On Time

it's Regents week. And it feels like I'm being tested. 

The boy, you see, is not like the girl.

He has not made spreadsheets with multi-colored sticky notes nor has he committed the schedule to memory.

He will fly by the seat of his pants, knowing full and well someone else is responsible for the laundry. 

I tried to decipher the schedule but felt like a needed a translator. 

“I thought you said you had biology today? I don't see biology on the list.” 

“It's there, but for some reason, they called the test “Living Space.”

Not that he could laugh, since he needed a timekeeper, as we'd already been to school and back twice, since he thought the exam was in the morning rather than midday. 

It had been that kind of day for me, too. The kind where everything that could go wrong had gone wrong.

Nothing major. Just little things …

Although waking up to find we were out of caffeinated coffee should have tipped me off to the way the chips might fall.

I would get through it, but it would be a slog.

Like you had to make six trips between the house and car to gather all the piecemeal things you forgot the first-through-fifth times you tried to get on the road.

And then you can't find your glasses, because they're on top of your head.

And then you get every light. The only thing left to navigate around is a slow-moving tractor. 

Oddly, the farm vehicle never materialized. 

“Are you here yet?”

Had he been in the car with me, and also a kindergartener, we may have laughed for a minute, knowing what the adult parent driving might have said for the four-hundredth time.

I mustered none of my dwindling self-control as I dictated a response for Siri to relay: “I am somewhere,” wink-wink, nod-nod emoticon. “I could be here yet, but also I could be there yet, too.”

The urge overwhelmed my sensibilities, however, and I sent the response off with a tell-tale Whoosh!

I deserved the 🙄 that he sent in response. 

Although I suspect that my absence from the curb where he waits in the pick-up line after school had more to do with it than my droll wit.

When he gets in the car he'll remind me of all the other times I'd forgotten something. Like the time I packed up the car with the little man’s baseball gear, and headed for practice … only to be told by his older sister that I had forgotten to pack him, the shortstop. 

Major-league mistake.

But when I arrive he's all smiles. Two of his friends jump out of the bushes and the three of them commandeer the backseat. 

“It's ok?” He asks. I nod. 

“Where are we headed,” I ask, flipping an imaginary meter and pulling out into the stream of test-day traffic. 

“Well … it's hard to explain. I just tell you when you need to turn.”

Now, let's see if I can find a slow-moving farm truck.

After the smoke clears

 As the quality of the air over the northeast hovered between "unhealthy" and "hazardous earlier this week," the result of drifting smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires, I tried to remain calm.

I know I wasn't alone. As native east-coasters, we aren't used to seeing air quality maps bleeding orange and purple into our allergy alerts, let alone deciphering what they mean. 

I believe we (those of us who are old enough to measure time in half centuries, anyway) have sensed the climate tipping our experience of the world toward calamity for decades. 

Even believers didn't want to believe. 

Still, this blood-orange sky turning mid-day into dusk seemed more than just another novelty. More than a fleeting catastrophe that visits once every hundred years …

It seemed important. Like something I should record for posterity, just as I had with the kids' first steps and their smiles before and after braces. A memory I might post to Facebook so it might remind me of it in a few years' time. 

The part of me fumbling in my pocket for my camera wanted to believe this ominous air was more of an oddity than an omen. 

But I couldn't get a picture of the orange or amber in the sky.

No matter how I held my phone - up, down, sideways - the color above me washed away when I pressed the shutter. The sepia sky was seemingly erased.

As the week wore on, I dug out the masks I’d shelved as the pandemic subsided. It felt strange to wear one outside … the one place that, for most of the last three years, felt safe to be bare-faced. But it did its job, helping me breathe a little easier by cutting the smell of wildfire in the air.

I have to give credit to the wiser west coasters who witnessed us unravel, and who dished advice based on their extensive experience with fire-affected air quality, with heaping helpings of concern instead of derision.

This is a club no one wants to join.

They spoke about the benefits of closing windows, putting home air purifiers in your bedroom, and making other small changes to your routine, such as showering at night.

We celebrated when, after four days, the wind began to shift revealing the sky’s lightest blue. 

And when we smelled the scents of the newly bloomed peonies, instead of char and ash, it felt a little like recovering from that other pandemic.

But we aren’t out of those woods.

Because Canada isn’t out of the woods.

And as our index declines, their numbers rise. The fires continue to burn. Maybe even throughout the summer.

But it will end. And a sense of normalcy will resume once more. 

When it does we hope the thousands of people who have had to evacuate their homes find them standing unharmed or with the help they need to rebuild.

Until another wildfire season begins somewhere else...

We can only hope for resiliency and compassion. 

Because we will all need it now more than ever.

Walk it off

 "Keep your eye on the ball."

That's what I was thinking as I hugged the edge of the trail, knowing it would soon turn from farmland to baseball field.
My slow jog was made even slower by the sounds of the game up ahead.

I had already procrastinated my way to this moment, saving the decision to continue a two-day-old running streak with a single loop around the neighborhood until the sun had just begun to sink.

As I reached the field a kid was stepping to the plate. I took my eyes off the path ahead, not to watch the pitch but to follow the ball should the batter slug it over the fence in my direction.

A swing and a miss.

I should have returned my gaze to the path ahead but I kept focused on the batter waiting for windup.
I'd seen enough leather-covered orbs of unyielding twine hit unintended targets with frightful force. There was that time at the stadium once, when an errant ball sailed past the ear of a knee-bounced toddler only to come to an abrupt stop into the shoulder of his knee-bouncing dad.

There was also the line drive that made its way past the protective gate on my son's helmet and into his jaw, somehow, miraculously, leaving a baseball-shaped bruise (complete with stitching) but also leaving all of his teeth intact. 
The pitch never came.

That's when my surroundings went sideways: green grass turned into blue sky and landed with a thud on the blacktop. I heard my teeth click together and felt the skin on my hands and shins grind against the asphalt.

For a moment that seemed endless, I lay in a heap trying to recover my breath and the composure that the fall had knocked out of me.

It may have taken only seconds to realize in my “baseball-ready” state I had drifted to the edge of the pavement and fallen off of it like a high-stacked heel. But the more I lay there the less I felt I might recover. I had to get up.

My left hand felt all sorts of wrong, but I used it to help my right hand push me into a standing position.

"Walk it off," I thought to myself as I saw all the people draped against the fences, dozens of them passively watching the game but actively ignoring the woman who had just gone "ass" over the proverbial "kettle."

"Walk. It. Off," said the voice in my head a little louder.

I started walking. And using my good hand, I felt all the bones of the bad one, pressing each one from distal phalanges to the carpals, taking deep breaths. I was mildly reassured by the absence of sharp pain. 

Of course, that's when I see the blood. Not a huge amount. But it's dark red and oozing from the patch of skin that is now dangling from the edge of my palm.

"Just a flesh wound," I guffaw aloud with the equally painful airs of an unconvincing British accent.
It would be ok, I told myself.

"Just. Walk. Faster." 

And that's when my inner voice hears the crack of a bat and the crowd erupting in applause.
It tells me to "Run."

"But keep your eyes on the road."

Which I am now happy to do.

Change of Pace

 I had been looking forward to the morning run in the way that I anticipate most of my planned exertions: with the brief but serious imagining that I could pull the covers over my shoulders and roll over in bed and relax into the warm cocoon of extra sleep.

Instead, I will unwind the blankets I'd worried into a twist overnight and gingerly dust off the rust in my joints as I get my bearings. I will walk the floor to gather my gear, irritating the still snoozing with my creaks and groans as I hop into my Hokas.

Truly, I find it amazing that I so seldom heed my recurring initial sluggishness. 

Especially now when I look at my wrist and see the time ticking away. I'm going to be late ... 

Surely my rally must be a result of the folks who will be expecting me ... the friends I have made pounding the pavement. Or not since I also likely forgot to add my name to the roster negating expectations. 

If I hustle I will make it.

That's when I noticed the dog, floppily making its way to the edge of the lawn, and the white mini-van slowly herding the freedom-drunk puppy to safety. 

It occurred to me that the woman exiting the vehicle was a Good Samaritan as she dropped to the ground and cautiously tried coaxing the canine toward her empty, outstretched hand. 

Her trepidation told me she was not the dog's official person. 

She was dressed all in white, with pretty shoes and styled hair. She told me she was on her way to work.  

"I don't know what I'm going to do," she said, looking at her watch. 

"I know," I replied. "You'll go to work and I'll take the dog... she has to live around here somewhere."

I asked the lady to do me one favor and drive the dog back to my house, where I could get a better-fitting harness and a leash.

As we were making arrangements, I knew I would be running around the neighborhood this morning but not along my usual course.

Together we would traipse up and down the main street – SHE (I had checked) would bumble around at my side, sniffing at this and that, as if we were always a pair. 

I was the thing out of place: As she ambled close beside me, I held her harness in an outstretched arm … as if it were toxic. I couldn't be sure an owner would know their dog if it were wearing different clothes. I peered into slow-moving cars, and dead-staring drivers, hoping to discern if they might be looking for the beast at the end of my leash. 

We visited the post office to give the postmaster a good look.

He didn't recognize her, either, but most people leave their furry friends outside … just like the sign recommends.

When I was about to give up, someone yelled out of a car “Is that Katie?”

“I sure hope so,” I hollered back. 

“But Katie didn't seem to respond at all to her name.”

He told me where Katie lived in case it was her after all.

It wasn't far. As we got there, another neighbor agreed that the dog lived in that house, but said her name was “Daisy,” which did get a reaction from my tethered friend. 

Briefly.

No one was home, unfortunately, but two Next Door posts and three messages on Facebook confirmed it was the place, and “Katie” might wish to be known as “The Escape Artist Formerly Known as Daisy,” after all.

And as it turned out, a morning of dog-walking and light detective work was exactly the change of pace I needed. 

Waxing prophetic

 A mysterious puddle had formed on the floor in the bathroom in the general vicinity of the toilet.

I know what you're thinking. I thought it too. Boys live in my house. And boys, we squintingly surmise through the thick lens of stereotypical thinking, are inattentive and sloppy with it comes to nature's call.

Of course, neither of my boys are youngsters: One graduated from middle school nearly three years ago and the other has graduated to middle age. 

Still, I did what any mother (with a strong constitution and a weak gag reflex) would do. I dipped my finger into the water to test its temperature and try to assess any odiferous qualities.

The liquid seemed to be icy cold and filter clear.

Which seemed, somehow, worse.

I did not relish relaying the news.

This appeared to be a plumbing issue.

Well, that's how it seemed to me, at least, having spent the better part of seven minutes studying at the Google School of Home Mystery Leaks.

My husband, however, would not be so quick to diagnose the problem.

He saw no evidence the dank little reflecting pool had come from the commode, so he ignored my initial assessment that perhaps the wax seal, after fourteen years of silent service had gotten dry, or broken, or cracked, and was channeling a stream of au de toilette toward the lowest spot in the powder room.

In its place he swapped a multi-pronged theory that included the potential that someone had improperly closed the shower curtain ... or that the cat had spilled the water bowl or the dog had been drinking from the toilet because the cat's water was gone.

Or that operator error or a remote-control switcheroo between the bidet's “jets” and “jet dry” features caused an unsanctioned waterfall to go spectacularly unnoticed.

Now I know he's creative, but a part of me couldn't believe he was able to spin this fabulist tale out of the dehumidified air.

But he persisted. Disconnecting the seat sprayer, turning off the water, and planting a mote of toilet tissue around the bathroom perimeter, making sure to cover the shower, the cat water, and the base of the thunder mug, hoping to pinpoint the source of the leak wherever it may emanate.

“Now we wait.”

“You know … the internet said that often wax seals don't leak in a reliable way. It may take a while.”

“I really don't think it's coming from the toilet.”

Denial is not a river in Egypt. But it might be at least a little related to a nebulous body of water in your upstairs loo.

I managed to keep my face just as straight as he circled the drain in search of a solution that didn't involve tools larger than a basin wrench or a project that would take him all weekend and eventually require the skills of a certified plumber.

My husband, not unlike the two bags of clothing donations in the trunk of my car, must drive this thought around in his head for weeks before he admits it might be time to replace the beeswax gasket.

Tooth and Nail

 "What?"

"What?"

"WHAT!?"

“WHAT DID YOU SAY???!?!”

I looked up from my phone to see my husband's face all red in the cheeks and stern. His arms, locked at the elbows and rigid, were attached to the steering wheel by vice-grip claws. Nails digging in. 

"I asked you six times to tell me why you said 'Oh no' before you just trailed off."

He was driving, and I was reading a message on my phone and trying to do two simultaneous tasks: find the answer to a question posed by one of our kids and then respond. 

I hadn't heard him say 'What' once, let alone over and over again. 

"It's nothing, just the girl asking if I could send her a nail clipper. She forgot to pack it when she went back to school."

"Well, you could have just said so. I thought something was wrong."

My silence, he explained, was as grating as nails on a blackboard.

I guessed he was just Hangry.

It creeps up on him around four o'clock on the weekdays. "Hangry" we call it. It is that confluence of irritation that when mixed with hunger can make a person short-tempered.

I fished a bag of nuts out of my bag and dumped a small pile into his palm. "This will make you feel better.

It worked. For the next 27 minutes, as I tossed nuts and seeds in his direction, and he'd munched enough to level out his blood sugar. He even apologized after we arrived at the track meet and he'd found a parking space.

Still, I wondered if he had enough stamina to hike the four bazillion miles from the parking lot to the vulcanized rings of hell that seems to be built in the center of the sun.

Now HE was dawdling. 

"This way," I said to my husband, churning the air with my hands as if the current it created would drag him in my direction.

He ignored me. Or so I thought.

I saw his brow arch up and his nose twist in the way it does when a person smells something bad. 

I was immediately annoyed.

There was an opening along the fence near the high school track's finish line and soon the boy would be coming in "hot."

I wanted to see the race ending up close, but the man was dawdling.

I raised my hands and shook my head.

He raised his hands and hung his.

Soon he was bent over and combing the grass with his fingers.

And for the forty-fifth time that day, what had seemed so unclear became transparent. He wasn't purposefully ignoring me after all. He had lost something.

"My tooth!" He yelled back with the same exasperation at me for giving him the nuts that could dislodge his dental work … and more than a little relief. "Found it!"

He extended his arm and in his open hand was the proof: A molar-shaped cap.

“Oh my, let me see it.”

“No way! You'll probably send it to the girl with her nail clipper, and I'll never see it again. Besides the starter gun has already gone off. The race will be over soon. And you know what that means ….

No, what?

What?"

"WHAT!?"

"WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?"

A year of goodbyes

 I opened the top drawer of my father's dresser and peered inside. 

A four-leafed clover key ring, set in glass and edged in silver, sat in the jewelry tray along with a half-dozen safety pins, a St. Christopher's medal, some coins and a tiny ceramic pair of Dutch shoes.

Memories came flooding back.

The room hadn't changed much since I was a kid. Its furniture was arranged for storage more than purpose, and sedimentary layers of dust had accumulated since age and infirmity encroached. 

It had taken me more than a year following his death to shake off the dust of dread and finally clear out his things. 

I had said goodbye but I hadn't been ready to let go, just as he hadn't been able to part with the things my mother had owned. 

All of it here still. 

There were official documents, yellow-edged, folded and fastened with age-dried rubber bands; flax-colored notebooks he used to bring home from work, some of them filled with numerical figures of some unnamed accounting while others were empty; and so many mementos, including a personalized wrist cuff with my name on it bought at the county fair while I waited anxiously for the craftsman to line up the letters that would rend my name into a length of leather with a snap at each end. 

It still fit, if only barely. I put it on and continued to extract items from the collection, separating each into bins or bags depending on their final resting places. 

At the very back of the drawer, wrapped in brown paper, lived the small hand puppet I had fallen in love with in a Boston toy store. He must have saved it -- a white rabbit with wood block for a head and polyester fur for a body -- from a bag of my toys headed for Goodwill after my final departure. 

I may be taller now, but feeling my calves harden into a cramp as I pressed up into my toes to get a better view brought me back several decades into my childhood.

Back then I would furtively drag my mother's camel-saddle hassock over to the high-boy bureau as quietly as I could, trying to keep its paired ornamental bells from announcing my treacherous snoopery.

I have authorization now. 

Still, my heart raced at the sight that startled me most way back then. And there they were: four rifle cartridges tucked inside the snug elastic loops of a leather holder. 

I knew he had the hunting rifle somewhere in the house, but I'd never seen it. My initial search of the closet I'd been warned away from as a child had nothing but old clothes, cobwebs, and perhaps the ghosts of Christmas presents past. 

I had just about decided my father had disposed of it himself as he was putting his affairs in order. Something I had hoped he'd do so I could stop thinking about the unthinkable.

My son found it.

Unloaded and zipped into a soft case my father has stowed under his

Bed. Discovered after we'd disassembled the bed frame and hauled off the old mattress. It was heavier than I imagined and imposing for an old gun. 

I still don't know if he'd ever fired it; the stories he'd told about its acquisition circled around being vetted by a hunting party he'd been invited to join but never zeroed in on a target. In my mind - the childhood one that refused to speak to him for two weeks after a mouse died in a trap he had set - I had concluded his interest in deer hunting was more social than practical.

For a moment I wished I had asked him. But then I decided it was probably best to keep my doubts. 

My husband secured the gun and stored it temporarily under lock and key. It would not live with us for long. 

Like pulling teeth

 The tufted leather chairs were more comfortable than they looked, though I found myself fidgeting as I sat in one of them waiting for news. I didn't know how long this would take and I didn't want to ask.

My firstborn child, who is more of a newly minted adult-ling, had been escorted by a nurse inside one of the interior rooms of the dental office in order to have all four of her wisdom teeth surgically removed.

I had been in offices like this before. Rooms, tucked between rooms that looked like a midcentury maze of medical fortitude. Find your way to check out and win a prize.

Behind a sliding glass window, the reception staff pretended not to notice as I hopped around the waiting room, pawing through periodicals without purpose and inspecting the wall hangings with an intensity I had to invent.

Could they tell I was nervous?

Probably.

I didn't feel nervous.

I had lived through the pulling of teeth ... eight to be exact. The same number my daughter would be down once this day is done.

But I was nervous. How could I not be?

I couldn't wave away the parade of potential complications surgery presents: from the dangers of anesthesia to who-knows-what-all-else could go wrong when they are trying to yank four perfectly good enamel bones out of your jaw.

"Will I have swelling?" She had asked on the drive.

Probably.

"Will there be bruising?"

Maybe. You never know.

I started to tell her about the two black-and-blue stripes that showed up unannounced a few days after my surgery and that traveled along both sides of my jaw and down my throat, but she bowed her head and held up her hand.

"That's fine. I don't need a graphic accounting ...”

Her voice trailed off and she looked at me between sharp, narrow eyelids: "Nor does my brother."

He wanted to be there. Not so much out of concern or for moral support, but to film any drug-fueled shenanigans the procedure may produce.

"People coming down from dental procedures practically fuel YouTube."

Being out of control worried her some.

She didn't want a thousand or one thumbs-up emojis stomping around her digital footprint for all eternity. 

"I was lucky. Back in the horse-and-buggy days of my youth, we didn't have videos that could haunt a person forever. The worst I suffered was waking up with the feeling that anything was possible ... even scheduling a follow-up appointment for a day that, had I been anesthesia-sober would have been terribly inconvenient. Luckily, my mom was there to reschedule more wisely."

Of course, things had changed. There would be a follow-up phone call instead of an office visit. If all was well, all would BE well.

Which is what I was hoping when a smiling nurse in scrubs opened the door to escort me back to the recovery area. "She's doing fine. She just has a lot of questions that she's not going to remember we have already answered. 

Half a world wiser

 We rarely consider how satisfying it can be to navigate our ordinary lives. With all the complex problems we face, it can be such a joy to tackle the things we do by rote, or more tedious than technical. No, we seldom celebrate the successful reading of a bus schedule or the stain that came out in the wash.

That's why travel can be such a blessing.

You get to see new things, meet new people, and imagine how our lives could be if our surroundings were entirely different.

We all kind of know that the bloom on this particular rose usually only lasts for a week or so.

The trials and tribulations of setting up a new life, no matter how temporary, in another town let alone another country, didn't particularly strike her as daunting at first. She imagined she could live in a hotel room out of two pieces of luggage just fine for a few months.

Case in point: My daughter went away to Greece for a semester abroad and was stunned by how much she didn't love it.

Her brief messages home were filled with pictures of herself and her friends visiting beautiful places we have only dreamed of seeing; The Palace of Versailles, Trevi Fountain, Big Ben, and The Acropolis. Followed by an accordioning list of complaints: "It's not walkable; the buses have an irregular schedule; there's so much creepy cat-calling; and you would not believe the price of washing and drying a single load of laundry! "Sixteen Euros?!?!?!" 

For comparison (and so I can share in her outrage), she will tell me to hang on while she takes a photo of her lunch and sends it instantaneously through the magic of technology:

“The phone pings: … and I see a sandwich that could easily feed three of her along with the all-caps expletive and explainer, summing up her frustrations: "LOOK AT THIS!!! One dryer tumble cost more than my entire meal."

So when folks asked me how she was faring out in the world, I honestly didn't know what to say. “She seems to be enjoying the food,”  

But for some reason, I still feel the need to tell friends and family the other thing … “Oh … you know the old saying, 'youth is wasted on the young'.”

To which everyone automatically murmurs and nods in agreement. Harkening back to our Salad Days that none of us seemed to enjoy.

Truly, though, I don't believe what I say as I try to limit myself to small talk. I can't seem to exchange normal pleasantries without getting into the tangled weeds of my otherwise untended thoughts.

Youth isn't wasted on the young. It just may take a little more experience to understand what you witnessed, accomplished, or were perhaps “blessed with” back in the day.

I think it's the rarest of people who don't need time and distance to bring their experiences into better focus.

As a mother, when she walks through the arrivals gate, of course, I can't give her much distance. I'm all flappy arms, long hugs, and a zillion questions. And after a few sleeps she will start to tell me her stories. She will tell me about the people, and the places and the ways they were different but how the joys and the problems seemed the same. And her voice will become more and more energized and her words will start to glow as she relays her memories.

She's already half a world wiser, and in no time at all she will realize how well her youth has already invested in her coming of age.

“I really can't wait to go home and do my laundry … for free.”

We should howl

 When the Supreme Court overruled Roe v Wade last June I was heartbroken. My daughter was graduating high school and the rage I felt had to hide under a smile. As the day and the formalities went on the silence felt suffocating.

Not a word was mentioned at the commencement that a ruling had been announced that had the potential to upend the lives of more than half of the graduating class.

We all knew it was coming, but the fight was more like a surrender. And though I'd believed Governor Hochul when she campaigned on a commitment to securing the rights of women, her immediate choice of a conservative jurist for the state's chief justice was an unfathomable shock.

So recently when as a theocratic ideologue, appointed to the federal bench in Texas by a twice impeached former President now under criminal indictment, unilaterally announced he would rescind the FDA approval of mifepristone, a drug in a two-part protocol for early non-surgical abortion, I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me that the game plan coming out of the Governor's office is once again painfully insufficient.

After all, The Justice Department maintains that the FDA's approval of the drug was proper and the pill has proven safe for two decades. And a near-simultaneous decision by a U.S. District Judge barred authorities from restricting access to mifepristone in the 17 states where Democrats had sued to protect its availability, New York was evidently not among them.

Specifically, the governor's announcement that the state would stockpile misoprostol instead of the drug being threatened, mifepristone, sends a dangerous message to all who believed New York meant its promise, that it would ALWAYS protect a woman's right to healthcare choice.

For those who don't know: Mifepristone is a drug that blocks progestin and the further development of a fetus, and when used in combination with misoprostol, reduces the pain and bleeding associated with evacuating tissue from the uterus thereby reducing the likelihood of surgical intervention.

In short, the two-drug protocol is the safest and least invasive treatment available to women in early pregnancy. 

Accepting this incendiary decision as even potentially legitimate does real harm, especially when legal uncertainty continues to erode not only choice but also their access to the most appropriate treatment.

The miso-only method is more painful, and less effective and could increase the likelihood that physicians will be overwhelmed.

With this plan, New York, which has promised to do everything possible to protect all women who need abortion care regardless of which state they reside, is instead legitimizing the GOP's bad-faith argument that the drug isn't safe while simultaneously ensuring the healthcare for New York's women is substandard. 

But what did it do when Walgreens announced it wouldn't dispense abortion medication at its stores, even in states where abortion was still legal?

And what will it do when theocratic lawmakers come, as predicted for Plan B, Contraception, and IVF treatments? My guess is it will tell us they will always fight … as long as we pledge another three dollars.

Because despite what anyone says, what this ultimately shows is that we will always throw women to the wolves.

Pack rats

 Spirit week. 

That glorious, zany week of harmless chaos manufactured by school administrators right before long breaks for the express purpose of proving to the dwindling percentage of the student body that participates that schools aren't just dress codes and drudgery all the time. Sometimes they are corny, too. 

Or at least that is how my eye-rolling children have always explained why they would not be indulging in Crazy Hair Friday or Dress Like A Twin Tuesday thank-you-very-much. 

This is why I was fully expecting my Socratic sophomore to "ghost" the festivities or declare the antics "bravado and buffoonery" and dust his hand of the entire week. 

I certainly did not have on my proverbial BINGO card the gangly teen showing up in the kitchen on the eve of "Anything But A Backpack" Wednesday, with sooty hands and all of his academic possessions tucked into the hollow of a full-sized winter snow tire asking matter-of-factly:

"Can you drive me to school tomorrow?"

"Can I ... " I hesitated, worried the rising question-mark lilt in my voice would betray excitement and tank the invitation. 

He knew it was risky. 

We would be traveling this holiday break, and this small chore could provide me with so many embarrassing ideas on how to pack for the epic trip our family had planned: Part homecoming, part holiday, part family reunion, we will come thousands of miles to finally be together for a vernal retreat. 

The plan is to go to the edge of the country by car, meet up with our globe-trotting college student at an airport, effectively sleep on the tarmac and then fly to the central south by plane the next day, where we intend to commune with more family and see all the sights we can by trolley (and possibly airboat) until we have to reverse engineer the whole thing and make our way back home.

My head was spinning. Omg. The drop-off line on Anything But A Backpack day would be epic. I can't believe he's allowing me to witness the madcap antics. 

It would only give me ideas I shouldn't consider. 

Kids toting everything from drinks coolers, mop buckets, waste bins on wheels; toy wagons, and trucks with storage under the seat to a literal kitchen sink. 

"Hey, who's the kid with the ottoman?"

My kid didn't answer. He had already "yoinked" the spare out of the back seat and "hulked"' it into the building. I barely got more than three blurry photos of the entire spectacle. 

Honestly, who wouldn't want to be a fly on the wall, buzzing around the school on a day like today?

If only to watch the kid who was scratching his head in the parking lot, and who likely hadn't fully planned the logistics of getting his books from class to class using his baby sister's Tiny Tikes Trike, find an elegant solution to his packing problems.

Which, of course, did.

"That kid was the GOAT, he just carried that purple three-wheel around all day like a psychopath..." laughed my son as he toted his tire toward the trunk.

Gun shy

Three more children are dead by gunfire.

And by the time you read this, you may be uncertain of which shooting I am referencing. 

Because as I angrily type, the number of deaths attributed to guns this year alone ticks up past 10,000 according to the Gun Violence Archive. Four-hundred-and-fifteen of those killed thus far were children and teens.

In the last two decades, the U.S. has seen a forty-two percent increase in the rate of child firearm deaths while all comparably large and wealthy countries have seen child firearm deaths fall since 2000. And it's not just mass shootings. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the firearm suicide rate among children and teens has increased by 66 percent over the last ten years.

That is an unconscionable number.

And while the number of deaths keeps growing by the day, what won't change in that time is how this nation reacts. There will be thoughts and prayers offered by our civic leaders. There will be calls for gun reform that will be met with admonitions for it somehow being too soon. 

There will be expansive media coverage with photos and graphics and the unspoken hope that this time something will give.

But no one will give an inch. 

Instead, those who find themselves at the business end of a microphone will befoul the air with all the reasons we can't have safety and security without amassing personal arsenals and encasing ourselves inside windowless walls. 

I can't help but shake my head listening to news reporter after news reporter after news reporter follows up by asking school psychologists for a minute's worth of advice on how we can talk to our kids.

How can we talk to our kids? 

"You think they're wrong," my husband asks.

"I don't think anything they have to say will matter if we aren't willing to acknowledge that guns are the problem we can solve," I responded.

"I think we should be asking our elected representatives why they have more prayers than constructive thoughts about this dilemma, and why we keep collecting the same soundbites from the traumatized."

Their answer - more police, more fortification of schools, and, inevitably, more guns - is free of credible evidence that it works. 

If it did, the number-one cause of death in American children and adolescents surely wouldn't be guns. 

Mental health professionals can only do so much. But our leaders are in the citizen-powered position to do much more. 

Why aren't all the microphones pointing to them? Why aren't we demanding to know what they plan to do to ensure that all guns remain accounted for and in safe hands? 

There's much we can do to affect substantive change: Background checks, licensing and license renewals, annual inspections, mandated liability insurance, and continuing safety training are just a few common sense requirements we could impose.

We could make accessing a gun as onerous as accessing abortion. 

We could value life more than we value live ammo.

We could demand our living, breathing, laughing, loving children get to live their lives in peace.

How can we face our kids if we don't? 

Rise and shine

When did you know? 

You might have had an inkling ... but when did you know that things weren't as they seemed?

Some describe it as a feeling of being jarred from a comfortable sleep by something you had just accepted without examination.

Context is the alarm clock.

Maybe you were a child, riding in the backseat of the family sedan listening to the car's radio as your parents drove through a rainstorm.

Maybe it was something that went a little beyond your ability to fathom.

The announcer may have been describing the details of a crime. Maybe it was a father killing their family, or a student opening fire in a school. 

Maybe you didn't say anything. Just sat on the leatherette seat in stunned silence, wondering if you could ever find yourself in a similar situation.

You were, after all, a child. How many times had you already been told that your imagination was getting the best of you?

I remember the first time ... and the second time ... I was nudged from the safety of my cocoon and arrived into a world as others might have experienced it. Some of these awakenings were amazing, while others seemed rude and unjust.

Eventually, I lost track, as if nothing could surprise me.

Of course, the lessons don't just stop in childhood. They follow you throughout life.

Maybe you were an adult and you'd somehow gotten through all of your formal education without unearthing buried histories that would have tarnished the general understanding you'd adopted. 

Maybe you experienced something traumatic and it shaped you.

Maybe it was a more glacial awakening. The slow melt of time against the pressure of change. 

For me, it was witnessing the arrest of a coworker who had committed no crime, but "fit a description." How many men like him get taken away from their lives on a whim? Perhaps taken away forever? Written off to mistaken identity, or the high cost of being cautious. 

Why did we just accept this as the norm?

It changed me. 

Something probably changed you, too. 

Whatever it was once you see it, you can't unsee it, no matter how you try. We tend to divide much of our time between pleasure and pain. We mark the hours, days, weeks, months, and years in a kind of blinkered forbearance, biding time until we reach some ultimate destination. It's never quite clear. but you don't need clarity if you have some kind of faith, be it agnostic hope or religious belief.

This happenstance of life might make us feel lucky or it might make us feel unlucky. And the genesis story comes to life. It seems there are so many of us who think innocence is only for those who have no prior knowledge. And that in times of upheaval, we try to expel understanding whether it's thoughts, books, or beings. 

 As I watch people rail against context and understanding, I feel sorry for them, and angry for the rest of us, who wonder what life might have been like if we actually had the justice we believed in so fervently.

Of course, it's not over. There is still time to rise and shine and be the people we thought we were.

Hard telling not knowing

"Why didn't you tell me my brother has a girlfriend?"

That's a loose translation of the message I had to decipher by squinting at a string of so-called words - not a vowel in the lot - comprising a single sentence with too many exclamation marks.

"B Cool, YDU?"

"Mom! Are you having a stroke?"

It was my college-age daughter, texting at 2:44 a.m. on a Wednesday demanding to know why I had failed in my unsworn oath to be her personal and immediate connection to news of home.

"I didn't want to gossip," I replied, trying to prop up all my good intentions on a leaning tower of unquenchable curiosity.

But now that the cat has clawed its way out of the bag. "Who told you?"

The boy, himself, of course.

It had been 27 hours and 45 minutes since I knew of this status change.

 

The truth was he hadn't told me. I just noticed he was talking on the phone more and walking around the house with the unmistakable look of an emotion that resembled happiness. And put two and two together.

Now I was speaking her language:

"Omg, do u NO who?"

And she was tossing words in my face:

"Will you stop that? Talk like a human being again, jeesh. I thought you didn't want to gossip?"

"It's not gossip if it contains facts."

.... *blinks nervously *

Apparently, she wasn't buying it. 

"Gossip," she lectured, "requires only the dissemination of personal information --veracity and vitriol notwithstanding -- to which the true owner has neither determined nor been afforded participatory authorship."

The assessment was fair.

"I was so scared of being "That Mom" that I couldn't bring myself to ask any prying questions. Not that I didn't try. But watching the expression on his face turn from horror to stone made me rethink my entire path to parenthood.

And no amount of chiseling would ever produce a work of art. I would have to be careful not to reduce the whole thing to rubble.

"All I know is that she's in one of his classes and she lives within walking distance."

I can't see her, but I know she's posed in the style of an early 90s lady detective; rubbing her hands together and getting ready to crack her knuckles. I know she won't go through with it because as much as she likes the satisfying snap she hates the feeling.

"I'll see what I can get out of him," she says with no small amount of exhilaration. Her mission, which she created and chose to accept, would be to extract uncomfortable secrets from her younger, adoring, and more trusting sibling.

After all, she has given him invaluable tips on hairstyles, clothing choices, and skin care that haven't led to public embarrassment yet.

"I'm his big sister. He knows I'll always have his back. Oh, almost forgot! He sent me her picture. She's very pretty. I'd send it to you but I know you're trying to be cool.

Surviving ourselves

My nerves are all aflutter. 

 

Race-day jitters make up a part of it. But it is something out of the ordinary – like a road trip with friends -- that counts for the lion’s share of my angst.

 

Today I will be among a small field of amazing women -- nine to be exact --  who are running Celebrate Life Half Marathon, a few of us for the first time, but all of us for the last time.

 

For decades, CLHM has offered a lifeline to families in Sullivan County who have faced a cancer diagnosis and treatment, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to ease some of the economic burdens families face when they have to navigate a serious health crisis.

 

Voted one of the best half marathons in New York State by 100 Half Marathons Club and featured in Runners’ World Magazine, the race will cease operations after its 20th anniversary, this year. 

 

It is a beautiful and challenging course, much like life itself. 

 sure many runners will be sad to see it end.

 

This day might have been months in the planning but is has been years in the making.

 

We are mothers, and daughters. We are single and married. We are Democrats and Republicans. We are holding ourselves to healthy lives with healthy debate. Sometimes we don't get it just right. But we keep trying.

 

All nine of us. 

 

We've rented four rooms.

 

Devised a plan for carpooling.

 

We have even secured reservations for the standard pre-race carbo-loading event at a fine dining establishment we are crossing our fingers ascribes to the belief that bread, being the staff of life and all, should be served warm and in quantities that rival an all-you-can-eat buffet.  

 

That will surely be a highlight, but if we can somehow manage to wrangle pre-checkout showers after we cross the finish line (dangerously close to check-out time) we will have attained post-race heaven.

 

I am as ready as I will ever be. And thankful I will be regardless.

 

I have packed, unpacked, and repacked my bag at least three times thus far.  I know I'm going to overpack yet still forget something important ... like socks or my shoes.

 

A part of me worries obsessively that the pandemic years have made me even more of a feral beast than I was already; insulated by isolation and a touch more unfit for polite society. Like, when was the last time I shaved my legs? I'm probably going to laugh too loud, aren't I?   

 

I mean who forgets their shoes?

 

Life threatening illness isn’t the only hardship that challenges us or turns us into survivors. Pain; the loss of someone close to us; a divorce; or even simply unmet aspirations can throw us for a loop.

 

So on this day, I will try not to worry, but instead, I will embrace my awkwardness as a reminder that sometimes the most important thing is to survive ourselves.

 

And that is surely something to celebrate.

At the whim of contingency

It was 3:49 a.m. when the bedside table quaked under the vibrations of my cell phone.

The noise of it must have melded with the soundtrack of a dream I'd been having, it fits nicely with the ticking of a clock that was getting louder as I searched my old high school for a classroom I'd never seen. Finals week. As I awoke, I was slow to recognize what was happening.

From between my sleep-puffed eyelids, I could finally see that the screen was aglow with a new message from my daughter.

I wasn't concerned as I counted out the time difference by tapping my fingers one by one against the palm of my hand. 

Seven hours. It's past 10 a.m. where she is and the school day should be in full swing. 

I reached out a bare arm to retrieve the phone so I could better make out the words:

"I'm ok. None of my friends, nor I, were hurt. We are all good."

I am fully awake now. 

I'm all thumbing as I send off a message asking what had happened. Capital letters tower in the center of lowercase words, some of which, off by a single letter, don't make much sense as I reread them. Trying to fix it only makes it worse.

I send it anyway.

Google doesn't give her time to translate Mom before a search engine hits me in the solar plexus with reports of a catastrophic train collision in northern Greece, where my daughter is studying at an American university abroad. 

Headlines told of the course of events that was still unfolding. Maps and photographs showed the horrific news of a passenger train had collided with a freight train as it ferried students back to Thessaloniki from Athens where many had just spent a five-day holiday. 

As fortunate as we are that she was safe, I felt equally fortunate that I hadn't spent a moment wondering if she would be.

Especially, as I lay in the dark with the light of my phone flickering past the mounting evidence of the enormity of this tragedy, 

My daughter assures me she is fine, but I know the weight of it hasn't set in yet; It certainly hasn't for me. 

I have not, can not, put myself in the nightmare of having to grasp an entirely different set of contingencies for which no one can ever fully prepare.

I bristle over well-meant words of comfort though I shouldn't. I'm not above offering agnostic prayers of my own, pretending that universal forces and gut feelings are somehow benign. 

But I know it's just the mind trying to make sense of the unknowable. Trying to parse all the steps we need to take without laboring each one until our feet feel like they are made of lead. 

A lump forms in my throat when she tells me she and her friends considered taking the train from Athens but decided air travel would save them some cash. 

"It's rattling to think it may have saved more than that."