on a leaning tower of unquenchable curiosity.

But now that the cat has clawed its way out of the bag. "Who told you?"

The boy, himself, of course.

It had been 27 hours and 45 minutes since I knew of this status change.

 

The truth was he hadn't told me. I just noticed he was talking on the phone more and walking around the house with the unmistakable look of an emotion that resembled happiness. And put two and two together.

Now I was speaking her language:

"Omg, do u NO who?"

And she was tossing words in my face:

"Will you stop that? Talk like a human being again, jeesh. I thought you didn't want to gossip?"

"It's not gossip if it contains facts."

.... *blinks nervously *

Apparently, she wasn't buying it. 

"Gossip," she lectured, "requires only the dissemination of personal information --veracity and vitriol notwithstanding -- to which the true owner has neither determined nor been afforded participatory authorship."

The assessment was fair.

"I was so scared of being "That Mom" that I couldn't bring myself to ask any prying questions. Not that I didn't try. But watching the expression on his face turn from horror to stone made me rethink my entire path to parenthood.

And no amount of chiseling would ever produce a work of art. I would have to be careful not to reduce the whole thing to rubble.

"All I know is that she's in one of his classes and she lives within walking distance."

I can't see her, but I know she's posed in the style of an early 90s lady detective; rubbing her hands together and getting ready to crack her knuckles. I know she won't go through with it because as much as she likes the satisfying snap she hates the feeling.

"I'll see what I can get out of him," she says with no small amount of exhilaration. Her mission, which she created and chose to accept, would be to extract uncomfortable secrets from her younger, adoring, and more trusting sibling.

After all, she has given him invaluable tips on hairstyles, clothing choices, and skin care that haven't led to public embarrassment yet.

"I'm his big sister. He knows I'll always have his back. Oh, almost forgot! He sent me her picture. She's very pretty. I'd send it to you but I know you're trying to be cool.

Surviving ourselves

My nerves are all aflutter. 

 

Race-day jitters make up a part of it. But it is something out of the ordinary – like a road trip with friends -- that counts for the lion’s share of my angst.

 

Today I will be among a small field of amazing women -- nine to be exact --  who are running Celebrate Life Half Marathon, a few of us for the first time, but all of us for the last time.

 

For decades, CLHM has offered a lifeline to families in Sullivan County who have faced a cancer diagnosis and treatment, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to ease some of the economic burdens families face when they have to navigate a serious health crisis.

 

Voted one of the best half marathons in New York State by 100 Half Marathons Club and featured in Runners’ World Magazine, the race will cease operations after its 20th anniversary, this year. 

 

It is a beautiful and challenging course, much like life itself. 

 sure many runners will be sad to see it end.

 

This day might have been months in the planning but is has been years in the making.

 

We are mothers, and daughters. We are single and married. We are Democrats and Republicans. We are holding ourselves to healthy lives with healthy debate. Sometimes we don't get it just right. But we keep trying.

 

All nine of us. 

 

We've rented four rooms.

 

Devised a plan for carpooling.

 

We have even secured reservations for the standard pre-race carbo-loading event at a fine dining establishment we are crossing our fingers ascribes to the belief that bread, being the staff of life and all, should be served warm and in quantities that rival an all-you-can-eat buffet.  

 

That will surely be a highlight, but if we can somehow manage to wrangle pre-checkout showers after we cross the finish line (dangerously close to check-out time) we will have attained post-race heaven.

 

I am as ready as I will ever be. And thankful I will be regardless.

 

I have packed, unpacked, and repacked my bag at least three times thus far.  I know I'm going to overpack yet still forget something important ... like socks or my shoes.

 

A part of me worries obsessively that the pandemic years have made me even more of a feral beast than I was already; insulated by isolation and a touch more unfit for polite society. Like, when was the last time I shaved my legs? I'm probably going to laugh too loud, aren't I?   

 

I mean who forgets their shoes?

 

Life threatening illness isn’t the only hardship that challenges us or turns us into survivors. Pain; the loss of someone close to us; a divorce; or even simply unmet aspirations can throw us for a loop.

 

So on this day, I will try not to worry, but instead, I will embrace my awkwardness as a reminder that sometimes the most important thing is to survive ourselves.

 

And that is surely something to celebrate.

At the whim of contingency

It was 3:49 a.m. when the bedside table quaked under the vibrations of my cell phone.

The noise of it must have melded with the soundtrack of a dream I'd been having, it fits nicely with the ticking of a clock that was getting louder as I searched my old high school for a classroom I'd never seen. Finals week. As I awoke, I was slow to recognize what was happening.

From between my sleep-puffed eyelids, I could finally see that the screen was aglow with a new message from my daughter.

I wasn't concerned as I counted out the time difference by tapping my fingers one by one against the palm of my hand. 

Seven hours. It's past 10 a.m. where she is and the school day should be in full swing. 

I reached out a bare arm to retrieve the phone so I could better make out the words:

"I'm ok. None of my friends, nor I, were hurt. We are all good."

I am fully awake now. 

I'm all thumbing as I send off a message asking what had happened. Capital letters tower in the center of lowercase words, some of which, off by a single letter, don't make much sense as I reread them. Trying to fix it only makes it worse.

I send it anyway.

Google doesn't give her time to translate Mom before a search engine hits me in the solar plexus with reports of a catastrophic train collision in northern Greece, where my daughter is studying at an American university abroad. 

Headlines told of the course of events that was still unfolding. Maps and photographs showed the horrific news of a passenger train had collided with a freight train as it ferried students back to Thessaloniki from Athens where many had just spent a five-day holiday. 

As fortunate as we are that she was safe, I felt equally fortunate that I hadn't spent a moment wondering if she would be.

Especially, as I lay in the dark with the light of my phone flickering past the mounting evidence of the enormity of this tragedy, 

My daughter assures me she is fine, but I know the weight of it hasn't set in yet; It certainly hasn't for me. 

I have not, can not, put myself in the nightmare of having to grasp an entirely different set of contingencies for which no one can ever fully prepare.

I bristle over well-meant words of comfort though I shouldn't. I'm not above offering agnostic prayers of my own, pretending that universal forces and gut feelings are somehow benign. 

But I know it's just the mind trying to make sense of the unknowable. Trying to parse all the steps we need to take without laboring each one until our feet feel like they are made of lead. 

A lump forms in my throat when she tells me she and her friends considered taking the train from Athens but decided air travel would save them some cash. 

"It's rattling to think it may have saved more than that."