A winning race

 Watervliet holds a special place in my heart. 

Once upon a time, I had family there. My grandmother was born in Watervliet, and my mother lived there when she was small. An aunty on my father’s side, and who-knows-how-many-other relatives, worked at the arsenal back in the days of rations and war efforts.

The city figured into a comedy act that tickled my parents once when “The Great Victor Borge” played locally and somehow my dad wrangled tickets and a babysitter.

“He was a riot pronounced Watervliet as if it were a French city: ‘Water-Vlee-Aye’.”

He laughed at that joke and mom rolled her eyes … for decades.

During my childhood – 20 miles away – Watervliet was still my parents’ Lenten destination for fish fries and the semi-annual expedition for birthday cakes. And more recently, it was the last place my father got his haircut while he was alive. 

It was one of the million tales he delighted in telling – starring himself as the befuddled octogenarian standing in front of a vacant salon he’d hoped would be available for a walk-in appointment, and a kindly woman – probably relieved he wasn’t demented, leading him around the corner to her own hair cutting studio so he could look just a little less like Einstein but still erudite. She turned out to be the hero of that little story.

These were the stories that came to mind when a running friend told me I’d be missing out if I didn’t sign up for the Arsenal City 5K Run. 

“There is no better run for your money,” he said counting the perks on one hand before switching to the other: You get a beer, a hot dog, popcorn, ice cream, an orange slice, a banana, balloons for the kids, AND one of the best t-shirts of any race anywhere … all for ten bucks. I don’t know how they do it.”

I wasn’t a skeptic exactly, but I was just coming back from an injury and worried that somewhere along the three-point-one-mile course I might break into pieces. But I did what I usually do after I swore off running and someone mentioned a race I would enjoy …

I signed up.

And when I crossed the finish line I couldn’t believe my time. 

“Was it downhill both ways?”

By the time we got to the Dome (where the afterparty was held before the pandemic), I had seen the beauty of the city up close. It wasn’t just the places I’d remembered from childhood. It was the people, too. The folks who ran beside me and the ones who marshaled the course.  There was even a man who reminded me of my dad, all dressed up in his Sunday suit, carrying an armload of flowers, walking home.

It was also a shock to learn from the announcements that I’d somehow managed to land on the proverbial podium.

 

As a solidly back-of-the-pack runner, I was stunned to learn that I’d placed fourth in my age group the first time out. It didn’t matter or care if there were only four other runners my age to compete against: My name was in the books.

I was hooked. The next year I decided to train. If I worked hard and consistently I was sure I could shave enough seconds off my time to come in third.

Sure it has snake, but there's oil in there, too

 So who knew phenylephrine didn’t work, raise your hands. Now take a squirt of your favorite antibacterial liquid and rub them together. 

A Food and Drug Administration board of advisors for non-prescription drugs recently voted unanimously to declare the drug commonly used in oral-form cold remedies (the ones that do not require the presentation of identification for purchase over-the-counter) didn’t work any better than placebo in reducing nasal congestion. 

According to reports, the drug phenylephrine was designed to reduce inflammation of blood vessels and is effective for congestion when used in nasal sprays but does little when taken by mouth. The drug is also effective for use in eye surgery, to increase blood pressure, for the treatment of hemorrhoids, and for the dilation of eyes. 

And now the FDA must decide whether to revoke its over-the-counter use, effectively banning it as an active ingredient from more than 200 products currently on the market. 

Ultimately that means the snake oil salesmen in the cold and flu industry could lose nearly $2 billion a year from this decision should it come to pass.

 Naturally, spokespeople for the business folks at the Consumer Healthcare Products Association have spoken out to keep the snake oil flowing. “Helpfully” pointing out that taking the products off of store shelves would be a drastic change and would not only place an undue burden on pharmacies and drug makers but also strain the healthcare system when it decreases selections of snake oil available to consumers.

Remember … Pseudoephedrine and other non-prescription asthma treatments were found to be significantly more effective than both phenylephrine and placebo. However, sales of Pseudoephedrine sagged in 2005 when federal laws placed restrictions on sales of the drug to combat methamphetamine abuse.

Now … a part of my brain understands the reasoning: These drugs aren't inherently harmful, and many of them contain additional analgesics that would likely reduce other cold and flu symptoms such as body aches and fever.

In the event the pharmacy had a run on acetaminophen or ibuprofen, a headache sufferer could opt to pop a couple of sinus meds and call in a standard derivative or maybe a credit default swap. 

But that's not why people take these medicines. They take them because they want to breathe through their noses at night, and their significant others may be threatening to relegate him or her to the couch so at least one of them might rest. 

I don't know. My guess is the bottom line is really just about the bottom line and keeping it from turning red. Businesses would rather sell off their inventory of stuff that doesn't work than put their profits in jeopardy.

So what if people don’t get their rest-medicine? Everyone knows there’s no cure for the common cold anyway.

It’s no small thing. Especially when drug makers look to recreate their success in getting approvals for more lucrative and equally ineffective treatments, such as medications for Alzheimer's that didn’t pass efficacy muster. They get to sell it anyway because people are willing to pay just about anything for hope.

It’s just a shame that our regulatory agencies are willing to let us pay for the snake just because there’s oil in there too.

Pacing ourselves

The boy has been limping around the house for days, struggling with stretching exercises and trying to get pre-cut strips of elastic tape to adhere to his dewy skin.

His Achilles and he have been in an argument over his choice to join the high school's cross-country team. And it appeared to me, from the first few practices at least, that the fibrous tendons were winning.

For the past two months they were used to swimming a little and lounging a lot by the pool. They were not used to fast starts or pounding strain.

The words - I TOLD YOU SO wafted unsaid in the air.

His father had wanted him to run during the summer the way he would have back in his old school days. 

Dad envisioned all the noble goals: Team spirit! Pleasing the Coach! Putting in all the effort necessary to grow one’s skills! It was a father’s desire so fervent that the man became visibly perturbed by the boy’s general lack of motivation and purposeful observance of summer vacation as if the kid belonged to a strong union that had won a contract for relaxation.

It's understandable. Sport is supposed to be competitive. It's supposed to be a challenge. And those who take them up are supposed to show a degree of dedication that should in no way be comparable to the speed of a three-toed sloth. 

After all, by either definition, the results of a teammate’s acquiescence to such a glacial pace and low exertion might be widely perceived as a cardinal sin.

I was not going to hound him. 

As I told my husband; I run to avoid all the negativity I perceive in the world. And while I have no qualms about running with our son when he's willing, I am not going to suffer the wrath of a sullen teen just because of some external notion of a motherly duty. 

I'll drive him to practice literally, but I am not going to be the nag that drives him to do it figuratively. That’s on him. If he’s just doing this to be with his friends after school and on weekends that’s good enough for me. I do not need to see him break through ribbons or stand on podiums.

I’m not going to say any “I Told Ya Sos” either. 

Best to let his coach do the coaching, anyway. She told him she was impressed that he didn’t want to quit or take shortcuts. If he needed to walk, that’s what he’d do. She can be his inspiration. 

Honestly, I’m just happy he’s decided to be there at all. He’s never been one to complain, but he wears his thoughts on his face all the same. 

His expression told the story, translated in every conceivable language, that he was not in any way having fun. And yet tomorrow he’d be there again, straight-faced and anticipating no gain and more pain.

Which is why I never expected him to say what he said as he got out of the car:

“Hey, I meant to tell you, writing the ABCs in the air with my foot seems to be working, thanks!”

I didn't remember giving him that little tidbit of running recovery advice, but it is a standard not outside my repertoire. 

“Make sure you do both sides. You don't want to be off balance. You just need to build up to it. Just go easy and you’ll get there.”

The last supper

 It was getting late.

She had decorated the living room with all manner of things she would need for dorm life over the upcoming months. The haul was staged in a maze of soft blocks. She gathered her clothes, a few pairs of shoes, some sheets, and towels, and was busy organizing them for transport. A fuzzy purple pillow that may (or may not) be taller than she is lay slumped over this low wall of luggage. Stacks of shirts and piles of fresh laundry everywhere else.

She stood, hands on hips, in front of it all and smiled. I could tell she was satisfied with all of the corners of her curation. 

She was excited to be moving back to college, where she would reassemble the lot in a more precise fashion, and yet, somewhere in this chaos, she was also in her happy place here at home. 

She had stretched this chore over the edge of literally every flat surface (and the most comfortable chairs) for weeks.  

And now, through the magic of this planning (as well as a dedication to the art of tucking and rolling) every single possession into a set of weathered but durable plastic zipper bags I had procured from a hardware store on a whim three moves ago, she was finally, almost, just about ready …

To pack the car. 

Piece by piece she dragged the gear to the porch, where she shuffled and queued them up by size. Largest in the front, smallest in the back. 

She didn't mind my presence, a warm body to provide limited conversation and quiet company as she kept busy with her tasks.

She didn't want any hands-on help. 

Which, I understand. She is anxious, As she plots each item’s placement, she aligns it in her memory like a coordinate on a map. She says she finds comfort and relaxation in the movements. 

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. What about dinner? Weren't we going someplace special tonight to celebrate my last meal? You know, the chicken place where for no apparent reason the cars start at one end of a tiny building and wrap around the entire county?”

I had been hoping she'd forgotten. 

“Oh yeah,” said her brother, who was “definitely not going to help schlep any bags to the car, or from car to a sidewalk and finally up some ramp-less stairs to an old elevator in an ancient apartment building,” not because he didn't want to see his sister off to school because he had track practice. Of course, he would happily join the two of us for a chicken sandwich, fries, and a raspberry-flavored lemonade if they had such fancy drinks. 

“That's ok,” his sister replied. “I don't need your scrawny, Achilles-heeled help limping around and tossing my stuff where it doesn't belong. Mom is enough.”

“Don't try to make it sound fun, that's mean.

This was the entire point of this outing: to sit in a line of cars for over an hour and trade humorous barbs until we received our orders of resembled characters in Shameless, whichever came first.  

Her father would have been here, too, if the scheduling of a job hadn't misaligned. He would have to settle for a phone call from the car as we scarf down our meals in which we make him guess which television character we are imitating with our fast food shenanigans

It's our last chaotic supper as a family for a while. Might as well be mixed with the kind of joy that sticks to your ribs. 

Drive time

 Have you checked the mirrors? 

“Yes, mom.”

The boy was sitting in his father’s car, making the finishing adjustments on the driver’s seat. It is a slow and methodical process that requires patience. Unless one has the sequence committed to one of the car’s digital memories. 

“There are so many buttons and knobs, and they move so sllllllllooooowwly.”

As he lowered the seat and eased it backward from where I’d had it set, the whirring of the mechanisms seemed almost comical. 

I tried not to laugh. 

Driving is a serious business. 

He’s almost ready. Maybe just a titch more arch in the lumbar region. 

My car isn't that fancy. But what it lacks in bling and built-in safety features, it makes up for in precision: notably a manual transmission, which ratchets up technical (and psychological) difficulties of learning to drive at six whole speeds. 

He's ready now. He starts the car. Shifts into gear and eases off the brake. The car inches out of the carport at the speed of seat position. 

He flexes his fingers and tightens them around the wheel. “This is the way you do it, right? Ten and Two?”

That is the way we do it. But we learned on our grandfather’s clock. 

“Yeah. The new standard is to grip around 5 and 7 or 4 and 8.”

“Why? That seems too low?”

“Airbags.”

“They come out of the steering wheel?”

“And when they do they might break your arm if it gets in the way. Also, you don't have to use as much force to crank the wheel as you did in the olden days thanks to power steering.”

He’s cleared the garage and is straightening from the hard left turn into the driveway. And with the swiftness of molasses, we are heading toward the open road. 

A part of me wants to hurry this along. We might rack up the 50-hour minimum drive time required to schedule the licensing test before we get home from the ice cream run. But the part of me that understood the mission, to navigate two stop signs, three traffic lights, and one traffic circle, between the end of our drive and the grocery store five miles away, I would wear out my welcome as the passenger seat driver.  

As I had more than three years ago when his

sister rushed to the end of the driveway as she'd witnessed my counterpart in motor vehicle instruction doing countless times.

Her face tensed and her lips would disappear into a thin line as I breathlessly called suggestions and gripped the closest armrest. 

“You're too close to the shoulder …

“You should speed up here 

“Slow down there!

“Ohmygod! what-are-you-doing? You are turning into oncoming traffic!”

It took her years to get over the hassle of driving with me. 

I needed to do better this time.

Up until then, I had always loved driving my kids around. 

Whether I was toting them to their friends’ houses, doctors’ appointments, or to far “away games,” the drive has always proven to be a real trip.

I suppose it’s time to get used to being driven.

The die is cast

Breakfast was almost over, but the smell of bacon and eggs hung in the air. It mixed with the sweetness of maple syrup and a second course of waffles that its cook had dealt like cards toward any newly vacated plates. 

This breakfast bonanza is as much of an indicator of our typical vacation as the wall-to-wall humidity and the games that have piled up at the end of the table.

I said no thank you by selecting one of the five decks of cards and started to line up seven little stacks in front of me. My lips move silently as I count: One up, Two down, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven … Two up, Three down, Four, Five, Six, Seven …

On occasion, the cards stick together as I deal them out or as I try to shuffle to the third one to reveal my next play. Ordinarily, this would cause some perturbation, but the gift of being in proximity to sea air is something one really shouldn't grouse about.

Hardship, it is not. 

Also, I figure, I’ll use the adhesions to apply little cheats until it becomes evident that I will not win the game of solitaire this round.

I scoop the cards and start again.

I will play until someone asks to gets dealt in and we parlay into a new game.

This is the ritual in the dwindling days of a holiday: table games are usually the things we can all agree on as a family as we try to pass the time until the next meal.

Dominos used to be favored. It was an easy game to learn and  satisfying to handle tiles, hiding them from the gaze of opponents or clicking them noisily, as we awaited our next turns.

Lets play Dominos?

Anyone?

Anyone? …

Somehow it lost its allure.

Each game has had a season of play and a season of retirement: Go Fish, Rummy, Hearts, Crazy 8s, Kings in the Corner, and Euchre. When the season ends, we can't rest assured that we won't outgrow it, or that our grasp of rules will remain. 

We know we will never be ready for Bridge.

This year, we’ve just rolled the dice.

“We are playing Yahtzee,” says the girl after she clears the table of breakfast dishes.

The game is her favorite and consists of five dice, a printed piece of paper that helps you keep track of your rolls, and a plastic cup that MUST generate the most noise possible as players shake and dump the numbered cubes onto the table.

The last one, of course, makes for the most excitement. Bonus points awarded to the adult who requires headache remedy before the final scores are tallied.

Luck has everything to do with it, but we still employ strategies.

I go for the “specialty” rolls first: The Straights, the Full Houses, and the Threes and Fours-of-a-Kind. I like to get them out of the way so I can relax in the idea of just rolling for Yahtzees that never materialize.

My daughter focuses on the top-tier rolls: The Ones and Twos, she admits are throwaways, but the Fives and Sixes can set you up for a bonus that would obliterate any Yahtzees that do float out of the ether …the ones that often roll up for her father.

 

Not that we are truly competitive despite our tendency to groan at the roll that spins the number we gambled on and settles on the number we gambled with originally.

I think we are getting better at celebrating the wins and ignoring the losses.

At least it feels like there are fewer hard feelings.

“Bye-Bye Mr. Four-of-a-Kind,” she sings. “This will be the day that I die.” 

Closer to fine

 

As we walked through the lobby, clad in a wardrobe one could rightly call drab, my daughter and I passed true believers: People for whom Barbie measured 10 feet tall. People who would wear pink and be gleeful as they watched a slice of their childhood light up the silver screen. 

I was worried I'd be the one who would only see the tarnish. 

I pictured myself hunkered down in the cool embrace of a resplendent reclining chair with no small amount of regret, not because I didn't have a personal relationship with Barbie but because I worried I may not have allowed my daughter to have fully realized hers.

Between trailers and teasers and wink-and-nod reviews of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” I couldn't imagine how a movie about an 11-inch doll could ever measure up to all the hype. 

Not gonna lie. 

I expected a lot. 

I had so many questions.

Was Barbie a feminist? An anti-feminist? Was she worthy of all the love or any of the ridicule? What message would she have for us now and would it be transformative?

The narrator in my head laughed as she reminded me that these are the items we have to bring to the table, they aren't even sold separately.

But deliver, it did. 

Though at first, it delivered like a gut punch. 

“Do you remember how I wanted a Barbie?” my daughter asked as we settled in for the previews.

My shoulders gently lift toward my ears as I fumble to find the recliner’s controls and an answer with a positive spin: “I remember you being a Barbie CheerleaderTM one Halloween.”

She smiled and tilted her head, pointing at the button partially hidden by the dimming light. 

I couldn't mod-podge over the moment she had just uncovered. 

“You got me a Barbie cake for my birthday and one of my friends told me it wasn't a real Barbie. You must remember.”

I hadn't forgotten. She has been a Barbie girl in my tomboy world.

I also hadn't realized until it was too late that the star of the party - a cake-skirted doll - had only a flesh-colored spike stabbing into the frosting instead of legs encased in a cylinder.

“Don't feel bad, I was more of a Calico Critter kind of kid than a Barbie Girl.”

And surprisingly I didn't feel bad. Because for the next 114 minutes, I could only marvel at how much Gerwig was able to pack and unpack into the trunk of this candy-colored vehicle. 

 

It not only passed the Bechdel test, it felt like it managed to devise a similar rubric to apply to cinematic representations of Ken; perhaps future viewers might even call it a Ken-del test. 

“Am I making that up,” I asked my kid as the credits rolled and we uprighted our recliners. 

“That was the part I liked the most!” She exclaimed. “Right from the beginning - when Ken crashed on his surfboard and the doctors were fixing him you knew they weren't going to turn the tables.”

She was right. Even as Doctor Barbie explained that his body would heal in the time

It takes to explain that he actually had no injuries, Stereotypical Barbie never once diminished his feelings or told him that it was all in his head. She just let him know she thought he was brave.

The film not only centered her in security, it allowed us to bring our experiences and meet the same gentle understanding.

Barbie seemed all-encompassing and there was no wrong way to be in her world.

And as we were making our way back to our oversized car in the parking lot, rehashing the movie and all the moments that stayed with us for the next several hours, I felt something pleasant and unexpected: the realization that I may have been a Barbie girl all along.

“You do know Mattel is releasing a Weird Barbie, right? I think it's right up your alley.”

Alive and kicking

Upon hearing I would be retiring to the state of Maine for the last gasp of summer (unofficially and increasingly known in these parts as the season when you can only buy swimwear from a big box Halloween store that has just taken up residence, albeit temporarily, in one of the many unoccupied warehouses that sold groceries for a generation before it up and split) a friend drew my attention from the cool-down portion of our mid-week run to an amazing news item out of the aforementioned Vacationland.

“It's the craziest story: a woman from Brunswick, Maine, awoke in the wee hours of the morning to find a teenager standing in her bedroom with a knife, saying he was going to cut her.”

Blink. Blink. 

Now, I must say, I believe my eyes may have widened and protruded from their sockets as confusion clouded them when the delightful story I was expecting pushed sideways and teetered over a rabbit hole of horror. when

 

My friend assured me that the take she was about to tell would forever endear me to the land in the upper-east corner of our mainland where women only grow more powerful as we age. 

And I listened raptly in the middle of the street as she recounted from memory: “The victim, an 87-year-old woman, said to herself, ‘Well if you're going to cut me then I'm going to kick you,’ and she jumped out of her bed and into her shoes, grabbed a chair as a shield and the two battled for so long  the boy became weary and wandered into the kitchen where he announced he was starving.”

So, according to this retelling, our lady hero made the attacker a snack of cheese and crackers and said he could have the whole box if he'd leave, which he did, and which somehow helped police and search dogs find him later for a resistless arrest. 

My friend marveled at the pluck of this woman saying she'd do it all again if, for some unfortunate reason, history were to repeat itself. And before I headed for home I agreed salt water must run through her veins. 

And just a little honey, too, as the woman said she hoped the kid got the help he needed to turn his life around.

It wasn't until later on when I searched for the news article that I learned how truly bonkers the story was: in addition to the chilling discovery and violent attack, the half-dressed intruder turned out to be a teenager who had mowed the lady’s lawn a few years prior and by her contemporaneous accounts “had done a darn good job, too.”

And that he had gained entrance to her home through a window by shifting the accordion slats of air conditioning to create an opening through which he could wriggle past.

In addition to providing safety tips for other central-airless homeowners to beef up security for these vulnerable window conditions, she also noted how having a rotary phone slowed her ability to contact police, 

“I dialed as fast as I could,” she told the reporter as the memory of the mechanical sounds of the carousel rotating and releasing came flooding back. 

As did a reminder that whoever wrote this story is a gem of equal luster. A reminder, perhaps, that journalism is alive and kicking. 

Turns out the most important thing she had in her time of crisis (besides ready access to shoes and a bedside chair shield) was having her wits about her. 

For this and so many other reasons, I hope to be a Mainer when I grow up

Stretched on her grave

The lives of celebrities can be intoxicating. Their deaths, perhaps even more so. An unknowable person who has influenced us from afar.

That’s what I was thinking when I heard the news that Sinead O’Connor had died at the age of 56. 

I’m not going to lie: I was angry. Just the mention of her name brought me back to 1987 and the moment I heard her beautiful voice howling out “Troy,” her anti-love song with its inspiration grounded in Yeats’ poem, No Second Troy.

I searched through my old cassette collection and found what I was looking for:

“I'd kill a dragon for you

I'll die

But I will rise 

And I will return

The Phoenix from the flame

I have learned

I will rise

And you'll see me return

Being what I am

There is no other Troy

For me to burn”

The lyrics came out of my mouth as if time hadn’t marched on. I had turned up the volume so I could pretend I could hold a tune. 

She had been an inspiration. A songbird filled with longing and rage. Her haunting beauty matched her evocative voice. 

I had missed it.

This also brought me back to the turning point in her career after she ripped up a photograph of the pope and the world turned against her. The subsequent banishment was nothing short of vicious. Blue chip stars voiced rage and mused about their willingness to commit violence against her. And even when that rhetoric receded the mockery did not. In short order, she had become a punchline. 

Honestly, for a very long time, her disappearance from the center stage felt like a gut punch. 

Black Sabbath had written a song in the 70s that asked the listener to imagine if they’d like to see “the pope at the end of a rope” with little uproar and certainly no real jeopardy to their careers. But it was an opinionated woman we just couldn’t abide.

But in so many ways I was wrong.

She hadn’t been silenced. She couldn’t be silenced. 

I just hadn’t listened closely enough.

I had even discounted her own words on the subject of her career-ending performance as a musical guest on a sketch comedy show.

She had been adamant that the career that ended wasn’t hers, it was the career her agents wanted for her; the one that would have afforded them extravagant estates in tropical places. 

Her immediately recognizable voice had never disappeared.

Throughout her career, which spanned 40 years, she stood against the abuse of children; against racial injustice, she supported the rights of women and LGBTQ communities. She had been open about her struggles with mental health.

She kept working and struggling and collaborating and fighting the good fights.

And while her death is most certainly a tragedy, her life is what will always be a revelation.

Her fans have always been stretched on her grave, and we’ll lie here forever.

Bear necessities

Everyone has been talking about bears. And by everyone, I mean people I know, or barely know, or am related to. Also the people I know of who post “helpful” advice to neighborhood busybody sites such as NextDoor. 

It's a little bit dizzying, frankly, 

For some people, the bear is an unconventionally attractive actor (I'd say Young Frankenstein-esqe) who plays a talented but tortured chef trying to upgrade his family eatery from dingy to destinate, and owing much of the success to the dedication of his beleaguered staff. 

For others - especially in suburbia - the bear we’re all discussing is Ursus americanus americanus: the black bear so nice they named it twice. 

For my husband, the bear is a phantom, a nighttime visitor who sets off the dog in the wee morning hours and leaves behind a multi-textured “gift” center driveway. 

I can't tell you how many people I've met at the coffee shop who have handed over a cell phone to show a disbelieving audience some blurry first-hand evidence.

My husband is one.

Still, I marvel at the population that seems to have ballooned in recent years. 

The bears must have had a few good winters since the virtual pushpins of area sightings keep multiplying on interactive maps. Click on one, and a whole Wikipedia-style entry, complete with pictures and anecdotal notes, pops up. 

“Wow! That's a big one! Did he take down your bird feeder? Crazy!”

A part of me judges, of course. What do wildlife experts have to do? Come to your house personally and impound your feeders?

Honestly, though, I feel slight pangs of jealousy as I scroll through my photos. There's little there to excite the coffee klatch. A dog snoozing on a sunny patch of floor. A meal that looked pretty. A series of selfies I have caught and released. 

There are no bears of any kind, not even of the Teddy variety. Which momentarily makes me sad. 

The closest I've come to a coveted sighting was a bear behind waddling into the woods over a country road. I almost missed it because my attention was focused on the car ahead that had come to a screeching halt. 

I considered taking a picture of the Adirondack-themed dish towel that seemingly appeared out of nowhere and is slung askew from the handle of the oven door. The only black bear I could document is appliquéd to its front. 

But I know I should be careful what I wish for. 

I've heard the stories from camping enthusiasts in bear country and how these hungry animals eventually thwart our best attempts to keep them from feasting on our provisions. 

And how conventional wisdom has gone from "hang the food in a bag from a tree," to "keep it in a bear box," to "leave it in a locked car," to " leave the vittles at home and just hike on through."

It won't be a good thing for any of us to live with bears. It's one thing to substitute your bird feeder for a bird bath and quite another to take out all the fruit trees and wall your house off with impenetrable cement. 

The bears will find their necessities.

Out of nowhere

The day was finally ending.

It had been a tough one. I was ready to put it behind me.  

The sun was still high in the sky, which was a brilliant blue. The kind of blue that is so rich and beautiful that it doesn’t seem ominous.  

The dog started pacing beside me – all shedding fur and shivery nerves. She weaved back and forth on a carpeted runway, refusing to settle or be comforted. 

Something was coming. 

And as sure as I am confused by the colorful animation of the weather radar, my dog seems naturally centered in the eye of the storm.

Dogs know. She had already been preparing for the worst long before I was startled by the sudden disharmony of sounds: wind beating against the windows and something resembling metal being dragged along pavement, then silence for a moment followed by a deafening crack. I fully expected the trees outside to be clawing their way in through the roof. 

Now my heart felt like it was jumping rope. 

Outside, the rain started coming down in sheets. The sudden deluge turned every surface into a container threatening to overflow. Gusts were turning the sun shades into billowing sails. The wall of windows that helped sell me on the house now seemed terrifying.

Yet, the sky was still smiling at me as the weather conjured its worst.

Meanwhile,I tried my best to regain my resting heart rate and remain as calm as a frequent flier during heavy turbulence. Lead by example, right? 

Right?

Wrong.

It never works. My startle reflex had set this panic in motion. I couldn't make my inner turmoil seem stoic.

So I did the next best thing: distraction. 

I turned on the television to the least terrifying thing I could think of: game shows

of the home improvement variety. 

And for the next four to seventy-seven hours I watched two extremely enthusiastic women organize the homes of their friends, famous people and famous people who are also friends.

So while the winds howled and the dog snoozed (thanks to the miracle of veterinary medicine) I watched a zillion episodes of a team of people color-coordinating possessions and making 10,000 tons of stuff fit neatly into a five-pound pantry. 

I rolled through the seasons like the thunder rolled through the neighborhood. With lightning speed.

Losing myself in watching strangers turn their troubled overflow rooms into tidy, ultra organized architectural masterpieces.

Honestly, it feels good to be in the closet. There’s something deeply satisfying about bringing order to chaos. I feel calm listening to careful enunciation of the show host’s S’s and T’s. I can feel my blood pressure dropping with each click of a space-equalized clothes hanger. 

Even if I have no personal interest in lining up my shoes or organizing my jeans and sweatshirts into an ombré of creams, charcoals and chambre, I feel at the edge of ease. 

And that’s close enough for now.

Especially as the storm rages on.

Summer job

His hair was a masterpiece. Its thick black peaks spiked unevenly in all directions. It was a little too perfect to be the result of bedhead, but his face still had the swelling of sleep.

“We have any breakfast sammiches?” he asked nonchalantly as if I hadn’t asked him several times over the course of the week if there was anything he’d like special from the grocery store, wherein his answer took the form of a series of shrugs.

He needed to have a good breakfast.

We told him he had to work this summer. 

We just couldn’t abide another seven sweaty weeks spent holed up in his room playing video games when he wasn’t sleeping.

The only evidence of him is a pile of dishes materializing overnight in the kitchen sink.

It didn't take much convincing. Even he knew the fresh air would do him good. And the money wouldn’t hurt.

He had already earned his driver’s permit and a mandate to practice navigating the local roadways for at least 50 hours under our careful and fully braced tutelage before he could apply for the coveted junior license.

So there was that. If he wanted our help to get to the magic number, he’d have to have some skin in the game, too.

So he got himself a camp counseling job. And in addition to minimum wage, he is bringing home a seemingly endless supply of colorful stories and rubber-band friendship bracelets he makes on the daily.

His day is made by the adoration of a handful of half-pints and a director-paid round of soft drinks on a sweltering day.

And while we were glad he was enjoying his work, his father wasn’t sure the money wouldn’t hurt.

But we don’t necessarily agree on how he should manage his money.

I try to keep a hands-off approach, aside from an occasional thumb on the scale.

The husband wants to lay down some family banking rules geared toward solid returns: Half, he believes, should go into savings while the other half should probably also go into savings because what else are you going to do with it? “I don’t want you to blow it on virtual outfits that dress up your game players.”

It was a suggestion the boy did not take well.

He had planned to use the bulk of the proceeds of his camp counseling gig to buy himself a new gaming computer that he would build from parts. 

And then all eyes were on me: The arbiter of what fiscal responsibility is owed to the joys of life. 

“I'll talk to him,” I promise. The boy will sometimes do for me what he would dig in heels for his dad. 

And when I do have the talk, I find that I do more listening.

I like to think it’s the hearing that makes the difference. It doesn’t take long to understand that my son doesn’t have a clear understanding of how banking works. Even something as simple as how to cash his new paycheck or that he can keep as much or as little of the cash as he wishes. The simple mechanics of filling out a deposit slip is enough to allow the chore to slip his mind as the paychecks pile up.

Mistrust the process

I opened the folder and skimmed its contents. The files inside were arranged by some form of chronology that merged creation and last perusals, but their subject lines were empty. As I drew my cursor down the list, I focused my attention on the window to the right of each draft, which showed the first three lines of the text therein.

I hopscotch across platforms. I was jotting down notes on my phone and shaping them into thoughts on my laptop whenever the time allowed, usually while the television remote was under the control of others.

Often, and usually, well before sunrise on the last day possible, I sit in the dark under the bed covers, rearranging words one last time before I send whatever patchwork of thoughts I have made off toward its final destination.

This has been my writing process since I could say “Gmail.”

When it works, it works.

I find the file I want and double-click.

The treatise opens as if tapped by a magic wand.

When it doesn’t work?

A stopwatch of dashes circled my screen as a notice told me to have patience while some magical process of computation – perhaps ones and zeros inside the machine, or perhaps squirrels – worked together to download my file from a server.

When the watch finally stopped spinning, a new message appeared in an empty window: The server was not responding. Try again at another time.

So, of course, I try again, and again and again with furious speed, until I can feel my stomach inching up into my throat.

I email all the people I know who are at least a decade younger, pleading with them to disclose the one small trick I know they must be gatekeeping: A string of code, perhaps, something like Archive://spin around three times and/VoiLA_Remove@trash, and my lost prose would magically reappear.

 Of course, they cannot help. There is no hidden pocket into which my work has been slipped. My friends quietly listen as I talk myself into the delicate understanding that it only takes one elongated internet disconnection for all those words to fly out of an empty window and be lost forever.

None of them want to venture a guess as to why the gray ghosts of my missing thoughts continue to haunt me after their untimely departure from the nebulous realm that is my drafts folder.

For that, I need to consult a scholar at least two generations removed.

Luckily I didn’t even need to enlist a volunteer since my daughter happened to be home from college and sitting on the other end of the couch creating a cacophony of disharmony by simulcasting tiktok on her phone and Netflix from her laptop.

“I feel like I have to tell you that I’ve discussed this situation with alllllllll of my friends, and we’ve concluded that the old thing that gives away your age is your constant refusal to use Google Docs.

“Here, hand me your laptop; I’m going to start a file for you … You will find it in the docs folder under “MOM NEEDS TO GROW UP AND GET WITH THE PROGRAM.”