The astro-naught years

I knock on the door.

There is no response.

I can't tell from the hallway, but I imagine he is cuddled up in a chair with headphones on, tapping away at a keyboard and oblivious to my would-be intrusion. He is probably floating through a world of graphics and gizmos that he and all of his virtual friends are tethered to by bright blue cords, like the one that spirals from his computer, out of his room and down the stairs before it slithers into the snakes' den of wires in a closet nearby.

I turn the knob and crack open the door slightly, careful not to breach his space with anything more than my curiosity. Privacy is to a teenager what piracy was to a toddler. Something of mythic proportions.

The air stabs at me in little prickles as it spills into the hallway.

"Hello!" I venture again.

From behind the door, a strange figure leans into the light. A chair creaks under his shifting weight.

"Hello," he says in response. “I'm fine. How are yooooooou? …. And yes, I will mow the lawn today.”

I hadn't asked any of those questions. But he is aware of the boundaries of our expectations and how to stay inside of them, mostly.

Cocooned in a blanket, my son is at his desk, which is surrounded on all sides by towers of dishes in various states of uncleanliness. His clothes carpet the floor.

He has found a way to keep his room from assaulting him with the earthy smell of foot funk: Air conditioning set to a subarctic temperature.

I wonder when icicles will begin forming on the edges of surfaces.

A part of me, the part that has a sense of smell, rejoices slightly while the parts that fret about electricity bills and the costs to the environment pretend to be occupied with inspecting the flooring.

If I were his father I might be breathing fire into that room. Melting his chill with the heat of patriarchal pragmatism: "You might be wasting your time by doing nothing all this summer, but you won't be wasting my energy. I fill the tank, you don't get to crank."

But I'm not good at bringing that kind of heat.

I remember being a lethargic 14, lost in the plots of fictions of dubious merit, while the people who paid my bills were pleading with me to find something better to do with my time.

It's hard to convince a person that all nothings aren't created equal. Some nothings are everything.

So the easiest way to appease them was to disappear. Take a walk, or the bike, and find a place to be out of sight and out of mind.

It's not much different now except I'm the one expected to find something better to do with his time. Not to mention that a kid being out of sight makes parents go out of their minds.

So I try not to worry about the world opening up behind his closed door. I'll just keep knocking until he lets me in.

We came, we saw, we conquered

 The backseat of the car pinched the backs of my legs as I shifted them toward the window. The exposed flesh below my shorts had adhered to the pleather by a thin layer of perspiration. 

The pain momentarily diverted my attention from the annoyance of the wind lashing my hair around my face. I want to crank the window all the way up, but the car isn't air-conditioned. We would suffocate. 

I would have asked my parents the most pressing question of all for any under-12-year-old traveler ... but I could tell from my mother's expression in the rearview mirror that we were nowhere near there yet. 

It's been 120 hours since we left New York and I know the reason my childhood memories have come flooding back is that I've spent ALL of them in the backseat as my car-sick-prone kids take turns riding "shotgun."

The designation, however, comes with the responsibilities of navigator, which attaches some degree of skill and the near-constant hazard of failure. 

Let's just say I am content to slouch down in the back, where I can try to nap while the front seat passengers bicker between themselves about whether we are traveling north or south, and which exit is the one we should take: this one or the next?

I don't know how people do this. Go into a new place acting like it's no big deal. It seems we go from one hotel and its swimming spot to another hotel and swimming spot.

When we can't agree on things to do. The oldest wants to get dragged behind a boat as an already open parachute flings her into the air, while the youngest non-adventure seeker shames us with logic: "Who wants to go to an Adventure Park in 98-degree heat?" 

The Para-Sailing's sign seeking Experienced Help Wanted kinda puts the pandemic pause into perspective. "Maybe next year."

Instead, we will find the thing we could have done at home (movies, bowling, shopping) and do that for a few hours before we argue over where to go for dinner.

I have wondered if inconvenience is the thing that kills a vacation more completely than indecision.

"We might have gone to see Wilber and Orville's miracle ... but making a left is just so difficult there."

There is also the failure of research. 

For instance, had the roadside billboard not spelled out "APPLES AND CARROTS KILL WILD HORSES" as we sped past, my brain might not have pulled up a vague recollection of reading something somewhere about the famous Spanish Mustangs of the Corolla.

I could barely Google before I realized we were moving farther and farther away from this colonial-era wonder.

And that momentary sadness of not having seen a thing the place is known for was just as quickly replaced by the relief of knowing that at least we didn't screw up its very existence. Taking home a printed memento of the conservation's educational efforts (a lunch counter impulse purchase) was enough to reestablish my tourist's sense of fortitude via retail therapy. 

We came to the Hotels and Swim Spots, we saw the guidebooks, and we conquered the trinket shops. 

We have finally traveled. 

Not my first Roto-Rooder-o

The People for Less Unrest in Marriage (or PLUM), an entirely imaginary and long-dormant think tank of which I have found myself a spokesperson, and now its descendant entity, People for Less Unrest in Municipal Parenting (or PLUMP), would like to share the following announcement:

Never be the one to say, “I told you so.”

You may think it quite a bit. You may even go as far as writing it on pieces of scrap paper you will burn in ritual protest over the backyard fire pit as your family roasts marshmallows that will inevitably gum up strands of their hair - but you should never say those four little words aloud. Even if you think them to be cheap words to work into casual conversation.

Even when the parties you so told disregard all that sage advice and come to see the error of their ways, you don't get to be smug. It's a bad look on everyone, and it could be costly.

So what if it's going to be cold later? You don't have to be the defender of people who should bring sweaters.

Is it really necessary to follow weather predictions to their logical conclusions? Pfffft! Runners should know not to go out during thunderstorms. And couch potatoes should know to charge their phones. 

Though playing Battleship by candlelight for old times' sake (and to ward off boredom) might be one of the things you use in future arguments about unplugging, but I wouldn't. I Told You Sos can be sneaky that way, too.

There is not a person in the world who doesn't know they've stepped in something awful until Captain Obvious pointed it out.

Personally, my favorite time to lob an I Told You So, is when the kitchen sink drain starts to slow and the person who is most likely to tinker with things refuses to call a plumber.

Since this is not my first Roto-Rooder-o, I know there's a backup in the lines that no manner of lye-based products left to marinate at sink level will solve. We've already taken the plunger and exhausted the extent of its effectiveness. 

But Tinkering Partner will need to try.

Tinkering Partner may also attempt to curtail Operations Management's insistence that two functions - say hand washing dishes and machine washing clothes - can (and should) be able to happen simultaneously.

This is where you can stand your ground by doing nothing, letting the standing water speak for itself. Eventually, (and from experience) I'd say we're only a few days out from Suds on the Floor behind the Washer as the Triggering Event to an Actual Solution.

This is when an I Told You So can go so horribly wrong.

Because the intricacies of ancient plumbing may be lost on such a person, not to mention the cost of professional intervention.

As maybe Tinkering Person spending an afternoon in a basement up to their elbows in effluvium, is the best thing after all.

As long as he doesn't say, I told you we didn't need a plumber.

The odds-on favorite

I saw the opportunity from across the patio, and I had planned to ignore it.  

My husband was talking to a nice man, and together they firmly planted a small-talk flag in what would ordinarily be my talking-point quicksand. 

But with the blessing of slight anonymity, liquid refreshment, and the desire to keep politics on mute, I was determined to stay on solid ground. 

For the first time in I-can't-even-recall-another-time, instead of taking the bait, I was going to just smile, nod in agreement, and ask the host for "a little more of this amazing salad."

I was so ready to just enjoy the evening and the company. It didn't even matter that just minutes before, a well-meaning stranger dropped into my lap the most dreaded of all getting-to-know-a-person questions: "So what do you do?" 

I didn't even flinch. I just said with a creepy wink: "I mostly make trouble," then stood up and asked if anyone needed any refreshments from the snack table. 

But just as I reached the food, my husband looked at me and, with the wave of an arm in my direction, announced: "you should talk to my wife - she has a more interesting take on this topic than I do." 

I withdrew my hand, which had been hovering over a platter, trying to decide which delicate morsel to select as if it had burned me. My appetite was suddenly gone.  

I hadn't been to a party in 18 months, yet, somehow, all the stomach-twirling discomfort of being a social misfit rocketed back as if it had never spent the last year and a half in semi-isolation. I was ready to enjoy the company of other humans without having to be diametrically opposed to everything they had to say, especially when we mostly agree. 

Of course, having heard only three words -- Gillibrand, Franken, and forced-resignation -- I knew what the consternation was and why it had resurfaced. 

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand -- one of the most prominent Democrats who had called for the resignation of popular Minnesota Senator and former SNL Comedic star Al Franken after several women raised allegations of sexual misconduct -- had missed a vote to bring a law on equal pay to the senate floor. It doesn't matter that Republicans announced they would filibuster equal pay so there would be no football to snatch away at the last minute. It certainly didn't matter that Franken chose to step down instead of wait for the outcome of an investigation. "She made him do it."

This perceived "Fauxmality-Pas" was just another reminder that liberal-minded Democrats prefer a tow-headed jokester with sophomoric antics to a career politician who wouldn't take one for the team.

It didn't seem to matter that Franken's charm, in Congress, wasn't nearly as effective as it was entertaining. (We still got Kavanaugh.) It also doesn't seem to matter that Tina Smith, a capable and qualified politician, took his seat and has been re-elected, twice.

I suppose it's just difficult to resist the gravitational pull of personality. 

I wished I could stand up for the funny man, too. I have fond memories of prank calling local bookstores in 1996 to ask if they could tell me the title of Al Franken's new book? My only goal was to giggle uproariously when the person on the end of the line obliged and then repeated: "Rush Limbaugh is Big Fat Idiot" for all to hear.

But the credible allegations against Franken made it difficult for me, if not impossible, to accept that such behavior toward women should be just buried for the sake of solidarity by the party that aims for higher ground.

And when people tell me the man is innocent until proven guilty, I tell them when women are the victims it's usually the other way around. Fairness is not something we have come to expect as much as recrimination. 

I mean, a man claims he was swallowed by a whale and spit back out, and we just marvel in amazement. A woman says she was groped during a photo op, and we ask her how much she'd been drinking.  

Another shot

 It's 9 p.m. My eyes dart from the television to my watch, and, finally, to a window that looks out over the driveway. Waiting and uncertainty cause my stress levels -- now quantified and reported by the proprietary technology on my wrist -- to spike.

Several times already, lights from traffic on the road out front tricked me into thinking her car pulled into the driveway. Each time, my heartbeat inches higher momentarily and then retreats. I let out the breath I've been holding in, only to imprison it once again.

My body and mind will figure-eight through this pattern until the door swings open and my firstborn child walks through the door, smelling of pizza and sauce and sounding her delight or displeasure her hours of restaurant service has wrought.

This moment feels normal and celebratory and panic-inducing all in one shot.

She flops down on the couch and pulls out a fistful of wrinkled bills. She tells me she is starving as she smooths the cash and starts to count: Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty.

Not a bad haul for a Tuesday.

I start a pot of water for pasta as she tells me about all the outrages and intrigues. And the curious story of the asymmetrical piling of pizza boxes how it caused her to burn her wrist.

A Connecticut-shaped welt on her arm looks about as angry as a bad sunburn. Commissary loves company.

"Maybe you should ice it," I suggest as I break a fist-full of angel hair into the boil.

"Do we have any paper towels? My boss says that wrapping wet towels around it is better."

I smile and nod.

It's official. I have joined the category of old wives who tell tales, I guess. The point is magnified by the fact that, as I type this, I am sitting in a hot car, in the parking lot of our pediatrician's office, banished from the annual proceedings by the onward march of maturity and a teenager's desire for independence.

I wonder what the doctor will say about the burn?

My level of panic is temporarily held at bay by a constant vigil at my smartphone's screen. I am at once afraid there will come a situation in which I will be needed, and anxious that there will be no need for me at all. My presence is on the wane.

Why does it always feel that we only get one shot? Maybe it's just in these moments of uncertainty, the moments where we have to cede control, where our minds hold us hostage. These are the moments of imminent change.

A parade of new parents with babies pass by my mobile waiting room.

I remember those days like they were yesterday. Though it concerns me a little as the time ticks by and those same parents make their round trip. There is still no word from my child.

And just as I look down at the screen, it lights up with a message. "You need to come in and sign for me to get a vaccine. The doctor says I need a parent or someone over 18 to give permission."

"See that ... There's always another shot."

The customer is always wrong

 The machine sprang to life with the push of a button, as expected, and then it forced out a giant exhalation of air and an anemic stream of hot, brown water. 

Not even a mouthful.

"Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do," I said to myself, with all the expletives I could muster and none of the yesteryear-words my grandmother would have used. 

I tried again. Pushed the buttons and waited: this time only drops drip from the device.

The fancy new coffee maker was on the fritz, and, I'm not ashamed to admit, it put me on the proverbial warpath. Trying to get a decent cup of coffee before you've had a decent cup of coffee often leads me to dark places. Not to mention, this would be the second machine, just over its warranty date, to decaffeinate unexpectedly. 

 "This doesn't make sense," I told the air around me as I unplugged and replugged the device, and then opened and closed the levers. How could this be a user error? I questioned myself as I continued this costly experiment pressing the two buttons in various combinations and speeds as if the coffee elevator would arrive at my crazy floor any faster.

Trial and error here was just literally a waste -- two inches of coffee would cost me $4 in supplies.

Rage momentarily clouds my rationality.

You know ... because we've all grown accustomed to buying new because repairs are just as costly and twice as inconvenient. 

Showing me no other solution besides taking my credit card to the store and starting from scratch, after which I will grouse about the latest in a string of disposable appliances I've managed to drag to the edge of the driveway muttering to myself about "highway robbery." 

"Or ... you could google the problem and see if anyone else has run across it," said the boy with a smirk. 

A quick internet search sends me to the page of people just like me who have indeed had this very mishap dampen their mornings. And they found solace and some degree of success running warm soapy water through the chamber a few times.

I try it to no avail. There is little build-up to remove, and subsequent test pours continue to squeeze out progressively less volume.

The interwebs show me how to find the one-eight-hundred number of the manufacturer, so I call it, pleased to find that the service number reaches real, live human beings 24-hours a day. Apparently, they have applied the happy-hour sentiment -- about it always being "quitting-time somewhere," -- to the expensive coffee machine world. Someone is always waking up to a cup of disappointment. 

The voice that greets me after a moment on hold is scripted to within a dry monotone. Her helpfulness is debatable. She can't believe I am unable to locate my account number or the receipt that would verify the age of my machine. She instructs me how to find the serial number, and as I turn the machine over, water drains onto my feet.

This is not going well.

I just want a simple answer to my problem, and she has a whole menu of steps to lead me through for the next 12 to 18 minutes of a call that might be recorded for quality purposes.

"First, you will need a paper clip and an unused toothbrush. ... I will wait."

I tell her I'm fresh out of toothbrushes.

"She insisted. You will need a soft brush of some sort. I will wait."

I could tell I was already a disappointment.

Not only was I a luddite customer without the sense God gave a goat when it came to basic problem solving, and I was also incapable of following simple directions.

"Next, you will need hot water ... almost to the point of boiling."

"I'm in an office without hot water," I stammered. I'll have to do this later. What's the next step?"

"You don't have a microwave?"

I imagined she was mocking me to the other service techs while she muted her end of the conversation. 

"I .... didn't think of the microwave," I stammer, fully intending to come up with all further supplies she tells me I need, without exception. If I am not successful, I will pretend otherwise.

 

"Run the machine until there is no longer water in the reserve chamber."

I hum while the machine chugs along, slowly spurting scalding water out its spout into the empty container. It all goes as planned until she asks me an open-ended question: "How many times did you depress the button?"

"Six," I said with improvised confidence because I wasn't keeping track.

"The chamber only holds four," she says with derision. "I'm going to have you reset the device to factory specifications, and then we will do some tests with used coffee capsules.

The reset was all of holding one button down for a count of five seconds.

"You are going to have to count slower than you are used to for this to work."

When she asks me to press the button again, I can tell that the output volume has also been restored to its original factory setting, Yet her belief in my competence has not changed.

I pretend to carry out her request of filling three separate cups to test the serving consistency. "They all look the same to me."

"They should all be 4.3 ounces ... are they?"

"And so they are. Exactly."

May the road rise to meet you

The pain is minor. It's just a pinch at the top of my hamstring that feels like a muscle pull. It hasn't been obnoxious even if it arrived unannounced and lingered for a day before it slowly started to nag. It hasn't even been hanging around long enough to even make me consider consulting with the Dr. S.C. Connally School of Medicine at Google University, let alone panic-dial a real MD.

I do not stop running. Slow down? Yes. Take longer walks between intervals? Maybe. Stretch a little longer and more often once I get home? You bet. 

I've felt this before. Lots of times. I'd call it a grade one tear that Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation should take care of in a couple of days. It's the same direction a real doctor once gave me right before she suggested I run in a serpentine fashion on a less busy roadway. 

Not that I do that. It's crazy enough to be running every day on the same roads, I'm not sure I could handle the stares (let alone the beeping of car horns) were I to slither from one side to the other. 

I blame the roads, especially where they heave in the center, having succumbed to the forces of the universe and four seasons of weather, which conspire to make a runner's one hip work harder than the other.

I am almost at the end. 

I will lay on the floor later and think about this as I perform leg lifts and deep knee bends and side angle lunges. I don't know for sure if any of these exercises help me, but they don't seem to be hurting any. Unless you count my pride when a kid of mine will ask if I need help to my feet as they stumble across me accidentally.

They probably guess that I will be the proverbial Old Woman who will lay there for days, not wanting to admit that she's found herself in a pickle. They check on me now and again just for practice.

Maybe it's all the groaning I do during transitions: going from standing to sitting, sitting to standing ... or just the act of thinking about kneeling. Standing up from the position takes more thought, surely, but it doesn't take an assist. Not yet. 

Truth is, the best years are coming. That's what a recent story in the New York Times said anyway, as it refers to runners who get their starts later in life. 

They have mounds of statistics and data to back up such claims, of course. But I'd believe it without a shred of proof.

I speak for myself when I say, we older folks are grateful for just being able to put one foot in front of the other; our goals aren't that high. This starting from zero and getting incrementally faster is the polar opposite of what my track star friends seem to experience. 

At some point, though, we all meet our apex. That highest point in the journey, where we look out over the top and marvel at the majesty before we turn around and make our way back down. 

Some of us don't recognize it and fail to take a few extra moments to take it all in. 

I'm not sure where I am on that journey, but I know to mark the milestones. Today I finished 365 days of consecutive running, amounting to fourteen-hundred-and-forty-five miles during the course of one year; at every time in the day, in every sort of weather. I ran through shin splints and blisters and headaches and allergies. I ran through local streets and unfamiliar cities. I ran around my pool as my kids doused me with water soakers just to keep the streak going. 

And as I stand here on this mountain looking down at my accomplishment, I'm filled with gratitude and a sense of completion. Enough of each to stop, on my own terms, without injury, and without regret. And rest. 

And for anyone out there starting their streak again, I hope that the road rises to meet you just as gently. 

Self serve

 Lost my wallet again. 

It has a tracking device inside it, which has a dead battery inside it, too.

Who knows where it is. My best guess? It's in a parking lot somewhere, having tumbled from my lap where it had balanced, forgotten between errands, for who-knows-how-many miles. 

This is usually how it happens.

Though I also leave it at the checkout quite a bit. Forgotten between slipping my credit card into the mouth of the do-it-yourself till and the moment I reach my car and start unloading the bags from the wonky-wheeled cart into its trunk.

If I am lucky, I notice right away and not five hours later, when I go back to the store for the thing I went for in the first place.

I used to love the grocery store. 

When my kids were little, their father would tag in so I could make a little vacation at the market. I'd start at self-serve coffee and spend an enjoyable hour sipping as I strolled through every aisle. I'd stop long enough to kvetch with my brethren browsers about how management must move half of everything at least twice a month, just to ensure we look close enough to forget our lists and tip a few new things into our baskets. 

On the hottest summer days, I'd orbit the store to stay cool. Studying the ice cream with the doors open, leaning into a tower of mint chips until the glass fogged. ... Or until people came.

I hear my mother's voice inside my head: What-do-you-think we're doing here? Heating the great outdoors?"

People. "Perfect strangers," she'd call them, emphasizing the perfect part. 

I remember her chatting with some of the less-than-perfect ones in the dairy aisle: catching up on the news as she inspected her would-be purchases for cracks.

"Good egg, that one!" She'd say about her friend as we headed for the butcher shop.

She snorted the words "Butcher Shop," as we stood in front of a refrigerated shelf of stretched-wrapped meats painted an impossible red. They were the only two words that could transport us to a place closer to home. It was long gone now, but the memory of the shop was still fresh. The specter of a man in a straw hat still vivid as he cut a steak to order, wrapped it in brown paper, secured with a string, handed it to my mother, and added a folded slice of bologna for me. 

I'd like to think my kids will have a random memory of me float back to them, and they will smile fondly. But it won't be any of me in the grocery store. Especially not the time someone admired my boots.  

"And there she was ... in the pasta aisle ... balancing on one foot as she handed her shoe to a stranger who only wanted to know if it was heavy." 

In my defense, the boots were new, and compliments seemed novel. I can admit I got carried away. 

And then they stopped going with me. But not because of that.

In pandemic times, it's been safety first. 

Things seem different now. 

Perfect strangers don't talk to each other anymore. We barely exchange glances. When we do, we only see something to judge or some fresh hell to catch. Stranger danger is infinitely more frightening than ever before.

If silence was golden, avoidance is now platinum.

I try not to worry about a future that's unprincipled. Just like I try not to think about a future that's unpeopled as I check my own groceries through self-serve.

But sometimes it's hard.

I wish all of our troubles were as easy as not finding lost wallets. Cancel and start over.

Pet Peeve

 IT was a mystery addressed to me: A plain brown, double-walled corrugated rectangle emblazoned with silhouetted illustrations of batteries. A flat-packed box had arrived two days after my birthday after numerous anxious inquiries from my husband.

“Any deliveries today?” he asked with a conniver’s grin.

“Not today,” I lied and left the box on the porch.

This gift wasn’t exactly for me.

"Anything liquid, fragile, or potentially hazardous?" I imagined a postal clerk might have asked the sender.

To which my husband - had he been there to witness the standard business shipping exchange - would have joked about the message inside being the most incendiary part of the delivery:

A printed note that said simply: "If you don't tell me what you want for your birthday, you get a vacuum cleaner. I don't make the rules."

Inside was an automatic floor cleaner. A circular robot with sensing whiskers roams the house in search of debris to sweeps into a central chamber.

Its motor whirrs at a decibel that annoys more than it disrupts, though it seems to have a proclivity to find all the cords and draping fabrics the instructions suggested the "We" (in the most royal of senses) remove.

To the casual observer, this might seem an indictment of my housekeeping skills, although my husband might tell you his Interest in buying me floor cleaning devices and gadgets of the utilitarian persuasion it's merely an assuage of his own guilt for lack of helping. His contributions toward the load he rarely lightens.

Moreover, this cursed device startles the cat, which, if my husband's extensive, giggle-filled research of cat-mocking videos of late is any indication, the gift was not merely to delight but to lightly introduce torment as well.

He is positively gleeful as he pours over the instructions I would have recycled unread.

"It's got Bluetooth," he gushes as his fingers tap the glass of his cell phone repeatedly. "It will send me messages!"

I roll my eyes as this gliding ashtray scuttles around in an erratic trajectory, the adult equivalent of a remote control toy. It's clear for whose amusement this gift is intended.

Purse my lips as the cylinder cyclone bumps into the dining room table, recoils, and tries again four inches further, only to be thwarted once again from sweeping under the table by a tight cage of evenly spaced chairs.

I move one of the seats to allow the vacuum access to the dust bunnies underneath and am met by my husband's horror.

"How will it learn to navigate our house if you keep changing the furniture?"

I have to admit I have no snappy answer, just stunned silence as stare at him while I slowly lower the chair.

But my perturbation is as much of a put-on as his theatrical showcase of abominable gift-giving.

We both understand that he is resurrecting a memory; one in which we already danced on our gender roles’ grave.

That time, long ago, when he came home from lunch to find me sitting on the couch watching a movie and eating bite-sized morsels of chocolate like a replicate of a ‘50s era storyline.

“What? I’m vacuuming!” I retorted as a robot vac chugged on by.

But eventually, I will have to explain that the joke has played out. The machine knocking off the faces of radiators and getting stuck under couches will get old.

But not just yet. …

"Oh! Just got a text!!! It's trapped in the corner! Needs assistance!"

He jumps up to rescue his new pet.

Siobhan Connally is a writer and photographer living in the Hudson Valley. Her column about family life appears weekly in print and online.

Reconnecting

 I bought a cassette tape at a yard sale about five years after I got rid of the last device I owned that could play one. 

An impulse, borne of the promise of an author and activist I adored, reading to me from her work as I carried on with the more mundane moments of my day. Driving from here to there and back again, waiting around, during the interstitial moments of life. 

Somehow, in the excitement, I had forgotten all about the technological advances to which I'd already adapted. It took only three cars to go from cassette to CD to some wavy blue lines that work like magic.

And here we are.

I still have the tape sitting in a bin by the side of my bed where so many good books go to be read but, through no fault of their own, face only neglect and a thin layer of dust.

A reminder of little heartbreaks that await beneath unexpected excitements that at first delight. It's not the worst thing that could happen.

Just as things slowly returning to normal may not be the best thing.

How are we to know?

Idling in the drop-off line at school while we await our turn. A staff member, clad in a face shield and mask, will aim a temperature gun at my passenger's forehead and let us know what kind of day we'll be having. 

A smile and a "have a great day," prompt my boy to shift his weight in the seat and groan, as if the transition from car to the classroom wasn't even anticipated let alone expected. He lumbers out of the car and rifles through the backseat to collect his things: a trumpet case, a backpack, a binder that won't fit inside.

I can't tell from his expression how he feels I can only intuit from the calm of his demeanor that he is content to move along through the day as expected. 

 Not that I know what is expected.

I have stopped aligning his schedule with the steps of my day. I have no idea if his math class corresponds to my 10:30 mail run or whether he has English or Health when I go on my "rounds. "And though I receive reports of the occasional missing assignment, I have stopped breathing down his neck while looking over his shoulder.

I barely remember to pick him up on Mondays, which has recently been added to my to-do list. His sister’s review class after school has kept her from toting him to and fro through May.

Usually, I meet him as he’s already walked a half-mile from campus, still wearing his mask as he juggles an armload of things.

Neither of us seemed to be able to plan ahead.

"What's Ruth's phone number?" He asks me. 

I stare at him in the fog of disassociation. "Ruth?"

"The town historian? You know her, right?"

"I've met her. We've spoken. But I don't really know her."

"Well, I'm supposed to call her TONIGHT and do an interview for school."

 I don't say what I am thinking: those things we are supposed to feel about planning, and common sense, and the unbearable disappointment of one's own shortcomings leading to natural consequences. 

I just send off an email with our phone number and the hope that she's online and willing to speak to a 13-year-old boy at 8 o'clock on a Tuesday night. 

In a few minutes, the phone rings and the boy picks up. 

"Thank you for calling."

The call doesn't take long. I see him in a half-hour's time as he rummages through the kitchen, looking for a snack.

I asked him how it went.

"Did you know she didn't go to school for history? She got an English degree and started doing historical work when she moved here and discovered that Dutch influence seemed to be largely overlooked in the stories of the founding of the country."

In the time it took him to toast and butter bread, he had conveyed the bulk of his 20-minute inquiry about careers. In between bites, I could sense the satisfaction.

"Sometimes not having a plan becomes the plan."

A desk job

 The lady at the Post Office smiled a little when she saw me at the counter, a slip of yellow card stock in my hand and a glimmer of hope for a special delivery of caffeine. Hope that was instantly erased by the question she asked of me:

"I hope you brought your car," she said before turning away and heading to "The Wall," where all the oversized packages are stored.

Alas, the box that had arrived didn't contain the tin-capsule encased coffee pods I had been expecting with anxious mint-flavored breath. Instead, the Post Office Lady lugged a door-sized, flat-packed box into the lobby. Something clanged metallically when she tipped it sideways to slide it through the door.

"It's heavy."

For a moment, I blink repetitively into the blinding light of the unknown.

The package is non-descript. A beige box, without pictures, inscribed with the name of a beige company that doesn't give away any secrets about the product contained within.

The label has my son's name on it.

A memory floated back to me from within the window of shipping possibilities: it was of the boy visiting me on the living room couch late one evening as I filled myself with warm caffeine and fiddled with something or other on the computer.

"I have some money saved up. Is it okay if I buy something online?"

I usually ask him about whatever it is his heart desires, and we chat for a bit about computer games I don't understand. The discussions have evolved over the years from extracting from the boy an accounting of the level of aggression his games would engender.

Back then he would assure me that nothing on his wishlist had been rated M for "mature."

On this evening, however, I had been preoccupied. I hadn't stopped to converse. I'd just nodded my head and shrugged my shoulders.

"Sure, go ahead," I had said, assuming the biggest inconvenience would be a momentary lag in broadband as whatever graphics-heavy game he wished to own took its sweet time downloading. "Just leave the money in my jacket pocket. I'll get it later."

It occurred to me, as I wrestled the box into my car, schlepped it up the porch steps and into the house, that I'd never even checked the deposit to see what he'd spent. I dipped my hand into my pocket and came out with a fist-full of crumpled cash. Much more than the ten or twelve dollars I'd expected.

I called up to his room:

"There's a delivery on the porch for you."

And then there came a thunderous trampling of feet down the stairs, his tousled head tilting as he skidded to a stop in the kitchen.

“Which porch?”

I tilted my head ... “Side.”

“What did you get? It was heavy.”

“A new desk! I wanted something more modern and without drawers for my computer. Want to help me put it together?”

“No. You'll just have to wait until your father gets home. I'm going to wait here for my coffee.”

kNOw Justice, kNOw Peace

I have a sign in my yard. It reads "kNOwJUSTICE, kNOwPEACE."

My children and I painted it last year after news broke that a police
officer had kneeled on a Black man's neck for an excruciating nine
minutes until he died.

The kids added BLM and a drawing of a heart to my handiwork.

During the past 11 months, there's been a lot of honking past our
house. Some of it accompanied by cheers, but much more, sadly, the
noise of jeers, or a forceful middle finger, or the occasional tossing
of rubbish.

Despite the uproar ... and the anonymous complaint to code enforcement
over whether a person with such a sign in a town such as ours has the
right to display "matters of politics," since there are rules
regulating the presence and placement of political signage during
election season ...
our sign stayed.

When it got egged, I cleaned it.
When it was tipped over, I righted it.

I'm not taking it down.

Even after my phone erupted with good vibrations last Tuesday after
the Verdict was read ...

"Guilty, Guilty, Guilty."

The moment - while triumphant right now - will pass.

I wanted to feel elation at the verdict. It was clear and correct, and
it was necessary, but whether it is a turning point for this country
seems unlikely.

Given the facts of the case -- the video evidence and heartbreaking
testimony of eyewitnesses, some of whom were children -- it seems
almost impossible for a jury to come up with any other decision.

And yet they have and regularly do; hamstrung, many say, by laws or
policy that give police an almost uncheckable power.

In the time it took to convict a remorselessly murderous cop, at least
two more police shootings of Black children hit the news cycle. Two
more chances for other citizens to argue about the permissibility of
discounting their lives.

It seems painfully clear that without the courage of a 17-year-old
girl who filmed the murder of George Floyd, this trial may never have
taken place. Similarly, as the verdict was read we learn that states
all over this nation are turning their legislative work NOT toward
fair and equitable policing BUT to further restrict citizens' rights
to gather in protest.

We have much work to do as a country. No one action will bring about a
solution to our many problems as a nation, but there are things we can
and must do to ensure an equitable future for us all.

Perhaps even more so than training, we must work to rid police ranks
of dangerous cops. That "One Bad Apple," saying has a literal ending
we ignore to our peril; "spoils the bunch."

And we in the media have our part to play, too. We have to reevaluate
our reliance on police as primary sources of information.

I wish I could impress upon you the benefits we all would gain by
having a policing system that is more compassionate and professional,
one that humanizes suspects, and one that is accountable and
responsive to its own failures.

I wish we all could know, without question or fear, that reform is not
only necessary it's a moral imperative.

Gardening at night

Should I go with the tall spiky plants that have wide flocked leaves and blue conical flowers, or should I choose the rounded low shrubs, with leafy greens and plate-sized pink blossoms? I've already ruled out whatever abomination has taken root in the only other option - yellow.

Still, I don't want to spend too much time on this decision. The stakes aren't high. I'll just close my eyes and pick one.

As I open them again, a dust devil has formed, circling around the strip of land I've been tasked to fill.

When it clears, tall blue flowers with spiky leaves are revealed.

Voila!

"I can't believe YOU play 'Gardenscapes'," the boy remarked as he sank into the space beside me on the couch.

Suddenly, I'm self consciously aware of what I must look like: a mother, with grey frosted hair, holding her phone at arm's length, swiping the screen with one finger hoping to crack a few nuts.

I bring the screen closer toward my body in a protective stance. As if keeping my son from seeing the balding, middle-aged bachelor avatar strolling around the grounds of some dilapidated old mansion I must renovate will save me from embarrassment.

Is it apparent that I've already spent the better part of an hour raising the needed capital for a handful of completely ridiculous restorations, by trying to clear a never-ending series of Tetris-like games?

It's all fairly straightforward, once you learn to work the puzzle. Like how you can string together five gems and earn a laser-shooting rainbow disco orb, which, depending on how you aim it, can obliterate a row of cookies or turn a single paper airplane into an airforce of fruit, nut, and berry-seeking missiles.

I don't even mind that I've been stuck on Level Fifty-Six for three days. 

"I find it relaxing."

The irony of a mother playing “video games” for the express purpose of turning her mind into mush -- the modern equivalent of immersion into the momentary respite of warm Calgon Waters – is not lost on me. 

Nor am I ashamed that I'd rather garden in the rarified air of cyberspace than dig in real dirt. I have enough dead flowers at the edge of my yard.

My son sees it a little differently, though.

"Doing the same thing, over and over hoping for a different result? I think there's I different dictionary definition for that one."

He thinks I should aim higher: like a space station in some distant galaxy, where colorful people dressed like welders wander around different airlocks performing random tasks while spying on their co-workers.

"Come on! Play Among Us! It's fun. I'll teach you.

"I don't know. It sounds too much like ... an office job."

"Pffffft," he sputters. His eyes roll to the ceiling and then settle into their most burning, side-eye position. A tiny explosion bursts forth from his own closely held screen and the unmistakable soundtrack of his player decompensating.

His voice breaks into a good-natured chuckle.

"Hmmm. Can I play yours? Maybe I can get you to Level Fifty-Seven."

College hopping

As we set out of the driveway the first sunny morning of Spring Break, I was reminded of a similar trip I made with my mother.

A high school junior, I sat behind the wheel of her car and headed west toward the edge of the state. The burgundy sedan was new and handled like it, offering a smooth ride that would make me unaware of how fast I was going.

Mom didn't seem to notice either.

Eighty miles per hour on a highway that stretched out straight ahead and seemed to be hurdling us forward forever, not just the six hours a paper map and our basic calculations could reckon.

Traveling at the same speed, but decades later and with a computer voice guiding us onward in a silver SUV, my daughter steers confidently, keeping pace with the neighboring traffic. Maybe it's nerves, but we seem to be faster now that I am the mother sitting in the passenger seat.

We won't be meeting officials or getting the low down on college life from a gaggle of half-dressed frat boys who appear in the hallway, snapping each other with towels as if on cue, as our tour parades through the dormitory.

Those days might not be over, but I can't say that I'm sad we won't get to experience such an embarrassment of such riches on this trip.

Honestly, I don't remember the processes being so fraught.

I picked a direction and followed it. One small decision after another, and here we are, college shopping. 

But then again, everything appeared to go according to my limited plan. Furthermore, tuition didn't cost $400,000 and I didn't have to mortgage a forever home and all the cars I might ever own to pay for it.

My stress grip on the armrest doesn't go unnoticed. I had phoned a relative; an insider willing and able to provide perspective who would join us in a two-car parade connected by the magic of DNA and invisible waves of pocket technology.

I am grateful for both.

We learn more than we would have on our own. Had we guessed which were lecture halls and which were residence halls, we would have been wrong.

Our plan is much less daunting than it seems -- two days, four colleges, and a reservation for an overnight stay; is stressful in all of our fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants kind of educational tourism glory.

A hundred years ago, as my mother and I cruised toward my college visits, we had a destination, with an appointment and an application pending. I had put all my eggs in one basket.

My daughter has a zillion possibilities to whittle into a handful of hopeful opportunities. She's reaching so march farther than I had. She's worried the baskets will be full before she can put her eggs in.

We don't know yet whether this uncertainty is a curse or a gift, but we operate as if it is the latter.

We'll use these experiences to make more educated guesses as we continue to college hop.

The Talk

 I have been putting off having The Talk.

With myself.

But a swirling cloud of improprieties circling our governor and, now, a certain congressman from Florida have me thinking the reckoning is unavoidable. No doubt it is long past due.

Oh sure, I've heard from men who wonder aloud about the state of office politics. As if politics is all that's at play. They all wonder what offenses - what off-color joke or light flirtation - would upend their professional lives as they know them.

And I assure them that they would KNOW in the way we KNOW when things feel amiss.

But I don't know why I reassure them when undoubtedly they must do their own self-evaluation.

It is not enough to look at our actions through the lens of the familiar.

I'm not talking about cases. Whatever investigations reveal about evidence is still to be seen.

I'm talking about pinpointing the moment in time when the expectations shifted; when the light shone on the old boys' network and all we saw was the decay.

But I haven't heard from my daughter; who, like her mother, has been having trouble locating the middle ground.

But before we open our mouths and take that deep, buoying breath to unleash the torrent, we have some serious thinking to do.

Because it's not just one thing.

From "Me too," to "Time's Up" to "Not All Men we are in the midst of a reckoning.

Maybe the middle is where we've been all along. Making things worse.

What strikes me as an oddity in this back and forth the genders in all their complexities seem to be having is that we keep looking at the forest but pretending not to acknowledge the trees.

The common beliefs we have accepted in our lives for no other reason than we didn't have to think about them aren't holding up.

Dad fixes the car.

Mom fixes the lunch.

Doctors are men.

Nurses are women.

We just like to hug. It's part of our culture.

Don't worry your pretty little head about any of these details.

But the details we should question aren't salacious ones. The details are more mundane than you might imagine.

What do we expect? And why? 

All it takes for change is for the weight of the world -- or those in it who are unwilling to accept the state of affairs -- to shift in a new direction. Afterward, it probably won't even seem like a giant wave has capsized everything we know.

It will seem more like a clarifying correction.

Maybe it started after the dramatic downfall of a movie mogul that we lost a taste for the so-called Hollywood ending: the guy getting the girl as the credits roll. A few female names among a sea of male ones becomes so much harder to overlook.

This flipped script is more than some heady talk of disruption. There is real change coming. And it is long overdue.

There will always be time to talk. Right now, it is time to listen.

Habit foaming

Some things never really get old.

A box arrives every three months like clockwork. Every three hundred miles to be exact.

A new pair of running kicks.

It's not a mystery gift. I have no subscription to a running-shoe-of-the-month club (if there is such a thing). No, it's a carefully plotted purchase that has been months in the making. In fact, just a few days after the last pair arrived I've scrolled through hundreds of pages of online catalogs looking for exactly the same pair in a color I've never heard of, that matches no other piece of clothing I own.

Mine are meant to be bright and light and seen from outer space. They also must be so cushiony that every adjective that described them had been derived from the mental image of clouds.

As if striding atop the aerosol of tiny water droplets where saturated air has met its dew point would be even remotely comfortable let alone effortless.

I'd like to tell you I'd gone from here to Boston and back, but the truth is I've just circled the neighborhood a few hundred times.

It's a strangely slow process, buying shoes. I even bide my time in the hopes of reaching the mythical 400 miles. I see how long I can hold out. People who know about such things say I should be able to squeak out at least one more trip to Cambridge (the New York one) and back, but I never get that far.

I don't understand it exactly. They don't look worn-in let alone worn-out.

The quarter-year-old shoes haven't lost even a hint of their vibrant hue. There's a little fraying around the mystery lace hole that is supposed to lock your foot in place, but only four people on Earth have ever used it. And every single one of those people complained about the speed at which the fraying accelerated.

Yet somehow I feel their decrepitude in my bones. A creak here, a groan there. Each step I take after the magic number 300 threatens to multiply fatigue by superstition. Truth is, even if I didn't know down to the millimeter how far my shoes have traveled, I'd know by the knee pain.

I'm giddy when the box arrives. I am intoxicated by the prospect of fresh foam and the new ride smell that will greet me the second I open the lid and shift the paper protector. The chemical components of clouds.

I can't fathom how I've let color or style argue in the backseat as I make comfort ride upfront. 

As I transport them to their new home - a little out-of-the-way nook of the house with a built-in ledge for sitting - I anticipate the ease and speed that will undoubtedly accompany me on my next run. The occasion of which will be now, since that is how runners celebrate new shoes.

And quite honestly, in those first few moments; after I start my watch and wave to the neighbors (who have somehow noticed my feet's change in color and elevation) I feel like I am flying. 

As if I were five again.

Run your race

I was worried about parking. The lot already looked full and cars were still streaming in as I slowly steered my way around dots of colorfully dressed people; some of them in costume - a person wearing a furry green bear suit stood a few yards away from someone in a pink tulle tutu.

The second I opened the car door and felt the western wind slicing at my outstretched arm, I wondered why I had agreed to this. I have been running each and every day since late last May in all kinds of weather. The novelty hadn't worn off.

I've felt the crunch of ice under my shoes. I've warily watched trees dance while flashes of lightning crack open the sky. I have been drenched with rain and covered in snow.

It has become the hour, or half-hour, or just ten minutes, of each and every day that I can count as normal.

I've discovered this past year that I don't really dwell in the trappings of my old life. It may seem strange, but I feel more attached to the new paths that necessity has opened. I don't think about returns being triumphant.

And yet, somehow, a five-mile road race with 600 anxious runners in the middle (or the we-honestly-have-no-idea-what-segment) of a pandemic, was more than a novelty. It was a brief chasing of normality.

My double-masked friend was beside me in the car, and though we hadn't gotten out yet, I knew no amount of convincing would get her to skip this exercise. Just as I knew I would pin on the racing bib and declare the digits my registration had generated to be my "lucky" number.

Eventually we would part ways. Each of us running our own race, set by any number of reasons and variables that neither of us can give a full accounting.

I would select a secret rival - someone who might look younger, but who I believed I could overtake at the finish line in one last burst of unnecessary speed.

We all tell ourselves we don't need to beat someone by a fraction of a second here at the back of the pack, but we do it anyway.

It's easy to forget the feelings of others whenever we compete against ourselves.

Maybe it's the anticipation of an announcer's voice exhaling out names into a microphone, or the muscle memory of a primary school desire not to be last to cross that finish. Maybe it's just the urge to be done.

Whatever it is, I'm always careful to weigh my stamina against the distance left to go before I dig in.

I often miscalculate. 

That last tenth of a mile seems longer than metrically possible. I can see the finish line, but the distance between me and it doesn't appear to diminish.

I will have to choose between pulling back and letting my rival have the three-second edge or whether I will need to stray from the chute in the aftermath of same-time glory and find an out-of-the-way place to hurl.

No matter how I choose to end this race, I know I will be glad I ran it.

I can't believe I've missed this at all. And yet, I have.

Rhyme Time

Good morning!

It's 7 a.m.

Or is it 8 a.m.?

Wait a moment while I consult the magic rhyme I've recited in my head
since the custom of keeping track of time started to matter to me.

"Spring forward ... Fall back."

I'm sure I have that correct. Spring back .... Fall forward sounds
like what happens at frat parties or comedy shows. Though I can admit,
my sense of time being of importance only began to mature between
adolescence (when I lettered in sleeping past noon) and undergrad
(when bar hopping was my preferred sport) and an 8 a.m. survey class
might be the only drawback.

But that was then and this is now: A few decades later when sleep is a
thing that happens after you sit down but before you are determined to
turn in. And when time doesn’t seem to have a clear direction. Some
might even feel its suspension.

For me, this time is also and marked by having the annual argument in
an attempt to convince the resident husband that an hour of sleep will
disappear into the wee hours of the morning, not to be seen again
until Fall.

It also means engaging in the semi-annual argument about leaving off
the extra S in Daylight Saving or whether we are returning to the
Standard Time. We could steer all usage to a simple directive: "It's
Time To Change Your Clock," and be done with it.

However, if we did that, would there be any room for the semi-annual
discussions of leaving the time as it is year-round?  Or would we end
forever all argument about whether this practice came about as an
ancient farming technique, or an energy-saving construct, or a simple
ruse to allow executives more time on the links after a long day at
the office?

Would we be able to wrap our heads around how time refuses to stand
still? Would you miss that crazy clock illustration, with its wings
and its spinning, confused face?

But the answer is yes ... even with this children's illustrated
explanation, we will argue forward can't mean "losing" and going back
has the opposite meaning of gaining - for perhaps the 18th in the
history of our history together.

And I will resort to scouring the house for an antiquated clock I can
manipulate to show that moving the hands of a clock forward
(especially when you've just turned 21) loses you a solid hour of
imbibing between midnight and four a.m.

"At midnight you go directly to 1 a.m. in Boston they'd start talking
about Last Call.

Of course, you’d forget to set your alarm clock. You’d miss a class in
the morning. Or you’d get to the car and have an existential crisis.
Am I late?

Eventually, even this argument will be one we have only for Old Time’s sake.

Eventually, it will reset as NatureTM intended ... which in modern
times means the Apple product that sleeps next to your bed, and which
(we can admit) is the first thing we greet in the morning upon
awakening, will have already made the transition for you.