Mothers' Day

 The first Saturday in May was … a lot. I’m not gonna lie as the kids say. 

Despite both of our children being licensed and capable drivers, my husband escorted our daughter back to college for the start of a new trimester, while I ferried our son to the various venues around the region where he would be tested and measured: one for higher than high school education, the other in feats of strength and speed in track and field. 

We had reversed the activities of the previous weekend when the girl had driven hours with me to a different city and the boy had driven his father to distraction. 

 Each leg of our respective journeys required at least three hours of “hurry up” and three hours of “wait” time. 

That’s eleventy-billion hours for those of us in our middle-ages. 

Not to brag, (totally bragging) I feel quite certain I am more suited than my husband to navigate the arduousness of this journey. Not only do I have the remnants of my younger, “carpool mom” stamina, but I have also been cross-training for various fun runs since 2014. I am literally “happy” to spend an hour or three running in circles around my former alma mater while "et filius" is inside taking his SAT.

*Note to those who might be willing to join me on the first Saturday in June when your kid might return to my alma mater to try for a better set of grades. We could form our own kind of running club dedicated to taking the last laps for dropoff and pickup

I’ve already done the legwork. I know the track is locked so we’ll have to run the grounds. I have Garminic proof that an entire lap of the school and its parking lots will get us a mile, which will quickly add up as we wait for our test-taking kids to resurface. 

No pressure. 

I only compete against my husband, who will call in intervals, wanting the play-by-play from the “match,” he is missing and to tell me how traffic is moving at the pace of snails.

He may complain about the monotony of the interstate, but he will soon gloat that he has won the lottery of city driving by finding a legal parking spot centrally located and within walking distance of the girl’s dorm and their dinner reservation. 

When we arrive at the meet, I find a parking spot and the boy starts his warmup. He has shooed away the butterflies from his test-nervous stomach and welcomed them into the belly reserved for field events and concessions stand snacks. He then shoos me away for being a gadfly, flitting around in a frenzy offering water and sunscreen. 

To smooth over the rough edge of his teen admonition, he spreads a layer of concern, asking me to stand out of sight distance for my protection. Throwing sports can be a dangerous lot.

He finds it hard to throw if he sees me in the line of trajectory. 

Oddly, I find myself unable to watch. 

I see him enter the circle and take a stance away from the direction of the throw. I look at the ground as he swings counterclockwise and back three times before releasing the discus into the air. 

I look up as it flies out straight across

the field. 

His smile as he lopes out to retrieve it tells me he is happy no matter what the line official reads off the now-taught measuring tape. 

“83’.1 - and a new PR” 

He resists pumping his fist in the air but the smile stretches further across his face. 

Challenges accepted

 The weekend plans had been in the works for months. Six of my running friends and I had signed up for a spring half marathon featuring two challenging loops of NYC’s Central Park. 

It was an anticipated outing that had everything: a stellar event in the Big Apple, local accommodations, and ample time to masquerade as a "Lady Who Lunches."

It was not without its challenges.

I’m not going to lie. At first, this outing felt like a whim. It began as a text message excitedly posted to a group chat about the potential of a women-only racing weekend right when the trees’ most colorful fineries would be on showy display. Not only did the original poster offer up free accommodations at other people’s houses, proffering not only the hope of such generosity but also the cross-fingered belief that free, on-street parking would materialize with the same miraculousness, none of us thought there was anything wrong. 

So before anyone could say – “WAIT! Shouldn’t we ask the homeowners before we volunteer their abodes?” –  all seven of us had circled the date on our calendars, paid our registration fees, and counted ourselves in.”

It had other challenges, too. And not the hidden downsides of such a beautiful race setting, like climbing hills and fighting pollen, and feeling queasy from fresh mounds of literal horseshit wafting over the other scents in the air, that of vanilla bakeries and ebbing cherry blossoms.

The biggest challenge for me was that I hadn’t consulted the calendar. 

Turns out the kid who made me a mom was coming home from college that weekend … and she would only be around for a few days before she had to turn right back around to begin her summer classes.

I didn’t want to bail on the race … but I wanted to bail on the race.

So I asked my friends if I could invite my daughter to tag along for the weekend … that is…  if I was able to convince the second-year co-ed to drop any plans for lounging around the house, catching up on sleep so she could hang with a gaggle of middle-aged women trying to outrun offers from the AARP.

Turns out a free trip to NYC is very attractive to a girl of her age, and hanging out with mature-minded women who enjoy sightseeing and restaurants and quietly noting celebrity sightings was a pleasurable alternative to doing her own laundry in my absence at home.

Any misgivings I might have had about foisting my newly adult daughter on my more mature friends melted away the moment I noticed she felt more comfortable with them socially than I ever did with her friends. 

As we toured the city, we touched on everything there is to delight and vex a person in conversation, creating hundreds if not thousands of chances to excite or enrage based on a generational divide. As we ran in circles, and she circled the runners waiting for us to finish, we realized we had some of the same thoughts, some of them ginning up outrage:

"Why were there so many men running a women’s only race?  Why did the announcers only seem to acknowledge the males of the species for cheering on their mothers and sisters and wives? Did they not see any of the women out there supporting other women?"

“I want to ask that man with the medal around his neck why he ran this race,” she asked without a hint of malice. “But I’m just going to assume he ran it in honor or someone he loved who couldn’t.”