Whiling away the kilowatt hours

"Are you sure?"

I was.

"I can't talk you out of it?"

He couldn't.

There was nothing he could do but hover anyway. He'd offer scads of well-meant advice that I would tiptoe around like the proverbial bull in a china shop. Things might break.

One collision away from catastrophe.

It wouldn't end well for either of us if he stayed. This was just one of those times misery doesn't love company.

So I kicked him out of the house. I watched him pack a bag with all of his cold-weather gear, his skis, and helmet and told him "Don't let the door hit you on the way out," with all the warmth and concern I could muster.

The annual ski weekend with the guys was finally happening, nearly three years after its pandemic-forced hiatus, and l didn't want him to miss it again.

Especially if missing it meant he'd have to bob along as I weathered the irregular waves of grief.

I've got lots of experience with sadness. It's like watching the ocean roll in on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday in summer. Even if I turn my back on the sea I know it's unlikely to overwhelm me.

You can only steady yourself. Focus on the sand escaping beneath the soles of your feet and dig in.

I would just breathe. And sleep. And do all the things I'd written down on my list as slowly as I could force myself to go.

I would take all the time I needed starting the moment his car left the driveway.

Which, as luck would have it, was the exact moment my daughter emerged from her room to declare that not only was the temperature sub-arctic but the water coming from the showerhead was only slightly more fluid than icicles.

I checked the thermostat and realized something had to be wrong: the digits claimed the living room was 57 degrees.

So I ran downstairs to the furnace to see what it had to say.

The readout said nothing but the water streaming out from the seams of its casing spoke volumes.

I called his cell phone.

"Hey there. Everything ok?"

In the four minutes he'd been gone he'd somehow made it all the way to Massachusetts, and was currently a rest stop or two away from his destination in Maine.

"Yeah. It's just the heat isn't working and the furnace is leaking. I think I'm going to have to call for a repair."

I knew I'd have to humor him: I'd follow the pipes and turn valves off and on before he'd agree that there wasn't much more I could do.

And three visits from the repair dude between Thursday and Friday nights convinced him there wasn't much he could have done either, besides calling in favors, which he managed to arrange via voice text as his car cruised along 495. By midnight he had friends deliver up all their space heaters, which they line up in the garage nearest the woodpile.

The kids and I would keep the home fires burning (literally) until the furnace part could be procured in three or four business days.

It was surprisingly simple. The woodstove worked some whole house magic, while the tiny little space heaters took the edge of the chill near the plumbing.

We awoke each morning to a warm house. Warmer, in fact, than when its furnace was functional.

And each night the kids and I snuggled into the couch watching movie marathons. It seemed like the most comfortable camping trip ever. We roasted hotdogs and told stories until we couldn't keep our eyes open any longer. Contentment washed over me like a little flash of gold as I banked the fire in preparation for another night's sleep.

Turns out there's quite a bit of solace in knowing there's only so much you can do. And sometimes that's plenty.

You come too

In a darkened room, with Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" playing softly, my father took his last breaths. My sister and I were there, stroking his hands, kissing his forehead ... just the way he had once comforted us when we had nightmares or couldn't settle ourselves to sleep.

We knew he couldn't stay. We knew his body couldn't take much more of the fight his lungs had picked with his heart. Still, the end came as a surprise.

Two days before he died, we sat and talked for hours. He told all the stories that had played like the background music of my life. He talked about growing up in the 'Burgh with the Oakwood as his playground.

He brought me along just like he always had.

But for the first time, the Troy of his youth flickered before me like a movie on a screen. I saw Great Aunt Agnes as she steered big Buick onto their street, beeping all the way from 1st Avenue until she pulled up to the big, yellow house to pick up her young helper who would buy her pizza and quarts of beer at Gallow's store so she wouldn't have to get out of her car.

I pictured the old man in charge of the crematorium who let my dad watch him work. I heard the metal door in front of the furnace slide open and saw my dad's face – seventy years younger -- cringe as a ball of fire burst from the skull inside.

I could taste the wine Carmel Bell's grandfather gave him to drink with dinner when he was seven years old and how exotic that seemed to him -- the skinny little Irish boy down the street -- whom the neighbors always wanted to feed.

There was Huey Morgan at the gas station working magic on cars while Fix Fasoli talked smack. Sal Speciale, on a break from his vegetable truck, was taking his helpers to fill up on breakfast before spending the rest of the day delivering greens.

I patted the mane of Sam Jordan's ride. He was the route man for Freihoffer's, and his truck had literal horsepower. An automatic, that clip-clopped through the neighborhood following his man from one house to the next. Can you smell the fruitcake? It's still warm.

Oh, there's grandpa! He's out on rounds with his post bag and his pipe pointing toward home, smiling as he goes. He always identifies the people he's talking about by name and address. Sure, it was late at night, but Mr. Rothenhaber, 343 10th Avenue, had been waiting on this letter. It would be unkind not to take it to him directly. Mrs. Rothenhaber repaid the kindness with paper-sackfuls of vegetables she grew in her garden.

We won't have to wait much longer.

Oh, dad! There's Tommy holding your hand by the rail station downtown.

I can feel his hand slipping away.

Look, there's mom. Pushing you out the door when you showed up nervous for the first date, Christmas Eve, smelling all brined from the AOH. “You can't come in here. I don't understand it: My mother likes you and we should keep it that way.”

I can see where he's going. The lake.

He waves me on: Come into this memory. It's just a story to keep for the next time we meet ... perhaps lined up for one of Dennis' footraces. Den will give us a headstart but he always wins. 

My adrenaline is pumping as his fades. 

I see it so clearly. 

Look! Everyone's here ... I tell him. You come too.

Mission Improv-able

Time was of the essence.

My neighbor had found herself in a bit of a pickle. Having nearly reached her destination two states away, she realized she had left something of vital importance on her kitchen counter. She also realized she had left all of her extra house keys in the bottom of her handbag, which was on the passenger seat next to her.

To have to turn around now and come home, just to fulfill this necessary task, would totally submarine her plans for the remainder of the week.

Which is where I come in ... or so explains her voice on speakerphone in my car ... making me an offer I couldn't refuse.

"The mission, should you choose to accept it," said this neighbor in no-way-near-any-similar-verbiage, "involves breaking into my house .... and you might need a ladder.”

“Who's ladder a'we gonna take?” I wonder in my head.

"You know these transmissions are probably being recorded," said my son, who was also likely wishing he didn't have to go to the sports-ball practice I was carting him to so he could witness my comedic attempts at sanctioned felony instead.

"It's not a crime if the homeowner ASKS you to break in.”

"You know what I mean," he says as he grabs his gear and pulls himself out of the car. "I could help."

Of course, I know what such "help" entails.

He wants to "spot" me as I attempt to scale the exterior wall using an outdoor gate valve and an empty garden hose holder. He wants to "cheerlead" as I struggle to balance while using a piece of lumber that I've found in the garage as a rude tool to pry open the window. He will "commiserate" when the shim proves to be too wide to get between the upper and lower sashes.

He will "suggest" I try a stick of kindling from our carport, calling it a better fit, without lowering his phone camera or offering to find one for me.

Really, he just wants to record this caper - to preserve my posterior for posterity - as I slither through a window of a house that's not mine if I somehow, miraculously manage to find a way in. And then, he'd like to account for everything I might literally break that requires skilled labor to repair. 

"I don't need that kind of help," I yelled through the now-closed car door as he loped away. 

But ... I did need exactly that kind of help.

The window, it turns out, was locked.

As luck (and texting) would have it, a mutual friend turned up to lend a hand.

We circled the house, looking for other ways in. Finding none, we nearly gave up. Even calling our friend with the disappointing news. Walking across the lawn toward my house, though, I noticed a tiny gap between the sash and sill of a living room window. A little pressure from the tips of my fingers was all it took to slide the thing up. 

I screamed and ran around the front hoping to stop our mutual friend before she drove off. "We're in!”

A leg up and a plant stand on wheels were all that stood between us and the task at hand. 

Mutual friend, smiling, appeared at the now unlocked door holding up the rescued item and handing it off for the next step in the mission.

"When does the post office close?”

"Google says you have 17 minutes to complete this mission or the entire plot self-destructs!”

I know this is the easiest part. The agents at our local P.O. have mad skills for the delivery of special packages, even in a last-minute pinch. The self-destruct part happens when I have to debrief the boy after I collect him, a little late, from sports-ball.

Mind over matter

The world is pretty scary right now. The news of emerging and enduring threats surrounds us wherever we turn. Just thinking about it pins my shoulders to my ears most of the time. It's hard to turn off the noise.

I wish I could time travel. I'd go back to almost anywhere. Even the ghosts of past uncertainties seem quaintly comforting compared to the threat of current events.

 Opening my phone usually opens the floodgates to more heartbreak. It's hard to and tune out. So I force myself to scroll past the doom until I land on the last page on the screen.

I select my game.

Backgammon.

Somehow it manages to bring me back. ...

Back to a smoke-filled living room where I, and a half-dozen 20-something friends, killed time before venturing out for a night on the town. Back when we had part-time jobs and full-time plans.

I don't know what made me think of it or what made me search for digital versions of a game I hadn't played since college. Maybe it seemed familiar and safe, something that would test my brain but not tax it. 

But instead of snapping open a leatherette briefcase and lining up rows of black and white disks on alternating white- and brown-colored triangular flags, the computer did it for me.

Memory, it turns out, didn't serve.

Were it not for the automated array the setup would continue to elude me.

I must have lost a dozen games against the programmed opponent before any semblance of my former strategy returned.

I was grateful to be alone with such stunning defeats.

It was weeks before any urgent need to listen for the ringing of phone calls introduced me to the sounds of the game.

The music playing in the background sounded like a light Jazz riff going out for a little stroll. It made me feel as if Charlie Brown and Snoopy were standing behind me, watching as I planned my attack.

I was surprised by the gentle "click" of the tiles and not so jazzed by the horn that blows upon defeat.

The combinations feel familiar but I am rusty. A roll of five, two moves one piece from the top corner and covers the "six" slot in my home turf. Six, five moves one piece on top, halfway from right to left, but leaves another piece vulnerable to attack.

I prevail in fewer than half the games I play. But the matches are quick and certain. Skill and luck working with and against each other. 

I can't figure out a formula for my wins, but it doesn't stop me from picking myself back up after each losing streak.

The machine litters its backfield with uncovered pogs, then rolls a six and a one and edges steadily toward a lead while I struggle to keep up.

When I roll a six and a one during the next round, I split moves between the two pieces stacked in the farthest quadrant from home. My opponent takes them both and builds a wall of stacked pieces, which will keep me waiting on the rail until my computer nemesis has halfway gammoned off.

There is no way to win this one … but maybe my luck will change for the next one. 

Celebrating in style

I think I miss holiday parties more than I should. 

Not that I miss the dressing up. Conversing with family and friends in the warm glow of festive decorations. Eating and drinking just a tad too much. Any remaining stress from the party preparation melted away with the first hardy laugh. None of that has disappeared. It's still happening, though perhaps in smaller, more subtle ways.

More ornate observances have gone the way of obsolescence. 

Those fancy fetes seemed rare in the before-times anyway. The gatherings I remember best, and miss most, amounted to an awkward pause in the workday when a few of my coworkers would chat about the things they had left on their To-Do lists as they wait in a line at the break room for a slice of pizza and a handful of sugar cookies. The parties would always last for about seven minutes before we'd return to our desks and eat in silence.

Is it weird to miss such an office holiday party?

The kind of forced frivolity at which we all used to scoff, they seemed to be just tinseled up coffee breaks designed by the very folks who may have already been working on our last, frazzled nerve. Nothing says holiday spirit like dunking on Dave from accounting.

Especially since there was always someone reminding you (usually Dave) as they filled their plates, that, in some past iteration, these parties used to be something grand. They'd be the highlight of the entire year, held in some grand hotel with catering and a cash bar. We'd go for scandal and intrigue. It would produce a story so salacious that it would be woven into the office lore and spread by successive generations of employees as if they were there.

Suffice it to say we were not our best selves.

It's a shame people don't remember how nice it was that Danielle made buckeyes every year. I hope we thanked her.

Sometimes I think when all this is over -- when we can lower our masks and truly embrace -- we may end up keeping our distance.

Eventually, we may even give up on the graduation of "normals" from new normal, to newer, to newest as we come to accept that some of the workarounds may suit us better than the old normal ever did.

I was thinking about this as I planned our running club's unofficial holiday party for the second year in a row. Unlike pre-pandemic years, where a panel of club officers voted on venues and menus and budgets, this time it was just me, plotting a course around the neighborhood for a winter evening tour of the local holiday lights. I would throw caution to the wind by bringing along a carafe of cocoa and a sleeve of paper cups. 

I hope this kind of celebration – a simple pleasure - will stick once the pall of this pandemic lifts. Because wearing a set of jingle bells from my running belt so the sound carries through the course as other like-minded friends follow along with their elf hats and Santa beards and blinking safety lights, will be a memory I cherish forever.

So you can bet when we can finally celebrate in style, I'll be there with bells on. 

All good-good

The news reached out and hit me like a fist:

bell hooks, the author, poet, professor, activist, and social critic who helped push feminism away from its white, middle-class worldview toward a more inclusive movement, died this past week. She was only 69.

The loss felt especially poignant to me as I steeled myself to celebrate the 18th birthday of my firstborn, who, on the eve of her coming of age, will come of age in a new, more unsettling time for women. She will be "Ittybit" no longer.

It seems like only a blink since this soon-to-woman joined our world. We remember how she came into it standing up. Asserting herself. How I didn't know her the way I thought I would just from having her swimming around in me for so long.

I'm not sure why, but the notion came as a surprise. As if such a thing weren't possible. That, somehow, this baby of mine wouldn't be a person separate from me starting on Day One. Or that intuition could only take me so far.  I didn't quite understand that the work of getting to know this new person would be the most laborious part of parenthood, but also the most gratifying.   

So we turned to books to help guide us on this journey. We thumbed through Spock and Sears as if they contain the perfect recipe for child-rearing. Indexed alphabetically for convenience. 

It was about this time that a gift arrived containing some of the most instructive examples of the kind of parents we wanted to be:

hooks' lyrical children's book "Homemade Love," introduced us to "Girlpie," and the trust parents can build around their families with unconditional love and forgiveness. With love, there was no hurt that could not be healed. It turned out to be one of the most comforting book we owned. The way her words came off the page and into the room helped soften the hard edges of our day. It soothed tears, lulled her to sleep, and invited pondering.


We read that book so often the pages became raggedly at the edges and the paper thinned where I'd traced the words. I knew all of them by heart. "Homemade Love" turned out to be my first and best field guide to parenthood. It was also an introduction to hooks' extensive work on the radical possibilities of feminism, race, and self-determinism and how it all interconnects through love.

For sure, her words comforted me in their artful and gentle reminders that transformation isn't all of a sudden like a bolt of lightning. It isn't delineated by things at all. It is a process of doing. A good life, while not free of suffering, has its basis in love.

"To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending."

"True resistance begins with people confronting pain ... and wanting to do something to change it."

All these years later, it occurs to me that “Homemade Love” was the parenting lesson that stuck with me best and made me seek out more. Though hooks' passing is most certainly a terrible loss, it is also a reminder that her life's work is an enduring treasure … one we can take with us wherever we go. One that new mothers will find and pass on to their children through the act of love.

She will always make you understand that it's never too late.

Elevation

Hah hah hah uhhha uhha haaaaaah.

The sound spells like laughter but it rakes through the old man's throat like cold air through a crack in the window. 

I listen for that sound the way I used to listen for silence when my kids were teacup-sized: Instinctively, hoping to avert trouble.

"Breathe through your nose."

If my voice sounds harsh, it's because I've said these four words at least forty times today and the knowledge that I will lose count of future repetitions is heavy.

Catching myself, I stop and try to practice a little of what I've been preaching. Letting a long stream of air soften my frustration, I start again:

"Dad, take long, slow, deep breaths through your nose. The machine is making the good oxygen you need. The room air isn't enough."

My father is attached to a machine that concentrates the oxygen from the air and feeds it to him from a lasso of translucent tubing. It irritates his nose and goes against every instinct he has to open a window and take long drinks of fast-moving air.

This is the new normal.

He doesn't live with me, but he's staying here while he ... convalesces.

We have no reason to believe there is a different word we should be using.

Still, it is not where any of us want to be. Complicated medical situations tend to send you on an unpleasant rollercoaster of emotions, going up and down, taking corners at jarring speed. It can be disorienting.

Everyone dies, of course. But we don't really get to choose the hill, let alone how close we'll get to the summit when that time comes. 

We don't know ... or even care to know ... how long that will be. Of course, we hope he stays for as long as necessary, but we will take as long as possible and count ourselves fortunate.

We have been fortunate.

"I'm the luckiest guy in the world," Dad tells his doctors as they help him struggle through the permanent effects of surviving lung cancer. "They found it when they could still cure it."

We knew that "cure" would come with caveats and complications that malinger: muddled thoughts, neuropathy, organ damage ... and other things that seem to come out of nowhere. 

I feel especially blessed he's so good-natured about the situation. Amazed, quite frankly, about how the darkest places make him focus harder on the tiny flickers of light. 

He's not angry at my frustration, nor is he deflated by the predicament of his child speaking to him in a parental tone. He just complies until his oxygen saturation returns and he is breathing more easily.

I relax when the panic in his voice is replaced by a story I've already heard a million times followed by a random question.

He's not a child, and my haranguing doesn't make me his parent. If anything feels familiar between caring for an elderly parent and caring for a child it's how little confidence you have in either pursuit when you're just starting out.

"Don't get old," he tells me.

"I'd much rather that than the alternative," I sass back.

"Hey, do you have a rubber band anywhere?"

Letter to Santa

Dear Santa,

It's been eighteen years since my last confession.

Wait ... I have the wrong etherial bearded guy. Let me try this again:

Dear Santa,

I still believe. But I must confess to feeling awkward about penning an inquiry of this sort so close to your proverbial game day. But here goes:

During the last score years, I have acted as secretary and scribe on your behalf with the express goal of indoctrinating the children in my household (as well as some in the extended familial orbit) toward adopting, in their own lives, some of the essential goodness of your legendary spirit.

Sadly, a majority of my accomplishments seem to have accumulated some degree of malcontent, especially when it materializes in those I've disappointed staring into the mouths of equines.

So by way of correction, if ever so slight, I would like to highlight some free and heartfelt desires of my own this holiday season.

But before I clear the air, let me first clear the dishes. There are so many of them. 

No matter how much you are tempted, I do not wish to find a new phone, souped-up computer, or a gimmicky gadget underneath the tree. My jewelry box is already filled with gems, though I wouldn't turn my nose up at polymer clay beads or a strand of macaroni for old times' sake.

Most of us don't need things. I'm sure you would readily agree with this statement if you didn't have such binding ties with all major retailers of American brands.

Not that I blame you. Someone had to keep the lights on in Santaland.

It's not all bad. The giving and receiving of things reminds us of the ongoing need to be grateful, kind, and forgiving. To remember and be remembered.

This is exactly what I'm thinking as I unpeel the paper accordion-wrap protecting some fragile object that has arrived, anonymously, by mail.

An eerie delight.

"Cloudberry Preserves," reads the jar's label. An illustration of a dimpled, peach-colored fruit reminded me of the dogwood berries that ferment in my yard and make the squirrels act drunk as they gather mouthfuls and run off.

I can guess who sent me this sweet delicacy and relax into the charm of its name. Hovering over the words that curve elegantly around the drawing. Smiling.

Until I picture the toast crumbs and jam-slicked knives, which I can foretell will adhere to the countertops or wherever else utensils become abandoned. If there is a plate, perhaps it will turn up before spring. Likely far from the kitchen sink. Hopefully, I'll find it before it goes through the wash in a tangle of bedsheets and comes out in a thousand pieces.

I know these aren't really the things you tally to make your final determinations. I don't tend to keep track of them either, despite the fact that they tend to stack up, especially during the holidays.

But maybe you can convince the elves that we don't really need their magic as much as we'd like them to rinse a plate, empty the dishwasher or wipe up a spill now and again.

This benefits you, too. I'll have clean plates for cookies.

Running in circles

 I had dropped my son at practice and was on my way to the track nearby. While I waited for him, I had planned to run in circles.

The sound in my head wasn't music. Instead, I listed to an accounting of time: specifically, the 12 minutes it took three men to hunt and kill a human being last year in Georgia.

Twelve minutes to snuff out a life and 72 days to convince authorities to make arrests in the case.

I had already heard the news: that a jury had convicted three white men - Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William Roddy Bryan - of the brutal murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who had been jogging through their neighborhood.

Few people call it what the men's act of barbarism was on that February day in 2020: a lynching. But we all know that's what the jarring video, recorded by one of the murderous trio as they cornered their victim, had captured.

The nation learned of Arbery's killing only after pressure from family and the public forced the release of a video, put forward by those who hoped the footage would exonerate the perpetrators. It did just the opposite. Since then I have followed this case as if I knew Arbery personally. 

We had some things in common: He was a runner; his birthday coincided every so often with Mother's Day, and, as the news reported, he was curious about houses under construction. I find myself equally enthralled with the bones of a house and have walked around sites and peered through windows on runs myself.

Just the loose threads of human existence we rarely draw together to their logical conclusion. Such as the unlikelihood a gang of vigilantes would shoot a middle-aged white lady for looking around a construction site or jogging through a neighborhood on a midday afternoon

The true scandal is why this is a privilege not afforded to all.

It's tempting to think that the system worked in the case of Arbery's murderers. But it didn't really. It served the obvious. Anything less would have been a perversion like the legal circus in Wisconsin, which delivered a total acquittal for two homicides by a teenage vigilante. 

We can't keep running around in circles.

I listened to the verdict commentary as I ran in the outermost lane. I told myself I would stop when I got to his number. 

When I had run eight times around the track, I slowed to watch the distance on my watch. As the number ticked past 2:22 I slowed; waiting for 2:23 – the number that has come to memorialize Arbery. 

I have run that distance so many times; in four seasons of weather; carved it into the shape of a heart through my neighborhood. 

Today will be the last time, I think. 

My son will be done with practice soon. Together we will be home safe and sound. 

The wind sliced at me as I ran around in circles. I had forgotten my hat and gloves. 

I think about Ahmaud's mother a lot. I think about how tragic it is to lose a son so tragically; and then to have to watch as his life and death get co-opted by people like me. She didn't give him to the world. A hate crime did that. 

Race day

The alarm was set for 5:30 a.m.

I had a plan. I would wake up, stretch and shake the rust off of my barely rested muscles, and then get back into bed after having made the first of several cups of black coffee. 

If it worked correctly, there would be plenty of time to gather the gear I'd packed the night before and warm up the car. 

Of course, this hurry-up-and-wait approach works a little too well. Often I will look at my watch and realize I have lost track of time. 

When I check now ... 

It's three a.m., three-0-one, now ... and soon to be three-0-two. I'm still awake, with the imaginary screenplay of the events to follow playing on my mind in a loop. 

Why can't I sleep? Race-day anxiety, I suppose. 

Seems wasted on a person like me. 

Fast is relative. I usually finish so far from the front runners that the light from said front runners is not likely to shine anywhere near me. 

I don't even keep pace with the sweepers -those caution-cone-colored volunteers who circle on bikes with the look of concern creasing their faces. 

I read their faces: Will I be the person they need to steer toward a medical tent? "Gosh I hope not," I reply wordlessly with a smile and thumbs- up as I continue to jog along, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. 

Three-forty-five. I finally sleep. When I wake again there is only a single minute ticking down until the alarm is set to ring. 

I turn it off before the rousing clang begins. I don't want to risk waking the house unnecessarily. Not that my herd-of-elephants tip-toeing won't do just that anyway. 

As I stand and stretch in my darkened room, I run through the plan for the rest of the morning: The drive to Schenectady, the finding of parking, the warming up in place behind the start line. 

I wonder why I do this to myself. Heading off before the sun rises to run more than nine miles, alone ... in a crowd of more than a thousand.

I could sleep in and run my own race later. 

The small part of me that lacks the compulsive impulse wishes I would crawl back into bed. No one would think any less of me, not even me. I might gain a few points for the wild abandon. 

But coffee calls. 

Downstairs in the kitchen, a note leans on the coffee maker. "Coffee is inside, ready to go. Have a great race."

By the time I park my car and find my place in line, I am truly ready. I start slowly, keeping an easy rhythm through The Stockade. I find my race pace as I approach Union College, tracing my initials from Lennox to Waverly. 

The neighborhoods seem to fly by despite my slow jog. At every corner, there are people waving signs as they cheer on someone they know along with dozens of strangers. 

The city seems as warm as the morning's sun.

I am reminded why I love this course as we dip into Niskayuna before climbing back toward Central Park and into Vale Cemetery through to the eventual finish downtown. 

 It has nothing to do with the realization that I shaved ten minutes off my 15k time. That's just a bonus

The last to know

“Hey, you guys didn't tell me it was school picture time,” I yell over the sound of morning routines: the whirring of hairdryers and the pounding on bathroom doors.

"It was a shock to us, too. I didn't even comb my hair," said the boy's muffled voice.

“Mom! Can you tell him to hurry up?," his sister texted. "I'm going to be late!”

I mumble something about there still being time as I ignore her pleas and click on a link that had blinked into my email: My son's unsmiling face showed up on the screen.

His hair, newly barbered, was pushed up high on top of his forehead but still ever-so-slightly askew. It is a look he had painstakingly preened to seem like he had just rolled out of bed. Everything about it said Too-Cool for School.

Welcome to your child's high school years. That will be twenty-five dollars for two five-by-sevens and eight, wallet-sized reminders.

Of course, I bought prints of the boy in his berchon expression straight away, even though when they arrive - in six to forty-six weeks - the copies will live in a dining room cabinet, where I store the rest of the official mementos from my kids' school experiences.

His sister's progress reports and quarterly report cards occupy the top shelf. The letters and missives have been extracted from their envelopes and piled in ascending order from kindergarten onward. 

His are filed in about the same order, interleaving between notice of grades with concert programs, playbills, certificate awards, and dozens of stock-white envelopes with younger and younger faces staring out from little windows of transparent glassine.

Oversized serving bowls I've never used (lest they become broken or cracked) act as a bookend, keeping the pages upright and from accordioning out onto the floor at the feet of whoever opens the cabinet.

This is my system.

The organization of opportunity. A box here, a folder there. The common thread between them is an intention to file it for easy retrieval, should the need to access his first-grade third-quarter progress report materialize.

My system makes sense only to me.

Which is what I think, when my husband forwards a similar link for our daughter, who the school has somehow classified in their etched-in-stone recond as belonging to him first and to me as occasional chauffer and forgotten-item delivery person.

I tried to correct that record once after one particularly aggravating game of phone tag.  Failing, it would seem to have them with the order of operations from "DAD" to "MOM" -- at least on the first attempt -- since I am the parent who has the most flexible schedule and the one who isn't likely to be traveling far from home.

Evidently, they thought my acrimony was based soley in matrimony, because after that, all the official correspondence from school included me on a separate line at the same address … as if I were the Ex living with my Husband and his Mrs.

“Well, that's very big of me,” my husband joked.

I didn't know what to do besides laugh with Mr. Husband about how progressive we were as a family. 

“Laugh all you want," the girl tells us wryly as she reaches for her keys. "But this explains why I got called down to the guidance office in the fourth grade and handed an invitation to join the Banana Splits Club," she says before she slams yet another door. 

“I never understood why she didn't go out for that. She loves making desserts.”

“Uhm. ... Because it's for kids whose parents are getting a divorce. She thought they were telling her the bad news.”

That sounds terrible, but it's probably going to get worse when they find out you've been hoarding all these horrible pictures.

I wish us all nine lives

 “What's this now?” I asked my son after I turned off the road and into the schools' driveway. About a dozen people with placards had gathered on the sidewalk where the intersection jammed with cars. It was just after 7 a.m., his usual driver -- his sister -- had taken the day off.

"Anti-factsers," he said with a sigh. “They don't want their kids to wear masks or have to get vaccinated or to discuss American History, I guess if it means talking about the racism parts. But I don't think any of them have kids who actually go to school here.”

“That seems weird.”

It took several minutes to get through the line, let him off, and get back to the road where the protestors stood, waving at traffic with bare-faced, beatific grins. They were joyful in their work professing strongly-held but evidence-free beliefs.

As I waited for my chance to escape, a woman bundled against the cold wave at me, seeking some solidarity. Perhaps a thumbs-up.

I gave her a different finger. 

It happened so suddenly. A knee-jerk reaction to a cheerful wave of a sign that bore a stolen slogan, and my undeniable urge to protest gushed forth. I used the only sign I had on me.

I was angry. Civility be damned.

The face outside my window changed from a smile into a startled scowl and finally rested in a downturned slant. I recognized the person then. I knew her. From a past life. One in which acquaintances seem to go deeper into friendship than they do. 

This knowledge, I suppose, should have caused me to feel remorse for using such a base vulgarity. The telling it like it is becoming less clear when you're telling it to a familiar face.

But I had none of those feelings. I had all of the shocks of recognition and none of the remorse. I didn't feel caught in a weak moment. I felt relieved. 

I rolled down my window and made my silent protest official, albeit with more publicly acceptable words. She conveyed, with equal reserve, that our diametrically opposed disappointments were mutual. I rolled my window up again and sat in silence until a break in the traffic allowed me to merge.

I drove away slowly, letting the distance between our planted flagpoles dilute my animus.

I don't need to know why she and the others have picketed a school none of their children attend using statements of things that aren't happening there anyway. Maybe she's a true believer, or perhaps she's searching for something that's missing from her life.

Aren't we all? Missing something?

I just hope she remains healthy and that she and her family gets through this crisis without a visit from harm. But I don't have to expend any more energy changing hearts or minds.

Consistency can simply become a thing we mold around our broken thoughts, rendering it into a defective weapon or an ineffective defense. 

We may be out in the world glaring at one another, but we still fit in a box with Schroedinger's cat, destined to be right and wrong at once.

Teen spirit

 "I'm going shopping, does anyone want to go with me?"

I was talking to the air around me, fully expecting silence, when the two teenagers within earshot harmonized "Yes."

The girl is usually a coin flip, but the boy rarely obliges.

Shopping isn't his thing. He's fine with shrugging his shoulders when asked if he needs anything from the market, and then nodding or shaking his head as I press him on a list I've made on my own.

Do you need shorts? Underwear? Soap or shampoo?

What would you like for dinner? Soup? Stroganoff? 

It's so rare to hear: "I'll just go with you," now in a voice so low on the vocal register I can barely make out the words that I almost wanted to celebrate.

I even felt a little remorseful as I ousted him from the front seat in deference to his older sister, who could easily suffer the indignity of taking a backseat to her little brother if she didn't also suffer from motion sickness. A malady the boy himself didn't inherit and wasn't conniving enough to feign. 

He didn't even rhyme the words that have been used against him time and again when his slow-motion meandering makes him the rotten egg.

"You snooze, you lose."

For her part, the surprise presence of her brother on this hastily planned procurement excursion didn't phase her. She doesn't even think of him as a Little Bother let alone call him that to his face. 

She doesn't lord her senior status over his first-year lack of standing. And for his part, he doesn't pester her that he actually stands taller.

For my part, I follow them around the store with a basket as they decide on the things they'd like.

She needs shampoo and conditioner. He needs deodorant and body wash.

She opens caps and breathes in the scent as best as she can through her mask, while he tips a package straight from a shelf into the basket. 

She plucks the thing out with two fingers and an arm's length of utter disdain.

"You can't buy just anything! What if you hate it? What if it's entirely offensive? What if it smelled like a muskrat that died in a sewer?"

He takes a whiff, gags, and quickly puts the stick of odorant back on the shelf. 

"Try this one. It just smells clean."

And this is how it goes for the better part of an hour. We wind our way through clothing and accessories to toiletries. They argue the merits of one snack food over another with good humor. 

She enjoys being his personal shopper and he gains confidence through her recommendations. As I push my card into the reader, I wondered if I've ever felt happier to part with money? 

And that's when it occurred to me that we hadn't been in this particular store together in a decade when my daughter rebelled following a particular temper tantrum from her brother that brought her to tears. 

Noting small joys has been essential to me as I use them to plaster over the mounting dings of life's disappointments. It's the sweet jelly that makes the salty peanut butter palatable in my generational sandwich. 

I am particularly grateful that sometimes teen spirit seems so much more resilient.

It's also nice to know that time heals at least one wound. 

Life is too damn short

 A new Siena poll reported the nearly eight hundred or so New Yorkers it surveyed have largely accepted COVID-19, and its protocols, as an enduring part of their daily existence. 

Most of those who responded said they carry a mask with them wherever they go. And while our confidence has ebbed since the feel-good-days of summer, we are showing more comfort in our pre-pandemic chores. A majority even said they felt comfortable shopping in grocery stores despite feeling the pinch of higher prices and supply-side shortfalls. At least the aisles seem wider now that the stores have mostly abandoned their one-way traffic patterns. 

Of course, half of those surveyed cling to the hope that things will steadily improve, despite transmission rates all over the country remaining exceedingly high, and despite some officials sounding new low-level alarms about the likelihood of variants of the variants coming in via elsewhere. 

Nearly three-quarters of us are comfortable eating inside of a restaurant. We're only middling more confident returning to the workplace. 

What are the options? Quit?

Well … another study affirms there is a Great Resignation afoot, with more than 4.3 million Americans -- nearly three percent of the entire workforce - quitting their jobs in August.

Calling in sick just isn't the same as it used to be, I suppose. Neither is juggling a routine that has been anything but routine. What’s behind all these numbers is still up for debate. But life, some economists now think, is just too damn short.

I still check the trackers every day, toggling between the CDC and The New York Times. I compare their figures to those of our county health department ... and the local school district, and no matter how I figure it, none of the numbers ever make sense. 

Seventy-six thousand cases today, 36 where I live, eleven the day before that. Nine for the week at the school. The two-week average is still flat. The county health department closed its building again and the latest school board meeting attracted the twelve loudest people in the county who think masks are the modern symbol of tyranny and will disfigure the faces of their kids, none of whom go to school anyway because of things they don't understand like Critical Race Theory or things they are afraid of like Halloween celebrations not to mention the War on Christmas that's been waged since a few lovely and caring people started saying "Happy Holidays" in an effort to be more inclusive. 

Sometimes I can't believe I ever got angry trying to make this make sense. 

I have done my level best. I have enthusiastically welcomed the vaccine for myself and my family. I have rolled with the punches of sometimes convoluted and always evolving messaging. I have accepted a moderate ability to adapt as my personal savior.  And perhaps most surprisingly of all, I have stopped staring angrily at the barefaced fools.

I have pushed up my sleeves and soldiered on even when I didn't feel entirely capable. I have laced up my shoes and run my fastest race, and I have set limits. I have made more of an effort to enjoy my neighbors. I have turned the other cheek. 

Just as our parents and their parents weathered the storms of their times and were forever changed, so too are we.

Life is too damn short.

Making allowances

 My husband's nose crinkled. He fixed his quizzical stare - that of a man who has either smelled something rancid or doesn't understand the question - on me.

"Why on earth should we pay people to do the right and moral thing?"

We had been talking about the news; in particular incentives (monetary and other compensation) some employers (and government entities) are offering their workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19. 

He thinks it's wrong. That the altruism of obligation should be the only path lauded.

Suffering should be the gift for those who choose unwisely. 

Whereas I don't really see the problem with funding unpopular mandates if it has the potential to corral more of us toward herd immunity. 

For some reason this idea makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. It offends his sense of fairness.

His take doesn't surprise me. I'm the carrot, he's the stick. And fair is the thing at the end of the summer with all the rides.

He shoots me that look again. 

Discussions like these usually end in a stalemate, and have for more than a

decade as we grappled with the mechanics of how home economics

should work.

"Allowances" shouldn't just be handed to the kids, he argued. "They need to learn the value of work!"

He was also of the belief that we shouldn't pay the kids for completing household chores, seeing as how contributing to the family is an obligatory duty that is needed to advance a common goal.

 

This theory has always struck me as somewhat off, seeing as how there is only one person who ever brings the dishes and the laundry and the vacuum cleaner over the finish line. 

And it isn't him. 

"What? That knife, dangling over the edge of the sink hasn't finished it's race yet."

I don't expect miracles, not after entertaining whether it's fair that Santa gets credit for any gifts that don't fit into a stocking. 

One of the reasons our kids don't have "chores" is that we haven't managed to figure out which random household tasks fall into "job category" and which fall into the "ask not what your parents can do for you but what you can do for your parents" rubric. 

But, aside from philosophical angst and a general lack of consistency, the kids can be persuaded  to empty the dishwasher from time to time and mow the lawn once a week. I thank them by picking up their favorite snacks at the store, or springing for a trendy pair of sneakers. The timing of these gifts, often on a whim, never feels transactional. 

I can tell it bothers him sometimes they have to be cajoled or reminded. That the kindness of their hearts isn't reward enough to spur motivation. 

That it seems like it's always carrot or stick. 

Kindlyists

 It's sometimes a pleasant feeling to immerse oneself in the warm, soothing waters of fiction.

To sit in a tub of bubbling intrigue, getting all pruney, while the edges of a pulpy paperback curl in the steamy humidity.

I'm not ashamed to admit to feeling this creature-comfort envelop me as I read a certain piece of long-form journalism about two authors, their short stories, organ donation, and plagiarism. 

Though, perhaps, I should be.

Ashamed.

The tale had all the hallmarks of an impending train wreck, with too many heroes unable to decide which damsel is worthy of saving while a dark chorus is all too happy to oblige an opinion.

The piece, if you haven't read it, is a fairly clear recitation of the string of events that resulted in a years' long battle between the two women, who accuse one another of intellectual theft and public harassment in a murky soup of hard feelings about the art of friendship.

Kindness, it turns out, has many dark sides.

I wish it were purely fiction.

This battle seems to be just another indicator of the current national psyche. And as we steep ourselves in this tea of social media, we tread some dangerous waters. It's not just about physical isolation, the cloying need to be known, or the degree of difficulty we face if we want even minor transgressions to eventually be forgotten. It's also about how minor transgressions can rage into the world and light our own little corner of it on fire.

We put ourselves out there to be judged. Sometimes harshly. Unsurprisingly, no one comes out in the end as a sympathetic character.

This is why, through a series of avoidable lawsuits, a court will decide what monetary compensation should be afforded to the party that most closely adhered to the laws in question: be they concerning intellectual property or harassment. 

It's tempting to scoff at the litigiousness of our society as well as the cruelty of adults, until one realizes how little control we have over other beings and how much time we are willing to devote to revenge. It can certainly seem, despite the means of legal intervention, we often see our choices flail between the sunk costs we must accept as "water under a bridge," or a scorched earth we try our best to demolish with explosives.  
The law will take a side.

But even when a verdict is rendered, the court of public opinion, of course, will always be out.

Wherever we scroll, we'll see a new iteration of this modern-age harm. 

This week, we watched a whistleblower explain the difference between what Facebook knows to be true and what it tells us about harm its very existence causes to virtually everyone and everything ... from teenage girls to the state of our democracy.

We see the usual finger-pointing: The calls for personal accountability in the face of systemic manipulation. The demand for systemic overhaul without toppling the expectation of continued freedom of speech. I wonder if we are ready for the messy battle that will ensue in search of a cure?

A part of me, an idealistic part, hopes that the answer will be to demand MORE of social media by requiring they do LESS for us: at the very least, we should ensure they stop selling our secrets on the side. Maybe, if they aren’t allowed to track where we go and sell it at a premium to those who seek to influence, we will finally face enough of the truth to see ourselves and each other a little more kindly.

But the lesser part of me - can't wait to read the sequel.

In the shadows

 

A gentle breeze tickled the back of my neck and coaxed me out of a fresh sleep. The zephyr danced lightly around my shoulders before cognition had returned enough to help me make a connection between this strange sensation and the window I'd forgotten had been left open to the night air.

I am awake. And awake I will stay, I think, at least for a while. I angle my pillow and prop my head against it until the tension in my neck relaxes. I dismiss the idea of pulling the covers over my shoulders. This shiver I feel is not from the cold. Summer’s lingering humidity tempers the chill.

The sounds of crickets sharpen from a low drone to something that seems more defined ... more personal ... a duet maybe? Then a solo.

The sound of air seems to rush all around me. A ceiling fan keeps churning though I don’t feel any of its effects. The dog snorts and exhales every so often, startling the cat whose purr turns into a snore. All systems, normal.

I listen for air currents downstairs, but the sounds of it can't penetrate the floor. Or perhaps, the sounds I can hear wall it off. I wonder if I should get up and go down. Make sure all is right with the universe, which includes a new wrinkle.

I need to relax. But not just yet.

I breathe in, one nostril refusing at first to open. More breathing. I'm not worried. Eventually, it will soften and allow the flow of air to enter more evenly.  It's a familiar pattern I've attributed to allergies but is probably the alternate-side breathing that happens automatically, though we're not supposed to notice.   

But I notice everything about this luxury of air now. 

A machine the size of a suitcase that an airline would make you stow in the belly of the plane for an exorbitant price, is downstairs, producing oxygen for my father. 

With rhythmic frequency, it hisses and ticks as it supplies him with the most basic of needs. 

He is staying with us for a while as he adjusts to this new normal. Leashed, as he must be, to a dozen yards of coiled tubing delivering purified air.

It takes some getting used to; having to think about breathing. Having to walk slower, do fewer tasks, remind yourself to inhale. Try to stay calm.

He still tinkers: adjusting this or that every so often. Experimenting with things that are obvious to him ... less so to me. As he walks around the house, he coils the leash of tubing and wraps it around midway anchor points; the finials of chair-backs mostly, the occasional knob of a cabinet door.  

I understand this compulsion. It seems only fitting that "medical things" should be kept off the floor. I follow behind and quietly untether it before the furniture topples. This is a task I repeat several times a day.

It's nice having him here. His presence is comforting, especially when he is humming a wordless tune from his youth as he makes toast. 

But it’s scary, too. Eventually, there will come a silence that will create a hole in this little part of the universe. I listen for it constantly. ... For the air whistling around him. A wheeze or a gasp. My breath always catches when he tells me, “I’m having a problem,” until he adds a specification that lets me know whatever it is, it’s something I can fix: “Technology is such a pain in the ... My phone isn’t ringing.”

I try to savor the relief as I walk him through this valley of the shadows of his iPhone.

The ends of our rope

I feel a little guilty as I tread upstairs into my room, where I quietly perform my own version of a Mr. Rogers' quick change.

I'll kick off my sandals and trade my bland daywear for more colorful activewear. 

I'll sit on a bench and pull on my sneakers. They slip over my heels even though the laces are already tied in a standard double knot. Never untying them is a strange and satisfying little shortcut I've started taking lately as I practice this strange and satisfying ritual that is running. 

Ordinarily, I'd refer to the bright orange kicks as "shoes," but "sneaker" seems more fitting at this moment. I feel guilty because I know my casual transformation is unlikely to delight my studio audience. I happen to be hiding my end-of-day clothing change from the dog, who, despite a milky cast to her eyes, and grey hair spiking up through her soft ginger fur, is pacing near the door like a puppy.

It's early evening and time for her walk, but I want to run. Ordinarily, we'd do both. She'd start with her "other person," ambling west along the same circular route while I lope off to the east. I will have clocked a mile or two before we meet at a mid-way park, where we'll slowly circle back toward home together.

But her usual walking partner is away on business, and her kids are busy with other things, so it's just the two of us. I think she knows that her chances of being at the end of her rope will dwindle when I'm at the end of mine. 

But I can't be sure. This is all going through my head, like a puppet show, bolstering my resolve to "run off" on her. For a little while, at least. 

As I stretch, I listen for her whereabouts. With luck and planning, I can avoid bearing witness to her disappointment as I leave. All I need to do is quietly take a right at the bottom of the stairs and exit the house through the furthest door from the last place I hear her nails go click-click-click against the floor. 

Not looking back is the key. If I make it outside without her seeing me or catching my scent, I could be home, free. 

I just need 20 minutes of not stopping to smell or bark or crouch. Twenty minutes to reach an arbitrary goal, and then I will make it up to her. 

I still feel a little bad. 

She's got a hang-dog expression that, like a thermometer, measures her exact level of heated disappointment from the gradual descent of her head as it dips from her shoulders toward the floor. 

When I return, she won't even feign acknowledgment. She'll just follow me with her eyes, refusing to put forward any effort to greet me.

I won't torture her. I'll just tug the favorite leash out of a tangle of backups; the one with the plastic hydrant hanging from the padded hand loop. All will be forgiven.

Safety Third

 My kids had returned to school for exactly one day - six measly hours at most - when my cell phone pinged with the first COVID alert of the semester. 

As I follow instructions to open my email, my heart racing, I stood at the ready for the bad news. I would refresh the window until the email explainer materialized some minutes later, my stomach contracted into knots. 

We’ve gone through more than 18 months, two rounds of precautionary isolation, and an untold number of disposable masks, and the message of impending doom always throws me for a loop.

This time school officials had detected a case of COVID-19 during a routine screening of athletes, who, as a surprise to me, are not required to be vaccinated so long as they agree to once-per-week testing, which will not be conducted without a parent's consent.

So much for "safety first."

“Oh … yeah,” my daughter says, rolling her eyes and dropping her books on the table with a thud. The alert has already been the talk of the school. “It's probably a footballer," she says, noting a posse of study hall detectives are already busy sussing out dirt from the rumor mill. "It's only a school," she says with sarcasm. "We aren't entitled to facts."

This goes against everything I thought I understood about how back-to-in-person-school was handling "high risk" athletics. It also factored into the decision to allow my kid to rejoin his team. 

As I waded through the web pages about protocols and policies, which all touted the value of being vaccinated as the best way to control this pandemic, I wondered if I was losing my mind. I felt I understood, quite clearly, that the students engaged in risky team sports would be required to be fully vaccinated. It took several reads to understand that mandates were mentioned only as far as the school was investigating the potential to implement them.

Not that it would. 

Without a determination, the season would go forward and err on the side of "safety third."

So ... This is how it's going to be. 

As we mull old platitudes about how sports build character, we should consider the shrugging of shoulders about parents valuing their kids' personal goals over public health. 

The facts as stated are clear and resounding. It is in the National interest to vaccinate as many people as possible to limit infection. It is in the community interest see to it that spread is minimized to the largest extent possible, which should mean requiring immunization for high-risk activities. 

It is astounding that we are in this predicament since, for generations, schools have required a host of immunizations against communicable diseases as well as health evaluations for participation in sports.

This is not about fairness. Or rights to body autonomy. No one - and that includes my immunized kid - has ever had an unfettered right to play sports on a team. 

All the analogies we've accepted about the benefit of sports -- the need for hard work, and skill, and humility -- are empty platitudes when they aren't put into practice. Because sports only have the potential for character building when all those stars align.

And the truth is those stars rarely align on their own. 

It's a shame that our state's schools haven't moved more quickly to protect the health and safety of our communities, especially as our infection rates increase.

This is no time to take our eyes off that prize.

We should urge our districts to mandate vaccines for all eligible students and staff if we are to continue in-person learning.

Integrity isn't something we can wear on our sleeves like a number on a jersey if we are unwilling to roll up those sleeves.

Fighting fire

I woke up Wednesday to the news that Texas had effectively overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that guaranteed women the right to end a pregnancy before the fetus reaches viability. Roe confirmed that women have the right and the autonomy to control their own healthcare decisions. They don't need to ask permission or be granted it by parent or spouse or, as Texas has now allowed, some random person you've never met who has a firmly held belief, no matter how cynical, against one form of evidence-based health care. 

Roe's protections for women died in Texas because the United States Supreme Court was silent.

Like a church mouse. 

So, in addition to a viral plague that is burning through this nation, we stand here mouths agape in witness to another harebrained, fanatical miscarriage of justice that works precisely as intended: to do the most harm to women and any institution that is enabled to protect them.

So we wait for the hand-wringing and tweet churning of our more rational representatives to solidify into nothing more than shrugs. And as we dread word of this malicious sickness spreading to other parts of this nation, we are told to have faith.

Justice will prevail. Equality is still possible.

Roe, after all, has long been viewed as imperfect. Ruth Bater Ginsberg disliked the law because its sweeping nature made abortion - an important women's right - vulnerable to attacks such as this one.

But fear of losing the protections of an imperfect law meant death by a thousand cuts. Without access, the right to safe medical care for women is hopelessly impeded.

The fight is not over, but the way we battle needs to change. 

I've said before in these pages that as a young woman I didn't truly understand the nature of this fight. 

It wasn't until I became a mother that my understanding of abortion changed to fuller clarity. 

"Choice" is the word that has hoodwinked so many. It has forced us to view women as arrogant or entitled. It has allowed us to look down on one to the detriment of all. Neither should ever happen. It has also forced us to share our private and painful stories only to have them fall on deaf ears. 

You will hear these stories over and over again about readiness, about miscarriages, about pregnancies intended or not. You will hear about women whose lives are emperilled for no good reason at all. And now that Texas has added a new sick twist, the problem will only multiply. These stories are going to break our hearts in a million pieces.

It's not enough to be broken. We need to fix this now and forever. Because healthcare is also fraught with some of the same political ideologies that sully our nation's stated commitment to equality and privacy and wellbeing. 

This onus placed on women and our healthcare system should be treated like the wildfire that it is. 

In addition to using federal authority to enforce the constitutional protections that women have under Roe, we need to expand the courts to ensure this bad-faith chipping away at such a woman's fundamental freedoms becomes a relic of an abysmal history.

Until then, accrediting organizations that oversee doctors should ensure anyone in their ranks who discloses information about their patients' histories to a "vigilante," should face dire sanctions, including the loss of medical licenses. 

And men, don't think this isn't about you. Your ability to succeed almost certainly hinges on a woman who had choices, too. 

If we just let it burn, this fire will ravage us all.