Packing and unpacking

As I rummaged through the half-dozen dust-covered boxes, I began to lose confidence in my memory.

​

“I’m sure it was here,” I silently assured myself as I sorted through all manner of dissimilar things I had only a vague recollection of shoving into a pair of grocery store tote bags. Newspapers interleaving a spice rack that I didn’t recognize; a few cloth-covered books I wondered why I’d saved from the trash; and a footed, butcher block cutting board that brought me instantly into the first kitchen I had ever known - my parents’.

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Where was the skillet?

​

All summer I had been talking about the cast-iron frying pan I had spirited away to save for posterity.

​

I don’t know what made me think one of my children would be more interested in a pan their grandfather had seasoned and cared for … and probably inherited himself … than I had been when I dismissed the same piece of cookware and opted instead for a new forever-chemical pan from the hardware store. As I recall, the purchase set me back $20 (eight bucks more than the cast iron pan on the bottom shelf) and took me approximately three minutes to scar with a fork.

​

I didn’t want to push it on my returning college students; it’s not like they have ample storage in their dorm rooms or the initiative to power through whatever coats the surfaces of a communal kitchen.

​

I was surprised I had a taker.

​

My son understood the sentimental value of the artifact as much as he understood the culinary benefits of a good skillet.

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At home, over the summer, long after dinner and his parents had retired for the evening (shortly after 9:30 p.m.), he had practiced until he perfected the late-night snack: a cheese-encrusted deep-dish pizza; steak tips au ju that would melt in your mouth; light and fluffy pancakes with a strawberry reduction.

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The aromas would waft upstairs and into my dreams. Each morning, the realization of my dreams would be rinsed and piled in the sink.

No leftovers.  

​

Turns out, he has plans to feed his friends on days when the cafeteria fare is lackluster.

​

I redouble my efforts to locate the cookware.  It has to be here. I carefully take out the contents of each box and bag, lining up each item neatly and smoothing out the 20-year-old newspaper wrappings that cradled them.  

​

I was surprised how the last bag seemed heavier with each thing I removed, which is why I was relieved to find the 9-inch pan at the bottom.

​

It is almost as clean and smooth as I remembered, just a tiny bit of rust on the hanger edge of the handle.

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“That’s nothing,” my son smiles as he inspects the skillet, turning it as easily as he turns a flapjack. A little steel wool and salt and that will be as good as gone.

​

Honestly, it made me tear up a little. I tell him his grandfather would be delighted his old pan would be of good use.

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The boy smiles and says, “That’s good, because my dad will probably have some other kinds of thoughts when I tell him I’m also taking one of the hex-clad pans he bought at Costco.”

Home remedies

It’s raining again.

The air is thick and still.

Black dots float across the sky as I walk home from work.

They have been swarming and biting for days.

The stagnant air, coupled with the soaking rains of the past few weeks, has caused their numbers to explode.

I feel a subtle stab and automatically lift my hand to the part of my neck where the sensation emanated. My index finger senses an intruder; a tiny, soft tuft that wasn’t there before … at least not that morning, when I slathered the manufacturer-prescribed amount of SPF moisturizer over my shower-dampened skin. When I looked down, I found a smudge of blood.

It will itch for a moment, and I won’t think of it again.

The mosquitoes, I muse, probably think I am fierce.

Or many just a big dumb oaf who lost a necessary fear of the slender pest amid non-stop news coverage of its more hard-bodied, disease-vector compatriot, the tick.

I don’t even have time to laugh at my own joke when a swarm of the thread-legged flies hone in on me and have at it. I understand they might be attracted to my scent, or my blood type, or even the amount of carbon dioxide my lungs pump into each exhalation as I run towards shelter.

I know it’s the female of the species that torments me. Her mate feasts not on necks but on nectar and pollen. She needs my blood to sustain her offspring.

When I outrun the swarm, I feel a rush of bygone adrenaline.

A recollected story about a deadly case of encephalitis, and then a watery memory of our town’s municipal truck fogging the neighborhoods with insecticide. My mother kept us inside, explaining she would not repeat the errors of her generation when children were allowed to chase the trucks and play in their mist.

Back then, my mosquito bites would balloon to fist-sized welts on my arms, legs, and back that would itch for days. In the palm of her hand, my mother would mix a few shakes of an ancient bottle of meat tenderizing powder with a couple of drops of warm water, and grind the poultice she created into the welts.

Perhaps it was only wishful thinking, or the scratching of the tenderizer’s residue that satisfied the itch, but it always worked like magic.

She claimed the secret was “papaya,” and thrust the bottle at me, with her finger at the place on the label where it listed the ingredient, and explained to me that she had purposely saved this particular package for medical purposes because the tenderizer company had since changed its formula and the effect, according to my mother, had been seriously diminished.

I believe that she believed.

I wanted to believe it, too.

As I matured, I began to wonder if all mothers had labored over similar mythical balms. My husband’s mother swore by the juice of red berries, picked fresh from the weed bushes in her yard and squished liberally into any spots of bother.

This salve, she said, worked well for insect bites befalling visiting grandchildren, especially if the stain survived bathtime and lasted until morning through an otherwise restful sleep.

Of course, I played along, but didn’t truly believe it. Prevention aside, what other alternative was there? Scanning the packages of dry rubs at our modern grocery produced none with the “magic” ingredient.

Might as well sing a happy little song in the rain: Deet. De-deedee deet de-de-de Deet Deet Deet de-Deet, Duh. ... and take a scroll through through the department of health's news releases.

Mayflies and mayonnaise

According to the letter-sized sheet of paper taped to the wall of the seaside provisions market, “Justin” was a lost pet.

​

Justin, the poster claimed, would answer by name and be attracted to ham and cheese sandwiches, but only those that weren’t slathered in mayo, owing to his vegetarianism.

​

He’d been missing since May.

​

I’m sure it was just a cheeky coincidence.

​

What I was looking at in the super-detailed photograph that took up half the page’s real estate appeared to be that of an ordinary Musca domestica Linnaeus, though he was magnified about 300 times.

​

That’s “housefly” in English.

​

No relation to Ephemera vulgata … the “mayfly,” which, as a cousin to the dragonfly, should have stuck around through August.

​

I snapped a picture as a souvenir and moseyed onward. It’s been a hot summer. The bustle on this crowded street is lacking its usual haste.

​

Strange how a bit of whimsy poking through this straight-laced place, no matter the origin or authenticity, always brings me a fleeting amount of joy.

​

I smiled most of the way down the block, towing our own found-hound behind.

​

Despite the progress we’ve made to lengthen our walks from just a few steps to all along the beach and all the way into town, we can admit the puppy still likes to lollygag.

​

He flits from person to thing, sniffs here and there, and sits with his head angled sideways. Eyes looking upward, past his wrinkled brow.

​

We tell ourselves we need to socialize a dog of his demeanor. Open him up to a world of chaos and noise, and let him make sense of it; something our other dogs had been too anxious to work out.

​

The shops here have been accommodating with their strategically placed water bowls, inviting us in to browse inside, not just the sidewalk sale.

​

There’s always a line that promises a little taste of bliss, and with it a shady spot where the rest of the party can hunker down as we wait. You can talk to strangers. They will ask if they can say hi to your dog. There will be enough delight in that little interaction to go around even if the store sells out of whatever magic elixir it had been selling.

​

Though it’s meant a pretty penny — what with the fancy accessories here and the adorable, handmade treats over there — the value of feeling welcome has few limits.

Being welcome is the thing that feels weightless.

His cute puppy face, I know, has an expiration date. Soon enough it will expand, turn rugged, his wrinkles will harden and become tightly defined. The curious expression he shows now will seem cooler and more calculating.

​

The tones will translate their “oohs and ahhs” differently. Folks will stoically reclaim the space they’d given us.

​

May would come again, and August would follow at a frightening speed, and everything would shift from small-world charm to large-world normal. The dog will be waiting for us at home while we stand in the queue for ham and cheese sandwiches. We’ll think nothing of the fly buzzing through the line.

​

I wonder if he might be the long-lost Justin; I heard the aioli was vegan.

Police state

 It is reassuring to see so many county residents stand in opposition to the powers in Rensselaer County that are and will forever be on the wrong side of history.

​

Dozens attending a public forum spoke in favor of the Governor’s law to end the so-called 287(g) agreements between federal immigration enforcement authorities and local police, which allowed some local officers to perform the functions of immigration officers, and also permits correctional facilities to house civil immigration detainees. Residents also took county leaders to task for their open defiance of the new law, which stipulates that agreements between the entities must end by August 25th.

​

Both the Rensselaer County Executive, Steve McLaughlin, and the County Sheriff, Kyle Bourgault, have condemned the law, which stipulates that existing agreements between the entities must be terminated by August 25th. Both men have stated they will defy the law.

​

They. Will. Defy. The. Law.

​

What does that make them? Heroes? Or Outlaws?

​

My belief is they are the latter.

​

When they equate civil immigration actions with criminal behavior, they are more interested in politics than community.

​

When they say they should be allowed to search for deportation-reachable prisoners in their system and turn them over to ICE, they are saying that justice for the local victims is of no importance to them.

​

How exactly do police who will not be tethered to laws that regulate them make anyone safe?

​

The answer is simple: We are not safer.

​

This is what we truly need to be asking ourselves.

​

Where is the oversight? Who are they accountable to?

​

None of us seem to know, and no body (meaning legislative body) has the ability to tell police what to do.

​

There seems to be no shared training, no true oversight; there aren’t even statutes describing what police work should entail. They make the rules they follow, and we agree to foot the bill.

ICE doesn’t even pay these deputized police to do their bidding. We do.

In deed, The Supreme Court has held on multiple occasions that police have no legal responsibility to protect anyone – even those with court-ordered protection except in very narrow instances. And that to give police any such a mandate would mean we would live in a police state.

But aren’t we in the same state when police are above laws?

I still reel from the sickening understanding — underscored by unwinnable lawsuits against departments that did not intervene in times of grave and mortal danger, qualified immunity, and the mostly toothless oversight by citizen boards — that accountability for police harm and corruption is almost unattainable.

How safe are we when police refuse to wear body cameras or turn them off, or when they provide contrary accounts than witnesses? What happens when they lie with immunity?

​

Immigrant criminal defendants are entitled to all the rights that citizen defendants are entitled to; it’s the most effective way to ensure CITIZENS are treated fairly and have access to our rights. It’s also important that crime victims have access to justice, too.

​

Democracy depends on the rule of law; it also depends on holding power to account.

Love in tatters

  I noticed the fraying bits and groaned.

​

Ughhh.

​

Another power cord turns into just another found-object art piece … made possible by the natural talents of the artist’s sharp puppy teeth working quickly against the momentary inattentiveness of whichever adult was in the room. Quite possibly me.

​

Ughhh.

​

I attached the wonky wire – now looking more like a gnarled, thorny vine – to my laptop, and it immediately started glowing with a satisfying orange light as electricity flowed.

​

The repair list gets one, the replace list gets nil, though the two inventories are currently racing neck and neck.

​

So far the tally includes two wicker baskets; three pairs of shoes, leaving all the right shoes unscathed; seventeen puppy pee pads, none of which had been soiled; four power cords, one for a vacuum cleaner; one for a cell phone, aforementioned lap top, and cord that came out of my favorite purple hoodie, which was still sad even though that cord only electrified me.

​

Deep breath. Take a deep breath. Just breathe.

​

Maybe it’s a gentle little reminder not to get attached to things.

​

“Ah, I had almost forgotten those days,” laughed our neighbor as we greeted each other over the fence to swap news of the day … and various vegetables, as neighbors tend to do. Neither of us could remember when their dog was as small, or as destructive, as ours. The kids, however, could pull all the receipts, starting with a kitchen table that had so much of its foot whittled away that it seemed to be a fido-feat that it was still standing at all, let alone level and sturdy.

​

One look … head cocked at a certain angle … a little whimper  … and all is forgiven.

​

Though we know the blame is ours: we should retract the cords, or coil them up and put them away when not in use. We should confine the puppy to a crate or to a part of the room where he can be safe, and where things can be safe from him. It just takes a little more time, a little more effort, and a ton more resistance to his plaintive howls that such minor restrictions are causing him to suffer.

​

Horror upon horror that he should sleep alone. In his bed. Without us cuddling with him under the cozy blanket. Without him pushing us with his paws to the farthest edges.

​

He’s smarter than we are.

​

I suspect this, not only because we have fallen prey to his sad eyes and the adorable puppy prance he performs when he hasn’t seen us ALL minute, but also because he has never once destroyed, damaged, or even performed a non-invasive squeaker-ectomy on a single one of his toys. He will drag them through the house, toss them up in the air, and nibble them as if he’s grooming them for fauxfleas, all the while cranking every decibel possible from each squeaker and every piece of crinkle fabric hidden inside. Yet not one tuft of fluff will be harmed. Not even the tag.

​

But turn your head for long enough to listen to the sound of water boiling on the stove (watch pots), and somehow the toe loop on the left sandal you were still wearing is missing.

​I am not unmoved by this memory still in its making. They are like the noseprints on the window glass in the bedroom … the ones the puppy covers with sniffs and light kisses… The ones I couldn’t bear to wash away this time a year ago. The sandals won’t harbor space in my memory the way these translucent smudges have held space in my heart.

Animal instincts

“I’m going into the MATRIX,” my son announced. “Or more accurately, I’m getting the matrix out of me,” he laughed. “And I’m just telling you because I’m probably going to need a few days off of work next week.”

​

It was a big moment for both of us.

​

Since he officially became an adult a dozen months ago, he has managed most of his routine medical care without me. He’s dealt with dermatology, dentistry, and now the fascinating world of podiatry with a kind of determination I didn’t really expect.

​

This procedure - a Matrixectomy - was a little difficult to wrap my head around… So I Googled what turned out to be a surprisingly generic description of the permanent removal of the toenail.

​

It was the first medical decision he’s made on his own, having visited the podiatrist on numerous occasions hoping to fast-track the healing of a toenail that had become ingrown after an injury in high school.

​

As I perused the pros and cons—conveniently highlighted by green checkmarks and red Xs, respectively—I had some concerns. For one, the word “PERMANENT” haunted me.

​

Like the feeling of unease I felt when I had been the one in charge of signing off on his first-ever cavity filling and forgetting to specify that he would probably prefer a tooth-colored filling instead of one of those silvery ones that seem to make everyone look like movie villains, or at the very least like they’ve got a wad of licorice stuck to their teeth.

​

Luckily, the dentist has phased out the mercury amalgam fillings now that modern technology has made the more popular composite resin version equally durable.

​

Still, it didn’t seem right that he should go by himself … so I offered to drive him … you know … just in case the procedure hurt so much he didn’t feel comfortable behind the wheel.

​

“Technically, this is a surgery.”

​

He understood my reasoning, and obliged my concern. Also, he made no secret of his aversion to needles, nor did he disagree that maturity had not ameliorated the condition. It would be nice, after all, to have a hand to squeeze … for luck.

​

Which is what I fully intended to be … a silent presence with an available appendage for moral support.

​

And I was able to do it all through the preliminary moments … when the doctor – in one of the nicest offices I had ever seen – was dutifully preparing his big toe to have a portion of the nail excised and asking all the medical questions one would ask to be thorough.

My son answered with ease and accuracy as I sat mum and bounced my leg nervously.

​

But when all was set and ready to start, the needle being the worst part, the doctor began asking other questions … ones I knew wouldn’t be able to distract him from the “pinch.”

​

“Do you have any pets?”

​

“We just got a puppy,” I exclaimed with the exaggerated excitement of a bad actor breaking out in their first role in community theater.

​

“Mom, let’s just let your son tell me.”

​

I took no offense. I understood what she was trying to do, and in a moment, with his face all scrunched in pain, she would understand what I had been trying to do.

​

That’s about the time the office therapy dog moseyed in and began sniffing our shoes, then curled up in a corner and became a silent presence.

​

“He does that when someone is anxious,” the doctor explained. “Somehow he knows.”

​

“Honestly, I think he’s here for my mom.”

Suburban safari

Did you know a group of skunks is called a Surfeit? An overabundance of things. Other names, according to the Wild West Web, include an “Array” (referring to how families sleep in a den) and a “Stench,” which seems rather rude if not oafishly obvious.

​

This is what went through my mind when I saw the low-slung mass of fur crossing the road ahead of me. I slowed, frantically checking my mirrors to determine whether the car following closely behind had noticed my caution. Then I stopped, completely, while continuing to monitor the rearview mirror for signs that the driver reflected in it would try to inch around me.

​

My inner voice hammered loudly in my head: Where are the caution flashers? Switch on the flashers!

​

I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first: at a distance, it seemed to be some strange kind of fur snake, but up close, I could tell it was a mama skunk slowly bringing a train of six kits across the abnormally unbusy two-lane road.

​

Which is why I felt mostly safe coming to a full stop so as to let the animals cross to the other side.

​

I saw the other driver relax when the parade I was witnessing finally processed past the edge of my bumper and into his field of vision.

​

I could tell from his expression he’d never seen anything like this either, and he was no longer perplexed by my maneuvering.

​

I haven’t always been so lucky. Well, I have been lucky, but the Gaze of raccoons that wandered into the path of my car late one night in the summer of 1991 left their mark on my psyche forever.

​

Truly, every bump I’ve felt under a tire after catching a glimpse of a hop-toad or a chipmunk, or a zig-zagging squirrel in the glare of my headlights has etched themselves indelibly on my soul.

​

Which is probably why I’ve tried to think about all of the other wildlife encounters I’ve witnessed (joyfully) while on my “commuter safari.”

​

The turtle I helped cross the road near school.

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The pair of rabbits that seemed to greet each other in the crosswalk in town.

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The fox twins playing near an alleyway in the city.

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The moose, moseying in the median somewhere on I-95.

Oh, and I nearly forgot the red-tailed hawk that dropped its dinner - a furry little package I assumed was a field rodent - on my windshield as I cruised home one evening on 787. … probably slipped my mind because I felt bad for the mouse.

​

Finally, there was the solo white-tailed deer that leapt straight up, landing safely and soundly on a rock ledge six or seven feet above the sheer slate wall that bordered the roadway. At the time – the fall of 2018 – it seemed miraculous.

​

Of course, it’s not a marvel … it’s just multiplication.

​

As we meander around and carve new pathways into nature, nature has no choice to meet us on the road.

Baby, sit

The puppy is still cute.

​

In the 21 days we’ve known him, he’s spent about nine of them asleep.

​

But now his wide-awake hours are expanding exponentially.

​

He barks at his toys when he’s happy. He barks when the cat won’t play with him. He barks in his sleep. Otherwise, he quietly studies us as if he were a mad scientist in a past life.

​

The things we need to pay attention to include:

Poo on the carpet.

Pee on the woodstove plate.

Piranha puppy teeth on electronics charging cords.

Juggling the knowledge that our “feral” cat will just as soon eviscerate him for merely gazing upon her beautiful face, while our super sweet, loveable cat – the one with the fast parasympathetic nervous system – will resign herself to his use of her as an unwitting lounge chair with barely a me-OWW.

​

We have been working on our consistency.

​

We clean up his mistakes without comment.

We praise his triumphs with excitement and treats.

We replace the things he shouldn’t chew on with things that are his to tear to pieces.

And we remove him from the cat and bring him to the furnishings where he’s allowed to languish.

​

Our repetitive interventions are beginning to feel like a workout.

​

But I don’t remember ever loving any puppy this much. I’m sure I must have, I’d just forgotten the feeling that comes over you when a bundle of fluff high-steps into the room like a miniature pony, grabs his favorite toy, and then drags it around the room in zoom-y-circles until he abruptly collapses into a faux nap on the rug.

​

He hasn’t learned his name. Or how to beg. Or the names of words we hope he will one day love: Like “dinner,” and “walk,” and “treat,” and “outside.”

​

The only word we’re confident he knows is “sit.”

​

I can see it register in his eyes as he looks up at me as I mouth the word, and he lowers his haunches.

​

I hand over the treat to his soft mouth.

​

I hung a set of bells on the door that leads into the fenced backyard, and of his own volition, he has begun to ring them when he needs or wants to go out.

​

We were hoping he’d be a dog-door candidate, since we have one, and the last few animals would rather have a root canal than let a door flap swap them on the backside.

​

He’s halfway there. We let him out the bell door, and he lets himself back inside by the flap.

​

It occurs to me that he may be training us, as we always get up to lurch over him with a humorously macabre sounding “You rang?”

​

Perhaps it’s just the timing. We are ready to welcome this mini multiplier of uncomplicated joy because so much around us has felt like unnecessary hardship.

​

This pup is a breath of fresh air.

​

Even the long-suffering cat, who has met all of his shenanigans with soft paws and softer squawks, has shown she has a sense of humor, too. Last night, while we were chilling out on the couch, Kitty just walked right on over and sat smack dab on top of him.

​

I swear, she was smiling.

Some like it hot

Some like it hot.

Not me, though. I live for layers. Sweaters, sweatshirts, long sleeves? It’s possible that my semi-annual wardrobe “change-over” - where I drag the summer tote bin from the closet and swap the clothes inside with the winter togs from my dresser - is almost too subtle to be noticed as having taken place at all by the other folks who live in my household.

​

“Oh look, mom is wearing her summer parka,” scoffs my son, to which my daughter laughingly responds: “I win the pool! I said we’d see the summer scarves just before the fourth of July.”

​

“If she were to go where the weather suits her clothes, she’d have to live in the ice box,” rejoins my husband. “Hey, do we have any Popsicles left?”

​

My eyes float into a standard upward gaze before their lids flutter back down and squeeze tightly closed. “You laugh, but it’s hard to go from the weather-lessness of the house, the outdoor world’s over, to the arctic chill of the indoors world.”

​

Thing is, I’m not sure how to gauge this heatwave. I can barely compare it to my childhood. I don’t know if I can really trust my memories of the winters being snowier or the summers having fewer days of swelter.

​

I do remember my mother joking about how I’d stay in the water until my teeth would chatter and my lips would turn blue. My kids can hardly remember a pool that didn’t feel like bathwater.

​

Somehow, I feel like I’ve managed to adapt.

​

I have adopted the verbiage I’ve gleaned from television weather people, pointing at a blank screen that only the viewers at home can see, explaining about the stubbornness of heat domes and how the sibling rivalry between El Nino and La Nina can make it all seem worse.

​

I heed the warnings.

​

I wake earlier to complete shortened runs; I walk slower in the shadows of trees and sprint through the streaks of sunlight. I drink more water. I draw the curtains during the day and do my gardening at night.

​

Anything seems possible if you have no better options.

​

The weather records allege Troy’s most extreme temperature - 108ºF -  occurred nearly 100 years ago on July 22, 1926. I can only imagine how they must have coped without the modern wonder and widespread usage of portable air conditioning units. I picture horse-drawn carriages delivering ice cut from the river in winter and stored in an ice house until summer. But I have no one to ask who might remember the experience first-hand.

​

Comparison from memory doesn’t do us any favors.

​

A part of me worries we don’t really suffer enough, not with the comfort of modern conveniences adding infinitely to the making of our modern dilemma.

​

We adapt to the discomfort like slow-cooked toads.

​

It seems we’re all waiting with bated breath for Mother Nature to finally have had enough of our shenanigans and make good on the promise to crank the wheel and turn this car around.

Forever, until

Three puppies came bounding into the meeting room, pinging around its four corners with carefree joy and boneless energy. They paid us no mind as we sat “criss-cross apple sauce” on the floor in a circle.’  

​

Even when the pups took turns landing accidentally in one of our laps, they kept their eyes on each other as they scrambled away from our clutches to partake in this sibling circus.

​

My husband, daughter, and son had positioned themselves in a row across from me, spaced such that I could see each of their wondrous expressions without moving my head.

​

I wasn’t there under duress, but I didn’t think I was ready, even though nearly a year had passed since the four of us held similar positions to surround our beloved dog with love and tears as we said our last goodbyes.

​

My husband had been in agreement. He wanted to travel more freely, and a dog would hamper that. Not that we hadn’t gone places during our long stretch of pet guardianship, it's just that we hadn’t gone without a pang of guilt. Now was our chance.

​

But as time went on sans canine companion, the odds began to seem out of favor for our being ready ever again. I told myself visiting with other people's dogs was good enough.

​

I told myself that my late-night visits to shelter websites were merely out of curiosity and not reconnaissance. I wasn’t aware I wasn’t alone.

​

Which is what brought us here: sitting on a shelter floor while on the rare family vacation where we are all together, serving as springboards for this triple shot of slobbery puppy love. I thought back on how hard it was to make the final veterinary call. How many nights I woke up afterward, reliving the final moments.

​

One mention of the word “adoption” and the ball got rolling.

​

Our children, now fledgling adults, had asked to be included in the selection. We knew, just as when they were little, the care and feeding would fall to us. But the kids didn’t want to be strangers when whatever dog we chose came home. They wanted to be imprinted, too.

​

The kids were harmonious and excitedly in agreement. It felt as if this were their very first pet. In a way, I suppose it was: They drove the whole endeavor,  worked together to find the shelter, and they communed on which quadruped seemed to be kismet.

​

These new, first moments - with the puppies careening around us - brought some of the joy as well as the pain.

​

The shelter volunteer solemnly told us every word of their story thus far: How they had been found as strays with their mama, how they had been sickly, and how each of them had been dealt the real possibility that their misshapen little hearts might never see them into adulthood.

​

But then he smiled: “I’m not worried. These guys will all get adopted. And the others, too.”

​

Of course they would. The pups were happy and playful and not even a little bit afraid of what comes next, a comedy-or-tragedy coin toss. And for some strange reason, I really don’t understand, neither were we. So, we spent a few extra minutes trying to absorb all the information we could about preventive veterinary schedules and medication administration, the smallest one would require when we took him home with us right then and there.

​

“We just firmly believe each pet deserves to live however long they have in a regular home with people who love them.”

​

There would be no more waiting. My son held the smallest puppy, who had crawled into his lap. He was the one. We were his, and he was ours. Forever and until. 

A pinch is all it takes

The pain seemed to tap me on the shoulder only lightly before it tiptoed over to my neck and tried to seize it.

​

Maybe I slept wrong. Or turned too quickly. Maybe my body finally needs the mythical eight glasses of water a day to keep all the toxins moving out and my muscles from drying up and turning to jerky.

​

At first, it felt like nothing more than a little pinch. It lasted for only a few seconds before it shifted sideways and then disappeared.

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I wasn’t alarmed, but I was trying to find ways to adjust that didn’t really help.

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Day by day, it got incrementally worse. By week’s end, I could concentrate on little else besides a single point, midway along the trapezius, where the pain had settled and sharpened as I stared into the computer screen for the forty-fifth hour. I could chase it: The pain would ebb as I leaned forward, and flow as I shifted my head back and sideways. But I couldn’t really contain it.

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The Google Machine mocks my investigation. It scoffs at my thrice-weekly running argument and suggests that what I am experiencing is a flare-up between my ol’ friends, tension and stress, who had perched precariously atop the unmistakable evidence of an otherwise sedentary lifestyle.

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I’ve gone through enough physical therapy with my children to know that the aches and pains of childhood aren’t always the “growing” kind. Often, they are the slouching kind, the sitting-too-long kind, or the dreaded head-hung-low-because-it’s angled-down-at-your-phone-too-long kind of discomfort, which feels like it may be here to stay since there is no way we can counteract the shapes our reliance on modern conveniences twists us into.

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I tried everything: I tried to avoid looking down; I tried alternating heat and ice; I tried stretching and moving at a snail’s pace. I tried sleeping with a new pillow, and then no pillow, then positioning all the pillows in the house so that my shoulders arched backward.

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I even tried forcing myself to relax … breathing in and out with slow, measured breaths, then willing my jaw to unclench and my shoulders to lower away from my ears.

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Tricking myself into thinking that the combination had worked, and the pinch had smoothed itself out. I could walk and run. I could  even carry heavy things while walking and running without much discomfort.

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But the second I sat down, the pain climbed up my back as if it had been formally invited to play a game of chicken.

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And that’s where I was, sitting at a picnic table, swapping stories of hardship with my perennially injured Saturday Run Club friends, when one of these intrepid athletes shared a sip of wisdom from her golden chalice.

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“When you go home, lie down on your bed, gently lean back so your head is hanging off the edge, then ever-so-carefully lift your head and chest slightly as if you were attempting a sit-up. Just a few reps. Don’t overdo.”

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I wasted no time. When I got home, I lay down on a chaise lounge and scooted to the edge until my head dipped backward. I let it hang for a minute before I gingerly lifted it up. I repeated the process three more times, letting a few hours pass before I performed another set.

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I wasted even less time texting my friend, as the advice seemed to be working.

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It wasn’t magic, but it felt miraculous. A few minutes a day was enough to keep the pinch at bay.

Communing with Community

I woke up before the alarm.

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The numbers - 5:58 - came into focus as my eyelids reluctantly parted.

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No time for the snooze bar.

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I had more than one job on this Saturday morning – Race Day, as our run club directors had referred to it since January, when the planning began in earnest – and each of them would require a degree of precision timing and the strength of muscle groups my body is not used to exerting.

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This was going to be a big one: There would be a record number of participants and spectators, but also a handful of changes that would throw a new learning curve toward even the most veteran of our volunteers.

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I would fold T-Shirts and unfold boxes. I would make pickups and deliveries of various things.

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I would schlep water and fetch bagels. I would deliver cups, plastic cutlery, bananas, granola bars, and recycling containers. I would take thousands of pictures at two different start lines and follow these subjects to the awards ceremony, the camera seeming heavier than I had remembered.  

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Next, I would help with clean-up, hauling the recycling and a half-dozen bags of trash off the premises.

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But I was one of many people working together to ensure the community road race was as successful as possible: Parking, Registration, Refreshments, Kids Race, Announcing, Waterstop, Vendor Village, Finish Line, Course Marshals, Outriders, Traffic Safety, Medical Services.

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I smile and socialize with people who pitch in to help. We laugh as we struggle through the momentary hardship, bringing our mantra back to the joys. When the task is completed, we all peel off in different directions, scouting for the next thing that needs doing.

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For the most part, the day is going as planned. The sun is shining, and the temperature is pleasant. Things are by no means problem-free, but the snags are getting sorted. I hardly notice the time.

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Eventually, we look up from our work to find nothing left to be done.

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I marvel at the difference. An hour earlier, the place was teeming. Every inch of space was saturated in the ephemera of the event: the bright colors of running kits, and table upon table of free treats and swag. Now it looked like we hadn’t been here at all. The grass was lush and green; not a blade seemed trampled.

I am entirely spent. My muscles will ache tomorrow, but I don’t want to move. I love this moment. I want to collect all the moments of the day I might have glossed over: the kids whose eyes lit up when they picked up the first race bibs of their careers; the hugs at the finish line, and the high fives. I notice the newcomers now, and the regulars. I wonder about those who are absent. I hope they are doing well.

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Eventually, a few of us stragglers will meander down to the local watering hole to swap stories and celebrate.

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There is always time to dwell on the difficulties, but this feels rare and important: a time to revel in each other and feel like part of something bigger. 

Zen and the art of household maintenance

 The weekend arrives with a schedule of household tasks that never ceases. There is laundry, and cleaning, and tidying, and the procuring of groceries. Depending on the season, there could be shoveling the walk or mowing the lawn. A thousand tasks randomly volunteer and all of them combined amount to the bare minimum of life’s essential needs.

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And as much as these tasks seem mindless, I tend to think about them all the time.

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Or half the time, since I often get distracted midway through by the intersection of other chores.

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The drier door ajar; a broom left out near a pile of nature’s glitter tracked in on the shoes, left catawampus in the foyer; dishes, all clean and in analogous piles on the counter, are waiting to be lifted into their dwelling places in the cabinets above. The grass has grown gangly around the edges.

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Our halfway house. Everything is halfway finished.

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Not just in tasks, but in its structure as well.

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As I carry a basket of laundry into the bedroom, I catch sight of ancient blue painter’s tape curling from the edge of window trim as if for the first time …  and not every morning since we moved here sixteen years ago.

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One of these days, I tell myself, I will peel that off. Then I just half smile, knowing that this is a conversation I’ve had with myself before. I, of course, bargain in response that as soon as the tape is dislodged, the wall will need to be repainted and the moulding retaped.

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I like the smell of the things I am folding, fresh from the dryer and still warm. It signals emphatically that they are clean. I had selected the hamper over another, one I had washed and dried days ago, because I didn’t want to face all the wrinkles that would have unfurled.

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Those duds would need another ride through the tumble, this time under the fancy “steam setting” I rarely remember is an option. Or not. The menfolk, whose clothes I am laundering, are perfectly capable of using an iron if they should be bothered by the idea of walking around in the world looking like an unmade bed.

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When I go back for the next load, I notice the perfect footprints of a size-13 shoe on the still-drying floorboards. The map they make starts in the entryway and leads through the right side of the dining room into the kitchen, where they turn in front of the refrigerator and traipse back through the house on the left side.

For some reason that evades me, I do not become irate.  Perhaps the tracks reminded me of a different kind of sadness, the kind of footprints the dog stopped making last summer when she left us. I could dwell in that sadness forever, but I won’t. The mop is still standing in a full bucket, waiting for me to wring it out, douse the weeds with our work product, and call it a day.

Heavy hand, heavy head

 This week, the New York Times published a disturbing  investigative report about police use of force in Texas schools. The newspaper went through thousands of incidents where school-based police departments had employed “heavy-handed” tactics – violent physical takedowns, chemical irritants, and electric tasers – and found many that were in response to minor misbehaviors, often stemming from things such as dress code violations, student beefs, and not showing respect for elders and authority.  

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Multiple studies spanning the last decade often found that while police presence in schools correlates with a reduction in some crimes, there is also a marked increase in harsher punishments, many of them disproportionately meted out to minority students. Cases that would have been handled aptly in a principal’s office have a much greater chance of winding up in a court of law.

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The Times reporting also included a handful of nauseating videos that showed exceptionally egregious displays of physical abuse, some of which led to students’ – visibly a fraction of the size of the police in the scenes – suffering serious injuries, such as broken bones and concussions.

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Officials responding to the findings pointed to the need to keep schools safe; parents and school staff often praised police for intervening in violent fights, confiscating weapons, and  preventing would-be attacks.

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But what if our kids aren’t safer with police departments taking up residence in schools? Do we really think that disrespectful children will be anything other than harmed by being arrested for poor judgment? Should mouthing off be punishable by jail time? Do we truly want to accept a society that doesn’t want children to be bullies but has few qualms about them being beaten by police?

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A part of me doesn’t really want an answer to any of those questions because I know the sentiments of many from reading the comments sections. Too many of my neighbors believe other people’s kids deserve harsh treatment. Or, perhaps, only theirs are entitled to grace.

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Obviously, I don’t have an answer that will fix our ills. We can’t prevent every bad thing from befalling us. Regardless, there are things we can do that will give our kids a better experience.

It doesn’t mean we will be reading riot acts until we’re blue in the face. But it will be hard work just the same: It might even mean lecturing less and listening more. Building connections with individuals rather than drawing conclusions from intuition.

​We could start with modest changes in mindset. Instead of treating schools as if they were crime-ridden microcosms or major incubators of criminal potential, we set our sights on delivering on education.  

It means justice has to apply to all mistakes, not just our teens. And consequences for the tormentors should be equally applied, especially when those doing harm are elders and authorities.

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At the very least, we should be demanding more transparency. Schools with police presence should have community and civilian oversight. These incidents of brutality should be part of the public record, open to inspection, and every instance should be investigated independently.

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We should not lose sight of the value of justice, oversight, and the role education can play in creating a healthier society. Maybe we can lean more heavily on our humanity so we don’t feel as dependent on the heavy hand.

Do the opposite

 It’s easy to become maudlin these days. If we keep our eyes laser-focused, we can’t help but get overwhelmed by the never-ending stream of information that is as noxious as toxic sludge.

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It’s enough to make us ill.

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We have tune it out to some degree if we hope to stay sane; how could we get up in the morning and go to work or school, and work toward a future if we can’t imagine  there will be one?

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Yet, if we glaze over, or look away for too long, we run the risk of losing touch with our humanity and becoming numb just the same.

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Summer will be upon us soon, surrounding us in a dismal soup that might feel like the inside of a pressure cooker … without an escape valve for steam, we will have to deal with an explosion rather than a delightful stew.

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Of course, it can feel calming to scroll from reel to reel … watching whatever it is we’ve mindlessly ordered from the algorithm that seems to “float our boats,” as our parents might have scoffed. But by the time you realize you are watching a woman who lives alone in a big city — with no friends, and no social life — coming through the door wearing a new outfit, but doing the same things: hugging her cat, making dinner for one, and settling in for a quiet night. .. you have frittered away the better part of an hour or worse. You’ve wasted the best part of a good night’s rest.

Finding the right balance can feel as steady as a roller coaster.

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What other choice is there?

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Might as well practice joy.

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Find it out of thin air if you need to; take a deep breath when there is a gentle breeze, let it relax you just a titch. Smile when you feel the sun on your face, close your eyes and let your shoulders drop away from where they’ve been tensing around your ears.

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Might as well practice service.

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Start a conversation with an elder in the grocery store; make it your mission to notice when someone else is struggling, and to tell them how you plan to help, and let them accept. It can be as insignificant as reach for a can on the top shelf or striking up a conversation that isn’t about the price of chicken.  

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Might as well change your mind and let those new thoughts change your mindset.

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Approach something you’ve been struggling with from a different angle. Maybe even from the polar opposite view.

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We don’t have to convince others of our righteousness, we just have to confirm that what we “know to be true” has veracity to back it up.

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Remind ourselves that an understanding can change into a misunderstanding quietly as new facts emerge. We need to be ready to expand our thoughts, and not just retract the words.

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The heat is coming back, but we can survive it by making good use of breathing room.

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Be ready to inhale fire and exhale the chill. 

Enduring

 I had arrived early for a late lunch at the diner.

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As I sat at the table, waiting for my friend – a woman, like me, whose children were all of a sudden grown – I exhaled.  It was a spur-of-the-moment meal. The kind of thing we usually say we will do, but never schedule. Until one day, in some unspoken alignment brought together by random texts bearing silly jokes, we set a date and see it through.

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My stomach growled as I looked over the menu.  

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I would order the same thing I always order: Swiss cheese omelet with rye toast. No jam. Hot sauce, please. She has no usual. When my friend arrives, I know she will make a game-day decision.

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The server brings me coffee.

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When she walks in a few minutes later, the room will come to life. Her voice carries, as mine does, but unlike mine, she has a clear tone that has a distinct melody. No one would ever accuse her of being monotonous.

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I smile, thinking about all the ways her voice changes. Our conversations meander and overlap, the way good advice discourages. “Don’t answer their story with a similar story of your own,” the inconvenient narrator in my head tries to interject as I push forward with my response.

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The history of our friendship could be put into words and follow a chronology stemming from our children’s early education, but it wouldn’t be able to describe the things that make the friendship seem effortless that don’t also align with happenstance.

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We would talk, and laugh, and yell, and say things that make the neighboring tables blush. We swapped stories of how the kids are moving on, how the husbands are still the same, but somehow we are getting grumpier.

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We avoid talking about the things that are heavy or create anxiety because we have accepted these as problems beyond our control, so we commence in complaining about the things in our lives that we could change … even though the likelihood of us changing them is less than one iota.

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Time gets away from us, but not the same way it transformed our kids. We blinked here at the table, and it was nearing late afternoon; we blinked with our kids at a kindergarten assembly, and somehow they’d graduated from college.

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When the check comes, she reaches for it, over my objections. “A belated birthday gift,” she says matter-of-factly as she holds the curl of paper over her head, where I couldn’t reach if I jumped.

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I love her for that kind of mischief. And I vow that we shall meet again in a fortnight to celebrate hers.

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Being of the same “vibe” feels like an inadequate explanation as to why friendships like ours endure.  Perhaps the word “enduring” is the key since it could mean “long-lasting” or it could mean “long suffering.”

It is not lost on either of us that, regardless of how long we stretch between meetings, we are in the struggle together. And the conversation will continue as if it never ended the next time. Whenever that is.