Out of the ordinary

I wish my father were here. 

I miss him. Not just on Father's Day, of course, but his absence today looms large.

He wasn't a Hero ... or The Best Dad Ever. He couldn't be categorized by a card. He was just a guy who loved his kids and his grandkids and did his best for the family.

A part of me loved him most for the things he didn't get exactly right.

The indelible moments.

The hour-long trip into the snowy woods to find the perfect Christmas tree, only to realize the trip back would mean another hour's trek dragging the quarry with a half-frozen toddler on top.

The eighth birthday party, held at the Snow Dock in Albany watching the garbage barge float past, when it turned out the bowling alley was closed.

He wasn't perfect but he was enthusiastic. Pride wasn't his motive.

He rarely took the easy path. A David fighting Goliaths. 

He hummed the music of Aaron Copland. He loved the poems of Robert Frost. He had strong feelings about politics and prose. He was anxious, but he didn't worry. He loved my mother. He hated eggs.

He would have grand tutorials around the operation of his electric train set, but I don't think he ever instructed us on the commodified evils of leaving the lights on in a room we'd vacated. He'd just shut them off.

He had an impish laugh, too. The kind of laugh that started silently and wracked his slender body until it took full control. He often found humor at his own expense, but he found amazement everywhere else.

"Did I ever tell you ...." is how he began most of his stories.

About how the old neighborhood looked. How he met my mother. What shenanigans his pals at work had gotten up to. What the grandkids had said last week that made him "laugh like a fool."

Of course, he had told them all before, but there was something about his voice that always made me want to hear them again. I could picture the tale as though it were flickering behind him on a movie screen.

Nothing out of the ordinary. 

It doesn't really surprise me that, according to history, this American day of honoring dads was ingrained by a daughter who simply admired her dad.

It also doesn't surprise me that the sentiment felt so embarrassing that it took a while for the nation to catch on.

Fatherhood, according to long understood lore, was more of a noun than a verb.

My father often remarked that he only found the true joy of fatherhood later, as retirement gave him time to spend with his grandchildren. Toting them around to swim classes or ballet performances. Letting them play with the model trains before they'd even learned the basics.

"Did I ever tell you how when you were little I used to go to work before you woke up and get home after you'd fallen asleep? You'd cry when you saw me on weekends because I was a stranger.

"I'm glad things are different now."

Looking forward

As graduation nears and all of its transitions loom on the horizon, I can't say a single one of us feels ready.

Though each day of this year has been leading us here, I still can't really believe it's happening. I close my eyes, and my daughter's first graduation comes into a clear focus.

The white construction paper hat, with its shimmering tassels of scissor-curled ribbon. A little girl with big plans ... So ready to move on ... to kindergarten.


Thirteen years have passed since that day. Four-thousand-seven-hundred and forty-five days.

Her unkempt hair and princess dresses have gone by the wayside, replaced by understated togs and sweeping locks Rapunzel might have envied were she a real girl like ours.

To her this moment has been slow in coming.

To me, it seems like no time has passed at all. We are all grateful to have made it through with more highs than lows.

This season of celebration, however, seems clouded in uncertainty. The stakes, of course, seeming infinitely more daunting.

In our lives. In our communities. In our understanding of how we fit into the world we live more, and more of us feel ill at ease.

It seems so dark right now. There are so many fears.

Stress stirs them up and makes tears boil over.

Every decision is fraught with anxiety.

Life itself is a risk.

Or is that just perception?

Is this life just on repeat?

The change from childhood to adulthood in one stage crossing. The pivot of a shimmery tassel from one side of her mortarboard to the other.

The accomplishment comes with a sigh of relief. We made it.

And in life's true irony, her achievement, not unlike the folder she'll receive for the photo op, will seem empty.

We have to believe it's worth all this angst, in part, because we bought the sales pitch.

It is what you make of it, or so they say. Where resilience seemed so empowering once, now it seems to be a side-effect forced by acceptance.

Maybe it's just in the moment we find ourselves. A time when so much is being taken away for no reasonable purpose. The worsening of our experiences in a nation that used to aspire toward being free.

It's hard to know what's real. It's hard to catch our breath when instincts take over.

When things don't work out the way you planned; When you have regrets;  When you feel like you are failing, and having to start over from scratch.

There are so many things we can't know for certain. So much of our experiences are strongly felt but not easily explained. Not even to ourselves.

I do not know the best way to chart a course. I know that hard work and dedication don't always mean you will realize your goals. What we want isn't always what we need. Just like I know that winning doesn't always mean we were right.

But we are still here. Looking forward to what happens next.

Greeting and salutations from that little old tree in the forest

The voice sounded so mature.

"Hello!"

I had just walked into the house and past the room where we welcome overnight guests, when a voice trailed after me.

"I'm sorry, I can't take your call right now. Please leave a message at the beep, and I will return your call as soon as possible."

Of course, I recognize this voice as it follows me on my quest for a lunch of last night's leftovers. 

My son. Sounding like a radio announcer, all smooth and silky, was replacing the outgoing message on his phone as he cuddled up with the dog on the guest bed sofa sleeper.

But something sounds off.

He notices, too.

"Hello! I'm sorry, I can't take your call right now, but please leave a message at the beep and I will get back to you soon."

Still wrong.

“Hello! I am sorry to miss your call. Leave a message at the beep. and I will get back to you.

I stood there without speaking, salvaged salad in hand, and just looked at the two of them for a while. Her graying muzzle rested on the crook of his knee as he scratched between her ears. She groaned softly has he repeated the takes.

 A lump swelled in my throat at the nostalgia before my heart sank.

"HELL-o … "

I wasn't prepared for the effrontery of this new baritone boy erasing his predecessor's froggy-throated message delivered via prank ....

"Hello? ...."

And in the the moment of hesitation after the question mark's lift, I would forge ahead with my assuage until ..

"Ahhhhhhhm not here! Leave a message and I'll call ya back!"

It got me every single time. 

Except now that little scoundrel was gone. Replaced by a new, more mature boy who was in possession of a piece of blue card stock, which permitted access to entry-level employment of limited scope during the summer. 

This new boy intuitively knew the old boy's sophmoric snark might limit his opportunities further. 

Of course, staring too long at your teenage son, is a known antidote his aspirational suave. He begins to squirm under the scrutiny.

His serious demeanor dissolves and he crosses his eyes and hopes I'll disappear.

Maturity isn't here full time just yet.

I look away … only to get another surprise:

A table lamp is lying on the floor, and next to it are the cordless phone and a small framed photo. The trio must have gathered each other up for companionship upon descent.

"Hello! What happened here?"

"Oh! There was a commotion between the dog and cat before. I didn't really pay much attention. Must have been one of them that knocked everything over."

So much for trees falling in forests, not getting heard.

As I suspected, it doesn't matter much if you heard it falling or not. The tree is still down, and the hikers are just going to walk around it until there's a new path to follow.

Our inside voices need to get louder on gun control

Another school massacre.

Another letter from a superintendent trying to reassure us that they are doing everything humanly possible to keep our kids safe. 

Scroll through the news: Experts offer suggestions on how to talk to our kids.

Increasingly we feel unable to remain calm as the torturous details of this latest slaughter trickle out. We need our kids to function and remain in good spirits for their next active shooter drill. We need them to stay calm so that we may all carry on.

Cheerleading, perhaps, as we continue to accept such an unacceptable situation.

We heed yet another call from politicians to deliver our thoughts and prayers as they raise their hands and shoulders skyward against an idea that the right to bear arms is unassailable. 

Everything else is fair game, I guess.

We will question all motives. 

Even my husband, a supporter of weapons bans wondered aloud: "Do you think Beto was pandering?"

I tell him that I reject his question's premise ... unless we redefine pandering as begging for much-needed change.

"Beto said what we ourselves think. We should all be so impolite.

My husband apologized for asking. He just wants to be on the same page.

The one not sullied by motive and opportunity.

We will distract ourselves with calls for more security. Maybe we'll consider building metal detectors into every doorway. Maybe we'll require our teachers to be armed. More and more will die, but we will accept the press conference jargon ... that it could have been worse.

It has only gotten worse.  

The only change we'll see is the Gun Deaths line on a graph shoots ever upwards. It's been two years since that line shot past automobile accidents as the Number One killer of children under 18.

Still, the seventy percent of us who want effective Gun Control are unable to thwart the thirty percent who are managing to enact Gyn Control instead. 

None of this is ok. But what can we do? 

Why can't we enforce the "well-regulated militia" part of the second amendment?

Why can't we ban military-style weapons?

Why can't we require insurance and licensing for every single gun? 

We have been effective in creating a system that protects neither life nor liberty. Or ... as thethirty percentt are so fond of telling us ... we live in a Republic not a Democracy. 

It's easy to feel hopeless. 

The gun industry is banking on that despair for its livelihood. a never-ending circle of violence. 

There is so much more we can do to exert political pressure over this status quo. We should remind ourselves that Beto, using his inside voice to speak truth to power, and being shouted down with expletives, should strike a nerve within us all. 

Mamie Till showed the world what hatred did to her child. It is well past time we make our leaders take a long, hard look at what their greed keeps doing to ours.

Sisyphus, Running

Running is often a solitary sport.

Alone, we keep our bodies in rhythm as we try to outpace our thoughts. We may charge up a hill with an upbeat tempo feeding into our headphones and roll back down, listening to the sound of the songbirds gliding along on the breeze.


It can get lonely.


Running, as a practice, is supposed to be a kind of “de-stressor.”


So, of course, one of the first rules in running clubs is: Don't talk politics. It will only make the activity distressing.


Stepping on toes, both literally and figuratively, can lead to dangerous places: quite literally a blood-pumping, heart-pounding way to a leaner, meaner you.


It can also lead to long, sole-crunching silences.


Which is exactly where I found myself after accidentally wandering into the topic of Roe-reversal at mile-two of a six-mile run: feeling like the someone had pressed the mute button on the world.


My Republican friend couldn't understand why his Liberal friends, like myself, had to keep saying the word "abortion." Especially since many people like him – well-meaning citizens without the benefit of a medical degree -- hadn't understood how many other reproductive procedures the bans might restrict.


He was just starting to understand the consequences: That the same drugs and procedures prescribed for early abortion are also prescribed for the treatment of early miscarriages; and that pharmacies may not fill those prescriptions in fear of legal reprisals. He didn't know how many procedures used to treat medical complications, including fetal demise, have been hog tied by the abortion debate as it has been written into the letter of the law. But he still feels the weight of a moral quandry: That it seems as if there are too many women who aren't being responsible with their choices. And who wouldn't want to save babies?


He knew a few women who had bad experiences or had used abortion as birth control. It didn't seem right.


So these are the stakes?


“I see the handful of people you know personally who use abortion as "birth control," and raise you the handful I've known whose abortions allowed them to continue educations, leave unhealthy relationships or saved their lives.

"This isn't politics, it's personal."


I say the words. Loudly, and with feeling.


"We can not make it our business, as a nation, to make abortion inaccessable for those who need one. Abortion must be safe, and it must be legal throughout the duration of a pregnancy because things can always go wrong. We need to ensure that women have the best healthcare for them. We have to be able to direct the course of our lives. Women should have the right to determine whether they are ready to be pregnant from the very start and that we can have the most compassionate care at the end if something goes heartbreakingly wrong. Abortion is healthcare for women."


The sounds of our running shoes scratching through gravel suddenly got louder. All other sounds retreat.


The silence startles me for a moment.


I begin to apologize, but he won't accept. He says there is no need. We are friends.


“We all just need to keep talking, keep listening, and keep trying to find common ground.”

I can't take back my position, but I want to roll back my rage.

This may be the hill I'm willing to die on, but  I rather the death be from exhaustion than getting flattened over and over by the heavy burden I tried to push up here by myself.

On The Town (Fate, Accomplice)

… : )

Hey, mom? What are you doing later?

I could almost hear the honey in her voice as I read the text.

This, dear friends, is not an open-ended question meant to ascertain a person's availability for a fun and frivolous after-work past-time.

Intuition (and experience) told me this was a trick. And it begged for an open-ended response.

"Why, what's up?"

Three dots pulsated again and then disappeared.

When the words finally appeared they offered nary a hint of specificity. 

"I was hoping you'd do something for me."

I imagined her voice as sharp Boston vowels tumbling from Ben Affleck's mouth: "I need your help. I can't tell you what it is, you can never ask me about it later, and we're gonna hurt some people."

I thought for a moment about forwarding my to-do list complete with appointments and meetings, making a particular notation of a closeted desire ... that one of my teenage progeny might gather up the dunes of laundry spreading through the house on the shifting winds of the season and put their grains where they belong.

I don't want to be the one doing the “sniff test.”

That, I know will happen someday, when they get houses and washers and children of their own. Today is not that day. Today she wants me to take her shopping. She has her own car ... her own money ... her own ideas about what she wants. Why is she asking me to be a part of it?

Is this a trick?

What can I offer? The past should inform her that her mother can only lay a wet blanket over the fire within. I can bring the admonition for spending too extravagantly. I have reached the age (unhappily) that the let-me-speak-to-your-manager vibe isn't as mortifying as it should be. Surely, she's not anywhere near ready to allow me to be the conduit between her youthful sensibilities and the desire to get a sale price.

She can't want me to talk her out of whatever skimpy thing shaped like clothes that her heart desires ... Or to make her think about the cost basis ratios … can she?

Dresser drawers? Washer? Trash? Maybe it's Trash, washer, dresser drawers ... The order of operations has always been quite flexible. 

I've been here before. Only I wasn't the mother then. 

Youth fashion hasn't changed all that much since I used to try and fit in. 

Time is so weird how it moves in fits and starts. How it weaves in and out. 

Time with her as I have experienced it ... the daily hum of music, song, arguments, hugs, laughter, tears, papers rustling, clothes thrown here and there, finger-pointing, eye-rolling, slammed doors, the occasional plate of warm cookies, and an explosive mess in the kitchen ... will freeze.

But it won't stand still. 

She will be three hours away, living her best life. And I will be waiting for those three pulsating dots to complete our connection.

For once, I won't say what I'm thinking. 

Instead, I respond with my best Jeremy Renner imitation: "Whose car are we gonna take?"

Wish us well

 Don't wish me a happy Mother's Day.

 

I am a person.

 

A person with a uterus.

 

A person who has grown fetuses. Birthed babies

 

I am a person who has chosen a path.

 

A path that was sometimes made rockier because people can identify me as a woman.

 

Considered less. Valued less. Always expected to do more ... with less. 

 

Separate. Not equal. That's life. 

But as we face a new dystopian future, I am a very unhappy mother.

 

True, I have moved past the phase in my life where my body can grow an organ to sustain a fetus. But my body has done this twice. Both times it was daunting and not without unpleasant and frightening complications. 

 

I didn't fully understand the seemingly limitless risks involved in pregnancy and childbirth as I was about to undertake them. A lot of the choices came down to probabilities calculated by others with more knowledge about all the complications that could occur. The cynical part of me would tell you they didn't want me to worry my pretty little head about.

 

The truth is there are so many things that can go wrong, it would be near impossible to explain all of them in the course of a single office visit.

 

That's what I told myself In the aftermath of my pregnancies: Everyone did their best. Because how could an ordinary person willingly put themselves at such risk when the outcome could be as life ending as life affirming? 

 

People who want babies will.

 

But why should people who don't want children be forced to take any of those risks?  A decision made by five people in a marble courthouse who firmly and cynically  believe laws that made abortion understood as a constitutional right were, instead, “wrongly decided” and not “settled law” after all? Five originalist thinkers working us back into a place where our inhabitants are either enslavers or the enslaved.

Unacceptable.

 

Your husband can’t make you give him a kidney, but he can make you give him a kid? 

 

And the state will enforce this labor. And not only will it enforce it, it will ensure that the labor is as hard and hurtful as humanly possible.

 

Do we accept this as we have accepted restricted access to abortion and birth control? Like we have allowed over-burdensome regulations: Forced cooling periods; multiple and unnecessary medical procedures. Extreme scrutiny including the gauntlet of harassment that has accompanied us to even the most routine medical exams and procedures?  

 

Do we accept another hurdle to proper care like we accepted the impossibility of getting birth control from the dominant Catholic healthcare system?

 

As I contemplate these questions, I wonder what my life would have been like had this country fully embraced my humanity. I can’t imagine what my daughter’s experience will be when our country denies hers entirely. 

 

The dystopian future that Margret Atwood showed us just a few decades ago in literature seems closer than ever to becoming real life. Parts of it have always been here. 

 

It’s not ironic that the handful of extremists on the Supreme Court shaping this future have relied on the great injustices of our past to get us there. 

 

There is no going back. Not because we have come "too far," but because we haven't gone nearly far enough. 

Don't wish your mother a happy day today. Wish her a healthy one.

I am Switzerland

The war broke out in our car on the way to the restaurant. The girl, now aged to the earliest point of adult maturity, had fired the opening shot. It had seemed to come out of nowhere:

"New York bagels are the only bagels anyone should eat. You shouldn't bother with bagels from anywhere else."


Granted, I hadn't been listening to the conversation happening on either side of me. I had been sitting there on the hump, thinking about dinner and, with every bump in the road, reconsidering my decision to let everyone prone to car sickness, (or whose growth-spurting bodies no longer comfortably fit in the car's "way back" seats) travel in relative comfort.


The boy's head bolted upright as if roused from sleep by the blast of a horn.


"How can any bagel be bad? By definition, they are dense orbs of starch goodness. Toasted and buttered, they can not fail."


Then it got heated .. or more precisely ... it got a little hot over the dish served cold. And the barbs started to fly past me in both directions.


"What do you mean 'toasted," I'm not talking about secondary processing. The flavors of cream cheese or the salt-ratios of butter. I'm talking about plain bagels taken from a bin and put straight into a paper bag. I'm talking about the attributes of the raw, unadulterated bagel."


For a moment there was mouth-gaping silence.


She had stuck out her proverbial beach. Left it wide open. And he saw the opportunity.


His eyes sparkled as he went for the kill.


"Oh. Well, that explains it then. You are a crazy person who eats raw bagels and decides they don't pass muster. Your bagel expertise is based on a taste for uncooked dough, which, let's face it, is entirely gross no matter what state the Bagel Bakery works out of."


I so wanted to take her side.


She wasn't wrong. There are certainly awful bagels to be had. Thin and anemic, they are often frozen monstrosities that our moms bought in bulk and would get covered in delicate ice crystals before we'd get hungry enough to thaw one out and try to choke it down with a slathering of peanut butter.


But neither was he. In the hours before The Big Shop market day, as the delectable snacks dwindle, you will eat that slab of starch the package calls a "bagel" and you will like it. That's how "junk food" works its terrible magic.


It's also how freshman boys who would rather get root canals than do another page of Earth Science homework, win debates against senior girls who have just been accepted to about a dozen discerning colleges.


Which is where just one ounce of maturity. One moment of calm left out to warm, could turn this whole thing around.


And I saw HER eyes gleam.


“Oh, I see what this is: It's a schmear campaign.”


Just like that the argument ended in laughter.

I didn't even have to use my secret weapon: knowledge that the most popular bagel in New York City right now gets trucked in from Redding, Connecticut.

Somehow I managed to stay in the frying pan and out of that fire. I'm willing to bet it's all because I prefer Swiss on my bagel.

Our lucky day

 He was just the kind of man you might expect to see at a local coffee shop, enjoying retirement and discussing the evils of tourism on the old home turf. And we are just the type of tourists who wrongly think they blend in.

The man smiled, identified himself as Dave, and checked us in for an experience we weren't exactly ready for: Horse hunting.

Specifically, we would be hunting for a glimpse of the wild horses of Corolla, which are thought to be the descendants of Spanish mustangs that were either shipwrecked or left by explorers who landed on the northern end of North Carolina's outer banks in the 16th century. 

Dave handed us a few waiver forms with paragraphs of small-print legalese we would not read in its entirety before we signed in the two places required and initialed in the six more locations he'd have to point out a second time. 

"I need someone to ride shotgun," he said affably, looking directly at my son, who was conspicuously dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, and a straw hat that eclipsed the sun. 

"I'm thinking it's you, bud," he said, handing the boy a duck grey parka from a pile before asking the rest of us -- who did not realize an open truck out on the dunes would get mighty cold -- if we wanted an extra layer. 

Dave warned us from the jump that spotting the mustangs is never certain, and the group before ours had a tough time finding any on the two-hour tour. 

There was something surreal about piling into a truck and winding our way through housing developments that dot the dunes like sandcastles. There were no paved roads, just signposts in the sand. 

Our guide slowed. The truck inched along one stretch of marshland forest after another. No sightings. He gunned the engine and hauled us up over the dune, back to the beach. Over and over this commute continued. Dave drove us past houses owned by the famous and the infamous. He navigated the steep climbs and sharp drops with ease. 

The world was different here. The dune takes what it wants; extending 40 feet farther than it did last year. Its sand covers trees and trails. In a few years, Dave tells us, the dune will reach the sound. 

We move on. 

Dave tracked hoof prints through a scrub of Live Oak, I marveled at the grace of the tree branches. We reach the end of the pathfinding "sand apples" instead of horses.

Dave explains that the winds' shift took with it the water from the sound. "The horses like it there because the grasses are lush when that happens. But it makes it harder for us to see them."

As if on cue, a horse lumbered out of the tree line and onto the path ahead of us. Regarding us blithely before it continued feasting on a nearby lawn. 

It owns this place. 

Dave takes the opportunity to tell us that these horses are miraculous in their ability to exist with the ever-changing landscape and the encroaching humans. They are unique in the horse world, too, having a diet that is entirely restricted to the grasses that grow here. "An apple or a piece of carrot will kill these guys, and every year we find idiots feeding them."

Now that we've seen this "bachelor" specimen, Dave can relax and enjoy the ride. He points out the snake tracks that cross our path as he wheels back to the beach towards Tour HQ.

The wind isn't as harsh in this direction, though Dave doesn't seem to be in a rush. He pulls over askance in the middle of the beach and hops out, returning a few moments later with a hunk of rock he hands to the boy.

"Your lucky day! That's what happens with lightning hits sand." 

Ans then lighting stuck again as we waited to get back into the fray of beach traffic: a herd of five mustangs loped up from behind and galloped beside us along the shore. They slowed to a walk, and we slowed with them, yielding as they crossed in front and headed back to the dune and out of sight. 

It really was our lucky day.

Do no harm

As I was crawling around the internet ... looking for a recipe that could gather the ingredients left in the pantry for a dinner that would feel like a hug to the family ... (In other words a rainbow-colored unicorn that I wouldn't find) I discovered something that surprised me.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, Vermont doesn't limit abortions for any reason. 

Perhaps, my cynical brain surmised, the Green Mountain State didn't need to exert such pressure. Maybe it just doesn't have enough healthcare providers and they don't feel a need to flex that authoritarian muscle.

Or maybe they recognize that abortion is healthcare, plain and simple. Maybe they've decided legislators have no place in the exam room determining their interest in a procedure that is really not unlike an appendectomy - when you need one you should have one.  

But they seem alone in their humanity.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, thirty states have introduced legislation that seeks near-total abortion bans this year. Seven states -- Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Wyoming -- have passed bans in at least one legislative chamber.

Much of the bans target healthcare providers, intending to make abortion services inaccessible.

What will follow is predictable: Patients with the means will travel for services; patients without the means to do so will suffer; the rate of adverse outcomes will explode, including the criminalization of women who do not have successful pregnancies.

Like the Texas woman who was arrested and charged with murder after hospital workers were alleged to have turned her in for causing her own miscarriage. The case was eventually thrown out because the law that makes abortion illegal at six weeks doesn't attach criminal charges. 

As it is, abortion has long been a fraught subject. Our collective conscience has allowed us to see the procedure as a necessary evil: Something to be minimized overall ... unlike gun deaths ... or school shootings.

A woman's health ... her ability to make decisions ... or merely choose the safest evidence-based care for her situation ... shall always be infringed.

I suppose what shouldn't have surprised me -- especially in the case of Texas where an unconstitutional law on its face has virtually ended the protections of Rowe in that state -- was the realization that our healthcare providers are ready, willing, and able to allow the state's weaponized laws to do harm through them.

Perhaps it is understandable. Doctors have been murdered for doing their jobs. According to Guttmacher, less than 20 percent of private doctors perform abortion care as part of their women's health practices. They, understandably, don't want to be the targets of those allowed to harass under cover of "free speech." 

Meanwhile, women continue to endure poor treatment and worse outcomes because we won't defend them and their constitutionally protected care.  

But I don't understand. And I don't think I can forgive when it causes real harm.

All of the arguments made to limit choice do so under the bad-faith reasoning that abortion never saves lives. 

It most certainly does. 

You gonna eat that?

 “Do you want that last slice of pizza,” is as much an aspiration as it is a question.

For a moment, there was silence.

“Is that what that was? I thought it was a circle of cardboard encrusted in plastic and grass clippings.”

People for Less Unrest in Marriage — an entirely imaginary organization for which I am an occasional spokesperson — has united, at least temporarily, with Parental Yawn, a grassroots offshoot partner that is expected to remain almost entirely silent as they "wipe that smirk off their faces."

“More for me.”

"PLUMPY," as the conglomerate will be known for the duration of the upcoming Spring Break and subsequent travel itinerary, will be charged with enacting some semblance of peace between potentially warring parties as we navigate a maze of painfully ordinary decisions such as, but not limited to: "What would you like to do today? Shall we go for a hike? Which restaurant should we go to tonght?"

I don't even want to think about the referring that will be necessitated by a ten-hour drive. 

They may have outgrown the Are-We-There-Yets, but a heavy sigh with the roll of an eye can easily bring tempers to a boil. 

Communication breakdowns are like the fly in this SPF ointment.

One wrong look will set everyone's hair on fire. Poof.

But that's par for this course.

As you may have been able to glean from our acronym, PLUMPY, like all unendorsed think-tank-style rogue agencies that got their beginnings in March of 2020, has grown by leaps and bounds since its initial inception and .... almost entirely fueled by individually-wrapped devil's food snack cakes and vanilla ice cream swirled with caramel and chocolate chunks ... may have also gained a little heft.

Muscle weighs more than fat … or so I'm told. Ah-hem.

Not that anyone in these parts is body shaming anyone for their parts. The first rule of PLUMPY is to never identify any members. Ever.

Sometimes it's better not to say anything at all. A few well-placed “Sounds like a plan.” Or “I'll be fine doing … whatever,” can go a long way toward it actually being true.

I'm just trying to stop eating my feelings ... especially the ones inflamed by the central aisles of the grocery store; where the junk food lives. Why can't I eat just one chocolate-button-covered brownie with its thick layer of frosting as lush as the widest wale corduroy? What is it about these cut-rate confections that makes me eat half a box?

Honestly, how many fewer calories are in that "deluxe" pizza with its shell made out of riced cauliflower and a blanket of meats and cheeses? Is it even possible to find healthy choices at corner stores and gas stations?

Salad can be just as tasty, can it not? Ribbon-sliced vegetables blended into a trio of curly-edged lettuces.

E Ghad, I hope so. 

I won't survive this trip without some serious deep breathing exercises, a limit on sugar, and a moment of silence. 

Fail Safe

She entered the family room brimming with an almighty joy.

The news had finally arrived: The last three colleges she had been waiting on - the ones with acceptance rates in the single digits – let her know, in no uncertain terms, that they were, indeed, beyond her reach.

"Their loss," she sang as she twirled in front of the television, blocking my view.

This sounds like bad news. Should I be worried? Should I try to console her?

Why is she dancing? 

She twirled around until I found the remote control (and a really old cheese stick) in between the cushions of the couch. With Wayne Brady frozen on the screen, I could finally give her my full attention.

"What's going on. Are you alright?"

My mind raced. This is probably my fault. Me ...blank staring my way through the FAFSA and THE CSS and all the other initialed portals I could barely navigate. How many times did I upload the same files? How long did I wait on hold, trying to speak to a human who could tell me where I had gone wrong?

There is no doubt in my mind that I dotted a few “T”s and crossed many “I”s.

"I'm fine! The pieces of my life are finally falling into place. I am not just going to college, I am going into GLOBAL studies!"

The sadness of the college rejection news had been offset by the simultaneous and more exciting announcement that she'd been selected to study in a foreign country during her freshman year.

"I'd spend the fall in Boston and then in the spring I'd study in London ... or Greece!"

I still felt like a deer in headlights.

I didn't want to look disappointed. I didn't want to admit that the whole thing felt strange: She had professed her love for Boston, managed to get accepted to the college of her heart's desire there, and now she was planning to leave it all and study ... where? She didn't seem to know.

"This seems ... a little unusual."

Though I'm not sure why it struck me as such. My little private college had a program called "semester abroad," which the price of tuition and a little bit of airfare, I too might have rubbed elbows, or at least mixed paint brushes, with a few of my student counterparts in France.

But I didn't know anyone who was going and I didn't want to be alone.

My daughter has never allowed fear to hold her back.

During her kindergarten orientation, she had personally interviewed the teachers and had essentially filled out the registration forms herself. In triplicate. I just sat beside her and fidgeted with safety scissors.

It occurred to me then … as it does now … that it wasn't bravery that set her apart from me … it was confidence. It was also, perhaps, a necessity.

“Don't worry. … I'm not blaming you for those rejection letters … But I'm going to file my own taxes this year … just in case.”

When aging rubs the wrong way

I was filled with hot coffee, toasted bagel, and the afterglow of warm chit-chat when I finally returned home from that morning's run. But my teeth were chattering anyway. 

This is not unusual.

Even if I'd skipped the social hour, the cold would set in before I'd made it home. 

As I turn and walk into the stream of the shower, stepping over my clothes that are now in a damp heap on the floor, I anticipate the kind of warmth that will set in if I let myself linger in the spray. 

The water hits me like hot needles; finding places I hadn't known were slicked with perspiration or gritty and irritated with salts that had dried onto skin.

A burning sensation surprises me.

I know from that particular sting when I look down, there is likely to be a patch of grated skin or a sunburn.

A blister, maybe? A cut?

I don't see anything amiss until the last drop of water escapes through the drain, and I slide the curtain open. 

As I reach for a towel, I catch a splotch of bright red in the pile of clothes next to it. 

My mind is slow to grasp there is blood where blood shouldn't be.
But when it does, the air around begins to pulsate. I hear no other sound besides the bifurcated thud of my heart. 

Next, I do all of the things I have learned over the years to keep my involuntary systems from becoming overwhelmed. Most of which involve slow-playing every fearful thought I can imagine from this moment until the one in which my brief existence on Earth comes to an end. And THEN telling myself NOT to panic. 

This never works. 

What helps is that under closer inspection, I could find no active bleeding.

I managed to get through the next few hours by the tasks of distraction and deciding on a reasonable timeline.

When will I call the doctor? Do I wait until happens again? Or do I call today ... or tomorrow? Do I call them next Tuesday I'm never?

The correct answer is lunchtime.

Instead of loading up on carbs, I chew on my fingers while I wait on hold for 22 minutes expecting to schedule an appointment three months out.

When the music stops a voice at the other end of the line says ... "We have a cancellation, can you come in at 2?"

All of a sudden I can't breathe. I am comforted and alarmed at the same time.

They think this is serious. It must be serious. Like a heart attack.

By the time I'm wrapped in a paper gown with my legs dangling over the edge of a pleather-bolstered exam table, I have almost resigned myself to a future without me.

I try to downplay my thoughts as I explain my symptoms. Winter skin? Overly long, scaldingly hot showers?

The doctor is quiet as she gently examines my complaint.

"It looks like a tiny cut there. Most likely chaffing as you were running. I wouldn't worry. You may want to use some kind of protective cream before long runs."

I wonder aloud if maybe I should lay off the long showers?

She shrugs “This stage of life it's normal to experience a loss of elasticity and … some atrophy. I'd just try the cream for now and see how it goes. A little dab should do you."

Aging really can rub you the wrong way.

Kick start

 

 
When his winter sport ended a month ago, my son retreated to the warmth of his overheated room and the comfort of his favorite video games. It is the equivalent of adolescent hibernation. 

And for the past four weeks, we've barely seen him.
Oh, we noticed evidence. 

Damp towels slumped on the bathroom floor like a dozing dog. In the morning, nowhere near the kitchen sink, I might find bowls encrusted with a thin layer of late-night ice cream. 

A trail of empty wrappers leads to his always-closed bedroom door. 
A shoe, sole up, trips me up in the entryway. A few hours later, I will notice its mate kicked under the dining room table, and I will try to make the mental note of it stick. 

Tomorrow morning he'll be limping around looking for his lost kick. I'll try and pull the sticky note out of my brain, but it will come out with a lot of words that ask only one question: "why can't you keep track of your things?"

Spring is here, boyo. It's time to turn over a new leaf.

However inartfully said, the message was clear. The boy could get a hobby ... or a job ... or he could putter around a house with no internet and only healthy snacks. His choice.

Truth be told, I thought it was a long-shot bet the man placed. After all, the likelihood we'd ever cut the wireless cord in earnest was next to nil. But thanks to some hidden odds, the wager paid off.

"Sam asked me to join the track team so I'm going to stay after school today. Hey, have you seen my sneaker?"

I couldn't believe my ears.

Wasn't he the little boy who demanded to join me on race day, but who ran out of steam by the first mailbox? After which, wasn't he the boy who gave me the hairy eyeball when I asked him if he'd like to go for a run?

Who was this boy?

"What? Wait, you joined track? Like ... you are going to run?"
I thought I might hyperventilate. 

A child ... of mine ... was going to live a dream I never even knew I had until I turned 40 and learned recreational "jogging" was the only sport I could do.

Finally! I was going to live vicariously through him. He might even ask me for what little advice I could provide. 

II was already picturing myself at the sidelines, cheering him on. I don't even know the events: shot put? long-jump? Javelin? There's no way he's running long-distance ... not with his father's big bones and my flat feet. ...

"Mom ... I'm better at discus, and New York state doesn't allow javelin throwing." He almost had it all figured out: "I'm not sure I'll ever figure out hurdles. Distance sends knives into my Achilles and makes my left lung hurt. Honestly, I'm thinking about joining the sprint team. ...

"Hey ... do you know why my shoulders hurt?"

And before I could answer, I made myself breathe into a paper bag. 
I couldn't believe I'm going to be one of THOSE parents ... the ones who know a little bit about a sport and will get to armchair coach like they are s certified pro. 

"You're probably tensing up. Just try to be mindful of it and relax."

The Unraveling

There is something about the modern age that makes me feel as if the old adage, Children should be seen and not heard, is more than just the words of some curmudgeonly aunt historically lamenting the annoyance of her visiting nieces and nephews. 

It's an old saw that pretty accurately describes adolescence.

Between electronics and earbuds, the house often feels like someone accidentally hit the mute button.

The only time we even notice the quiet is when some sudden noise shatters the silence. And even then we tend to ignore it: footsteps on the stairs. Water flowing from the tap. The rustling of bags and a dry cascade of chips into a bowl. Footsteps back on the stairs. 

Midnight mice.

They sleep well past the morning. And sometimes there is a noise that jolts us awake. A dog barking. A cat hissing. An expletive that wakes up the snoring.

It was some blue utterance followed by a slamming sound that jolted me into awareness. 

I knock on the door … and wait.

As I stand in the hallway I can't hear anything coming from the other side. Wireless headphones, I assume. The kind that seems to blend in with the structures of their ears and block out the background so they can focus on a distraction.

This is one boundary I try to respect.

I knock again before I turn the knob and send my voice into the room alone.

“Yes?”

“Is everything ok?”

I look into the room, seeking out her reflection rather than finding her directly. The room is tidy and warm. It smells faintly of cinnamon and vanilla. I can barely make out her shape from the corner of my eye … wrapped in a blanket and still tucked into bed. 

I can tell from her mirror image she is looking at me as if I have crash-landed on her planet. I am intruding.

She sighed but didn't slam the door. 

“Everything is a mess.”

Like most of us who are obsessively checking the news these days, she has little knowledge of foreign affairs and no expertise. Yet somehow the distance from such understanding feels like a lens bringing our failings as a society into sharp focus.

"War? Why is that still a thing?"

My daughter has awoken from the sheltered, childhood part of her youth and embarked on the portion of the journey through adulthood where one tries to keep whatever is left of the insulating chrysalis intact. 

"Why?"

She's not looking for answers. 

She knows I don't have them. And that I never really do.

I don't remember the world ever having more than small pockets of peace. 

But I remember reaching the age of so-called reason and breathing a small sigh of relief.

The things that had worried me had involved scenarios that with time and distance seemed to become rather remote:

Quicksand.

Nuclear war. 

The Handmaid's Tale. 

These seemed quaint in comparison to the true terrors that presented themselves to our kids: passive aggression, active shooters, and an increasingly apparent apartheid state. 

I've been watching what is happening in Ukraine. I've been seeing the news from Texas and Missouri and Florida and Idaho. My level of outrage feels like catatonia. 

We think we have been watching insanity unfold, but this feels like the part where insanity entirely unravels. And a new hope takes hold: That her generation won't try to piece it back together. They will make better, fairer, more humane choices.

And the peace the follows won't seem as quiet.

Smart daughter, Stupid Watch

The watch on my wrist vibrated. "You seem stressed," it informed me. "Why don't you take a breather?"

Of course, I hadn't felt stressed.

Sure, I'd been pretty busy: I'd gone for a run, cleaned the kitchen, argued with the cat, fed our family's entire winter wardrobe to the laundry machines, and stretched my shoulders to prepare for the moment when the dog would double dare me hold on to the loop end of her leash during her late afternoon squirrel hunt.

I wasn't stressed …

At least I wasn't until it told me I was.

I tapped the glass face to demand further explanation:

Pulse? Normal.

Respirations? Normal.

SpO2? Normal.

It all seems normal. Why does it think I'm stressed?

“Hey, dummy. Did you look at the STRESS widget next to the VO2 reading I keep trying to explain to you?”

I hate this watch.

A bright orange number appears. Like VO2 this number means nothing to me. 

But the watch won't give up. A line graph scrolls past with a spectrum of orange-hued spikes stabbing into all hours of the day. "You have not had enough restful moments throughout the day to balance your stress levels. Why don't you try a meditation break?"

Three wavy lines appeared and instructed me to tap them. More magic:

Breathe in ...

Hold your breath ...

Breathe out ...

Hold your breath.

Each prompt was accompanied by a long vibration and the understanding that for the next fifteen minutes I would have to focus if I wanted any peace from my timepiece.

"Close your eyes."

In

Hold

Out

Hold

In ... Hold ... Out ... Hold ... In ... Out, Hold, In, Out Hold, Out, In, Fidget, Twist, Shout.

The watch shouted back: "Your meaningless orange number went even higher! How did you manage to relax into more stress?"

I wanted to throttle this watch. I wanted to remind it of the time it tried to alert the authorities that I had fallen and might be bleeding out on the side of the road … when no such accident had occurred.

I hadn't tripped. Hadn't shifted weight. Hadn't moved. I hadn't even thrown the maniacal timepiece across the room out of sheer frustration. 

Can you imagine? Me standing there yelling 'YOU DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING,' into my wrist?

But I didn't. Truth is the watch … and all its proprietary technology … makes me believe we're all just one update away from wearing our primary care providers on our sleeves. And if people ever saw me talking to my watch there'd be no chance they would assume I was secret service.

“Want to go to the mall?"

I know what you're thinking. … But I hadn't lost my grip on reality, my daughter had.

She had seen me practice hyperventilating and decided what I really needed was a little retail therapy.

I think about the traffic. The parking lot. The strange vibrations you feel when you finally stand still on the second floor of the wide-open space.

How can I say no? 

“Who's car are we gonna take?”

“Let's take yours, then you can relax.”

My smart daughter is so much better at helping me relax than my stupid watch.

Full of beans

 It's not a secret. 

 My daughter hopes to live in Boston next year. A city she's been to six times in her life, not counting parts of holidays spent on its outskirts.

As she plans for this monumental move to Beantown (mainly by putting dorm-room "essentials" into her Amazon shopping basket and taking them out again) she had the idea that what we really needed - as a family - was an immersive experience in the neighborhood to which she'd soon belong.

Midweek. During a rainstorm. Dragging us around like wet teabags, our thrifty brains thinking we could have at least one more use.

I'm not judging the wisdom of this trip if that's what you're asking.

She managed our limited time with a fair amount of decisiveness and good humor; even when we all seemed so out of place.

Especially when the four of us duck-walked our way down Huntington, and she realized being a college student with parents in tow wasn't exactly the vibe she was going for.

Her father missed the forest for the trees, too, as she whisked us off to the remarkable landscape she had discovered inside ... the Prudential Center … Where she pointed this way and that … to chain stores with which we thought we were all too familiar.

"We're going to a mall? Oh, wait! This is the 'crappy coffee' part of the date, right?"

I laughed a little too loudly, which I immediately regret.

The last thing I wanted to do was rain on her parade. I whisper, reminding him – and myself – that we are tourists in her city now. 

The Boston I remembered was ancient and romanticized. Quincey Market lived in my mind as a place my parents would take us after visiting the penguins. There we could buy cut flowers, or fish with the heads still on, or an armload of crusty baguettes. Not that we ever purchased any of those provisions. Our hotel didn't have a kitchenette in the 1970s either.

Even back in the olden days, we bought our food pre-made, too. 

It was just a long weekend in a nearby city where we'd perused toy shops and kitchenware boutiques along a wheel of quaint cobblestone streets. 

I remembered the harbor seal who did tricks behind glass near the Aquarium ticket counter. I did not remember how dark and dank his small tank seemed. 

But for all the things I had misremembered, this trip I saw the city anew. 

The way the houses curve, rows and rows of them undulating along the streets like ribbons on a breeze. The way low stone buildings with manicured lawns anchored to sparkling glass towers. 

I can't imagine any of us will soon forget standing inside a globe of the world, our whispers echoing around its familiar curves. We four made up two-thirds of the 10:20 tour.

Hope springs anew under the other celestial and terrestrial curiosities in the lobby. It feels like the city told us a secret.

Word

Green, yellow, and gray curved-edged boxes stacked in rows five wide and six high, started to appear on social media feeds about a month ago. That's when I took notice of them, anyway.

It looked like Tetris got tetanus. 

I had no idea what any of it meant, but I tried to ignore it anyway.

The world around me is so full of noise. The clamoring of all that's wrong within it and still, no hero galloping up from the horizon to save it.

Who needs another fad to figure out? Who has time for another thing to download, perhaps; to fiddle with, maybe even to fret over? It's just another distraction we don't have time to address.

But the silence around this puzzle eventually sucked me in. 

It brought me back to the 90s' and the last time I'd experienced the watercooler set trapped in silence. Back then it was the HBO series Sopranos that kept us all quiet. Owing to the fact that so few people subscribed we had to wait for that week's recorded episode to circulate through the office. It could be weeks before we could have any sort of post mortem.

This time, it didn't take long to figure out what no one was talking about.

Just a website that posts one game per day. Everyone who visits gets the same challenge. That's it.

The premise is simple enough: You enter a word and see how many letters are correctly placed, incorrectly placed, or not found in the word at all.

And what many people have found as they play along is that there is usually only four or five degrees of separation between the wrong answer and the right one.

Nobody's talking about it, because no one wants to burst the bubble that has formed around the word of the day. A word that has literally no connection to our larger predicament. A word that is so ordinary it shouldn't make us feel so magical when we solve it. But it does.

But we do. When the six squares turn green our hearts celebrate and we bask in a glistening, rainbow-colored soap bubble of happiness.

No one wants it to burst.

I don't understand how it works. I really know how I went from RANCH to MOURN to find WRUNG ... but it feels like it has to be prophetic. A miracle no more apparent than from DOLES to LAUGH to RURAL and finally ULTRA.

Which wasn't even a word that can stand on its own.

I don't want to quibble about it though. I'm afraid that the shine would tarnish in the harsh light of understanding. I don't want to see the truth behind the magic trick. I don't even want to tempt the fates with overexposure.

Perhaps this I why I never send my non-specific picture denoting my score to my friends and family on the World Wide Web, yet I seek out those who do to congratulate them.

It's the nod between us that acknowledges the shadowy particular we both recognize.

It is a simple, wholesome pleasure we all have in common.

I'll Fly, You Fry

The chef frowned.

She took the paper bags from my arms and carried them into the kitchen.

"Forgot the totes again. Huh?"

It wasn't a question so much as an indictment.

The reusable bags were right where I had left them: folded neatly and packed in another reusable tote, a nesting set that was waiting near the door to be brought to the car, where they would have stayed – stuffed in the trunk -- even as I tooled around the store with the one wonky-wheeled cart I'd managed to select from a line of perfectly functioning options.

I could tell her that a human being who has swum around in my gene pool it is more than likely she would rather pitch in five cents per bag than run out to the car to get them once she's in the store. …But that would have been cruel.

And risky.

Especially after she had so graciously volunteered to make dinner - a two-entree feast fit for a Super Bowl - and I had fumbled the ball. Again.

One by one, as she extracted the goods, she found enough evidence to convict.

"What's this nonsense? Chicken? From a can?"

She could not believe her eyes.

Her mother had taken the list she'd written by hand to the grocery store - and replaced each carefully curated ingredient with an imposter.

Canned chicken wasn't even the worst offender. Store brand hot sauce? Generic corn chips? What's next? Elbow macaroni in place of the twirly, whirly cavatappi? Gouda instead of Gruyère? 

Gru-where? Oh, rats! I knew I forgot something. 

She pulled out the box of elbows. “I even spelled C-A-V-A-T-A-P-P-I for you.”

“Honestly, I thought you had just mistakenly named some imaginary Franken-Pasta.” 

She had caught me. 

For a moment, I thought about pulling out the old supply-chain excuse. The pandemic-induced store-shelf gaps have made the old “They ran out” totally believable in almost all circumstances.

But I couldn't bring myself to lie.

The cat food aisle may have been sparse, but the pasta products were totally tubular.

"I'll be right back," I said with a sigh as I jammed my arms into my coat sleeves and search the pockets for car keys. "It's only the third time I've been to that store today, but I'm sure no one else is counting."

She tells me not to bother. She's already improvised her recipe from recollection and a cookbook framework once. She can improvise again.

But it's not really a bother.

I'd rather circle the globe in search of fancy cheese for an eternity than spend one more minute soaking up the silence brought forth by the nightly question: what do folks want for dinner?

"One of these days, I swear to dog, I will feed you crickets."

“Well if you're going back anyway, could you get real chicken this time? The kind I can cook myself? I feel like this canned stuff we should maybe feed to the cat.”

It really tied the room together

We had just pulled into a parking space at the big bullseye box store when her phone started to jangle.

We were on a mission (that my daughter had chosen to accept): I was redecorating my office and needed her help in finding a rug that really tied the room together. We were happy. Mother and daughter, out at the store, doing mother and daughter things.

But something wasn't right.

Her face, illuminated by the blue glow of the screen, twisted in an expression somewhere between agony and excitement.

"Duuuuuuuude."

“Duuuuuuuuuuuuude.”

“Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.”

I turned off the car and asked quite bluntly what was going on. She just flapped her hands and started to say words that mostly sounded aloft on a jet stream of hyperventilation and escalating screams.

“The! College! Decision! IsInMy INNNNNNNNNNNNBOX!”

And though she had applied to eleventy-billion institutions of higher education, I didn't have to ask her which decision had been finalized.

ONLY one mattered.

The only application she fussed over, wrung her hands over, and rewrote until the words sang to her in four-party harmony. The only application she paid for with her own money. The only one that's acceptance rate made her feel as if her chances were worse than a camel's trying to thread itself through the eye of a needle.

There we sat, wordlessly staring at each other, as the winter chill started to creep into the car.

“Well?”

“I'm not going to look at it now,” she said turning off the phone and opening her seatbelt with simultaneous clicks. “Let's you that rug!”

We almost made it … 

We had gone past the spring-coming Fashion; taken a right and Lingerie and a left at Bedding, and found ourselves smack in the middle of … Frames? 

Honestly, I'm not sure how we found floor coverings but we did, finally, and we had two whole aisles to choose from. Of course, I didn't know what I was doing, but I expected this trip would not only tie the room together it would join us more closely in her expertise in retail therapy.

I started the opening salvo: “Do we want natural fibers or manmade? Should I go with neutral colors? What about pulling in a color that contrasts with the couch? Would it be too loud? What do you think?”

She didn't answer.

When I looked, she was wistfully staring down into her phone.

“I have to know.”

And then I knew: This was a make-or-break moment-of-truth time. And no matter what happened – whether she broke down in tears in (I'm suddenly realizing) a painfully-well-lit department store aisle teeming with shoppers, or started jumping up and down for joy – my chances were dwindling for leaving the store with a rug. Or, it turns out, my dignity.

Because suddenly expletives were flying over the carpets into curtains. Happy, excited, celebratory curse words. She even called her dad so she could curse with him on speaker. 

Eventually, we found a rug and loaded it into the cart. We wheeled it to the checkout thinking of all the people in our lives that we couldn't tell even with full-sized words. But when we unloaded that rug from the car and unrolled it in the room it will live in, it became abundantly clear. 

This rug really tied the room together.