The gift

 “The best gifts for mothers-in-law.”

I typed this into the search engine and waited. In short order, a few bazillion sponsored links cascaded down the screen.

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I was not disappointed. There wasn’t anything that screamed “revenge gift,” which had worried me a bit as I mulled over the wording I had keyed in at the onset, feeling a little remorseful that the qualifier – in-law – still seemed appropriate and necessary.

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I didn’t think my giftee would be disappointed, either. The selection available ran the gamut between tasteful and classic to playful and zany: There were stylish grippy-soled slippers; a plush robe with safe, sedate color options. Of course, I clicked away from all of those to read more about a green plastic pill case that looks as if it had been molded from an actual pea pod. But I came to my senses soon enough.

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After flirting with the idea for a few moments before abandoning the fake “produce” in my “virtual” cart, I move on to explore the endless array of things no one really needs that, sadly, in the moment in which we find ourselves, may be made entirely of A.I.

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Which is why I tend to feel a little adrift as I wade through all the well-meaning gift guides that media and moguls alike churn out at this time of year. Because the best gifts … we all know … require we know a little more about a person than their age, gender, and place in the family hierarchy.

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We need to know and care about who they are and what they mean to us. We might have to pull out an old story or an inside joke. We have to make a connection.

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Every part of me knows this as I peruse the guides, hoping to find an item that will somehow show my investment in the thought, and not just a brightly decorated box I would hand over like collateral.

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That’s when I happened upon a piece in the New York Times that had collected hundreds of stories from readers about their favorite or most memorable gifts. It was a delightful read that gleaned sweet little snippets, telling of prized memories more than it described mere possessions.

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It reminded me of the Swiss Army knife my father gave me for my college graduation. It was the only thing I wanted for Christmas, or maybe it was for my Birthday, when I was seven. I don’t really remember. I just know from the note that came with it that my father never forgot: “Congratulations on your graduation! You are old enough and wise enough for this now.”

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It also reminded me of the year my sister had handed me a triple-digit gift card for a national coffee purveyor I liked, saying, “Here. This is all I’m doing this year.”  That was the year I thought of her, and said a silent “Thanks, Sis,” every time I needed a little caffeinated pick-me-up.

I know it doesn't have to be a grand gesture.

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And it could be that I buy the slippers that look stylish, but know that the real gift will be the laughter as we sit around after our holiday meal and swap stories of our favorite gifts.

Yearning to be free

 My heart sank a little as I read the opinion after opinion heralding news from Australia that a new law, effective immediately, would restrict children and teens from using social media.

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We all seem to agree that “kids today” are depressed, anxious, and failing to do so many things we were somehow able to master - with one hand tied behind our backs - by the time we were only half their age.

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It’s the clothes they wear … the music …  the video games … the movies … the books … the screens … the bullying … the drugs, the sex  … are all addictions we can beat with abstinence.

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And just as it was our impulse decades ago to keep our kids from ever being alone in the big wide world, we will now seek to keep them sheltered from the World Wide Web.

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But as we all wax nostalgic about the lack of freedom to “just be kids,” we should really be focusing more on the “freedom” we have already etched away.

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I don’t know a single person who would want to relive their youth.

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Sure, they’d like to be able to do some of the things they once took for granted … like eating cheeseburgers, or staying up late on purpose, or sitting on the floor without having to think about whether their knees will enable them to get back to standing.

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I don’t know a soul who would ever be happy going back to pay phones or navigating the roadways with a paper map folded into 27 rectangles.

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Who would rather we lost?

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Nostalgia shouldn’t be the foundation for policies that dictate our future. Nostalgia for our youth -  when we had limited experiences with the world and the understanding of a child - is a seductive and effective marketing tool.  It also clouds our judgment.

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It makes us look for enemies when we are faced with a chaotic present, it helps us isolate a problem or points us to an enemy we can vanquish, and offers the hope of regaining a life we never truly experienced.

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My cohorts worried about the threat of nuclear Armageddon and visited the bomb shelter in the school basement once. Our children worried about whether or not a gunman would get through the barricade of chairs their class had piled against the door during one of several random active shooter drills each and every year.

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We had space and freedom to explore and to get into scrapes; they had stranger danger and organized, optimized play. We could be free in our neighborhoods and beyond once we got bikes; they could be free in Minecraft unless we insisted they share their passwords.

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Is it possible that the chipping away at privacy and freedom in an attempt to secure temporary safety gives us nothing? If they can’t move about, or have privacy and secrets, if they don’t make decisions or get the chance to be independent in thought, aren’t we merely adding to the anxiety?

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If we block another channel for independence, are we asking for more deception and despair?

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There are a host of studies by the Educational Database Online that examine how constant monitoring can be detrimental to our teens’ development and mental health. It suggests that a rights-based approach to privacy policy is imperative.

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It’s not that we shouldn’t demand more from progress and those who power that progress, it’s that we shouldn’t accept anything less than the right to control our own message, no matter what our age.

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Parenting has never been easy, nor has growing up.

Have candy, will travel

 “Are you all packed?”

I wave my hands in the air: part acknowledgement of the question, part indignation about having been asked it.

Of course, I’m not packed.

Packing, as nature and history proscribe, means that I will be pacing around in the eight-square-foot space where my clothes and luggage reside until the wee hours of the morning, as he snores, navigating in the dark with only the flashlight on my phone and a faltering memory of where I last saw the shoe travel bag.

As usual, when I have adequate time to prepare, I find myself shoving coconut flakes and confectioners' sugar into a tote bag a few minutes before we depart for a weekend in Maine.

This is how one finds themselves emptying out the “baking supplies” drawer into a tote bag seconds before hitting the road.

“There are stores near my mom’s,” my husband says with a laugh he has cultivated to isolate the madness of my method.

This trip - part work, part family diligence, part holiday social - was also somewhat impromptu. Once we return, I’ll have only an hour or so to pull a few dozen cookies and a tin of candy out of thin air for a different soirée.

Now as part of not packing my bags during normal packing hours, I had instead decorated a cardboard box to use as a photo booth prop (and tested it with the resident cats).

I also puttered around the kitchen, quickly mixing a new favorite cookie dough that I would roll into logs and store in the fridge. They would be perfectly chilled and ready to slice and bake a mere few minutes before the party.

(I’d been testing them for weeks now, slicing and baking just one or two so as not to overindulge.)

This is when a bell tolled for a message entering the imaginary chat:

“You’re still bringing the potato candies, right?”

And just like that, my feeling of accomplishment at pre-planning a batch of warm cookies disappeared as I realised I had done only enough calculating to know that there wasn’t enough time for the Needhams, for which I’d become known.

He was schlepping the bags of piled next to the door, while I found a package of chocolate chunks and tossed it in with the rest. I contemplated bringing a potato … the secret ingredient … but decided against it, rationalizing there may be an occasion to exploit a near-future dinner’s leftover mashed.

Despite having tasks to tick off, I know there will be time to fill.

As we drive northward, I notice the depth of the snow in the woods, where remnants of it still cling to the trees. I also notice my shovel-tightened muscles have started to loosen.

I smile broadly, imagining how the work of the holidays can also feel effortless, like your mind hurtling itself into a soft snowbank depicted on an old Currier and Ives print.

Make time to enjoy the work and the play.

Home fires, burning

 “Mom! Mom! Mom!”

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I jabbed at the phone in my hand, trying to will myself (and my family) into the apex of modern technology.

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“Hello? Can you hear me?”

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“Maaaaaaaaaaaam!”

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“Hold on ….  I feel like I’ve drifted back into the 1980s …”

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I had tried the impossible … adding a new contact to a call that was already in progress.

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For a moment, I was surprised by how easy it was.  

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Then the moment was gone.

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“Gah! MAAAAAAAM!”

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That’s when I realized all I was doing was toggling between the noisy car where my daughter was safely ensconced in the passenger seat, holding the phone up on speaker mode as her father was chauffeuring her westward for the start of the holiday season, and the quiet dorm room of her brother, who would be venturing north by train the next day.

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I tried to bring back the Party Line, but I’ve only managed to revive Call Waiting.

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For the next several minutes, I attempted to conduct two conversations simultaneously. At times, placing and releasing the hold button so fast that I thought it a small miracle I hadn’t disconnected the connections by accident, despite having mixed the trains of thought fairly consistently.

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This was the fastest I had ever traveled between New York City and Boston, albeit by phone.

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“MOM! Stop. Look down at your phone. On the left? See it? Now press MERGE.”

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How had I missed that? The word appeared in the same location ADD had been moments earlier. It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be more than one step.

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When I pressed it again, my son’s voice chimed in: “Finally!! We have a conference call. I knew you could do it.”

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The banter continued with cartoon voices delivering tiny slights and booming guffaws. The mood was light as it pinged around, occasionally interrupting transmissions with moments of radio silence.

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I couldn’t wait for them to be home. All of us under one roof for the first time in months.

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There’s a delicate balance to this back and forth that, I know from experience, could be quick to go off kilter. Even through the laughter, a word can slice any intention too sharply and tear all the ties that bind us to shreds.

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We tend to take turns trying to prop up  jokes that fall flat. Saved only by backtracking and a heartfelt apology.

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This time, the conversation is elastic. The witty repartee stretches further and wanders into strange territory. There is a cohesiveness despite our being so far apart.

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My children, shapeshifting into adults.

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Each of them brings big ideas for change to our traditional holiday menu. The girl has plans for a savory baked mac and cheese, started with a classic roux and rich caramelized onions, and a zingy dessert. The boy wants a Wellington and is willing to take over as chef.

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It is refreshing. Especially when my daughter hands me a sugar-encrusted globe and tells me to put it between my teeth and wait for the “pop.” The candied cranberry explodes with a gush of sweet and sour sparks. 

Age of Reason

I willed myself out of the house on what might otherwise have been a sleepy weekend afternoon.

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The simple song of “It’s a beautiful day; you should do something,” played on repeat in my consciousness until I could stand it no more and decided that “something” should include something besides laundry and other routine chores.

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In the olden days -- where the watery memories of way back replay a muddled soundtrack of babies that never sleep, toddlers who never sit still, and weekends that taxed our souls with hour-by-hour activities — I would have happily stayed on the couch, under a blanket, nodding off to a non-linear stream of Hollywood extremism mixed with journalistic gut punches.

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Those days are long gone, it seems.

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I’ve had ample amounts of rest, lately, if not a dearth of peace.

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Still … as a woman of a certain age and immovable habits, I find myself unable to veer too far off course.

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I didn’t have a clear plan. Just the inkling that I should take advantage of the rarity of the sun shining and not needing to be anywhere or do anything for anyone. I could make myself a fancy cup of caffeine and just walk around looking up at cornices and front doors as I strolled up and down sidewalks. I could go into a posh shop and just browse.

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I might jog through a new neighborhood.

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I would do something that I could consider a reward for tasks I have put off because, in my mind, they are also treats: things like buying a fancy yogurt at the grocery store when I cash in the bottle deposits. Or, as I would decide before lacing up my shoes, perusing the racks of clothing at the thrift store when I finally offload the dozen bags of donations I’ve been driving around the county these past three months.

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I may not be able to do anything about the current president, or the tsunami of racism and hatred that seems to be growing stronger as it engulfs us all, but I can plug in to another reality for a while.

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I settled on Goodwill.

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It’s been a while since I feel a strange rush when I reach for the door and it gives way, since I never can tell if the place is open.

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The donation bins are tidy, with plenty of space for the bags I’ve brought for deposit. I chart my course through the aisles counter-clockwise. Men’s department, children’s, housewares, small appliances, until finally situating myself amid the vast array of women’s accessories and clothing, gravitating toward the blues and greys and purples segments of the inventory.

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Nothing ever changes in this store; I like that.

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The place smells of inoffensive but uniform detergents rather than dust.

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I also like that, as I click the hanger of one azure sweater into another – perhaps more lapis than indigo – I am comforted by the conversations all around me.

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A professional woman, her chin tucked into her phone, discusses plans for the weekend as she skims through blouses. A boy skips up to his mom, who is selecting jeans, with hope burning in his expression and a prize clutched in his hand. She is equally delighted to extend the award. Three twenty-somethings – who I imagine are home for the holidays – discuss their shared understandings of age and grace as they push an empty cart from one end of the rainbow to the other. They are so in sync, they seem to finish each other’s sentences.

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And for an instant, I am right there with them.

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Their laughter is so familiar. It is effortless and honest as they catch up with each other.

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I find myself edging closer, ready to revisit the joy and freedom of youth.

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“My mom turned 60 this year … and I am not ok with it. For the first time in my life, it really feels like she looks old. Not that I would EVER tell her that.”

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For an instant, the realization felt a little like a gut punch as I recalled a recent conversation with my daughter about feeling old. She had countered with fierce enthusiasm that I was still a youthful apparition. Of course, it wasn’t true. Although the blow softened as I accepted that I, too, would never have told my mom she looked her age.

Bad Sports

 

This week, President Trump pardoned a trail runner who was convicted in September of a misdemeanor for going off-trail in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park, which is prohibited, in a quest to set a time record for running up and down the 13.2-mile, 7,000-foot-high peak.

Michelino Sunseri, 33, had appeared to shave off two minutes from the previous record when he submitted his results to Fastest Known Times, but the governing body revoked the record after learning Sunseri had cut a switchback on the descent to avoid day hikers, which also shaved off a half mile from the course.

That revocation alerted park officials that Sunseri had used a prohibited trail that was closed for restoration to prevent erosion.  

What happened next caused much controversy between nature lovers and adrenaline junkies. The sides clashed over the appropriateness of the punishment, since leaving the trail is prohibited and punishable by a reported $5,000 fine, a ban from the park, and/or the imposition of community service.

Was it justified, or a case of over prosecution, or was it something else?
Officials weigh many circumstances when deciding how to proceed with sanctions in National Parks. They are especially concerned with intentional rule-breaking and prosecute such to the full extent as a deterrence.

In May, the NPS itself tried to withdraw the charges against Sunseri, but the Justice Department forced the case to proceed, eventually going to trial and leading to the conviction. Before his pardon, prosecutors had agreed to seek a case dismissal if Sunseri completed 60 hours of community service and a course on wilderness stewardship.

News media labeled the pardon a rare non-partisan move despite the fact that the case fit squarely into this administration's deeply partisan disdain for any power welded outside of the executive branch. They may even have forced the case to continue just to have another cause to rebuke the administrative state.

Essentially, it seems, this administration doesn't want experts – National Parks or other agencies – telling them what to do. And with recent Supreme Court decisions upending agencies’ ability to make and enforce new rules that cleave to the spirit of other environmental laws.

They don’t want to defer to the experts, and they think we are gullible enough to agree.
Especially when they can grab a few lines of an incomplete story and spin it into a wider web.

Whether leniency in any specific case is warranted will always be debated, but we should be careful to consider what will become of our natural wonders after we’ve damaged the authority of those entrusted with maintaining them. Property damage, illegal activities, and other unforeseen harms, such as when people leave the trails, harming themselves and endangering the lives of their rescuers in the process, will likely grow.

What’s so disheartening is that it could have gone another way.

Mr. Sunseri could have simply said he was sorry and used his platform to educate peers on how to be better stewards of the land.

Instead, he accepted a pardon and denounced his treatment by officials. Perhaps he was a pawn, too.

This is truly an exercise with no winners but a heck of a lot of bad sports.

Sometimes we win

 Election day this year was a breath of fresh air for those of us who had been feeling breathless these last ten months.

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Nationally and locally, Democratic candidates showed their resolve and won the hearts and the votes of their respective electorates. In this county, we saw the party gain a majority on the Troy and Rensselaer City Councils; in the latter city, a democratic mayor ousted the incumbent. We cheered as Albany elected its first Black mayor and Columbia County ushered in its first Black Sheriff, also its first woman.

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I stayed up way too late to watch the national results trickle in from our time zone: the Governors of New Jersey and Virginia. A proposition in California on a three-hour delay.

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The City to our South felt like the headliner as a young, vivacious immigrant pulled out a historic win with a campaign that beamed with bravery, positivity, and humanity: three things we all desperately need as so much pain comes at us full speed.

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As I fell asleep in Wednesday’s wee hours, I felt the sweet comfort of relief … knowing, but not much caring, that in the morning and in the days following, there would be detractors. Scores of them. Headlines and opinions we can always interpret to mean: “Why Democrats lose even if they win.”

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Inevitably, infighting will come when disagreements arise. It’s possible that we will remember what it felt like to watch a video feed of masked federal agents lobbing teargas into a crowd of peaceful protestors. How revolting it felt to watch a teacher being dragged out of a school in handcuffs … without any legal proof that she was even in civil violation of U.S. immigration laws. How horrifying to know that children may never see their parents again after leaving school.

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Don’t they know what they are doing is wrong? Can’t they see their actions as villainous? Are they acting only on impulse? Do they have charm yet no regard for people’s rights, or social norms, or basic safety? Are they ALL true psychopaths?

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Why else, I wondered, would the Supreme Court absolve a POTUS of murder while the District Attorney for DC fights tooth and nail to charge a protesting sandwich tosser with a felony?

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Now I’m not going to say that Mr. Hero Lobber is a hero, but the jury that acquitted him is an inspiration. Civic duty sometimes means saying the punishment doesn’t fit the so-called crime, but mostly it means accepting the role of juror when your number comes up.

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Evil might still win on occasion, but it won’t be sustainable.

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The good folks are still out there, doing hard work. And their inspiration is deeply satisfying.

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We are not without agency. We can all look back and see a time when things seemed better, simpler. But we should remember too that we probably had a child’s understanding of the world back then. Time has marched on. And with it come developments that have enriched us all. That’s really something we won’t abandon.

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So hope is still here. Kindness can prevail. We are not without agency. We, The People, have the power to change; all we need is the will.

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Snakes and Ladders

The weather is getting colder, and many changes are upon us.

As such, my husband and I start to churn through our semi-annual arguments. He will say, We lose an hour of sleep because the clocks turn backward,” and I will calmly explain that we gain the hour because we get to repeat the 60 minutes prior to midnight when it resets, presumably while we are sleeping.

Neither of us quite knows how to explain the evidence we both try to commandeer – that the clocks on the stove and in our cars, will remind us that it’s earlier than we think – even though our “smart” devices will have adjusted without our awareness.

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He doesn’t get mad when I stop him from turning on the heat or building a fire when the temperatures dip below comfortable in shirtsleeves. It’s not just an inherited desire to be virtuous and hold out on cranking the heat until All-Saints Day. There is also the matter of dragging a ladder to the roof, where he will clean the chimney of its soot and grime.

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“There’s never a build-up of creosote,” he’ll good-naturedly kvetch, reminding me anew that its  lack of a fitting door gasket means everything gets burned up fast in hot fires, even the dangerous residue. “But you are right, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

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Likewise, I don’t harbor any anger for the foibles of our kitchen sink, which seems to rebel at the first snap of cold as if it is on a similar schedule.

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It doesn’t exactly “sneak up” on us: this biannual slowing of pipes leading from the dual-drained sink into a tangle of ductwork in the basement has, with each attempt at improvement, seemed only to grow unmanageable with each passing year.

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It’s a longer, slower process to root the problem.

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I’ll notice the slowing drain and will mention it to the husband when it becomes a recurring development., He will commiserate and explain that it happens to him, too. He rectifies it by sweeping the basket of vegetable chunks, which he most likely rinsed into the strainer instead of tossing them into the compost.

I will commence plunging when the wash water pools, which will work for a while. But when the water ceases to drain, and it may be time to snake the pipes of the grossness that has settled by way of a drain-impeding incline, he will insist on using one of five different varieties of liquid drain-clearing products available at the grocery store.

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Of course, I want to remind him that, as memory serves, the bottle has never solved any of the clogs. He’s always had to endure the most nauseating task of releasing gray water from a midline pipe by wedging himself into a crawl space with a wrench or a snake.

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It wouldn’t deny it is gross, or suggest I take over the task, so I don’t want to gloat when he soaked the pipes for two nights straight without as much as an air bubble of progress. Soon enough, he’ll have to change tacks. I don’t need to say ‘I told ya so.’

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Though I never expected him to be the one to say it.

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“Hey! I got the sink working!”

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“With the drain cleaner?”

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“Kinda. I think it got the clog loose enough so I could plunge it.”

These boots were made for walking

​For whatever reason, I might call it a whim, I dug all the way down to the bottom of my chest of drawers when I packed for parents’ weekend.

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Oh sure, I had pulled from my usual staple of presentable yet comfortable duds, the going-out wear that I think looks a little more put-together than the wrinkled mess my weekday self can seem to manage, as well as a few pieces of athletic wear that I would most definitely don should a gym (or a nearby park) present itself.

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But I also folded a fancy skirt and a vintage pair of dress boots into my luggage.

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I don’t know why I thought to do it, really. “Dressing” just for dinner isn’t usually something I do.

In fact, the last time I wore a dress was for a funeral several years ago.

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“Options,” I told myself, while thinking it might be an odd pang – like a craving – to wear the boots again.

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They are black leather, knee-high boots with a square toe box, side zippers, and synthetic liners. They aren’t what I would call fancy, but with a little polish and very little circumstance, I think they pull my outfits together.

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They have also proven to be just as comfortable as my cushiest running sneakers.

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In fact, when a stress fracture forced me to take an eight-week rest from running nearly a decade ago, my beloved dress boot not only matched the height and comfort of the therapeutic boot the doctor prescribed, it almost made me forget I was injured.

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For the life of me, I can’t remember where or when I bought them. It just seems as if I’ve always had them. They are like old friends, the kind that will walk for miles with you in any kind of weather.

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And that’s what I was trying to explain to my daughter as we found ourselves jogging to make our seven p.m. dinner reservation.

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The nostalgic me wanted to share the time-tested quality over quantity wisdom, and impress upon her how magical it was to happen upon the holy grail of finding shoes that will carry you comfortably for more than thirty years.

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To her credit, she didn’t roll her eyes. Though she might have, had she known that not twenty minutes earlier, I’d found a hole the size of a nickel along the zipper’s end grain. Probably the work of a mouse.

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And I didn’t let on, seventeen blocks from where we started,  just one measly corner away from our dining destination, the strange burning sensation on the ball of each foot felt like it was about to catch fire.

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Experience kept me from blaming the shoes, so I quietly cursed my socks. Somehow, they were rubbing something the wrong way.

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But alas. When the night had ended and I sat with my legs in figure four, pulling the boots off by the tip of the toe with one hand, and the cup of the heel with the other, I saw the hole. When I checked the other boot, I found another hole to match.

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“I’m sure you could have the soles replaced,” my husband offered dutifully. He’s not opposed to buying new, but he understands the value of familiarity and sentiment, if not the difficulty of finding heels that don’t try to murder you every step of the way.

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I know the boot company is still in business, and that it might be cheaper to buy a replacement than seek a partial reconstruction. I’m even hopeful that I’ll get another thirty years out of the new pair since I know these boots are made for walking.