A desk job

 The lady at the Post Office smiled a little when she saw me at the counter, a slip of yellow card stock in my hand and a glimmer of hope for a special delivery of caffeine. Hope that was instantly erased by the question she asked of me:

"I hope you brought your car," she said before turning away and heading to "The Wall," where all the oversized packages are stored.

Alas, the box that had arrived didn't contain the tin-capsule encased coffee pods I had been expecting with anxious mint-flavored breath. Instead, the Post Office Lady lugged a door-sized, flat-packed box into the lobby. Something clanged metallically when she tipped it sideways to slide it through the door.

"It's heavy."

For a moment, I blink repetitively into the blinding light of the unknown.

The package is non-descript. A beige box, without pictures, inscribed with the name of a beige company that doesn't give away any secrets about the product contained within.

The label has my son's name on it.

A memory floated back to me from within the window of shipping possibilities: it was of the boy visiting me on the living room couch late one evening as I filled myself with warm caffeine and fiddled with something or other on the computer.

"I have some money saved up. Is it okay if I buy something online?"

I usually ask him about whatever it is his heart desires, and we chat for a bit about computer games I don't understand. The discussions have evolved over the years from extracting from the boy an accounting of the level of aggression his games would engender.

Back then he would assure me that nothing on his wishlist had been rated M for "mature."

On this evening, however, I had been preoccupied. I hadn't stopped to converse. I'd just nodded my head and shrugged my shoulders.

"Sure, go ahead," I had said, assuming the biggest inconvenience would be a momentary lag in broadband as whatever graphics-heavy game he wished to own took its sweet time downloading. "Just leave the money in my jacket pocket. I'll get it later."

It occurred to me, as I wrestled the box into my car, schlepped it up the porch steps and into the house, that I'd never even checked the deposit to see what he'd spent. I dipped my hand into my pocket and came out with a fist-full of crumpled cash. Much more than the ten or twelve dollars I'd expected.

I called up to his room:

"There's a delivery on the porch for you."

And then there came a thunderous trampling of feet down the stairs, his tousled head tilting as he skidded to a stop in the kitchen.

“Which porch?”

I tilted my head ... “Side.”

“What did you get? It was heavy.”

“A new desk! I wanted something more modern and without drawers for my computer. Want to help me put it together?”

“No. You'll just have to wait until your father gets home. I'm going to wait here for my coffee.”

kNOw Justice, kNOw Peace

I have a sign in my yard. It reads "kNOwJUSTICE, kNOwPEACE."

My children and I painted it last year after news broke that a police
officer had kneeled on a Black man's neck for an excruciating nine
minutes until he died.

The kids added BLM and a drawing of a heart to my handiwork.

During the past 11 months, there's been a lot of honking past our
house. Some of it accompanied by cheers, but much more, sadly, the
noise of jeers, or a forceful middle finger, or the occasional tossing
of rubbish.

Despite the uproar ... and the anonymous complaint to code enforcement
over whether a person with such a sign in a town such as ours has the
right to display "matters of politics," since there are rules
regulating the presence and placement of political signage during
election season ...
our sign stayed.

When it got egged, I cleaned it.
When it was tipped over, I righted it.

I'm not taking it down.

Even after my phone erupted with good vibrations last Tuesday after
the Verdict was read ...

"Guilty, Guilty, Guilty."

The moment - while triumphant right now - will pass.

I wanted to feel elation at the verdict. It was clear and correct, and
it was necessary, but whether it is a turning point for this country
seems unlikely.

Given the facts of the case -- the video evidence and heartbreaking
testimony of eyewitnesses, some of whom were children -- it seems
almost impossible for a jury to come up with any other decision.

And yet they have and regularly do; hamstrung, many say, by laws or
policy that give police an almost uncheckable power.

In the time it took to convict a remorselessly murderous cop, at least
two more police shootings of Black children hit the news cycle. Two
more chances for other citizens to argue about the permissibility of
discounting their lives.

It seems painfully clear that without the courage of a 17-year-old
girl who filmed the murder of George Floyd, this trial may never have
taken place. Similarly, as the verdict was read we learn that states
all over this nation are turning their legislative work NOT toward
fair and equitable policing BUT to further restrict citizens' rights
to gather in protest.

We have much work to do as a country. No one action will bring about a
solution to our many problems as a nation, but there are things we can
and must do to ensure an equitable future for us all.

Perhaps even more so than training, we must work to rid police ranks
of dangerous cops. That "One Bad Apple," saying has a literal ending
we ignore to our peril; "spoils the bunch."

And we in the media have our part to play, too. We have to reevaluate
our reliance on police as primary sources of information.

I wish I could impress upon you the benefits we all would gain by
having a policing system that is more compassionate and professional,
one that humanizes suspects, and one that is accountable and
responsive to its own failures.

I wish we all could know, without question or fear, that reform is not
only necessary it's a moral imperative.

Gardening at night

Should I go with the tall spiky plants that have wide flocked leaves and blue conical flowers, or should I choose the rounded low shrubs, with leafy greens and plate-sized pink blossoms? I've already ruled out whatever abomination has taken root in the only other option - yellow.

Still, I don't want to spend too much time on this decision. The stakes aren't high. I'll just close my eyes and pick one.

As I open them again, a dust devil has formed, circling around the strip of land I've been tasked to fill.

When it clears, tall blue flowers with spiky leaves are revealed.

Voila!

"I can't believe YOU play 'Gardenscapes'," the boy remarked as he sank into the space beside me on the couch.

Suddenly, I'm self consciously aware of what I must look like: a mother, with grey frosted hair, holding her phone at arm's length, swiping the screen with one finger hoping to crack a few nuts.

I bring the screen closer toward my body in a protective stance. As if keeping my son from seeing the balding, middle-aged bachelor avatar strolling around the grounds of some dilapidated old mansion I must renovate will save me from embarrassment.

Is it apparent that I've already spent the better part of an hour raising the needed capital for a handful of completely ridiculous restorations, by trying to clear a never-ending series of Tetris-like games?

It's all fairly straightforward, once you learn to work the puzzle. Like how you can string together five gems and earn a laser-shooting rainbow disco orb, which, depending on how you aim it, can obliterate a row of cookies or turn a single paper airplane into an airforce of fruit, nut, and berry-seeking missiles.

I don't even mind that I've been stuck on Level Fifty-Six for three days. 

"I find it relaxing."

The irony of a mother playing “video games” for the express purpose of turning her mind into mush -- the modern equivalent of immersion into the momentary respite of warm Calgon Waters – is not lost on me. 

Nor am I ashamed that I'd rather garden in the rarified air of cyberspace than dig in real dirt. I have enough dead flowers at the edge of my yard.

My son sees it a little differently, though.

"Doing the same thing, over and over hoping for a different result? I think there's I different dictionary definition for that one."

He thinks I should aim higher: like a space station in some distant galaxy, where colorful people dressed like welders wander around different airlocks performing random tasks while spying on their co-workers.

"Come on! Play Among Us! It's fun. I'll teach you.

"I don't know. It sounds too much like ... an office job."

"Pffffft," he sputters. His eyes roll to the ceiling and then settle into their most burning, side-eye position. A tiny explosion bursts forth from his own closely held screen and the unmistakable soundtrack of his player decompensating.

His voice breaks into a good-natured chuckle.

"Hmmm. Can I play yours? Maybe I can get you to Level Fifty-Seven."

College hopping

As we set out of the driveway the first sunny morning of Spring Break, I was reminded of a similar trip I made with my mother.

A high school junior, I sat behind the wheel of her car and headed west toward the edge of the state. The burgundy sedan was new and handled like it, offering a smooth ride that would make me unaware of how fast I was going.

Mom didn't seem to notice either.

Eighty miles per hour on a highway that stretched out straight ahead and seemed to be hurdling us forward forever, not just the six hours a paper map and our basic calculations could reckon.

Traveling at the same speed, but decades later and with a computer voice guiding us onward in a silver SUV, my daughter steers confidently, keeping pace with the neighboring traffic. Maybe it's nerves, but we seem to be faster now that I am the mother sitting in the passenger seat.

We won't be meeting officials or getting the low down on college life from a gaggle of half-dressed frat boys who appear in the hallway, snapping each other with towels as if on cue, as our tour parades through the dormitory.

Those days might not be over, but I can't say that I'm sad we won't get to experience such an embarrassment of such riches on this trip.

Honestly, I don't remember the processes being so fraught.

I picked a direction and followed it. One small decision after another, and here we are, college shopping. 

But then again, everything appeared to go according to my limited plan. Furthermore, tuition didn't cost $400,000 and I didn't have to mortgage a forever home and all the cars I might ever own to pay for it.

My stress grip on the armrest doesn't go unnoticed. I had phoned a relative; an insider willing and able to provide perspective who would join us in a two-car parade connected by the magic of DNA and invisible waves of pocket technology.

I am grateful for both.

We learn more than we would have on our own. Had we guessed which were lecture halls and which were residence halls, we would have been wrong.

Our plan is much less daunting than it seems -- two days, four colleges, and a reservation for an overnight stay; is stressful in all of our fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants kind of educational tourism glory.

A hundred years ago, as my mother and I cruised toward my college visits, we had a destination, with an appointment and an application pending. I had put all my eggs in one basket.

My daughter has a zillion possibilities to whittle into a handful of hopeful opportunities. She's reaching so march farther than I had. She's worried the baskets will be full before she can put her eggs in.

We don't know yet whether this uncertainty is a curse or a gift, but we operate as if it is the latter.

We'll use these experiences to make more educated guesses as we continue to college hop.

The Talk

 I have been putting off having The Talk.

With myself.

But a swirling cloud of improprieties circling our governor and, now, a certain congressman from Florida have me thinking the reckoning is unavoidable. No doubt it is long past due.

Oh sure, I've heard from men who wonder aloud about the state of office politics. As if politics is all that's at play. They all wonder what offenses - what off-color joke or light flirtation - would upend their professional lives as they know them.

And I assure them that they would KNOW in the way we KNOW when things feel amiss.

But I don't know why I reassure them when undoubtedly they must do their own self-evaluation.

It is not enough to look at our actions through the lens of the familiar.

I'm not talking about cases. Whatever investigations reveal about evidence is still to be seen.

I'm talking about pinpointing the moment in time when the expectations shifted; when the light shone on the old boys' network and all we saw was the decay.

But I haven't heard from my daughter; who, like her mother, has been having trouble locating the middle ground.

But before we open our mouths and take that deep, buoying breath to unleash the torrent, we have some serious thinking to do.

Because it's not just one thing.

From "Me too," to "Time's Up" to "Not All Men we are in the midst of a reckoning.

Maybe the middle is where we've been all along. Making things worse.

What strikes me as an oddity in this back and forth the genders in all their complexities seem to be having is that we keep looking at the forest but pretending not to acknowledge the trees.

The common beliefs we have accepted in our lives for no other reason than we didn't have to think about them aren't holding up.

Dad fixes the car.

Mom fixes the lunch.

Doctors are men.

Nurses are women.

We just like to hug. It's part of our culture.

Don't worry your pretty little head about any of these details.

But the details we should question aren't salacious ones. The details are more mundane than you might imagine.

What do we expect? And why? 

All it takes for change is for the weight of the world -- or those in it who are unwilling to accept the state of affairs -- to shift in a new direction. Afterward, it probably won't even seem like a giant wave has capsized everything we know.

It will seem more like a clarifying correction.

Maybe it started after the dramatic downfall of a movie mogul that we lost a taste for the so-called Hollywood ending: the guy getting the girl as the credits roll. A few female names among a sea of male ones becomes so much harder to overlook.

This flipped script is more than some heady talk of disruption. There is real change coming. And it is long overdue.

There will always be time to talk. Right now, it is time to listen.

Habit foaming

Some things never really get old.

A box arrives every three months like clockwork. Every three hundred miles to be exact.

A new pair of running kicks.

It's not a mystery gift. I have no subscription to a running-shoe-of-the-month club (if there is such a thing). No, it's a carefully plotted purchase that has been months in the making. In fact, just a few days after the last pair arrived I've scrolled through hundreds of pages of online catalogs looking for exactly the same pair in a color I've never heard of, that matches no other piece of clothing I own.

Mine are meant to be bright and light and seen from outer space. They also must be so cushiony that every adjective that described them had been derived from the mental image of clouds.

As if striding atop the aerosol of tiny water droplets where saturated air has met its dew point would be even remotely comfortable let alone effortless.

I'd like to tell you I'd gone from here to Boston and back, but the truth is I've just circled the neighborhood a few hundred times.

It's a strangely slow process, buying shoes. I even bide my time in the hopes of reaching the mythical 400 miles. I see how long I can hold out. People who know about such things say I should be able to squeak out at least one more trip to Cambridge (the New York one) and back, but I never get that far.

I don't understand it exactly. They don't look worn-in let alone worn-out.

The quarter-year-old shoes haven't lost even a hint of their vibrant hue. There's a little fraying around the mystery lace hole that is supposed to lock your foot in place, but only four people on Earth have ever used it. And every single one of those people complained about the speed at which the fraying accelerated.

Yet somehow I feel their decrepitude in my bones. A creak here, a groan there. Each step I take after the magic number 300 threatens to multiply fatigue by superstition. Truth is, even if I didn't know down to the millimeter how far my shoes have traveled, I'd know by the knee pain.

I'm giddy when the box arrives. I am intoxicated by the prospect of fresh foam and the new ride smell that will greet me the second I open the lid and shift the paper protector. The chemical components of clouds.

I can't fathom how I've let color or style argue in the backseat as I make comfort ride upfront. 

As I transport them to their new home - a little out-of-the-way nook of the house with a built-in ledge for sitting - I anticipate the ease and speed that will undoubtedly accompany me on my next run. The occasion of which will be now, since that is how runners celebrate new shoes.

And quite honestly, in those first few moments; after I start my watch and wave to the neighbors (who have somehow noticed my feet's change in color and elevation) I feel like I am flying. 

As if I were five again.

Run your race

I was worried about parking. The lot already looked full and cars were still streaming in as I slowly steered my way around dots of colorfully dressed people; some of them in costume - a person wearing a furry green bear suit stood a few yards away from someone in a pink tulle tutu.

The second I opened the car door and felt the western wind slicing at my outstretched arm, I wondered why I had agreed to this. I have been running each and every day since late last May in all kinds of weather. The novelty hadn't worn off.

I've felt the crunch of ice under my shoes. I've warily watched trees dance while flashes of lightning crack open the sky. I have been drenched with rain and covered in snow.

It has become the hour, or half-hour, or just ten minutes, of each and every day that I can count as normal.

I've discovered this past year that I don't really dwell in the trappings of my old life. It may seem strange, but I feel more attached to the new paths that necessity has opened. I don't think about returns being triumphant.

And yet, somehow, a five-mile road race with 600 anxious runners in the middle (or the we-honestly-have-no-idea-what-segment) of a pandemic, was more than a novelty. It was a brief chasing of normality.

My double-masked friend was beside me in the car, and though we hadn't gotten out yet, I knew no amount of convincing would get her to skip this exercise. Just as I knew I would pin on the racing bib and declare the digits my registration had generated to be my "lucky" number.

Eventually we would part ways. Each of us running our own race, set by any number of reasons and variables that neither of us can give a full accounting.

I would select a secret rival - someone who might look younger, but who I believed I could overtake at the finish line in one last burst of unnecessary speed.

We all tell ourselves we don't need to beat someone by a fraction of a second here at the back of the pack, but we do it anyway.

It's easy to forget the feelings of others whenever we compete against ourselves.

Maybe it's the anticipation of an announcer's voice exhaling out names into a microphone, or the muscle memory of a primary school desire not to be last to cross that finish. Maybe it's just the urge to be done.

Whatever it is, I'm always careful to weigh my stamina against the distance left to go before I dig in.

I often miscalculate. 

That last tenth of a mile seems longer than metrically possible. I can see the finish line, but the distance between me and it doesn't appear to diminish.

I will have to choose between pulling back and letting my rival have the three-second edge or whether I will need to stray from the chute in the aftermath of same-time glory and find an out-of-the-way place to hurl.

No matter how I choose to end this race, I know I will be glad I ran it.

I can't believe I've missed this at all. And yet, I have.

Rhyme Time

Good morning!

It's 7 a.m.

Or is it 8 a.m.?

Wait a moment while I consult the magic rhyme I've recited in my head
since the custom of keeping track of time started to matter to me.

"Spring forward ... Fall back."

I'm sure I have that correct. Spring back .... Fall forward sounds
like what happens at frat parties or comedy shows. Though I can admit,
my sense of time being of importance only began to mature between
adolescence (when I lettered in sleeping past noon) and undergrad
(when bar hopping was my preferred sport) and an 8 a.m. survey class
might be the only drawback.

But that was then and this is now: A few decades later when sleep is a
thing that happens after you sit down but before you are determined to
turn in. And when time doesn’t seem to have a clear direction. Some
might even feel its suspension.

For me, this time is also and marked by having the annual argument in
an attempt to convince the resident husband that an hour of sleep will
disappear into the wee hours of the morning, not to be seen again
until Fall.

It also means engaging in the semi-annual argument about leaving off
the extra S in Daylight Saving or whether we are returning to the
Standard Time. We could steer all usage to a simple directive: "It's
Time To Change Your Clock," and be done with it.

However, if we did that, would there be any room for the semi-annual
discussions of leaving the time as it is year-round?  Or would we end
forever all argument about whether this practice came about as an
ancient farming technique, or an energy-saving construct, or a simple
ruse to allow executives more time on the links after a long day at
the office?

Would we be able to wrap our heads around how time refuses to stand
still? Would you miss that crazy clock illustration, with its wings
and its spinning, confused face?

But the answer is yes ... even with this children's illustrated
explanation, we will argue forward can't mean "losing" and going back
has the opposite meaning of gaining - for perhaps the 18th in the
history of our history together.

And I will resort to scouring the house for an antiquated clock I can
manipulate to show that moving the hands of a clock forward
(especially when you've just turned 21) loses you a solid hour of
imbibing between midnight and four a.m.

"At midnight you go directly to 1 a.m. in Boston they'd start talking
about Last Call.

Of course, you’d forget to set your alarm clock. You’d miss a class in
the morning. Or you’d get to the car and have an existential crisis.
Am I late?

Eventually, even this argument will be one we have only for Old Time’s sake.

Eventually, it will reset as NatureTM intended ... which in modern
times means the Apple product that sleeps next to your bed, and which
(we can admit) is the first thing we greet in the morning upon
awakening, will have already made the transition for you.

Safety third

 The wind seemed to reach over the fence in our backyard to squeeze the hand of a tree limb. It held on like a practical joker with a buzzer concealed in its palm. The shrubbery in its midst appeared to be laughing at the gale-force grip until the wind-weakened branch gave way.

The limb tumbled and clattered against the house, scraping the clapboard until it came to an uneasy rest on the back porch where it blocked the door.

The noise had frightened the dog and dissuaded her from doing a lick of her morning business.

I can't say that I blame her. I didn't want to venture out, either. Especially not after the wind's eerie howls had kept me up through the night.

It puzzled me some that this canine of mine wasn't similarly deprived of her puppy dreams. But not enough to add three layers to my running attire and leave the house. Instead, I took some cues from her refusals to navigate around the fallen tree parts and switch my outdoor run to an indoor one.

The treadmill is not my best friend.

It "tread-spreads" in the limited space of my office, which shrinks to fit an edge of our guest room. Which, now that I think about it, are all just imaginary components of life right now as we know it.

But I digress.

This loud, heavy, second-hand treadmill has saved my psyche and my current 283-day running streak exactly seven times, but it has always frightened me.

The fact that the green "UP" arrow that allows for incremental acceleration is a thumb press away from "10" (unofficially known as the speed of 10-thousand-miles-per-hour-immediately) is a design flaw that on more than one occasion has nearly launched me into the proverbial “next week.”

For this reason -- and a single accident that didn't kill him -- I have forbidden my son from using the contraption at all. My daughter, however, continues to use the device for Home School Gym Classes as she has taken fewer risks and more courses at the School of MOther PROtection (SMOTHER PRO for short).

But even she has found less use for the stationary conveyor, which is why, upon finding its deck lowered on this most blustery of days, I didn't follow any of my own safety precautions.

I just hopped on and set the pace at a leisurely Four. Four and a half. OK, five.

I wasn't even playing with the buttons when I felt a strange pull on my right sneaker and then the immediate sense of finally (and frighteningly) being at my first rodeo.

Only I was the calf; lassoed by the strap of an unzipped gym bag that had been living, evidently, on the front bumper of the machine. The thing NOT strapped to me was the emergency clip.

It's a good thing my reflexes are still capable of acting independently of my mind. I managed to shift my weight into my arms and lift my feet off the webbing, shaking my foot free of the bag and all the items from it that had tumbled onto the belt and were now jettisoning against the wall behind me. A comedy of errors.

But unlike this tree falling on my back porch, no one was the wiser. I hadn't screamed or fallen. Nothing went thud. And because I put safety third, I didn't have to start over.

Pandemic hair

 I've always thought of myself as a brunette. The very picture of me on a swing set in a neighborhood playground circa 1984.

It wasn't a particularly flattering photograph: Me hunching forward through the swing's chains, unsmiling, wearing a ratty old flannel shirt; The photographer aiming the pocket camera up from the dust of the next swing's foot space.

But for whatever reason, that picture -- my face awash in the hot light of a flash and my hair as black as a shadow -- is frozen in time as my mind's permanent self-image.

At least it was until my youngest went to Kindergarten. Newish to motherhood, but still long in the tooth, it was just a few weeks of Thursday volunteering when one of his cherubic classmates mustered up the courage to ask me a question. “Are you his Grandmother?"

The innocent inquiry stung as if a crayon-shaped dart had been plunged into my psyche. It pierced the protective bubble that had congealed around my ego until what almost spilled forth was ... well ... a torrent of unsaid thoughts that would have been impolite if not entirely unkind.

The teacher didn't say anything either, but I could see from her pained expression that she would have hugged me if I had been within arm's reach.

Nobody would have blamed me for leaving that den of primary colors and puzzling questions and heading directly for aisle 12 of the nearest drug store, where I would try to choose which box of unnatural color suited me best.

I never thought it would be whatever color this is right now.

The two curtains alongside my face, emanating from a widow's peak at the top of my forehead, are a solid steel gray. Silvery strands throughout catch the light and illuminate like frost on the grass. The haircutter complimented me on the nature of my gray, battling back from long-abandoned attempts to restore it to former glory.

 From the chin down, however, my hair is the color of straw. It even has the same crinkly texture that threatens to fracture and break just by grazing it with my hand as I adjust my shirt collar. I pinch the ends between my fingers, and little serpent tongues slither back at me. It's been so long since my last haircut, I barely remember it.

Once a week or so, I comb out a mat that forms at the base of my skull after a good night's sleep. The rest of the days I just pretend my hair has the body or I hide it under a hat.

This is what happens when time and neglect conspire with the elements to undo whatever magic comes from mixing potions contained in a box of drug store hair color.

Not that my tresses experienced any less stress before the pandemic.

I don't know what color to call it should someone official ... someone, say like the Identifying Officer from the Department of Descriptions, were to try to fill in a box.

Eye color? Brown.

Height? 5'4" with a stacked heel.

Hair color? Let's just call it Manic at the Disco?

Selective shorts

To hear the boy tell it, he had been holed up in his room since the year 2011, venturing out only for bowls of cereal and trips to the loo.

"I've been in this room since I was four," he tells me emphatically. His complaint asserts the unmistakable tone of authority as if the pronouncement were based on fact rather than feelings. Such is the life of a modern 13-year-old who is wrapped inside of inertia and tucked into a pandemic.

It seems plausible.

He does spend an inordinately long time inside those four walls. However, I know his sister has keys to a car and almost full authority on when to use them, the two caveats being that she tells me where she's going; and that she taxi her brother on the two days a week they are scheduled to attend classes in person.

I have seen him in the passenger seat with a pile of books and bags balanced on his lap and a practiced bershon written all over his face.

I have passed him on the stairs. I am headed up with a laundry basket while he is headed down to rummage through the fridge.

I make a point to catch his gaze as I ascend to the step he just vacated. This is the only way I can continue to measure taller in his eyes.

He knows he's gaining on me. His body is gaining mass but losing some of its softness. A patch of hair over his lip is growing darker.

He's not unhappy about any of this. Not outwardly, anyway.

He is the captive to my audience, but he knows how to play it to his advantage. He does his level best to be noticed and then ignored.

A squeaky wheel, he knows, just gets the grief.

It's a hardship he's borne quietly enough to avoid adults bringing him solutions to problems not of his making.

For him, the virus couldn't have picked a better time. The sequestration shields him from view while the fits and spurts of budding adolescence do their work.

Teams were constantly forming, and Natural Selection seemed to glance off him and land on the kids standing on either side.

He didn't take it personally. Sinking two game baskets seventh-grade year would be enough to show he tried and prevailed. He could move on to other pursuits.

He could choose the games that require him to sit in one place and stare straight ahead.

I would have lamented this a year ago. I would have insisted he join a club or try out for a team. I still worry about the pale sunless corner of the world where he currently stagnates. The inertia threatens to expand his waistline and turn his mind to mush.

I send him outside now and again to assuage my guilt. “Do me a favor, please. Shovel the snow from the stairs and then clear a path in the backyard for the dog.”

He grumbles under his breath but obliges. He heads for the door, wearing short sleeves, short pants, and slippers. From the uniform, I can tell this job won't take long.

But at least it will get him out of his room.

The doctor won't see you now

 

I'm trying to will the stress from my body. One breath at a time, I picture the weight of pent-up rage cascading from the top of my head, like sweat or tears, and soaking into the ground below. 

It's not really working as well as I had hoped.

But I don't have to tell you. All of the days in the decade of this year have been a trial of some sort. We aren't all working from the same evidence or relying on worthy advocates. 

Most days, I visit the kitchen and stand in front of the coffeemaker. A stream of foamy liquid splutters into an awaiting cup with enough force to shake me, albeit momentarily, from my doldrums. It is my third vacation of the day.

I need it to bolster myself in my travels through the dining room, which seems to be the connecting hub through which one must travel to reach any other domestic destination. 

Lately, it has proven to be an epic journey that one might not realize presents impediments. First among them is a laundry basket. It contains a heaping pile of mystery. Its contents could be dirty, or it could be clean. Or it could be some combination of the two. Unattended piles tend to attract additions that may or may not belong.

On this day, I have left the house. In a snowstorm, no less. I can't remember the last time I white-knuckled my way through a wintery mix, but doctor's appointments are precious enough to keep, despite the physical risks.

Even if I never leave the car, which is often the case now as I wait for my father, who is inside with his cellphone set to speaker.

It takes a while before the doctor makes his way to the exam room. 

As I linger in my mobile waiting room, the impeachment hearings are playing out. I listen in.

I've missed the beginning, but the person talking now assures us that what preceded was impressive and well done.

He's being cynical, though. His point being it was too good.

As he stomps around his points, which seem to have neither order nor relevance, I understand. Nothing he says really matters. There will be no defense because defiance is enough.

Standing on a hill and yelling about its beacon is the stock phrase.

One side is certainly all theater. And not the Tony Award-winning kind. Maybe it takes one to know others.

I struggle with the passive tense, I think because it leaves the tangle of my thoughts intact for someone else to interpret. 

But I'm finding it less and less likely that people like Marjorie Taylor Greene are using the passive tense by accident. When she said: “I was allowed to believe things that weren't true,” - she wasn't mincing words.

Change that tense and you might understand the truth she holds dear: I am allowed to believe things that aren't true. I am allowed to perpetuate this to my advantage. 

These are the words that frees her. and hamstrings us.

The actions of the conservative movement, perhaps today more than ever, shows they are content with lies and the political theater they've staged to perpetuate them. 

I hope it's not something we'll just have to get used to ...

Like the call that breaks into this regularly scheduled programming. I answer it just in time to hear a door open and a voice greets my father, who introduces me by holding out his phone.

“I apologize that I won't be seeing you right now.”

Value subtracted

 "I don't know how you do it," I gushed to my friend. "I am just so thankful." Where I had run up to brick wall after brick wall, she had managed to wrangle two appointments for my COVID jab-eligible loved ones. 

And they wouldn't have to shuffle off to Buffalo to get the elusive shot in the arm. 

"Don't thank me," she responded with a soft laugh I've come to know as the sound of incredibly kind and thoughtful people tend to have. 

"I'm in this for purely selfish reasons. I want to make sure everyone who can get a vaccine does. It will make us all safer."

All she wanted in return was for me to spread the word. There may be other local candidates that she could benefit from her luck at snagging appointments. She felt strongly that such skills should benefit those who needed it most: the elderly without internet service and the essential workers who may lack the time it requires to sit in front of a computer to keep hitting refresh.

Of course, my heart aches for the people who are, for the moment, one letter out of reach of the protective injection. They are the people who are immunocompromised or who possess other co-morbidities that make this illness so dangerous. 

No one would say they are less deserving. The same goes for all the folks who, as 1As and 1Bs, could be rolling up their sleeves right now but can't secure an appointment. We are all at the mercy of a deluge of interest and a dearth of supply.

It's easy to complain about the roll-out of this vaccine. There has certainly been no shortage of fear that the cresting wave of new infections will swamp us next.

Everyone is tired. Everyone is anxious. No one wants to be vulnerable ... especially when some of us have been more used to having timely access to healthcare than others. 

To date, the US has administered roughly 62 percent of its available vaccine covering 10.27 percent of the population. This seems like an enormous achievement if those numbers are correct, considering the Trump administration's mismanagement and the states' roll-outs leading to more confusion and chaos as supply inequities coupled with understaffed healthcare facilities became overwhelmed with patients, who were responsible for finding their own vaccination appointments. 

Predictably this has meant we've seen many stories about people jumping the line to get the jab. 

It is literally all the rage. 

Some people holding others up between their proverbial fingers, asking point blankly why anyone in charge would think others ... a restaurant server, a grocery store bagger, was more valuable than ...  "Me."

We don't even pause before saying words like these aloud anymore. We believe them, in our souls. We value each other based on a paycheck or a job description. 

And yet, the elderly, the supermarket clerks, and the health care workers are all still out there waiting for a line in which they can stand. 

These are the up-front workers, the people most likely to die, and those who are most likely to be at the center of transmission. 

We all deserve to be protected. And slowing the spread will protect us all a little bit better. 

Some Thursday in Spring

I stepped on the foot lever, and the lid of the kitchen garbage can sprang open. 

As if it were a gaping, unwashed mouth, a waft of sweet rot launched into the air. I squinted and turned my head despite being grateful for the reminder I still have a sense of smell. 

That's when I saw it.

The dish was nestled on top of a compacted pile of refuse and a brown speckled banana peel. It was in two pieces.

Probably the boy. He's growing so fast he can't calculate the amount of leeway he needs for his limbs when turning. I don't wonder why he didn't tell me.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It was one of the good plates: a handmade piece of art, collected over the course of this pandemic from a roadside vendor. 

A not-so-guilty fair-weather pleasure, I'd stop by the pottery cart every Thursday to inspect the wares. 

The potter was always putting out new crockery fresh from the kiln.

Maybe there would be gemstone-colored cups with wonky handles. Or platters with squiggly edges and round, cartoonish feet. I remember how my heart raced when I found a scarified white ramen bowl with an outer rim of bubbly brown. It reminded me of the marshmallows my kids had learned to caramelize to perfection after a summer spent almost entirely in our backyard.

I'd fold a bit of cash and tuck it into the honor box, cradling my choice like a trophy. By the time the stand sat down for winter, I'd collected a whole set of mismatched pieces. 

The prize I'd chosen that last day was going to drive me crazy, but I didn't care. I smiled at the little splotches of orange paint speckling the smoothly curved center of the bowl I held in my hand. It was just the right amount of pigment to make it appear as if the dishwasher had missed some of the saucy spots.

It occurs to me now - as I wait for a rodent to usher in our countdown to spring - that this chaos of tableware I've collected is liberating.

It's changed all the rules.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If one of these speckled egg designs cracks under the pressure of the piling plates or succumbs in any way to the machinations of a low performing kitchen appliance (that's best trick seems to be making the dishes get dirtier with washing) I will neither mourn its loss nor harbor resentment for the imperfection.

Or maybe I'll ignore the spots altogether. I won't even look, I'll just put the dishes away, telling myself I'll worry about them if and when we ever go back to entertaining guests.

Perhaps I'll run the dishwasher twice.

And as for this dish remnant I found in the trash? I have no heartbreak left for it. I'll just bid these shards farewell, and think about welcoming a new one, some Thursday in spring.

(s)Mitten

The living room was teeming with activity. 

We had come in from the cold and a somewhat impromptu inaugural party in the driveway complete with cake and the ritual mulching of Christmas trees. The mood was joyful as we warmed up by the light of a live television broadcast, and despite the chaos of competing sounds we were united as a family.

The husband was playing Risk quietly, not even shushing the room to hear the television; the daughter was riding imaginary waves on a balance board, clunking the plywood oval to the carpeted floor every so often; the son was adjusting the laces of new shoes, testing the tension and its relation to the hardwood-drag squeak. 

And I was giggling as I sat in my usual chair, virtually road-tripping with friends: 

Quick, what's your street address? I typed furiously into my phone. I hit Send without proofreading.

"Quik, Whot ist yur st aDdresS?"

A few dots later, a bubble appeared with the coordinates and a question mark.

"Good thing I am fluent in typo. ..."

I just giggled with the furious abandon of a squirrel with too many nuts and kept typing. Seconds later I sent my friend a screenshot of her Google Street Map address with Bernie Sanders sitting on a folding chair next to her mailbox.

More giggling as I typed in every address I could remember off-hand. More emailing off the hilarious results. 

It was delightful, casting myself (and all of my friends) into this magic of technology. 

And as it was nearing midnight on the first official day of a new administration, and I was finding that after taking a collective inhalation of relief, it seemed somewhat fitting that our first act of unity seemed to be dunking on the curmudgeonly senior senator from the Green Mountain state. 

There was something comforting about this moment, as the casually-dressed senator, his hands crossed and bundled in a pair of chunky mittens (handmade by a constituent of his in Essex Junction) started popping up in the strangest of places. 

Suddenly, Bernie was everywhere: He was riding The New York City Subway, sitting in art galleries, and even plunked down in the center of paintings. His likeness made its way to the landscapes of video games and television series. This new meme was pasted into old memes and added to map generators. 

It was nothing, but right now, at this moment, it was everything.

It occurred to me that this was the unity I hadn't expected. One that didn't rely on forgiveness or finger-pointing. 

Something silly and distracting as we gear up for the hard work ahead.

In so many unbelievable ways, this was the so-called 吐uture Democrats want.A future that includes recovery and revelry.

And one where the invective we've seen emblazoned on the front pages of newspapers for four long years start to sputter and fizzle out. 

We all know this winter will be harsh and unrelenting. But it just feels good right now to have Bernie and his mittens showing us how to dress for the storm.

A tale of two Houses

Our house overwhelms me at times, especially now during this pandemic. None of it seems new: My homebound kids still use every dish in the kitchen and toss into the hamper every stitch of clothing that's only momentarily touched their bodies. But the volume has definitely risen.

Their father, trying to be helpful recently, thanked me profusely in their presence, gushing with bravado about how I had wrestled more than my fair share of laundry and dishes from their precarious piles to some orderly assembly.

A well-meant, but still theatrical ingratiation meant to model thankfulness and reduce his guilty conscience for leaving me to figure out how to work such a miracle, especially now that the mechanical devices we normally employ both unceremoniously tendered their resignations on the morrow of their warranties' demise. 

I have to remind myself to take deep breaths. 

Guilt is a slippery emotion. I can see it in my daughter's eyes as she asks me a technical question about the task at hand, followed by an assertion that she intends to use this information to unburden me.

A few hours later, the promise unfulfilled, she looks at me in anger when I muse aloud about lip service.

She apologizes and is quickly forgiven. It's not fatal. 

Not like a different kind of lip-service is coming out of our other House.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday backed a resolution urging Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove President Donald Trump from office after he urged on a crowd of supporters to storm the Capitol building on January 6th and interfere with the ceremonial vote court that officially acknowledges Joe Biden as president-elect.

Pence rejected the call.

Rep. Elise Stefanik voted against the resolution, and then remarkably, calling for the sides to "unify."

“We must work together to unify at this challenging time for the American people," she said. "This political resolution sets a very dangerous Constitutional precedent and further divides our country. I believe we should focus on ensuring a safe transfer of power on January 20."

Stefanik was among the Republicans who, based on cherry-picked sentiment and no evidence, voted to challenge some states' electors after the presidential election. She sought to stop a mostly proforma vote count in Congress, presumably to appease Trump and the seditious mob that his party spent years priming. 

She continued to side with Trump's lies when Congress reconvened after the siege to complete their work of naming a successor to the defeated Trump.

But Stefanik is not asking for unity, she's demanding capitulation.

The peaceful transfer of power requires more than a hollow call for playing nice. It requires her and her cohorts to acknowledge the damage these lies - the ones she continues to peddle - have done to democracy and that continue to upend the peace. She must make amends.

Each day since she's could join with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to calm the madness. But it requires her to admit her actions were wrong and destructive. She must renounce them.

Rep. Elise Stefanik is on the wrong side of history. She is pushing a troubling agenda fueled by lies and divisiveness. And each day, in fact, each hour, as we learn more facts surrounding the insurrection in the nation's Capitol, we feel even more uncertain about the ground shift beneath us because these new revelations only hint at the bigger story unfolding.

There is no peace without justice, there is no justice without truth, and there will be no unity without an effort to repair the faith that is broken. 

Anything else is just lip service in support of a lie. 

Magic words

"Alexa, show me something that's funny."

My husband's jaw drops as he sits motionless to my left. For the past 45 minutes, we’ve been in a silent struggle, each of us determined NOT to be the deciding voice in the entertainment-viewing event of the evening.

Both of us … just sitting on the couch, scrolling through the doom of our phones and intermittently asking each other to choose something neither of us will hate.

It’s a tall order.

"That's not how it works. You have to give more information."

I don't care to give her more information than I suspect she's already gleaned from our random conversations around any one of our houseful of electronic devices.

Having the Amazon-employed personal liaison for television selection and viewing purposes - not to mention the stealth marketing prompts - certainly wasn't my idea. 

I mean I had JUST (and I mean within the span of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas) learned how to work the two remote controls that operate the television, toggling between HTM1 and HTM2 like an expert, despite having no idea what any of those combinations of letters and numbers actually mean.

A third remote to juggle has thrown me into a crisis; not the least of which is because we now have an invisible woman in our house who is always listening and, it seems, taking notes. 

And yet I find the creepiest part to be that my husband seems to know exactly how to talk to her. As if she might be the rational, uncomplicated, honey-voiced woman of his dreams.

"You have to be more specific," he instructs. "Say, 'Alexa, show me Casey Affleck movies'." 

How about this: "Alexa, if you show me any more Oceans sequel I will remove the inner parts of your machine and replace them with other parts."

“That seems a tad aggressive.”

He’s right. I’m twisted so tightly around a maelstrom of thoughts in my head it might slingshot into the abyss if I were made of cartoon. But it’s altogether possible that choosing between The British Baking Show or The Grand Tour could be the end of life as we know it.

Months of staring into the void, bombarded by one inconceivable thing after another, I just want to detach. Float off into a warm cloud from the natural world and not the one that may (or may not) contain all the digital fragments of my life.

After all, I've entrusted robots to know the passwords I can't remember.

It’s just television, tell myself and Alexa (because I probably said it aloud).

I push aside any thoughts a Stepford Wife might harbor. After all, I had been using a technique I'd learned from the stereotypic "menfolk." And that was to essentially fail my way through a simple task to practically ensure that anyone else in the house (I don't care if it's a dog intent on tearing the thing to pieces) would snatch the remote away from me and just pick a show already. 

Which, after saying the magic words: "Alexa, Find Caillou!" He was suddenly happy to do. 

Prescriptive glasses

Just before the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve, I raise my glass to the television screen and say a silent prayer. 

Familiar words fall into place as they reluctantly release from my dusty memory and slide through inaudible whispers under my breath. 

"Our Father who art in heaven ... Hail Mary, full of grace ... Hallowed be thy names."

It's been a while. 

I know the passages don't belong together, but their lofty sounds have the same effect on me as releasing a deep breath or knocking on wood. 

A momentary solace courtesy of superstition and parochial school. 

I make the sign of the cross and drain my glass of its effervescent contents. I thumb through a notebook I started keeping in March. 

The pad is filled with doodles that don't make much sense. They begin In the center of the page with the date and they feather out to each edge like a meandering, fine-line tattoo.

It looks like atonal music sounds. 

A cute and fuzzy bunny with razor-sharp teeth and a doctor's bag sits frozen in a portrait-style pose. The entire scene is encased in an ornate frame. A nameplate says, Alvarez.

I don't remember drawing this. Nor do I remember the squiggly boy on the next page, who has a thick mop of thatch-stroked hair and a contour-lined mask stretched over his face.

The upside being I didn't have to draw the features I tend to struggle with: noses pointed at awkward angles and mouths that look like mistakes. 

Honestly, I don't know what to hope for as 2020 moves into hindsight. Surely it won't soon be forgotten. 

Every year offers up the double edge of hope and hardship. It often seems as if the most skilled are the only ones capable of slicing the cork and partaking in something sparkling and drinkable. 

If we're lucky our glasses will be perpetually half full. If we are lucky we will enjoy every ounce we are afforded. Even if it tastes bitter.

The horrors we suffered may be as indelible as the blessings bestowed, which, if we are being honest, we have individually accounted for with Scrooge-like scrutiny. 

The list,  an inverted Christmas tree, balanced on the thinnest point. 

We tell ourselves we have to move forward because time doesn't have Hollywood's brand of special effects. But the only thing we can do for the time being is to stand here, and try to keep our trees from toppling.

This season ... like the last season and the one before that ... will come to an end. 

Some of our prayers will be answered, though not necessarily to our liking. Some of our wishes will be granted with a similar effect. 

Still, for one night only, we'll put on our 2021 bedazzled spectacles (they're prescription so long as you count self-medicating with impulse purchases at the self-checkout kiosk of a local commercial pharmacy). 

In another year's time will refill our glasses (and our prescription for dated spectacles) when we celebrate again.