Back on Track

Track is starting. It will be his last time. Running around in the oval, tossing dots and dashes — as we call the shot and the discus — in a nearby field. 

“Hey, I think I want to go out and buy a new water bottle,” my son tells me, all nonchalant. “I have taken advantage of my friends for long enough.”

I want to laugh but I know I shouldn’t. We’ve gone around and around with the kid’s various needs for hydration. It is rare that any bottle we have shelled out money for, no matter how costly, has somehow fallen short.

Maybe it didn’t keep the water cool enough, or, maybe, it was awkwardly shaped for drinking. It may have been too big, or too small. The seal was never strong enough. 

“Remember the time you bought me the swimming pool-sized jug? It flooded my locker.”

Last year he resorted to buying gallon jugs of spring water at a convenience store across the street from school. 

I’d catch a glimpse of him as I watched from the sidelines. He’d run his part and grab the jug by its handle. Using one hand he hoisted it over the back of his shoulder and turned his head to take long, slow gulps.

His technique was … unique. 

Honestly, it was a little bit of a shock to me that he would rather have a double-walled carafe built with the imaginative technology to keep ice frozen and bobbing in the refreshing water all day.

He cared more about how the water tasted than how he looked drinking it. 

“Hey… remember when I was in kindergarten and you started running? We all asked how you were going to run AND drink coffee?”

It’s always a wild ride taking a stroll down adolescence memory lane with this kid. His mind holds onto grievances like a steel trap.

“Like the time you spilled hot coffee on me when I was four,” he says for, like, the hundredth time in the last decade. 

I don’t bother to defend myself. He’s not interested in hearing me say I haven’t been able to enjoy a coffee while it’s still hot for the last two decades. Not to mention that the scent of au du Starbucks permeating my car would tend to underscore the reality that I am, indeed, a klutzy slob. 

It probably wouldn’t surprise him to know just how many packages and bits of mail I have sent through the post with beige rivulets of various sizes, depending on how high the stack of packages was in my arms versus how much of the caffeinated beverage was left in the cup I was carrying in my teeth.

“I’m reallllllllly going to miss you when you go away to college. Who will be here to keep me humble.”

I know I’m not helping my case.

More to the point, my son hasn’t moved from the spot he’s been standing. He’s smiling. Relaxed. Just waiting … 

“Oh … did you want me to go with you to buy a water bottle?”

“Yes, I would. Thanks.”

Line of Duty

It was a beautiful day!

The sun was out, the birds were singing, and I was going to take my little old friend to the dog park. 

Tuesdays and Thursdays. Our standing mid-day date.

I called out and heard the jingle of tags, and a thump as she jumped to the floor from her place on the couch. 

I had let myself into the house with a key, said hello, and continued to the refrigerator to extract the miracle of “second breakfast.”

“What a lucky girl,” I said as I set the meal on the floor. 

I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary until she put her nose in the dish for only an instant before turning it up to the air.

A puggle equivalent to a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. 

“Snubbing food? That’s not like you,” I thought as I followed her into the hallway and watched while she stumbled and tripped over her own back legs, which had suddenly and unnervingly stopped providing support. 

When she fell over sideways and started to convulse, my heart sank and I abandoned hope for a temporary lapse in balance and braced for something much worse. 

I held my hand on her flank as she shuddered, thinking if it did anything at all, it might remind her she wasn’t alone, 

It was over quickly, and a full recovery followed. I called her person and asked if a trip to the vet was in order.

I clipped on a leash and she danced out to my car. I felt sorry for her that our commute wouldn’t lead to the park.

Eleven minutes later the veterinary staff were waiting for us when we arrived and her person was leaving work early.

An afternoon no one expected. 

It’s hard to watch living beings struggle. It’s painful to anxiously await an end that may not be imminent but will arrive too soon whenever it comes. 

But that’s for later.

We would wait for tests to be performed and assessments to be made. I would talk too much trying to be comforting when her person arrived. The fur baby would ping-pong between us in the examination room. 

Had she ever seen us together before?

Two people she likes … having no idea we even knew each other .. and neither of us would take her to the parking lot let alone the park. 

Sheeesh!

She groaned I assumed because my waiting-room humor needs work. 

Luckily, the doctor interrupted the banter and we were all relieved to learn that soon our friend would be released with a new medication and instructions for follow-up care. 

After the hopeful news, I said goodbye to my friend and her person, and I slipped out of the exam room. I refused to look back to see her tail stop wagging or her face fall out of its impossibly cute smile. 

It was entirely unfair that SHE wasn’t the first to leave. 

I promise, though, I just went back to work. I didn’t have fun at any dog parks. 

Sunday night scaries

 As the twenty-first hour of the last day of the weekend rolls around, I gather my wits and all the things I will need to sit in relative comfort by the light of the television screen … and relax.

Said things include: a cup of coffee and a glass of water, which has become my ill-advised habit of evening hydration; a bowl of snacks, preferably something salty and crunchy that will last at least fifteen minutes into the hour-long episode; and a warm blanket, preferably the light-colored down throw that I rediscovered last winter in a trunk I hadn’t opened since the early aughts. 

Of all the things, the blanket is my favorite. It reminds me of one dragged through childhood: feather light, buttery soft, and surprisingly warm. I hold my breath as I scan the room for it before settling in. On occasion, the other inhabitants of the house remind me through first dibs that I’m not the only one who plays favorites. Will I get my trifecta of coziness, or will I have to settle with one of the less-than-comforting comforters? 

My daughter, from 134 miles away, pings my phone.

“Are you watching?”

“Not yet,” I reply, realizing the remote control is not where I left it, indicating some other uses may have taken it into another room, left it in the crevice of a cushion, or kicked it under the couch in which I had prepared to embed myself like a potato.

This has been our ritual these last few Sundays, communing at the altar of HAMBOX … or whatever we call the newly merged cable networks of yore. We banter about the plot as it unfolds, we pick apart the costumes and the scenery. We arraign each character as if we have more than just a knee-jerk hunch about which will be exonerated and which will be found guilty of malfeasance. None, we surmise, will become heroes.

Some may call it a guilty pleasure – the pair of us following the formulaic and fictional depravities of the ultra-rich whilst they vacation and do crime in luxury resorts across the globe. We have come to think of it as a harmless distraction from the Pandora’s Box our fearsome leaders are insistent on opening.

“I’m getting a weird vibe about this chick,” my daughter muses, as I realize she means the young woman who accepts help from a man she appears to have no deeper feelings for than friendship... “She seems to be stringing him along..”

I don’t want to argue with her, but I want to put up a feminist guard. “Look how her man friend commandeered her attention when she was talking to some other men … I’m sensing some Ross Geller vibes.”

“I see your point. … But the three b’witches? What say ye?’

The three old friends. The three white, privileged women sing each others’ praises on one side of their mouths while cutting each other to the bone on the other side.

“Hit dogs will holler here.”

But what about politics? Two sat dumbfounded when the third revealed more conservatism than they had fathomed, and who then clammed up when asked directly if she had voted for Trump.

She hadn’t read the comments smeared all over the interwebs – from conservatives who have found their heroine and progressives who identify with the stunned silence – but she had pegged its message.

“It was purposefully unspeakable, and yet it will have us all talking until next week.”

Moving the goalposts

You’re flat on your back, staring up at some caged-in lights, hands grasping textured metal, trying to follow directions.

“You got this.”

I wanted to believe. And for a moment I did believe that I - a middle-aged woman who exercises on the medium - was capable of the task at hand: the bench press.

But I didn’t, in fact, have it.”

No matter how hard I pushed, strained, or willed my wobbly arms into action, the bar — which my accomplished and knowledgeable weightlifting friend had stacked for me with an appropriate amount of poundage —  would not budge. 

I’m not going to admit I was discouraged, because I had come to the gym without any goals I could build upon. 

Truly, I thought I would socialize and relax.

I was planning to meet some friends at a gym that doesn’t encourage grunting, walk on a treadmill, and, maybe, slip past the desk into a room where a chair rather than a human would provide a mid-tissue massage.

Instead, I followed the gang from one station to another, jumping, lunging, pushing, pulling … until there was actually something absorbing into my clothes that must have been actual sweat. 

Even so, it wasn’t the worst surprise.

That came when my friend hefted a large metal plate and hooked it onto the second lowest rung of the exercise carousel we had been spinning around. 

“Now … step-ups.”

And with the grace of a gazelle, the woman stepped onto the platform and rose as if on an escalator.

I didn’t even know it was difficult until she said “Your turn.” 

I stood in front of the plate and my brain started to bargain with my body about which leg should go first. 

“Start with the leg that is weaker,” she coached. “That way you set the repetitions so you won't over-exert. You will have an easier time evening out any imbalances.”

So I chose my left side, and I proceeded to perform what may have looked to the rest of the gym-goers like the dance of a mortally wounded bird or a drunken sailor … probably the latter.

What the … fudge!

She had just risen and descended as if her legs were made of bionics. I looked as smooth as a tremor.  

She lowered the plate to hit just a little higher than an average step and I came closer to looking normal when I stepped up. 

“Something to work on,” she said encouragingly as the others finished the circuit and we moseyed toward a contraption that looked as if using it required an advanced degree in aerospace engineering.

“We are now going to do 'assisted pull-ups'," my friend announced.

I did as she directed. I stepped here and knelt there. I grabbed that and just pulled myself up using only the triangular muscle in between my shoulder blades. 

“Don’t think about it too much, just try to feel the muscle lifting you up,” she reiterated.

I didn’t have faith that it would work, but I gave it a go.  When I felt myself rise from what I assumed might be the scruff of my neck, I wondered if I had succeeded. 

I had, she assured me. I had to admit, it wasn’t even unpleasant. 

“You can even step on the cushion and press down to strengthen your legs. If you lean forward you’ll feel the different muscles get stronger.”

When do we hit the massage chairs?

“After at least ten minutes on a spin bike and then a little bit of stretching.”

It’s good to have goals.

Boyish

“Hi, Mrs. Connally … ”

A newly tall, tow-headed boy  … one of my son’s best friends … had caught sight of me on the track apron. 

He noticed I had been failing in all attempts to summon my son from a jogging distance at the edge of a lane. I had wanted him to come and collect a cartoon-sized vacuum flask that I had just purchased and filled with ice water to solve the recurring problem of him collapsing into an overheated puddle in the passenger seat of my car at track meet’s end all because he lacked the forethought of hydration. He wanted me to disappear Into the ether without further ado. 

It seems I misread his bemusement of the drum-sized cooler as “approval” when last we were browsing at the local department store. 

Still, dehydration during sports seemed a challenge worse than embarrassment so I persisted.

My son was strategically avoiding me and also sending glares like daggers my way. 

Towhead was waving his arms as if churning the air into gale-force winds. He saw this golden opportunity and didn’t want to squander it.

“I will bring it to him, Mrs. Connally,” he said rather angelically as he loped over and took the jug from me, Running back to circle my son and pretend to play the game of keep away for a moment before making the transfer. 

Now, I know what you may be thinking (if you are old like me) … “This kid must be a real Eddie Haskell.”

He may be smooth, but I don’t think this kid has an insincere bone in his body. 

This is just who Towhead is; a helpful guy who enjoys a good-natured ribbing regardless of which side of the target he’s facing. No hard edges. No sarcasm. It seems like an aspect of adolescent joy that is weirdly non-toxic, possibly the result of truly embracing that which is slightly awkward as something that is decidedly cool. 

Certainly a rare talent. 

When it’s over my son will not only be well hydrated he will be smiling and forgiving my egregious motherly trespasses. 

I am grateful this boy of mine has been lucky enough to attract so many lovable weirdos. Friends who have your back just by accepting who you are at face value: oddities and all.

It’s comforting to know my son has adopted those ways, as well. And that boyish silliness is still a big part of the appeal.  

“Oh don’t mind the kid skiing in the cow costume. He’s cool. The real weirdos are skiing in jeans,” I overhear him say during a break in gameplay. “How far apart do you think shoulder blades should be?”

A part of me hopes he will never change. 

I dip my head into his room to ask if he needs anything. I was going to the store. 

“Oh, mom! I forgot to tell you: Towhead decided to open a pizza shop this week during break. I ordered a large pepperoni and a small margarita for tomorrow night. So dinner is on me.”

Cat's Cradle

 It has been so long since I’ve heard her voice ... my newly adult child, the baby I used to call Ittybit.

This is not a complaint.

Just an observation.

Like the type of handwriting known for its flowery script that some would tell you has gone the way of the dinosaurs, it seems the random phone call home. I also know that ninety percent of the time I will EVER spend with her has already occurred.

Truly, I am not complaining. I have understood the hard realities of parenting even before my daughter was born. I knew that time would fly.

It is one of many reasons that I took copious amounts of pictures. I did not, however, make many videos. Which sometimes worries me as months go by without hearing the cascading sentences of her excitement; or the exasperated signs that spell out irritation.

Not that it matters. Somehow, I recognize the underlying sentiments she communicates with the straightforward words she randomly texts at odd hours.

I may not have known that Short Message Service would displace the telephone, but I am entirely comfortable with texting as a primary method of communication. I have even been overjoyed with silly messages she sends through mobile applications that I can not seem to initiate on my own.

And there’s nothing that sets my aging heart aflutter than a mid-winter request for an in-person appearance. She didn't NEED me, but she WANTED me.

It’s as close to feeling like royalty as I will ever reach.

“I am running a headshot event for the students in my dorm … any chance you are available to take the pictures? … pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top *blink*blink*.”

Little does she know I will drop everything to drive five hours in a snowstorm if it means I can be in her presence as well as being of some help.

Or maybe she knows all too well that I will drop everything for her when it is coupled with my favorite hobby? Suffice it to say,  I wasn’t exactly what anyone would call a helicopter parent when she was growing up … I was not one to swoop in and save the day.

Back then, I had the idea that what kids need (within reason) was the freedom to figure things out for themselves.

Now … in hindsight, I can see that sometimes, to her, that stand-backish-ness may have resembled benign neglect. At least that’s what I wonder about nearly seven times a day as my social algorithms toss me video lists that will help me identify if I may have an Adult Child of an Emotionally Immature Parent. 

She reassures me that is not how she feels, but if she did, she trusts that I would possess the maturity to hear her out.

It’s not as if I am superhuman, having never made mistakes. I never even pretended to have all the answers.

But I did check in, and I acknowledged how new I felt I was to the world, too. Despite having lived inside of it for a couple of decades longer, I only had so much insight.

I suppose that’s the maturity part; the acceptance that your opinion is not always golden just because you’re headed toward those yellow-brick years.

Ahead of the storm

Anticipation kept me awake. 

I switch off the alarm before it rings, and while I’m a little annoyed that planning a run before work tends to inhibit my sleep, I accept the late-night soundtrack outside my window — gusting winds and a Long Horned Owl —  as welcome compensation. 

I avoid looking out that window first thing, convincing myself I want to be surprised by any snow that may have fallen earlier than previously predicted. 

A millisecond before my feet connect with the floor, I feel the skin around my face tighten into a wince. 

It’s preemptive. I know the floors are cold enough to send stabbing pain into my soles. I expect it.

As I hobble around it will loosen. By the time I have pulled in the clothes I set out the night before I hope to be gliding around as smooth as silk.

Hope is still in play. 

The wildcard has yet to be played. My left foot - the inner arch to be specific - has been trying to tell me something.

I am holding out hope that it’s all a grand bluff. 

Truth be told I’ve been on guard that the grumbly appendage is engaging in stealth negotiations with a little point near the edge of my back that is intermittently threatening rebellion.

It’s not that I’m ignoring my frenemies, it’s just that they become quiet enough after takeoff that I tell myself it’s ok to postpone our come-to-Jesus moment until we land in three to seven miles.

I will go slow. I'm hedging my bets that it’s not an injury in the making as much as it is a quirk of advancing age to be managed. 

Just being out here in the dark and cold feels like an accomplishment. Getting out of bed before dawn, wrapping myself in layers and safety lights so that passing motorists are not left unaware.

The snow has been falling. It softens the noise of the world. Enough that its dangers can take you by surprise. It soaks up the sound of cars and trucks that may or may not be compensating for the ice that after days of fluctuating temperatures has a solid base, 

Nevertheless, the challenge is part of the plan. 

It feels good to be prepared. For an instant, after I leave the house, I stand on the porch absorbing the cold as a welcome recalibration. I had been bundled up inside long enough to have courted overheating, 

I even carry a flashlight for extra precaution, alternately swinging it by my side as if directing planes down a runway, and shining it on the roadway ahead to troubleshoot potential trouble spots. 

No one wants to be surprised by potholes or camouflaged ice. I know to stick to the roadways as they are more evenly seasoned. When the spring comes I know

to make noise; I don’t want to surprise any critters newly awakening from their winter slumbers.

Dawn greets me midway home. I am wide awake and grateful that I have managed to avoid the worst of the weather. 

Adult Education

On the eighth day of this New Year of My Malcontent, I lay on a high school cafeteria floor and tried to relax. 

Calm would not come easily, I knew, what with the Chaotic News of Everything and All. However, I hadn’t counted on a malfunctioning soft-drink vending machine providing the necessary distraction from those inner thoughts when I chose the location next to it, unfurled a yoga mat, and copped a squat.

I had, however, calculated that the room would be freezing, so I bundled myself in a down parka, switching it to fit like a sleeping bag by wrapping myself in its arms, straight-jacket style.

The instructor’s voice was barely audible over the racket of the machine, not to mention through the soft pillow mask I had made of my coat’s hood. I contorted comically to be able to hear her more clearly. The image I must have projected to my neighbors as we stretched this way and that, me noisily swishing around in my parka sack as we all tried to follow the clear-sounding directions of our teacher.

“Take a deep breath in,” she said to the room, which was pleasantly packed with folks, who, I assumed, had also sought out this eight-week series of calm and tranquility to hone their own inner peace. 

The bargain price of the series (thanks to the value of public education) was a bonus for us all. 

We – with our worn joggers and stocking feet – looked more like the rabble than the fabu.

No matter how long I’ve practiced, each class feels new. In this one,  none of the poses brought us to our feet, and only a few would bring us to a seated or kneeling position. So I struggled to translate what I knew from standing into prone.

The voice at the front of the room said something about pushing against the soles of our feet with our legs crossed, left over right … or right over left? 

Craning my neck to see the instructor, turned out to be a mistake. It’s been a while since THAT muscle has been asked to move independently of the other muscles that hold my shoulders and back together. I heeded the warnings and eased off.

I turned to the folks beside me, stealing enough furtive glances to understand what had been asked of us and correcting my form accordingly.  

I started to sweat unnecessarily.

As the class wore on my wishing-to-be a younger self gave in to the more restful stretch. Truth be told, each motion became a surprising challenge and I anxiously wondered if somehow organs had shifted in my torso, now that I had set my intention to extend my arms toward one side of the room and my legs toward the other.

A few more uncomfortable moments (without discernible effort) remind me that I should have better appreciated the body I once had, the one that didn’t make strange cracking sounds or stab me with sharp pains out of nowhere. The body I must now accept and start to care for with patience (and no sudden movements). 

My focus moved to my closest neighbor, the vending machine, which sounded as if its inner workings were spinning off cubes of ice into parts unknown. I breathed in at the whirring, and out at the clunk. In and out … until I was calm.

I lay staring at the ceiling and thinking of my son, who had been in this very room a few hours before, no doubt challenging his friends to contests of nugget eating and ice tea taste-testings. 

I had asked him if he wanted to join me …believing some fallacy notion that he might enjoy hanging out with his ol’ mom at his current alma mater before trading up to college. 

He’d “rather have a root canal,” he answered with a grin, which is understandable for a boy his age. 

Flexibility comes and goes with age, I think. Neither of us seems to have enough of it at this particular moment. 

When the class ends, I collect my things and roll up the mat. 

I am grateful for this community. Grateful to be reminded so gently about what we stand to lose.

As I turn to nod to the vending machine, thanking it for its service, I notice a hand-written sign taped to the front, warning those who would dare to plunk in their quarters that the beverage dispensed would be warm. “Cold water available from the attendant. All you need to do is ask.”

And I am grateful anew, because when I get home I will ask my son about this rickety old machine, and I know he will laugh and eagerly tell me all about it.

 

Keeping the Faith

As I was trying to shut out the politics swarming like flies around last week’s inauguration, I found myself surprisingly immersed in and comforted by religion.

First came the sermon heard around the world … and then came this reckoning on how religion is losing its faithful.

As the President and Vice President shifted in their pews at Washington National Cathedral, their faces showing displeasure if not discomfort, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde delivered truth to power from the Canterbury Pulpit. 

“Let me make one final plea, Mister President. Millions have put their trust in you. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.

 

“And The people … The people who pick our crops, and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants, and who work the night shifts in hospitals; they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals, they pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of churches and mosques, synagogues, and temples.

“I ask you to have mercy, Mr President, on those in our communities who have fear ... . And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being. To speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people, people in this nation and the world.”

And though Budde’s words may have fallen on deaf ears for many gathered in attendance, her message was well received by many of the “formerly faithful, even those of us who misspent some of that time rolling Matchbox cars across the pew or pinching our sisters.  

This was the Christianity of my youth. The tenets of a loving creator who urges us to treat our neighbor as ourselves, to welcome those who may be strangers, and to care for the poor. Her sermon may have been directed to one man, but it was as familiar and comforting to me as the parable of the Good Samaritan.  

So often as religion becomes televised for public consumption and photo opportunities, I fear the scalding of fire and brimstone or the fleecing of the flocks. So many, it seemed, were lured from the message of love to the promise of prosperity gospels. As the ratings went up, we watched in horror as pastors traveled by private jet and swept their abuses under the tarmac.

These days it seems that the Church of What’s Happening Now really hopes the meek won’t inherit anything, let alone the Earth, as if only those with clout are worthy.

Budde's words rang not only with truth but also hope and faith that we can still foster better intentions. And they reminded me that while some of us have let go of our religions, we continue to keep the faith.