Pocket dial

I miss her face.

I knew I would. Even twenty years ago, when she was born, and none of us slept, and I went to work one day - got all the way up two flights of stairs - without noticing my footwear consisted of one open-toe mule and one closed-toed clog of very different colors. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d had them on the wrong feet. However, I was grateful that their heights were identical, mostly because I could come up with an excuse even though I suspected a noticeable limp might not have awoken me from my zombie-like stupor.

It’s funny to look back and think those were the days.

But I knew there would be a day when seeing her off to school would be more than just standing at the end of a driveway waiting for a yellow bus. It would mean packing up the important parts of her life and moving them hours away from home.

I had no idea that I would get used to the silence. I didn’t think I could go without seeing her even for a moment.

It wasn’t so much proof of life, as much as it was feeling like we were still in the same place, even if I was just staring at a map.

So, with her permission, I made a pact. I did the same with her brother.

If they would allow me to access their location, I would promise not to intrude beyond the knowledge of their longitudes and latitudes. I would give them all the space they needed if I could just locate them on a map (in case of emergency).

They call it the stalker app.

I swear, I try not to intrude. I asked to be allowed to track their every move with no small amount of humility and the promise of parental silence.

I have kept my word. I don’t let my thoughts coagulate over data points. I don’t bring it up in casual conversation, say, that I know she went to the hockey arena three nights in a row … or that he went to Stewart’s after school.

Just seeing their photos bobbing along a Google map getting closer to home can make my heart flood.

  

And, I know, that having the power of real-time tracking without context can also lead to surprises, suspicions, and awkward questions.

This might have been possible when I called up my daughter and saw her bubble bouncing near the edge of the ocean at a beach not far from her school.

She had mentioned it, though. She had called me the day before, sighing deeply and releasing the tension that had been building as she readied for a midterm exam. 

“Now that it’s over, I think I’m going to take a “wellness day” tomorrow and go to the beach with some friends.”

For a moment, I thought maybe I could accidentally call her …

Make like my pocket had dialed … just so I could hear the sound of waves behind her happy voice. But I resist.

What happens in Find My Phone stays in Find My Phone.

Shit kicker

There might have been a path to redemption for placekicker Harrison Butker when he addressed the graduating class of Benedictine College in Kansas last week and told them to focus on their vocations whatever they may be. 

But he missed the mark with the words he selected specifically for the “ladies.”

The only ones applauding are rooting for chauvinism in an age when women are finally starting to see their representation reach some semblance of parity in the fields they pursue. 

There is no defending where his words trespassed after he singled out 51 percent of the graduates and told them they had been lied to … and explained with a back-handed compliment that all of their accomplishments up to this point would pale in comparison to what would come next: his advice that instead of seeking promotions and titles, they should “lean in” to their vocations as wives, mothers, and homemakers.

And as much as my flesh crawled as his words wormed their way through the commencement hall into the news cycle, I wished I could buck liberal leanings instilled in me by Catholic parents: God gave us life and the free will to live it.

And while I believe my father might have told this cad to kick rocks, it is painful to see so many young faces smile and fill the place with such raucous applause. Compelling Butker to pause his insult so that he might bask in its cacophony.

As the rebuke reverberated over the wider web of witnesses it showed the true weakness of a man who has not evolved.

Had I been a member of the commencement steering committee, I would have insisted they turn the vehicle around.

I find it odd that in his speech Butker cribbed from Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 book, Lean In.” He probably thinks it a clever twist to use a feminist slogan to imbue his trad-wife anthem. 

Though I suppose it somewhat ironic that Sandberg faced a similar (if not more nuanced) backlash for telling women all they had to do was work harder to succeed in business.

Sandberg’s detractors were quick to point out that the system, which was designed for men, was not so ready to yield to women. Butker’s will be told they belittle mothers. 

To be sure, freely made choices are intrinsic to the joys we seek in life. That Butker should acknowledge his wife’s sacrifice for their family might have bordered on laudable had he also mentioned his mother’s contributions to humanity.

In addition to raising a “good Catholic boy,” Elizabeth Keller Butker is also a clinical medical physicist specializing in radiation oncology at Emory University in Atlanta.

Or better yet, maybe the folks at Benedictine should have invited her to be their speaker. 

 Is she not also doing the work God intended?

It is a shame and a missed opportunity that they didn't value their women graduates enough to be embarrassed by their choice of such an offish homily. They've diminished their worth and credibility by allowing any of their graduates to be denigrated.

 

Mothers' Day

 The first Saturday in May was … a lot. I’m not gonna lie as the kids say. 

Despite both of our children being licensed and capable drivers, my husband escorted our daughter back to college for the start of a new trimester, while I ferried our son to the various venues around the region where he would be tested and measured: one for higher than high school education, the other in feats of strength and speed in track and field. 

We had reversed the activities of the previous weekend when the girl had driven hours with me to a different city and the boy had driven his father to distraction. 

 Each leg of our respective journeys required at least three hours of “hurry up” and three hours of “wait” time. 

That’s eleventy-billion hours for those of us in our middle-ages. 

Not to brag, (totally bragging) I feel quite certain I am more suited than my husband to navigate the arduousness of this journey. Not only do I have the remnants of my younger, “carpool mom” stamina, but I have also been cross-training for various fun runs since 2014. I am literally “happy” to spend an hour or three running in circles around my former alma mater while "et filius" is inside taking his SAT.

*Note to those who might be willing to join me on the first Saturday in June when your kid might return to my alma mater to try for a better set of grades. We could form our own kind of running club dedicated to taking the last laps for dropoff and pickup

I’ve already done the legwork. I know the track is locked so we’ll have to run the grounds. I have Garminic proof that an entire lap of the school and its parking lots will get us a mile, which will quickly add up as we wait for our test-taking kids to resurface. 

No pressure. 

I only compete against my husband, who will call in intervals, wanting the play-by-play from the “match,” he is missing and to tell me how traffic is moving at the pace of snails.

He may complain about the monotony of the interstate, but he will soon gloat that he has won the lottery of city driving by finding a legal parking spot centrally located and within walking distance of the girl’s dorm and their dinner reservation. 

When we arrive at the meet, I find a parking spot and the boy starts his warmup. He has shooed away the butterflies from his test-nervous stomach and welcomed them into the belly reserved for field events and concessions stand snacks. He then shoos me away for being a gadfly, flitting around in a frenzy offering water and sunscreen. 

To smooth over the rough edge of his teen admonition, he spreads a layer of concern, asking me to stand out of sight distance for my protection. Throwing sports can be a dangerous lot.

He finds it hard to throw if he sees me in the line of trajectory. 

Oddly, I find myself unable to watch. 

I see him enter the circle and take a stance away from the direction of the throw. I look at the ground as he swings counterclockwise and back three times before releasing the discus into the air. 

I look up as it flies out straight across

the field. 

His smile as he lopes out to retrieve it tells me he is happy no matter what the line official reads off the now-taught measuring tape. 

“83’.1 - and a new PR” 

He resists pumping his fist in the air but the smile stretches further across his face. 

Challenges accepted

 The weekend plans had been in the works for months. Six of my running friends and I had signed up for a spring half marathon featuring two challenging loops of NYC’s Central Park. 

It was an anticipated outing that had everything: a stellar event in the Big Apple, local accommodations, and ample time to masquerade as a "Lady Who Lunches."

It was not without its challenges.

I’m not going to lie. At first, this outing felt like a whim. It began as a text message excitedly posted to a group chat about the potential of a women-only racing weekend right when the trees’ most colorful fineries would be on showy display. Not only did the original poster offer up free accommodations at other people’s houses, proffering not only the hope of such generosity but also the cross-fingered belief that free, on-street parking would materialize with the same miraculousness, none of us thought there was anything wrong. 

So before anyone could say “WAIT! Shouldn’t we ask the homeowners before we volunteer their abodes?” all seven of us had circled the date on our calendars, paid our registration fees, and counted ourselves in.”

It had other challenges, too. And not the hidden downsides of such a beautiful race setting, like climbing hills and fighting pollen, and feeling queasy from fresh mounds of literal horseshit wafting over the other scents in the air, that of vanilla bakeries and ebbing cherry blossoms.

The biggest challenge for me was that I hadn’t consulted the calendar. 

Turns out the kid who made me a mom was coming home from college that weekend and she would only be around for a few days before she had to turn right back around to begin her summer classes.

I didn’t want to bail on the race - but I wanted to bail on the race.

So I asked my friends if I could invite my daughter to tag along for the weekend -- that is -- if I was able to convince the second-year co-ed to drop any plans for lounging around the house, catching up on sleep so she could hang with a gaggle of middle-aged women trying to outrun offers from the AARP.

Turns out a free trip to NYC is very attractive to a girl of her age, and hanging out with mature-minded women who enjoy sightseeing and restaurants and quietly noting celebrity sightings was a pleasurable alternative to doing her own laundry in my absence at home.

Any misgivings I might have had about foisting my newly adult daughter on my more mature friends melted away the moment I noticed she felt more comfortable with them socially than I ever did with her friends. 

As we toured the city, we touched on everything there is to delight and vex a person in conversation, creating hundreds if not thousands of chances to excite or enrage based on a generational divide. As we ran in circles, and she circled the runners waiting for us to finish, we realized we had some of the same thoughts, some of them ginning up outrage:

"Why were there so many men running a women’s only race?  Why did the announcers only seem to acknowledge the males of the species for cheering on their mothers and sisters and wives? Did they not see any of the women out there supporting other women?"

“I want to ask that man with the medal around his neck why he ran this race,” she asked without a hint of malice. “But I’m just going to assume he ran it in honor or someone he loved who couldn’t.”

A deafening quiet

 Why can’t we just say what we want?

What we really want. 

We all tend to think if we did, life would be better.

That’s not always the case. 

The truth doesn’t always make things better. 

Yet it should be ours to limit.

Why do we just smile and say “Of course, it’s ok,’ when everything inside us is screaming “THIS IS SO FAR FROM OK THAT THE LIGHT FROM OK WILL TAKE SIX MILLION YEARS TO REACH THE PLACE I AM NOW.”

That wide, tight smile doesn’t fool anyone.

Not talking about it is easier.

Of course, it’s OK … even if it makes us sad.

Life, as we all know, isn’t fair.

It’s barely just.

Are we trying to level our inherent awkwardness? The natural urge to smooth over all that presents the world as a sense of discomfort? To make the intolerable quiet and polite?

Why must we wallow in our worst thoughts?

The chip on our shoulder slowly erodes our range of mobility until we are stuck in one place.

It doesn’t need to be this way. We could just go with the flow.

Why fight against strong currents? They’ll just drown you where they wear you out.

Sometimes saying what we want or need opens possibilities. If done correctly, with thought at understanding, the simple voicing of desires can change trajectories for the better. And sometimes it can embolden the worst.

A shift in current doesn’t sway everyone. 

Of course, I can’t tell you how the stars align to produce either scenario, however, I feel luck must have something to do with it.

The daily news is nothing more than a case in point that luck may be a double-edged sword.

Those who bill themselves as wiser will helpfully explain that a lot of it comes from being prodigious in the art of choosing battles.

If I were someone else I might self-soothe with alcohol or more recently decriminalized mind-altering substances. But I have enough trouble with regular realities.

Like all the things in the news for the last half-decade that have done nothing to allay our worries. 

That states’ rights would supersede human rights.

That the highest court of the land – in the same week no less – would entertain the notions that some states won’t be required to preserve the health or life of women experiencing pregnancy-related emergencies – and that Presidents of the United States can’t do their jobs effectively if they aren’t immune from criminal prosecution. 

I must admit, I didn’t know there was a “Tunes In To Oral Arguments of The Supreme Court” years old, and that I started celebrating it two years ago without realizing it was a milestone.

What’s more, I didn’t realize I would find myself so incredulous about the decisions that seem opposed to the ideals of our democracy.

I have also reached the age that, while I disagree with arresting student protestors I hope that the law is still robust enough to ensure their day in court will absolve those who speak out with conviction no matter how disquieting.

I have to believe that the truth and good faith will prevail. 

Surprise, party of two

“Wanna go out?”

For a second I floundered. As I stood in the kitchen, gazing absently into a refrigerator packed to its edges with leftovers wavering within a wide range of decrepitude, I looked at the boy who spoke those three words with a dubious expression.  

That is not how the last teenager of the household usually answers when I ask him what he’d like to eat for dinner. 

“You want to go out?”

I had heard him right, evidently, but my mind still wasn’t processing the information.

Usually, he shrugs in silence, or mutters under his breath that he’ll find something to eat when (or if) he gets hungry. The idea of leaving the house for food holds no cache. Then, maybe around midnight, he’ll make his way to the stove to grill a few sandwiches, leaving a pile of dishes in the sink, a precariously wrapped block of cheese in the fridge, and the lingering aroma of bacon for me to handle. 

I can tell from the smell of the air … even hours later … that whatever it was he made was made to perfection.

Sometimes, I’m not going to lie, I mind. 

Especially when I’ve already emptied the dishwasher, stowed the cleaned plates and wiped down all evidence of residual cookery from the countertops before bed. He might have just said what it was he’d prefer to eat instead of creating a midnight garden of good and evil while I slept. 

I also tend to become annoyed by his indecisiveness, which, yes, I realize, he also gets from me.

He may act annoyed; an emotion I accept without hurt feelings, understanding that his preference for food has always seemed incredibly personal. A quirk of nature he probably, if I am to be honest with myself, has acquired not through habit or laziness, but just from swimming around in my gene pool.

Although no one usually has to ask me twice about leaving the cooking to someone else.  Someone who doesn’t need to feed the first through fourth pancakes to the dog. Someone like my son.

Sometimes he seems like an alien, and other times it’s like looking in a mirror and seeing myself with a three-day stubble of beard.

But not today.

Today, as the kid stood in the doorway twirling the looped end of his car’s keys – the unsaid yet unmistakable sign that he is willing to drive – I did not mind. I wasn’t even annoyed.

 And even though we kicked around ideas of types of food and restaurants that might be open on a Monday: Googling, passing names and tastes back and forth until we agreed on a place, I had to admit feeling a little excited.

He’s had his license a few scant weeks, and yet I find myself surprised that I don’t have to cajole him out of bed or hound him not to be late. He’s already gone by the time I knock on his door. 

As I had hoped, he met the new responsibility with a new maturity.

And he didn’t mind sharing a meal in public with his old mom.

Unlike other surprises – say a dozen or more friends and family hiding in our darkened living room, ready to jump out when I turn the lights on – this was the type of unexpected invitation that was so spur of the moment that I couldn’t possibly raise concerns or my blood pressure. 

He just had a hankering for shrimp tacos.

Looking up

It was mid-afternoon on an otherwise ordinary Monday for us “work-from-homers.” But for my son, who was lounging around the house in his PJs, it was an imaginary snow day, which in the first quarter of the 21st century, is just a way for schools to make a springtime withdrawal of banked time that, historically, had been allotted to winter folly when blizzards turned carting kids around into an unduly hazardous pursuit. 

It seemed kismet that on this day, celestial bodies had literally aligned to provide a special show all the same. 

My husband had set up chairs in the backyard and texted his son no fewer than 68 times since accidentally awakening the kid, drill-sergeant style, to get ready for his non-existent school day. 

“T minus 12 minutes until the start of the eclipse,” he heralded, on the never-ending loop of texts he sent to our phones as a kind of countdown.

“You don’t want to miss it!”

“There won’t be another one for like 27 years!”

… “Hey!” 

“Anyone?”

“*Grumble, grumble, all I ever get is the sound of crickets*!”

I would have responded but I was still scouring our house, looking in closets and through drawers for the pristine, cardboard light-filtering glasses I had saved from a college family weekend last fall. We didn’t heed the advice of the welcoming committee and set an alarm to “look up” between 10 and 10:35 on the second morning of our reunion - October 14. My mistake caused us to miss the annular eclipse entirely as well as the continental breakfast to commemorate the solar event.

Instead, I summoned my phone to text my son, and asked the boy to acknowledge his father’s request, knowing a response from a silent teenager would be a welcome blip on the flatlining radar. 

“Mom is looking for the creepy glasses she kept from the last 3D movie we saw when I was 8 … or something,” he jested. 

“Tell her to just Let it Go  … I have enough welding helmets for everyone. I don’t want any of us to miss this one!”

“Found them!

“... Trunk of the car, go figure!”

Oddly, I felt excitement by the time the three of us were gathered on the patio, slouching in the nylon chairs as our heads rested on the seat backs while we stared into the sun. 

The least of which correlated to what our filter-protected eyes could see: the moon slipping over the sun, slowly swallowing her up. 

Nor did the quieting of birds as the sky darkened rev my heart as much as the sudden realization that along with the … million people looking up at this very moment, the fourth member of our household was probably seeing the magic of the cosmos, too, even though she was hundreds of miles away.

I texted her a picture of the three of us in our get-up, and the best image of the eclipse I could manage without a similar filter for its mechanical eye. 

We were all there … 

The dad in his welding mask,

 The boy spun the glasses around his index finger like a set of car keys, with an expression that said:  “I came, I saw, and I wonder now how long I’m supposed to stay out here?”

And me … with my cardboard shades … smiling up at the sun.

…. 

“So that’s where those glasses went! I've been looking for them everywhere.”

Wish or command(ment)?

In his book, “Get Married,” Brad Wilcox, presents a stilted case for why “Americans must defy the elites, forge strong families and save civilization.

Waving cherry-picked data from recent surveys about a decreased interest in marriage and family, especially among younger women, Wilcox sounded the alarm.  

Citing a six-point difference in marriage interest between women and men who identify as single and childless, Wilcox places most of his emphasis on trying to establish that women are the problem. As if all they need to do is look at the data showing older married women answer the happiness surveys affirmatively. 

America, he heralds, will suffer if more women don’t heed their biological clocks.

Joining his chorus this week was NYT columnist, Nicholas Kristof. Citing Wilcox in his own call to arms for the institution because “it is worth fighting for marriage,” Kristof, it seems, is willing to go to the mattresses on his belief that married people are happier people. 

And as one woman after another tweeted to the contrary in their general direction, they “gently push back” with more unsubstantiated statistics. 

Why must everything be a fight?

The histrionics of happily married men, holding up graphs, telling women they are the problem, is nothing new. 

This is just a rehashing of conservative laments about the problems of increasing secularization in a society founded on religious freedom. 

But the only thing I can glean from this survey is that some men are willing to watch their kids on occasion, maybe coach a team here and there, and some women don’t want to risk their health and lives, and then have to manage all the other logistics while working similar hours or putting careers on hold.

Wilcox tends to spin the numbers showing there are 24 hours in a day and men and women work similar hours whether it be paid labor or domestic drudgery. 

As you look more closely at Wilcox’s insistence that married women are happiest, try to understand that none of these studies can prove the cause of that happiness is marriage without randomized pairings. And randomized pairings – despite sometimes being highlighted in reality shows like Married at First Sight – aren’t exactly a study ethical scientists would recommend. 

Removing the pro-marriage studies, social science still shows that men do better and are happier in marriage than women. Even if you think the division of labor is a petty reason it is a harbinger of other more insurmountable dissatisfaction.

And this “fight” that Mr. Kristof has recommended has me wondering, just who are we supposed to battle? Single people? Women? Will we enact laws that make it easier to marry? More difficult to divorce? Some combination of the two?

Abusive partners often use therapy to their advantage, weaponizing terminology to more effectively control their victims.

They also do the same with the courts.

So you might imagine what it looks like for women after these guys manage to jettison access to no-fault divorce. Claiming abuse for divorce will require an exemption from a court, the same way women find themselves pleading for abortion exemptions only to be rebuffed. 

 

The worst part is marriage isn’t heading for extinction. People will always be willing to enter them willingly and of their own accord and exit them for reasons that are truly none of Mr. Wilcox's or Mr. Kristof's concern.

But if recent history in politics offers any clue, what may be heading for extinction is a person’s ability to choose the direction of their lives and to change that path for themselves.

Fish or cut bait

As I listened to oral arguments in a case before the Supreme Court concerning Mifepristone, one of two drugs often used in combination, and commonly prescribed by doctors to facilitate abortion, I felt a mix of emotions:

Anger at the thought that denialist doctors and dentists had wormed their way onto the high court’s docket to pitch a case that could force all doctors to abandon evidence-based, and in some cases emergency, medical care to human beings they deemed to be unworthy of the standard of care all doctors take an oath to uphold.

Disbelief about what I was hearing from the counsel for the plaintiffs, who was trying to underscore the harm her clients could endure from merely the thought that they might one day, though some extreme circumstance wherein an anti-choice dentist might be the only medical professional available to treat sepsis in a pregnant woman, have to decide whether the patient had sought an abortion or it had happened spontaneously. 

And, finally, a minor amount of relief that at least some of the ideologues on the bench weren’t biting at the line they’d been cast. 

But even that feeling is fleeting. 

The regulars of this particular fishing trip signaled with their questions how these so-called doctors might one day better land a whopper. Specifically with an antiquated law that governs the mailing of medications. 

Isn’t it enough that guardrails for a doctor’s firmly held beliefs have already been erected?

How many women will die before we acknowledge that that live birth is as rare as pregnancy loss is common? 

Must we continue to endure the chipping away of healthcare autonomy with legal maneuvers bathed in bad faith? Must we suffer the most invasive procedures when the least invasive ones have been standard care for decades?

We must, evidently, because what they are saying the the court is that they do not want to provide the standard of care to anyone they believe is having complications from a pregnancy loss they don’t consider acceptable, or can’t confirm was not the result of human intervention.

As the plaintiff’s attorney dodged one question in particular, it seems her clients might fear complicity so much that they wouldn’t be willing to hand a bottle of water to a non-religious colleague, let alone perform standard procedures to clear the patient of non-fetal tissue for the prevention of infection or death.

Can we truly believe the harm to a practitioner’s soul would in any way match the harm done to the women they would discriminate against by denying emergency medical care? 

In so many of their claims, it seems ensuring that souls endure the most suffering as they experience this “right to life” is the central, though unstated, goal.

I do not believe the majority of us want the sea change in healthcare these fringe doctors are angling for. Nor would we accept such Sisyphean impediments to any other forms of life-saving treatment should our doctors decide the way we consumed food, drank alcohol, or didn’t belong to a church meant we weren’t deserving of righteous care.

And while I am certain these doctors will one day be startled to face a Creator who doesn’t share their belief that using “God-given” talents to deny life-saving care was what she intended, I don’t for an instant think this litigious minority should force the rest of us to turn the other cheek.

At least not when we still have a vote.

-- 

Siobhan Connally
writer, photographer, keeper 

Unexpected flash

 “Oops!” 

I had trained my camera on my husband. He had been lying in bed beside me, head propped up on a pillow while our black cat draped herself over his shoulder like a scarf. I hadn’t hidden the camera, but I had every intention of being furtive in this particular photographic pursuit for posterity.

The room was dark except for their faces, which were illuminated by the word puzzle he was playing on his phone.

The flash had given me away.

My husband laughed at my predicament more than his own.

I had intended to quietly record a different moment in our lives. 

Not just the one in which a sweet feline affectionately paws for his attention, but more pointedly that this serene moment is happening with wires and monitors taped to his face, torso, and index finger. 

Here we are finding a new-age way to fight the dying of the light. 

So many of our stories overlap. Husbands and wives, and parents and children. … That they do is not surprising. But what is often shocking to us is how our shared experiences often diverge.  

A month ago, when he was trying to schedule this sleep test, I was sitting in a waiting room waiting for someone to call my name so that I might be screened for new and more frightening diagnoses.

Instead, his doctor’s office called my phone looking to track down his preexisting conditions, leading me into a testy exchange in which I enquired as to why they had called me instead of him. 

They didn’t think they needed to let me know they were having trouble reaching him. They definitely didn’t think that they needed to remind me I was next of kin.

For better or worse, our stories are all jumbled together. 

For example, the time I took a three-year-old and a five-week-old (by myself) to Maine (while he worked) and the newborn spent four-and-a-half of the six-hour drive crying inconsolably. When I tell the story, I feel like its hero, having survived the arduous journey. But he only hears only that he is a zero for not even playing a minor role in such a major undertaking.

When he tells the one wherein I broke up my relationship with vegetarianism to feast on a foil-wrapped plate of airline chicken, I remind him that is essentially my story and his experience of it mocks me.

 

Not that I mind exactly. 

But he knows what I mean. 

Even these little vignettes can have so many perspectives it can be difficult to focus on the ones from other vantage points. 

Like the stories I tell out of earshot of my kids … the ones that recount cutesie quirks like toddler mispronunciations and silly dances. Youth offers its own richness of embarrassments, they don’t need me laughing about my memories to make them feel foolish. 

It seems like it should be a simple thing, knowing where a story will go … even when it seems straightforward. But it's not always so. Often it’s the unexpected flash that sheds light.