A lock on time

Who is that woman? 

Her hair, frizzy and dry, was a tri-blend of color that needed … at the very least … a bit of attention. 

She looked vaguely familiar but I avoided making eye contact. It’s a small place. It would be awkward, if not painful, to stare directly into the mirror. 

If this had been a campground, I would have been the tent pole; with a full circle of fabric cascading around my neck, covering the place I inhabit almost entirely. I held my phone between my two hands, prayer style. I could still feel its warmth even if I couldn’t read the screen. Like the fire.

It might be nice to be small under the stars. Quiet-like. 

The young woman who had welcomed me motioned to a seat and then disappeared into a back room to collect materials. The place was abuzz with activity. Soft music played while scissor blades whisked against each other. Conversation floated above us in gentle waves. 

Before long, she selected strands of my hair, parted and stretched them, then painted and folded each piece between sheets of colorful foil. Layering upward, the woman peering back at me from the mirror looked like she was wearing the roof of a pagoda as a hat.

She is quick efficient and naturally personable. She takes her work so seriously that she uses her spare time to prepare.

“Oh, I didn't have much of an interest in the Barbie movie, myself, but I knew it would be something my clients might want to talk about, so I thought it would be good to see it.”

The women in chairs all around me talked about their families. Their pets. The best things to watch on Netflix. They upsold travels and downplayed travails. Keeping the conversation steady and effortless. 

With cordiality considered there seemed to be no unsafe subjects.

It occurred to me as I sat there in my tinfoil hat, waiting for science and artistry to transform the cantankerous keratinous filaments I had too long ignored, that the so-called journey had led me here kicking and screaming. 

Far far too long, this ritual of self had felt like just another chore. And a chore that could also be fraught with personal failure under the gaze of a professional. 

And although I stopped coloring (and trimming) my own hair long ago, I have not managed to keep these tresses any better managed. Nor have I ceased worrying that the state of its split ends and tangles shouldn't be justification for semi-public shaming, But I have accepted my age and the changes it has visited upon my hair and I have committed to increasing the number of visits I make to the professionals per annum. At least two times as we go around the sun. 

“How has it taken me so long to prioritize,” I wonder each time I leave the salon and sit in my car. My hair feels lighter. Younger. Full of possibilities. And if I squint I can almost recognize the girl in my rearview mirror.

Adulting in Z formation

“When you come can you bring one of the air mattresses?” 

An undulating college commute for the holidays - where we spend a few non-continuous weekends together as a family here and there before a month-long respite takes hold -  was underway and negotiations were getting heated. 

“I could” … I retorted cheekily. “But why do you want it?”

“We need something to sit on … and something for people to sleep on if they stay over,” she replied, reasonably enough. The months-long season of multi-festivity was coming in fits and starts, but the one thing she has this year that she didn't have last term was a place to keep her stuff during the interim.

Though she is living in a dorm, I would tell anyone who asks that she and her roommates live in a pretty “epic” apartment. 

Wording it that way makes me feel as if my own salad days weren’t so long ago.

Now, I never lived in a fifth-floor corner city apartment with secure access and hardwood floors. I didn’t have a balcony-like window that looked out lovingly over my campus.

But I did have a windowless room in a basement that was all my own, even if it was more than seventeen blocks away.

And I NEVER would have asked my mother to donate the old folding cot in the basement to my cause to find accommodation and party furnishings.  

I would have resorted to doing what all the countless Xers of my Generation did - take a walking tour of the better neighborhoods on trash day. 

That is, after all, how I procured one AMAZING mid-century modern sectional couch with a Hollywood Regency flair that lasted more than a dozen years – through one party after another, one apartment after another – all the way into the new century. 

And I would still have it now if I hadn’t felt the call of nostalgia and released the blonde, jacquard beauty to a new generation of college students one fateful trash day. 

But that is not how Gen Z rolls. Afterall, my daughter points out, there are epidemics of bed bugs and other forever-pests to think about now.

“One of the air mattresses will be fine,” she says with a heavy sigh, as if wading through my nostalgia were the physical equivalent of swimming the English Channel. 

“Or … it would have been fine if the dog didn’t puncture the thing last time we had guests,” I said, narrating the sudden memory I had miraculously withdrawn from my post-pandemic memory bank and accepted as true without the arduous task of investigating the evidence so as to avoid doing a thorough search of all 11 tote bags in bottom of the front hall closet where the thing is probably jammed.

“How about I get you a bean bag lounger instead … Did you know companies make human size dog beds now? They are so versatile. They can be a lounger, or a couch, or a bed.”

“I know! We live in WILD times.”

“The only thing wilder would be if a drone had delivered the 40-pound, vacuum-packed box to your balcony window within the five- to seven-day shipping window. … As it is, we’re going to need your brother’s help to schlep it up the stoop and into the elevator.”

“I’m sure dragging it out to the sidewalk on move-out day will be much easier.”

Togetherness

 We separated this holiday season. 

I took one kid and a carload of stuff.

He took the dog, and the pickup truck, and a trailer with an old rusted tractor riding on top, the kind that could weather an apocalypse and be in working order for any surviving organisms with opposable thumbs to use its mower deck and horsepower to rid their gardens of choking bittersweet.

“Working the tractor requires a little more finesse than that,” he’d say if he were reading over my shoulder right now. 

But he is not. 

There is nothing fair about my feelings. 

I downplay his lofty intentions on this family weekend to wax defensive about the straw I had pulled. It was my job to pick up all the humans after the workday had ended, whether at home or in Boston and drive them to Maine.

I was not looking forward to the task: the traffic, the crosswalks, and people leaning on car horns. I was not sure I could be the aggressive driver I needed to be to muscle my way through rush hour. I imagined we’d be driving for days. 

But I didn't say anything.

I just listened to him go on about wanting to get in at least one day’s work at his mom’s house before the rain and the rest of the family descended for a festive weekend.

His parting words gave me hope, though I feel guilty about wishing.

“Maybe I'll pick up the girl in the city on my way. That way it would be a straight shot for you.”

My heart skipped a beat. 

If you do that PLEASE take a picture. I want to see you pull up to the dorm towing a beat-up Massey Furguson through Bean Town. 

A truly Tom Sawyer move. Painting this fence would be so much fun!

He said he would keep me posted.

But he didn't. Staying vigilant about the sway of his heavy load was foremost in his mind.

I didn't hear a peep from the college student either. 

So I stalk them both using the surveillance powers of Find My Phone. His dot traveled steadily along the Mass Pike, while hers hovered over the address she proudly calls home. 

“I knew when your dot was in your dorm

and his dot was zooming up 290 that your twains would not meet. So I will be hunting down Huntington tomorrow.”

She blinked twice and narrowed her eyes.

WOops.

“How often do you use location services to find me,” she asked.

I had broken the first rule in cyberstalking: Talking about cyberstalking. Don’t let on that you know she was at El Jefe’s at midnight last Friday night. 

It’s not as if your intent was nefarious. 

You never intended to call her out for her choices. You just liked knowing her dot was out there somewhere that I could still see and feel connected. Even if only remotely so.

And of course, I imagined she got the churros and that were cooked to perfection with just the right amount of cinnamon sugar.

On this, I hope, we can come together. 

Well enough

 The clicker isn't working.

I rattle it against my hand. Twice. Then I try again.

This time it turns the television on, but it won't change channels or lower the volume.

The batteries are probably losing their juice. It's been a few minutes since the loud, announcer voice started repeating the intro to a broadcast I don't want to see. It might be a show or a movie or a swatch of the news. It doesn't matter. 

I could probably get used to the narration repeating if I focus on closing my ears. It occurs to me that I don't have the stamina right now to process new things. 

And I don't want to get up. 

I am comfortable under a blanket on the couch: a putty-colored throw that is filled with down but otherwise nondescript. It is more subdued than the one made of t-shirts that my husband prefers, or the green woolen Mexican blanket that is older than our marriage. The longer it stays, the harder it is to jettison. 

 

My blanket is different, though. It is timeless. It blends in so well it seems invisible. It has no weight. It has no color. And I have no recollection of its purchase. It just appeared one day when I was cleaning out a closet. 

The moment I saw it I had an urge to hold it to my face. Rubbing it against my cheek. It felt uncommonly soft and smelled of cedar. It came as a surprise when it spoke to me. 

I felt like I'd just met an old friend. A friend I do not wish to offend.

Like I did my old hand mixer - the one I bought at a hardware shop one Thanksgiving eve when I was in my early 20s. 

It was in my first apartment, hosting my first holiday dinner but it had never been my job to make the mashed potatoes. Now it was. In addition to the delicate-fleshed yellow gold spuds, I selected the Easy Mix Proctor-Silex hand mixer with five speeds. $11.99 plus tax.

I didn’t think about the purchase, I just stopped by the hardware store after I’d packed the car with groceries and carried the only electric-mixing product they had on display to the register.

It worked well enough, even though I had to apply a certain directional pressure I alone understood, to keep the top speed humming. And it continued to work well enough for the next thirty years as other machines started taking up residence, such as a stand mixer; an immersion blender; and even a classic, low-tech, potato mashing tool, which also came to live in our kitchen.

Though … I must admit, the allure of seasonal displays of perfect pyramids of kitchen gadgets over the years had tempted me to replace the working-well-enough mixer with one that might work more perfectly than well enough.

Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, to have a pretty mixer that came with a storage compartment? One that would work at all speeds without hesitation? One that I had thought about for more than a moment and that would fulfill some understanding I have about my life?

YES! I admitted. “Yes! Thirty years is a good long time,” I reasoned. “It may even be wise to replace such an elderly appliance. Who knows how much moldering cake batter is kerning around inside the works.”

So I marched into the hardware store and bought the prettiest, most elegantly designed mixer they had – a six-speed beauty with a snap-on case. $37.99 plus tax.   

And when I got it home and fired it up … it worked well enough.

 

Training day

“You want to go to the gym?”

If you are like me … you probably don’t.

You’d rather curl up in your favorite chair with a cup of coffee and a sleeve of crumbly cookies and scroll through Netflix for something that will take your mind off the world for roughly 45 to 120 minutes.

On the other hand, also like me, you might be painfully aware that the question is coming from a gangly teenager who is only two months (and a few days) shy of being eligible to drive himself.

After that … It is a mere 18 months until he’s packing up for college.

And then he won’t be asking me to do much of anything.

It is all part of the unspoken contract we have with ourselves as parents to soak it all in before it’s all over.

Time is of the essence.

So I change into clothes that might facilitate a four-way “stretch,” and start the search for my keys.

He raises his hand and swipes the air. Around his finger hangs the electronic fob. 

“Ahem.”

He might have stood there forever, silently dangling the non-jangling device, before I would have noticed my hunt would be for naught.

“I’ll drive.”

His voice, as he says this, is imbued with more snark than excitement. The last time we made this trip I had insisted on driving and, well, let’s just say I made one navigational error that would live on in infamy in the novice driver’s mind. He is careful in his gloating. Knowing full well he still has to play to the audience, who is at this moment feeling a bit chagrined.  

“Of course. You could always use more practice driving at night.”

We don’t speak much on the commute. Instead, we listen to the soundtrack he has carefully programmed so that it won’t require him to take his eyes off the road even for a second. It sounds like the fast-beat celebratory music that plays at the end of just about every 80s-era arcade game. I don’t understand how he does it, but the fast-paced beats seem to keep him calm and focused. It makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

And it makes me realize he’s not such a novice anymore.

Because in trying to block out the visions of Froggers falling off logs or getting splattered on roadways, I focus on his driving. The starts and stops. The consistency of speeds. Smooth and unlabored. He’s come a long way. Gone are the days we inched toward the end of the driveway … it seems five inches per minute.

Tonight, in a moonless sky, we will practice using high beams. 

He is good at it. Turning them down the moment a car approaches but before it comes into view. 

Before long we arrived at our destination. We park and head into the gym, I assume, to our separate corners. He will go to the free weights, and I will go to the circuits.  

Do you want me to show you how to use the squat stand?

I resist the urge to laugh at the oxymoron in that sentence, and just follow along.

Time is of the essence, especially in the world of personal training.

Safety Third

I read with interest linguist John McWhorter's essay on the loss of the freer-ranging childhood of his youth (NYT Opinion Nov. 2).

In it he explores the more than five-decade history of childhood between the 1970s and now, wherein our nation's kids increasingly found their movements tethered and under the near-constant observation of adults. 

He surveys the time after chattel enslavement and the industrial age, skipping past civil rights and Jim Crow. He lands in the early 80s where the numbers of kids seen and heard in the wild seem to precipitously decline. 

We went from teens and tweens on every corner, to witnessing virtually no unaccompanied minors anywhere. 

He uses studious theories to foment the rational argument that our kids are experiencing a decline in mental health like no other generation because they have no opportunities to navigate our communities alone. 

He cites thinkers who believe it's the eyes upon them that keep our kids from becoming the stable, reliable adults we think we became. 

As a member of GenX, and someone who experienced the barely restricted freedom to pedal off into the world alone and unhelmeted - I identify with McWhorter's sense of grief.

I, too, believed my childhood was marked by a sheen of magic that has dulled for my children. 

I say this despite the dangers I know my parents worried about at the time: dog bites, cars colliding with bikes, even the unspeakable attentions of men no one in polite society would have suspected.

But McWhorter, like most of us, focused on 1981 as the flashpoint. 

In my mind and probably the minds of many, the abduction and murder of Adam Walsh at the hands of a stranger is what shattered our idyllic veneer. 

It changed the way society viewed the ways we could and should protect our children.

“Stranger” became synonymous with danger. And a new crime entered our unshakable belief system: parents who would leave their children alone or let them go anywhere unsupervised for even short lengths of time could be charged with neglect. Even if nothing foul befell their kids.

McWhorter makes good points as he implores our fearful leaders to support new laws that won’t criminalize parents for allowing their children to “range” more freely.

He's not wrong.  

In his essay, McWhorter reminds us that on the whole, the dangers we envisioned haven't materialized. Violent crime is down, and children are as safe as they ever were during those magical days of our youth. 

If they happened before the 1990s.

Of course, we now have cars that drivers need cameras to see out of; and a Supreme Court that will let states take away voting rights and health care choices, but they will let just about anyone have a gun. 

Because of that, our schools have armed guards and active shooter drills because some of our leaders would rather have a right to a private arsenal than a public education. 

We may think that safety is our FIRST priority, but the reality is that safety figures much, much lower on the list. 

We should be reminding ourselves as well as our leaders that our desire to make our kids safer has driven innovation: it gave us bicycle helmets; backup cameras, hearing protective earbuds, and protected bike paths.

We should be reassuring ourselves, too, that most of our children will grow up and become loving and protective members of society. And they will likely have fond memories of their childhoods they wish their children could share. 

The infancy of a fall

 

The dog pounces at the blowing leaves, testing the limits of her collar at the edge of the driveway as we wait for traffic to pass. Her nightly walk always starts this way. Both of us heading in the same direction, a line of webbing between us, pulling against one another. 

It is a kind of give-and-take that the two of us have received and bestowed for a dozen years.

The sun is momentarily blinding as it dips beneath the trees. Its light channels through red and yellow leaves electrifying the neighborhood and making it seem as if the whole world was on fire.

In a good way. An exhilarating way.

When it is finally safe we cross. 

The neighbors have already started the ritual cleansing of their yards. The fruits of their raking and pruning line the sidewalks, ready for an official transport to wherever it is we mulch or compost as a collective good.

The season is still in its infancy … the blink and you’ll miss it kind of development.

The crabapples gave up the fight during the summer. For a few years now I've noticed these diminutive trees that live near the mossy side of our dwelling bow out early. Not long after they flower and unfurl foliage, the leaves just seem to slowly give up. Fluttering to the ground here and there until the branches are mostly bare in the eighth month.

Stressed. I worry the trees might be dying. A fungus or a blight. Something other than old age. 

The sugar maples are holding on to their color while the oaks get ready for their turn. Hickory will follow soon after.

The drying leaves that have begun their descent, curl into feather-weight shells and crunch underneath our feet as we walk. It is a satisfying sound. 

The dog sniffs at the piles as I scuff along the edges. Careful not to undo the work of the rake. I want to rustle leaves, not feathers.

A teardrop leaf caught my eye. Its center was a translucent gold while sawtooth edges blazed fiery red. They hung on the shrub like a wave of festive garlands. 

Oh, what a celebration!

Oh, how I wish I could bark orders at our dogwoods. Get them to burst forth and shuffle off this mortal coil before the municipal sweeping ends … dog-willing.

But I would be barking up the wrong tree. The leaves will fall when they are good and ready. Certainly, after the birds have feasted on the fruit and left the remnants to molder underneath. 

My internal almanac can predict with witnessed assurance that the town trucks will have just made the switch from vacuums to other winter attachments when the lot will give up the ghost and finally unburden the tree.

Of course, they will stay put until after the first snow. That's how my memory tells me it happens. And I remind my husband that in those years we are content to let the lawnmower, Mother Nature, and the squirrels building nests recycle the remnants.

The dog will have a clear view of their abode, and she will remind us as the show piles up there is work for her outside. Haranguing, corralling, squirrel-patrol work. 

Until spring. When we are distracted by the leaves of old when fresh flowers and chutes poke out of whatever remains are left.

Changing spaces

I drummed my fingers on the table. Tapped my foot in imperfect time with the music. My thoughts jumbled an informal to-do list until I decided to finally write it down.

There was so much to do before we left and I didn’t want to forget a single thing.

I was filled with nervous energy because in just a three-hour drive (give or take some traffic) we’d be reacquainting ourselves with our daughter, who had, only a month and a few days prior, packed up just a smidgeon of the top-tier elements of her personal collection and moved them to a dorm room in Boston.

First things first: I had to locate the black, down jacket she’d need now that the temperature was dropping; and the red, bedazzled tights that would certainly not keep her warm in this year’s Halloween costume. 

She had directed me to her things as if she’d had them mapped. The tights would be in the topmost drawer of her dresser. The coat would be hanging up. 

I stared straight into her closet, but I couldn't see past the things she’d left behind: Things I’d bought her. A library of children’s books, a zoo of stuffed animals, a rack full of clothes that still fit her body but no longer fit her style.

And for the very first time since she left I understood that she doesn’t live here anymore.

Once I find this jacket … and the tights … 

“Oh … if you could bring the curling iron with the small barrel, too, that would be great. You should find it in the bookcase, bottom left basket.” 

Where in the … ?

Voila. There it was. The curling iron.

“Oh .. and some clothes hangers. I don’t know why mine keep disappearing.”

Once I fit the clothes hangers into a bag with the other items I’ve unearthed from her room, I would reckon with my nerves.

The last time I’d been this nervous was just before I met her. I had so many questions.

What kind of mother would I be? What kind of relationship would we have? 

Of course, I didn’t take the time to thoroughly explore these questions that flit through the minds of so many parents while we are still elbow-deep in diapers and daycare until we are surprised to find ourselves tiptoeing through a proverbial teenage wasteland. 

My daughter will only be a teenager for a moment longer. 

Which is the overwhelming feeling I have as we reach her address and wait for her to make an appearance. She is smiling as she exits the building and jogs down the stairs. She gives each of us a hug. Mine is extra long.

We have so many plans for this weekend. Dinner reservations. Tickets to a home game. Plans for shopping and sightseeing.

But as much as we have been excited to see her again, she has been preparing herself, too.

It’s a delicate reunion. 

We are a different family here and she is the first to know it. In as much as we have prepared to visit, she has prepared to receive us. We are in her city now. 

Hoping for the best

I’ve been thinking about “family” a lot recently.

Particularly about the connections we’re born with … and the connections that fray as we meander through the seasons of our lives. A wall of silence is a reminder that relationships can be as hard as our feelings.

Our wanting to do better than our parents did. Our hoping that we will. And the likelihood that we will fall short seems to be the embodiment of the human condition itself.

A friend reminded me of my own setting and resetting of boundaries as she recounted a rollercoaster ride of familial discord twice removed. The kind of thing that starts as a friend of a friend’s story of hurt and misunderstanding so big that it becomes a telegraphing parable of a story for the ages.

In this story, the daughter had a tumultuous relationship with the father, which had ebbed and flowed over the years in predictable ways. Admiration floated naturally along with the jetsam of off-the-cuff banter that eventually led to a host of invisible wounds that were healed with silence. Some of which she let go, but some gathered to her like scar tissue, overgrowing, becoming proud flesh. 

I know the feeling. Anxiety often rules these interactions. We interpret words - sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly - and commit them to a dictionary of feelings we’ve written in our minds. 

We bring our fallible selves to witness and often we can't help but believe the worst. 

My friend’s friend has erected fences and barricades to protect herself. It had been in her best interest. Anything to blunt the hurt, she understood, allowed some form of relationship to remain. 

 

Which is what I had done for a time. Like the friend of my friend, I had harbored the pain of a mother’s harsh gaze and thoughtless words and let them resonate within. I had wondered if love could be extracted and measured. That we just had to accept that love could coexist with unsolicited advice, disappointment-laced judgmental tone, and the occasional I-told-you-so. 

But we didn't have to like it. 

Avoidance of discomfort sometimes becomes central to our relationships. Not that we shouldn't mitigate abuse via the least taxing ways possible.

After all, avoidance feels like it does the least harm.

But why don't we have an impermeable layer that prevents the muck of our thoughts from drenching us in toxins? 

Maybe that’s where we will find ourselves one day If we were unlucky enough to have been wrong; once avoidance is no longer required  … maybe it will be in a box of old letters or the pages of a journal.

Maybe we will find the evidence of the loving parent we had never known or had forgotten.

And we will see ourselves in a different light. A dimmer one that missed enough possibilities to have mattered. 

My friend found it heartbreaking. All those years of animosity and keeping oneself at arms-length for naught.

For some reason, I found it comforting. 

The note, in my mother’s handwriting, about her joy at some tiny thing I didn't even remember doing, was reassuring that my fears about being unliked, let alone unloved, were unfounded. 

Though it didn't erase any of the awkwardness that had existed in our relationship, it reminded me that my feelings are not always as reliable as they seem and that stoicism isn't the absence of love. And that the work of understanding was neither hers nor mine alone. 

It may even take more than one lifetime.

Long in the tooth

The cats greet me every morning in the kitchen with big, toothy screeches. 

They show me with the skeletal ridges of the hard palate as they unhinge their jaws - that they want their breakfasts. 

I move a new crop of overnight dishes from the counter to the sink, first things first: unearth the coffee machine from this mess we call a kitchen. 

One cat sits on the lid of the garbage can and mewls as if the decibel level of her caterwaul has a direct bearing on the amount of vittles I will trickle onto her plate, she watches me intently as I pour from the clear glass canisters rising from the counter like crystal silos in some reimagined castle in Oz. 

She knows I can be swayed.

The other cat stays low to the ground and waits impatiently. She silently swishes her tail and paces, drawing figure eights between my ankles until I fill her bowl. 

She has learned to scootch the dishware (and herself) into a corner to protect the meal from sibling rivalry. There’s no place like home. There's NO PLACE like home. 

The dog, exhibiting all the courage of a cowardly lion, exacts a tax if the cat doesn't cover her work. One swat will send her into the next room. 

My son calls the area of the counter I've dedicated to “pet-ween-meal snacks” the treat factory. 

“If you stand here for any amount of time you get a curious audience and a standing ovation.”

 

My family thinks the animals have me trained.

“They get morning treats, afternoon treats, walking into the house treats, oh-I-didn't-notice-you-there startle-me treats. Not to mention the I-just-went-for-a-walk treats and it's-not-long-now-before-I'm-gonna-need-my-after-dinner and just-before-bed treats.

They are even allowed to choose, using their noses to sniff out the treat of greatest desire with the old “pick a hand” gambit. 

The magic? They also get what's in the other hand, too. 

"You are a pushover."

I've always been a pushover, as my mother used to say. An easy mark. Soft target. 

“Maybe you're just kind-hearted.” 

My son has entered the chat. 

I'd been thinking aloud again. Going over the thoughts that snake through my mind as I wait for the coffee, unaware that there's no cup to catch them has they brew. 

The animals have vacated the vicinity now their tummies have been temporarily placated. 

“Who called you a pushover? I'll pummel them,” he said dancing and jabbing in at the air. “I’ll p-p-p-pulverize them.”

Pummel. Pulverize. Fighting words that sound like they are stuttered from a bygone era. 

I ask him if he’s familiar with the expression. 

“Pushover?” He looks at me like he hasn't known me for all 16 of his accumulated years. “Yeah. it just means someone who is easily manipulated. Someone who would do extra things they don't have time to do because …  well, I don't know why they'd do it … maybe just because someone asked.”

“Do you think there's a word that means the same thing as pushover … that maybe doesn't have the same negative connotations?”

The boy fell silent as he considered the alternatives. I could see the pages turning through the thesaurus in his mind.  

And that's when the cats settle in on my lap  and the dog curls up at my feet.  The house ... even in its cluttered disarray ... feels like home. 

“Maybe the word you are looking for is ‘mom’.”

Raise your hand

 I raised my hand when the kid’s team asked for volunteers. I was eager. Confident, even, despite my limited knowledge of competitive high school sports and a total lack of technical proficiency with timing devices of any kind.

What could go wrong?

I am a runner. I have volunteered at races before. I have perfected the art of safety flag waving and have mastered the three stages of a water cup hand-off: eye contact; flat-handed balance and shoulder-length levitation. The runner can take it from there. Some people think that's it; that's the job. But I know the service isn't complete until we rake the crushed cast-offs into the trash. 

 Furthermore? I know these trails like they are in my own backyard. 

So on this particular occasion, I was excited to be in the woods, standing next to my son - who is also a runner but who was injured and unable to participate in this hallowed event - even if I had NO IDEA what to do.

“Where are the cups?”

“There are no cups.”

“Wait. What's the distance?”

“Two point five miles.”

“So what do we do?”

“We literally stand here and keep the runners from going the wrong way. We are figuratively traffic cones.”

“Ah … we provide direction!”

“That does not mean coaching,” cautions my son, who has heard the lilt in my voice and knows he must dial back my enthusiasm.

He punctuates this directive by jamming his hands into his pockets, elbows locked so his shoulders crowd around his ears, and he sighs heavily.

“No helpful hints, no yelling. Try not to be too excited.” 

None of these kids know you. It will be weird. Try not to be weird. I'm not saying this to hurt your feelings but to protect you … from yourself.”

“I know that,” I said with all the know-it-all-ness motherhood bestows. “I just want to understand the route. Once they come down the hill towards us, where do they go?”

“They go down the trail to the right and into the woods on the left where they will loop around and come back this way. When they do come back, we stand facing the other way, so they run through the woods that we kept them out of the first time.”

I think I've got it: “We point them back up the hill when they emerge?”

He sensed I was overthinking.  

“Everyone should have previewed the course before the race, and there are chalk markers on the trail. Just relax and it will be fine.”

He knows better than I do that going above and beyond sometimes only means you will miss your mark completely.

He was entirely correct because when the first group of runners crested the hill and came barreling toward me, I pointed to where they needed to turn and yelled: “LEFT!!!” Which was the verbal expression of the exact opposite of where I was pointing. 

“TO YOUR OTHER RIGHT!” he hollered over my shoulder. “Don't worry, you got this ... but you can put your hand down now."