When you are outside enough, you will bring pieces of nature into your home. A leaf on a shelf, dried in autumn fragility. Five or five thousand redwood fronds in corners or stuck to a canine paw or ear like jewelry. Beach sand in bed linen.
Several months ago when playing piano, I became diaphoretic, nauseous, had palpitations and my face started tingling on one side. Certain it was not some transcendental reaction to my unpolished Bach, I was equally certain I was having a stroke. I laid down on the couch and touched my cheek, brushing away the craziest, neon yellow, black-spiky caterpillar. It had left a rash where it tread upon my face. I took it outside and wondered what it all means anyway.
When you enter the home or life of a sick, vulnerable human being, you will bring pieces of that vulnerability into your heart. Methamphetamines sit on a a counter near a plate of cookies. The cat crawls in through an open window. Someone cannot breath. Something is infected. However the epigenetic fallout of systematic racism makes the idea of going to the ER or hospital more terrifying than death.
You chart the winding paths of attempted healing. You know the right answer to every test question but they never taught you about slumlords or the pushers that deliver drugs to the hands of elders. Penicillin is magnificent. Unless the disease is grinding poverty, abysmal despair, multi-drug-resistant hopelessness. The tobacco is so thick that the carpet blows smoke rings with each step you take. You will have to change your clothes later.
You run so many miles on trails 6, 8, 13.5, thick with mud from the rain, the rain. Quick steps grip the curves made by mountain bikers, like the periphery of the Indy 500 track. Dancing, one foot on each rim, over that root, skipping that stone. Passing families with tired or curious children, and passing unwashed homeless men out on their various walks.
High tide pushes you away from the shore to the hilly dunes. Saw grass slices your ankles and calves. Your son cried about this once and you gave him a hard time about it and maybe that's why he is in prison. That thought like the sand collecting in your shoes and the ticks hitching a ride on the dog sticks to you and follows you into the next morning when you lay in the still dark, separating from sleep. In those dunes a burrowing owl runs by and you carry that with you too. It brings back your first date with your beloved, a long walk by a bay punctuated by little man-owls puffing their chests out, running you out of their neighborhood because you do not belong.
Cars crash, helicopters fall out of the sky, hearts break, people make it or they do not. You smell the destruction of Eucalyptus trees driving down the highway to work and wish it was scented this way always.
You sweep your floor today
Redwood needles wait at the door
To replace their binned brothers tomorrow.
All this falling apart, this disintegration of order, of what we need it to be, is not like JS Bach.
Bach JS like not is, be to it need we what of, order of disintegration this, apart falling this All.
My parents had a coffee mug that said "May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead." Even at age 6 I thought that was one fucked up Irish blessing.
Being part Irish myself, I propose this:
For those in pain, may you feel loved.
May our homes be open to the dubious gifts of nature.
May our hearts hold space for kindness in this mean and meaningful world.
And may the disorder turn upside down and all around like the most clever Bach fugue of all.
Monday, January 27, 2020
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Dark
I like my coffee dark. Hip baristas have tried to school me over the years about the inverse ratio of caffeine level (lighter more, darker less), but I just smile and stick to the dark. In a seasonally affective sense, dark is distressing, though I am realizing this may be a line I have bought from my own mind about the way things are. Rape is less of a concern than it was, a perk of aging I suppose, though the younger woman inside still runs the show, so we never find ourselves between parked cars and bushes on a dark sidewalk. My mother -in-law once asked me why runners run in the street in the dark and I answered, its the rapists.
Dark O'Clock is the best time to rise out of bed, once having completed the screaming argument in your mind with the more sensible half of your being. Early morning hours are less busy on call, for some reason, than late night hours, and the dark makes being up, the only one up, not even the dog is up (!), a clandestine act. Woods in the dark can be navigated by head lamp and dog with a flashing light on collar. If the dark is also foggy, headlamps are less helpful but the effect is like falling into a Sherlock Holmes novel, if he wrote about the dark, misty redwood forest instead of the Baskerville moors.
What scares me most in the dark is the automobiles, and when I ride my bike home from work with lights blooming out of every part of my bodily person, even then the cars act like I am the devil itself. How dare I ride my bike in the bike lane fully lighted in reflective clothing while signaling every turn after a hard day at work when it is dark and they just want to get home while playing that game of "how many points do you get for scaring the shit out of a tired doctor on a bicycle." Or how many points for a runner who is in the middle of the cross walk and fully lit, in the luminary sense people, because in the dark a zooming right hook turn into a crosswalk is fully acceptable maybe because no one can see you, sort of like when a toddler closes their eyes and the world that baffles them so disappears conveniently and truly.
When it is dark it is hard to maintain a fast pace for fear of tripping on some small crack in the sidewalk, some stone in the trail, and it forces you to slow down which is at once frustrating and pleasant. Training headlamp at sidewalk or trail, darkness is somewhat defeated but it will always prevail against the non-nocturnal human eyeball. I wonder if being blind is like running in the dark or if being blind is not so much darkness as much as a whole new way to see the world.
Any dog in the dark looks like the cast of a Stephen King novel. Seen in the distance, they are only eyes, two embers bouncing up and down, and dark calculations of the mind take place, to determine if the unknown factor ahead is a raccoon or a lion or a labrador retriever. The time I surprised a raccoon and it surprised me on Old Arcata Road we both jumped in tandem and that was the one and only time I danced in the dark with a member of genus Procyon.
In the power outages, at least five of my patients fell in the dark. Pacific Gas & Electric thought they were saving people but we forget our vulnerability as creatures of the light, quite at mercy to the unflouresced night trip to the commode or refrigerator, stray shoes or cords on the floor melting into the darkness so they can grab our feet and fling us onto our face, forcing us to kiss the very earth while we fumble for the lifeline which we probably left hanging on the kitchen chair instead of wearing because who wants to wear a lifeline to bed.
And as we approach the shortest day of the year, which always confused me as a child because are not all days 24 hours?, we hunger for the day after that when the bookends of darkness start to slowly inch apart thus leaving more room to add our daytime stories to the collection. My child in prison sits in a dark cell day and night because society has decided prisoners do not deserve windows or vitamin D. Vitamin D requires the sun to make its chemical appearance, like a magic trick of science,it is and the supplement makers of the world are so grateful for the dark so they can charge us all millions of dollars to buy our sunshine vitamin in a plastic bottle which will later clog the ocean and lead us all into the darkness of an inhabitable planet, though first it will choke a sea turtle or dolphin, and at least we have stronger bones and happier affects in the process.
I do not like it when I am running the bay trail in the dark, the one by the highway, and some guy on a bike with an unleashed dog comes slowly toward me and I have three options: keep my cool and put those keys between my 2nd and 3rd finger to jab him if needed, dive into the icy bay, or dive onto highway 101 into the traffic parade of cranky drivers. Thus far, the dark trail riders and their dogs have posed no real threat, so maybe the real problem is the dark recesses of my mind where all the lore about a woman alone at night sits to remind me of my lack of power. Why should the spin of the planet so spin our psyches, why should dark and light be the binary of boogey men and beauty, why should we not rejoice in the stars and the quiet that night brings? It is this or that, them and us, good and bad, dark and light, he and she thinking that makes us all feel we have a grip on reality. Not all light in the electromagnetic spectrum is visible to the human eye, so maybe the darkness is light. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second and the bulk of the light in our universe is invisible to us, so we call it dark.
Like dark coffee, it holds secrets that we cannot fathom, pearls that were our father's eyes, rich and strange, and it is a place where we can plagiarize tales and poetry to the glow of our own souls, scared and thrilled and serene and often asleep where we dream of the next voyage and the voyages of the day before.
Dark O'Clock is the best time to rise out of bed, once having completed the screaming argument in your mind with the more sensible half of your being. Early morning hours are less busy on call, for some reason, than late night hours, and the dark makes being up, the only one up, not even the dog is up (!), a clandestine act. Woods in the dark can be navigated by head lamp and dog with a flashing light on collar. If the dark is also foggy, headlamps are less helpful but the effect is like falling into a Sherlock Holmes novel, if he wrote about the dark, misty redwood forest instead of the Baskerville moors.
What scares me most in the dark is the automobiles, and when I ride my bike home from work with lights blooming out of every part of my bodily person, even then the cars act like I am the devil itself. How dare I ride my bike in the bike lane fully lighted in reflective clothing while signaling every turn after a hard day at work when it is dark and they just want to get home while playing that game of "how many points do you get for scaring the shit out of a tired doctor on a bicycle." Or how many points for a runner who is in the middle of the cross walk and fully lit, in the luminary sense people, because in the dark a zooming right hook turn into a crosswalk is fully acceptable maybe because no one can see you, sort of like when a toddler closes their eyes and the world that baffles them so disappears conveniently and truly.
When it is dark it is hard to maintain a fast pace for fear of tripping on some small crack in the sidewalk, some stone in the trail, and it forces you to slow down which is at once frustrating and pleasant. Training headlamp at sidewalk or trail, darkness is somewhat defeated but it will always prevail against the non-nocturnal human eyeball. I wonder if being blind is like running in the dark or if being blind is not so much darkness as much as a whole new way to see the world.
Any dog in the dark looks like the cast of a Stephen King novel. Seen in the distance, they are only eyes, two embers bouncing up and down, and dark calculations of the mind take place, to determine if the unknown factor ahead is a raccoon or a lion or a labrador retriever. The time I surprised a raccoon and it surprised me on Old Arcata Road we both jumped in tandem and that was the one and only time I danced in the dark with a member of genus Procyon.
In the power outages, at least five of my patients fell in the dark. Pacific Gas & Electric thought they were saving people but we forget our vulnerability as creatures of the light, quite at mercy to the unflouresced night trip to the commode or refrigerator, stray shoes or cords on the floor melting into the darkness so they can grab our feet and fling us onto our face, forcing us to kiss the very earth while we fumble for the lifeline which we probably left hanging on the kitchen chair instead of wearing because who wants to wear a lifeline to bed.
And as we approach the shortest day of the year, which always confused me as a child because are not all days 24 hours?, we hunger for the day after that when the bookends of darkness start to slowly inch apart thus leaving more room to add our daytime stories to the collection. My child in prison sits in a dark cell day and night because society has decided prisoners do not deserve windows or vitamin D. Vitamin D requires the sun to make its chemical appearance, like a magic trick of science,it is and the supplement makers of the world are so grateful for the dark so they can charge us all millions of dollars to buy our sunshine vitamin in a plastic bottle which will later clog the ocean and lead us all into the darkness of an inhabitable planet, though first it will choke a sea turtle or dolphin, and at least we have stronger bones and happier affects in the process.
I do not like it when I am running the bay trail in the dark, the one by the highway, and some guy on a bike with an unleashed dog comes slowly toward me and I have three options: keep my cool and put those keys between my 2nd and 3rd finger to jab him if needed, dive into the icy bay, or dive onto highway 101 into the traffic parade of cranky drivers. Thus far, the dark trail riders and their dogs have posed no real threat, so maybe the real problem is the dark recesses of my mind where all the lore about a woman alone at night sits to remind me of my lack of power. Why should the spin of the planet so spin our psyches, why should dark and light be the binary of boogey men and beauty, why should we not rejoice in the stars and the quiet that night brings? It is this or that, them and us, good and bad, dark and light, he and she thinking that makes us all feel we have a grip on reality. Not all light in the electromagnetic spectrum is visible to the human eye, so maybe the darkness is light. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second and the bulk of the light in our universe is invisible to us, so we call it dark.
Like dark coffee, it holds secrets that we cannot fathom, pearls that were our father's eyes, rich and strange, and it is a place where we can plagiarize tales and poetry to the glow of our own souls, scared and thrilled and serene and often asleep where we dream of the next voyage and the voyages of the day before.
Monday, November 4, 2019
Because I Am Alive and Filled with Longing
Western Wisconsin, October 2019
Marathon records have been smashed. Fast shoes, bodies less than 7 stones in weight. Flying through cities at a rate beyond what most achieve on one lap around a track during interval workouts.
Meanwhile, running through the trees, I begin to see the forest. It also smells of fall and the sound of deer dashing through the brush draws my eye for a moment away from monitoring the floor for rocks and roots. Turns out trail runners can trouble wildlife. Nature is good for humans but we are not so good for nature. Though I argue we are animals too, and have found ourselves out of our natural habitat and boxed away, butt cheeks spread on office chairs, having to protect our garbage from neighborhood bears. Telling someone you ran 31 miles in the woods draws concerned stares.
Music conducts through my skull, bypassing my ear drums, thus allowing me to tend to my surroundings. Bone conduction headphones threaten the purity of my soul, or so says the man who stopped me recently on a run on a Wisconsin trail. "Snark, snark!" said he. Then proceeded to sermonize on the righteousness of His Way of Running Trails. "Thanks for the advice, mansplainer" said I, then with middle finger aloft left his pasty midwest ass in my dust.
I did not actually employ the middle finger except in my mind. I did run on this astounding trail in southern Washington, and as I climbed into more remote territory, the little hairs on back of neck rose to remind me of bears not appreciating sudden appearances by interloper nature crashers. So I turned off my headphones and blasted my music outright into the air, serenading bear with The Clash and Lizzo and some Bach as well. I turned my head left and beheld Mount Saint Helens, nearly falling over the cliff so surprised by the perfection of the moment, and with a sound track to boot.
Southern Washington, October 2019
No bears were hurt in this process but when I descended back to humanity I got a sour look from a hiker about my music, from the pocket of my tights "should I stay or should I go", and is not this the multimillion dollar question? Adjusting my music back to the private world of bone conduction, I smiled at her and continued on my way.
First ultra done, grand master champion for women, I now see myself in Chamonix, doing the UMTB, for the bluffs of Wisconsin are surely proof I am destined to be...
Truth is I loved that 50 kilometer trail run, despite the three near launches into the air, toe catching on a rock or root, surely disturbing deer and foxes with my desperate yelp and flailing arms, but no harm done and I loved that 50 kilometer trail run, despite the prolonged bout of diarrhea at mile 20, pulling over Shalane Flanagan style, though as with her running she is an elite bathroom user as well, and her time of 13.86 seconds was a fraction of my time gazing at the blue walled porta-potty which was mercifully sitting there right when I needed it most.
Truth is I loved how after I had to walk and recover from my nausea and gut twisting existential crisis, the amazing volunteers sitting there trailside with a table of snacks pointed out the flat ginger ale and that was exactly what I needed most in life and it gave me my second wind and I came across that finish line and got a special mug for being a champion.
Truth is I came back to Wisconsin to run but what was most precious was the multiple connections I made with friends from childhood who gave me the gift of their presence and did not even roll their eyes once at how I chose to celebrate turning 50, in my home town, with a long run, with old friends, with two separate servings of deep-fried cheese curds, with a drive through the old neighborhood, with family time, with deep gratitude.
Home is back here in California. I brought back a turkey feather I found in the arboretum in Madison. I brought back the views of the Mississippi from atop Grandad's bluff. I brought back the smell of autumn and the multicolored trees which I believe is God's tip of Her hat to gay pride. I brought back the question of what is next.
I think it will be this 50 miler. Because I am alive and filled with longing.
Meanwhile, running through the trees, I begin to see the forest. It also smells of fall and the sound of deer dashing through the brush draws my eye for a moment away from monitoring the floor for rocks and roots. Turns out trail runners can trouble wildlife. Nature is good for humans but we are not so good for nature. Though I argue we are animals too, and have found ourselves out of our natural habitat and boxed away, butt cheeks spread on office chairs, having to protect our garbage from neighborhood bears. Telling someone you ran 31 miles in the woods draws concerned stares.
Music conducts through my skull, bypassing my ear drums, thus allowing me to tend to my surroundings. Bone conduction headphones threaten the purity of my soul, or so says the man who stopped me recently on a run on a Wisconsin trail. "Snark, snark!" said he. Then proceeded to sermonize on the righteousness of His Way of Running Trails. "Thanks for the advice, mansplainer" said I, then with middle finger aloft left his pasty midwest ass in my dust.
I did not actually employ the middle finger except in my mind. I did run on this astounding trail in southern Washington, and as I climbed into more remote territory, the little hairs on back of neck rose to remind me of bears not appreciating sudden appearances by interloper nature crashers. So I turned off my headphones and blasted my music outright into the air, serenading bear with The Clash and Lizzo and some Bach as well. I turned my head left and beheld Mount Saint Helens, nearly falling over the cliff so surprised by the perfection of the moment, and with a sound track to boot.
No bears were hurt in this process but when I descended back to humanity I got a sour look from a hiker about my music, from the pocket of my tights "should I stay or should I go", and is not this the multimillion dollar question? Adjusting my music back to the private world of bone conduction, I smiled at her and continued on my way.
First ultra done, grand master champion for women, I now see myself in Chamonix, doing the UMTB, for the bluffs of Wisconsin are surely proof I am destined to be...
Truth is I loved that 50 kilometer trail run, despite the three near launches into the air, toe catching on a rock or root, surely disturbing deer and foxes with my desperate yelp and flailing arms, but no harm done and I loved that 50 kilometer trail run, despite the prolonged bout of diarrhea at mile 20, pulling over Shalane Flanagan style, though as with her running she is an elite bathroom user as well, and her time of 13.86 seconds was a fraction of my time gazing at the blue walled porta-potty which was mercifully sitting there right when I needed it most.
Truth is I loved how after I had to walk and recover from my nausea and gut twisting existential crisis, the amazing volunteers sitting there trailside with a table of snacks pointed out the flat ginger ale and that was exactly what I needed most in life and it gave me my second wind and I came across that finish line and got a special mug for being a champion.
Truth is I came back to Wisconsin to run but what was most precious was the multiple connections I made with friends from childhood who gave me the gift of their presence and did not even roll their eyes once at how I chose to celebrate turning 50, in my home town, with a long run, with old friends, with two separate servings of deep-fried cheese curds, with a drive through the old neighborhood, with family time, with deep gratitude.
Home is back here in California. I brought back a turkey feather I found in the arboretum in Madison. I brought back the views of the Mississippi from atop Grandad's bluff. I brought back the smell of autumn and the multicolored trees which I believe is God's tip of Her hat to gay pride. I brought back the question of what is next.
I think it will be this 50 miler. Because I am alive and filled with longing.
Sunday, October 13, 2019
Obituary of a Trail Runner
She ran a lot. Once an Eastern European cardiologist pulled her aside in the hospital corridor and asked in a low, Slavic tone “what are you running from?” It was on a run that she died when a mountain lion made a stealth attack. She stopped him with a whack to the nose but it was too late.
A big gash in her side bled rivers on the trail, further reddening the redwood fronds.
She was always on call so had her phone tucked in the thigh pocket of her glow-in-the dark Oiselle tights. Laying there alone, she grasped the phone and gasped “hey Siri, call 911”. To which Siri replied she could but didn’t think it worthwhile at this point but would she like to know which local funeral parlors ranked most highly on Yelp?
Her dog wanted to help but being a poodle only knew how to look good and burp in French. He curled up next to his bleeding running companion and laid his heavy head on her side that was still intact.
The guy with the yak walked by, averting his gaze, suspecting a trap. Despite her pleas he went on, leaving only a Patchouli dust cloud, not unlike Pigpen of Peanuts fame.
Her dog normally would’ve wanted to eat the yak but sensed his place was at her side. Her dog never lied about anything and preferred the beach or watching television to food. He would stay there forever, with her in the woods.
She never understood math as well as she would’ve liked. She enjoyed long bike rides but feared having a flat in the middle of nowhere and being too inept to fix it. She often joked around with her patients. She thrived on diagnostic puzzles. She did the New York Times Crossword each and every day.
As she breathed her last, the past flashed in the manner of a View Master from her 1970’s childhood, a frame with each pull of the lever. The time she first said goodbye to her Dad at age 5 in the cardiac care unit. Click. Her mother’s fingernails caressing her scalp. Click. First kiss under the viaduct. Click. Learning the names of the notes on the spinet piano in the church basement. Click. Making love, having children. Click. Pronouncing someone dead for the first time.
Who would pronounce her dead? Would yak guy come around again and shake his dreadlocked head then break his creepy silence to declare her demise to the world at large? She closed her eyes and hoped that would not be the case. She imagined being left to slowly decompose and some sunny afternoon a hiker finding her and dog in skeletal repose.
When she expired, her Apple Music Family Membership persisted. She had two unused credits on Audible.com. Her paycheck would be automatically deposited, with the unworked days paid as “other”, no category on the drop-down list on her Excel time card to precisely explain being bitten to death by a catamount.
She was married to her best friend. Her only regret as the air grew thin being never seeing him again.
She liked to practice piano in the dark pre-dawn hours. Her running preference in order:
1) Mad River Beach
2) The Community Forest
3) The Marsh.
She wanted to run ultramarathons, work less, and spend more time with her children. She never really liked talking on the phone.
Her death was not tragic and her life was complete. In lieu of flowers, show kindness to everyone, even the assholes. Send donations to Planned Parenthood in honor of the NRA. In lieu of a memorial, run on a trail you’ve never set foot on before and notice everything. If you must have a memorial, remember-no harps.
She died doing exactly what she loved. Her final request: don’t shoot the puma, who only wanted a taste of her trail-running bliss.
A big gash in her side bled rivers on the trail, further reddening the redwood fronds.
She was always on call so had her phone tucked in the thigh pocket of her glow-in-the dark Oiselle tights. Laying there alone, she grasped the phone and gasped “hey Siri, call 911”. To which Siri replied she could but didn’t think it worthwhile at this point but would she like to know which local funeral parlors ranked most highly on Yelp?
Her dog wanted to help but being a poodle only knew how to look good and burp in French. He curled up next to his bleeding running companion and laid his heavy head on her side that was still intact.
The guy with the yak walked by, averting his gaze, suspecting a trap. Despite her pleas he went on, leaving only a Patchouli dust cloud, not unlike Pigpen of Peanuts fame.
Her dog normally would’ve wanted to eat the yak but sensed his place was at her side. Her dog never lied about anything and preferred the beach or watching television to food. He would stay there forever, with her in the woods.
She never understood math as well as she would’ve liked. She enjoyed long bike rides but feared having a flat in the middle of nowhere and being too inept to fix it. She often joked around with her patients. She thrived on diagnostic puzzles. She did the New York Times Crossword each and every day.
As she breathed her last, the past flashed in the manner of a View Master from her 1970’s childhood, a frame with each pull of the lever. The time she first said goodbye to her Dad at age 5 in the cardiac care unit. Click. Her mother’s fingernails caressing her scalp. Click. First kiss under the viaduct. Click. Learning the names of the notes on the spinet piano in the church basement. Click. Making love, having children. Click. Pronouncing someone dead for the first time.
Who would pronounce her dead? Would yak guy come around again and shake his dreadlocked head then break his creepy silence to declare her demise to the world at large? She closed her eyes and hoped that would not be the case. She imagined being left to slowly decompose and some sunny afternoon a hiker finding her and dog in skeletal repose.
When she expired, her Apple Music Family Membership persisted. She had two unused credits on Audible.com. Her paycheck would be automatically deposited, with the unworked days paid as “other”, no category on the drop-down list on her Excel time card to precisely explain being bitten to death by a catamount.
She was married to her best friend. Her only regret as the air grew thin being never seeing him again.
She liked to practice piano in the dark pre-dawn hours. Her running preference in order:
1) Mad River Beach
2) The Community Forest
3) The Marsh.
She wanted to run ultramarathons, work less, and spend more time with her children. She never really liked talking on the phone.
Her death was not tragic and her life was complete. In lieu of flowers, show kindness to everyone, even the assholes. Send donations to Planned Parenthood in honor of the NRA. In lieu of a memorial, run on a trail you’ve never set foot on before and notice everything. If you must have a memorial, remember-no harps.
She died doing exactly what she loved. Her final request: don’t shoot the puma, who only wanted a taste of her trail-running bliss.
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Oz
I ran at the beach yesterday morning, after waking up to being newly fifty years old, then sending my youngest child off to college. Dog in back seat of beach-mobile fully agreed with beach running plan and added layers of poodle snot to the windows. The fog was so thick when we arrived, we could just barely make out the waves. Well I could just barely make out the waves. Dog was so happy I think he tried to make out with the waves.
We ran north and about a mile in crossed a line in the sand and we were transported from Kansas to Oz. Stage left, a fog bow spanning the grey to the blue and touching the water in each world. Center stage along the shell-strewn road, a clarity that can only be had when one leaves the fog behind.
The sand was that perfect mix of soft and packed, making my Hokas feel like flubber and my dog spring around like a bunny rabbit out of hell. One great blue heron we see there sometimes (I assume it is the same one but we've never actually formally met, so...) gave us side-eye disdain. "That effin' poodle again" he/she said. Not knowing that Dog really just wants to cuddle. Or make heron soup. One of those.
Sir Strava was not invited to this party, nor has he been for awhile. Not that he did anything wrong. Though he is a pretty bossy jerk. We just needed some time apart, some space to sort out our relationship.
I might need that guy again right now. For one thing, I miss my Strava peeps. For another thing, I signed up for a 50 Kilometer trail race in October and I do sometimes wonder if I am REALLY putting in enough miles. Sure 3-4 hours running in the woods SEEMS like plenty. But what if I am actually running 1 mile per hour? Tomorrow is my 5 hour run day, and I am going to sweet talk Strava, the asshole, and ask him if he will go along.
After sending my youngest child off to college yesterday, and before climbing into beach-mobile with my maniac Dog, I sat in my very quiet house. It echoed with kid laughter and teenage snark. Before child left, I received two unsolicited, sincere hugs and my heart liquified into a sloppy mess on the kitchen floor and I keeled over and died happy. I then reincarnated as a fifty year old with an empty nest.
Later, I sat on a piano bench next to a world class pianist and played music in front of people. I mused as we musicked that at age 25 I never would've pictured myself here at age 50, sitting next to Daniela Mineva playing dances by Barber and Piazzolla. Come to think of it, I do not suppose at age 25 I could picture myself as 50, doing anything, anywhere.
Question: why does AARP kick in at age 50?
The other band (I like to think of myself as a "band") that played the concert last night ended up with a sing-along of "This Little Light of Mine". It was weird and goofy and I about cried as this is one of the songs I sang all three of my children at bedtime. No matter what else one does in this life, it always comes back to being tucked in at night or tucking in those you love. Herein lies the foundation on which love is built. Also, chocolate chip cookies, family car trips and all the extra call taken by a certain mother in order to pay for college for certain children.
Dog and I did eventually return to Kansas but I could not shake the Oz off my birth day. It was like I took a trip somewhere brilliant and came back changed. It would have seemed like a dream but there was all this magic sand packed into the tight curls of Dog, a gift of fairy dust from the Good Witch of the West Coast. Fog is temporary but magic beach sand will be found in one's bed for weeks to come.
I also put some of the bright light in my pocket and it is right there for me, illuminating whatever might come next.
We ran north and about a mile in crossed a line in the sand and we were transported from Kansas to Oz. Stage left, a fog bow spanning the grey to the blue and touching the water in each world. Center stage along the shell-strewn road, a clarity that can only be had when one leaves the fog behind.
The sand was that perfect mix of soft and packed, making my Hokas feel like flubber and my dog spring around like a bunny rabbit out of hell. One great blue heron we see there sometimes (I assume it is the same one but we've never actually formally met, so...) gave us side-eye disdain. "That effin' poodle again" he/she said. Not knowing that Dog really just wants to cuddle. Or make heron soup. One of those.
Sir Strava was not invited to this party, nor has he been for awhile. Not that he did anything wrong. Though he is a pretty bossy jerk. We just needed some time apart, some space to sort out our relationship.
I might need that guy again right now. For one thing, I miss my Strava peeps. For another thing, I signed up for a 50 Kilometer trail race in October and I do sometimes wonder if I am REALLY putting in enough miles. Sure 3-4 hours running in the woods SEEMS like plenty. But what if I am actually running 1 mile per hour? Tomorrow is my 5 hour run day, and I am going to sweet talk Strava, the asshole, and ask him if he will go along.
After sending my youngest child off to college yesterday, and before climbing into beach-mobile with my maniac Dog, I sat in my very quiet house. It echoed with kid laughter and teenage snark. Before child left, I received two unsolicited, sincere hugs and my heart liquified into a sloppy mess on the kitchen floor and I keeled over and died happy. I then reincarnated as a fifty year old with an empty nest.
Later, I sat on a piano bench next to a world class pianist and played music in front of people. I mused as we musicked that at age 25 I never would've pictured myself here at age 50, sitting next to Daniela Mineva playing dances by Barber and Piazzolla. Come to think of it, I do not suppose at age 25 I could picture myself as 50, doing anything, anywhere.
Question: why does AARP kick in at age 50?
The other band (I like to think of myself as a "band") that played the concert last night ended up with a sing-along of "This Little Light of Mine". It was weird and goofy and I about cried as this is one of the songs I sang all three of my children at bedtime. No matter what else one does in this life, it always comes back to being tucked in at night or tucking in those you love. Herein lies the foundation on which love is built. Also, chocolate chip cookies, family car trips and all the extra call taken by a certain mother in order to pay for college for certain children.
Dog and I did eventually return to Kansas but I could not shake the Oz off my birth day. It was like I took a trip somewhere brilliant and came back changed. It would have seemed like a dream but there was all this magic sand packed into the tight curls of Dog, a gift of fairy dust from the Good Witch of the West Coast. Fog is temporary but magic beach sand will be found in one's bed for weeks to come.
I also put some of the bright light in my pocket and it is right there for me, illuminating whatever might come next.
Monday, August 12, 2019
Mother Ode
The 17th generation of hummingbirds that nested in the redwood trees outside our sunroom window moved away. More accurately, they were forcibly relocated, by the felling of redwood trees blocking the neighbor's sun. The ache I feel when standing at the window with my coffee in hand is not unlike the ache I feel with every other loss. Though reliable in its lack of mercy, impermanence still baffles me. Each breath we draw from birth on forward teaches us that nothing lasts but not how to cope with that hard piece of fact. The bewildered hummer moms hung around for a day or two, then most likely rebuilt their nest elsewhere. The sugar water altar they prayed at for seventeen years now stands abandoned, like a chapel in a war-ravaged town. When I cleaned up the tree debris, a salamander scuttled away. I planted a rhododendron and went on with my life.
23 years ago this week my mother died. I have been telling her some things in my mind that I should have thought to say before she was ashes scattered, earless and presumably in a Better Place. Gratitude for being there for me, and for letting me spread my wings. Apologies for my lack of interest in her as a fully formed human in her own right. I am now in that position of being less than visible, as all Moms are throughout time and will be. When my nest empties, I wonder if I will disappear altogether.
"If I could do it over" is a recurring phrase that makes that ache, like how I feel when I look out where the hummingbirds always were. I can no more do parenting over than I can reverse the redwood stumps back into towering giants. It is true there is more sun now that those trees are gone. Loss brings a certain clarity, a light trained on imperfections and sins. Loss is like an interrogator who has you tied to a chair, terrified and trying to decide what you can admit to and what you must keep locked inside no matter what blows fall.
When I sit next to people with dementia, they often talk about their mothers as if they were still around, and coming by in a bit to "take them home". This limbic link to the woman who was once dispensable and considered an irritant is neuro-ironic. Even the damaged brain has saved some space for her, in the back closet, behind the dust pan and broom. Its possible I too will receive limbic visits to my Broom Closet Better Place someday from some grown child who just wants to tell me this or that. Or who has forgotten everything else but me and is waiting for me to come pick them up and take them home.
A story about a mother frustrated:
One day our hen seemed sick. She sat so motionless I thought she had died. Then she stirred and moaned and did that world-weary cry that only hens can do. We thought perhaps her egg was bound. We brought her in, fascinating the dogs. We placed her on an oven rack over gently steamed water, a towel wrapped around her. She clucked and looked at us like we were idiot farmers. Smart hen. Then I tried a lubricated finger in the cloaca to turn or dislodge the egg, my dusty obstetric skills asserting themselves. Her cluck became more of a what the f:#%? No egg. Back to the coop. We finally called a wiser hen-keeper who said, why she is just brooding! She wants her egg to become a chick. She does this regularly now, the only one in the brood to be such a broody brooder. Maybe someday I will slide a chick under her, all warm and real and fuzzy feathered.
When my nest empties, perhaps instead of disappearing altogether, I will become solid once again. My brooding might turn to staring at the back of my hand which now looks exactly like my mother's hands which used to freak me out with their veins and age spots. They will try to tell me the story of me, little hands that once climbed trees and were enamored with the piano at the age of three. Bigger hands that practiced piano for hours then decided to hold a scalpel in gross anatomy instead. Hands that felt the swell of my pregnancy. That held the hand of my husband. That rested on the top of the heads of my three children in turn. That extracted splinters expertly. That played catch and held every Harry Potter book, each heavier than the last, for night time reading-out-loud sessions. That flew to my mouth when I heard terrible news. That gripped the dashboard while teaching the mysteries of driving a stick in the parking lot of St Mary's School. That touches the back of my teenager just to have some contact before they roll their eyes and walk away. That write things down and paint a house and palpate joints and abdomens to diagnose. That make me feel I have everything in hand.
A mother in the hand is worth two in the bush.
I do miss my mother's hands.
23 years ago this week my mother died. I have been telling her some things in my mind that I should have thought to say before she was ashes scattered, earless and presumably in a Better Place. Gratitude for being there for me, and for letting me spread my wings. Apologies for my lack of interest in her as a fully formed human in her own right. I am now in that position of being less than visible, as all Moms are throughout time and will be. When my nest empties, I wonder if I will disappear altogether.
"If I could do it over" is a recurring phrase that makes that ache, like how I feel when I look out where the hummingbirds always were. I can no more do parenting over than I can reverse the redwood stumps back into towering giants. It is true there is more sun now that those trees are gone. Loss brings a certain clarity, a light trained on imperfections and sins. Loss is like an interrogator who has you tied to a chair, terrified and trying to decide what you can admit to and what you must keep locked inside no matter what blows fall.
When I sit next to people with dementia, they often talk about their mothers as if they were still around, and coming by in a bit to "take them home". This limbic link to the woman who was once dispensable and considered an irritant is neuro-ironic. Even the damaged brain has saved some space for her, in the back closet, behind the dust pan and broom. Its possible I too will receive limbic visits to my Broom Closet Better Place someday from some grown child who just wants to tell me this or that. Or who has forgotten everything else but me and is waiting for me to come pick them up and take them home.
A story about a mother frustrated:
One day our hen seemed sick. She sat so motionless I thought she had died. Then she stirred and moaned and did that world-weary cry that only hens can do. We thought perhaps her egg was bound. We brought her in, fascinating the dogs. We placed her on an oven rack over gently steamed water, a towel wrapped around her. She clucked and looked at us like we were idiot farmers. Smart hen. Then I tried a lubricated finger in the cloaca to turn or dislodge the egg, my dusty obstetric skills asserting themselves. Her cluck became more of a what the f:#%? No egg. Back to the coop. We finally called a wiser hen-keeper who said, why she is just brooding! She wants her egg to become a chick. She does this regularly now, the only one in the brood to be such a broody brooder. Maybe someday I will slide a chick under her, all warm and real and fuzzy feathered.
When my nest empties, perhaps instead of disappearing altogether, I will become solid once again. My brooding might turn to staring at the back of my hand which now looks exactly like my mother's hands which used to freak me out with their veins and age spots. They will try to tell me the story of me, little hands that once climbed trees and were enamored with the piano at the age of three. Bigger hands that practiced piano for hours then decided to hold a scalpel in gross anatomy instead. Hands that felt the swell of my pregnancy. That held the hand of my husband. That rested on the top of the heads of my three children in turn. That extracted splinters expertly. That played catch and held every Harry Potter book, each heavier than the last, for night time reading-out-loud sessions. That flew to my mouth when I heard terrible news. That gripped the dashboard while teaching the mysteries of driving a stick in the parking lot of St Mary's School. That touches the back of my teenager just to have some contact before they roll their eyes and walk away. That write things down and paint a house and palpate joints and abdomens to diagnose. That make me feel I have everything in hand.
A mother in the hand is worth two in the bush.
I do miss my mother's hands.
Monday, July 15, 2019
Summer Communion
I was thinking of being six years old and a member of a two person club, the California Condors. The name was everything we needed, based on a semi-mythical and nearly extinct bird with a wingspan longer by three feet than that of the best NBA players. And California conjured exotic landscapes, far from the rolling hills of Western Wisconsin and Eastern Minnesota, rising up and watching over each side of the Mississippi River.
I swam in the Mississippi and would dare myself to open eyes under water, though mostly finding a silty darkness looking back at me. Once, briefly, I shared my inner tube on a tributary, the Black River, with a long water snake. I caught it on my shin, legs bent over the tube, butt hanging in the holy center, and kicked it in the air, watching it arc and splash down river while I screamed and it did whatever the equivalent snake sound of horror might be.
Hot summer evenings, at dusk, in those, the days of laCrosse Encephalitis, brought the mosquito spraying truck through our neighborhood, first spraying one side of the street, then the other. It made a particular deep, sonorous hum that attracted groups of children, not unlike an ice cream truck with its creepy tunes. We would chase it and feel the poison mist falling gently on our faces and scrawny, bare arms and legs. Probably our parents were never aware of this pastime. My mother, who was up every day at 5 o'clock AM to braid my hair, make breakfast, make lunches, then work all day and come home to make dinner and clean the house was likely at this point in the evening curled into a corner of the couch watching Hawaii Five-0, as well she should have been.
My tree house had a ladder and a trap door. Inside was a musty carpet and homemade curtains on each of the four square windows. Daddy Long-Legs considered it their vacation home of choice. One of the neighbor boys used to catch Daddy Long-Legs and chase me and my friends then pull their legs out. I suspect large, angry Daddy Long-Legs will be a prominent part of the Karmic payback for many a neighborhood boy, come judgement day.
My father would stand outside on summer days after work, shaking his fist and swearing in German at the deer eating his tomato plants and flowers. They would stare back at him like a pack of teenagers, unconcernedly chewing. My job was to lug the watering can up and down our steep hill to water the plants. I also mowed the lawn and at least once during every four hour mowing session, the mower would take off on some hillside and threaten to slice off a body part and I would run in the other direction until I was sure I could turn back and catch the thing on my own terms and keeping all of my toes. I hated accidentally running over toads, and was constantly stopping to move those guys out of the way.
On hot summer days growing up, I ran all the time. Walking was inefficient and a waste of my little muscled, mosquito-bitten stick legs. I ran to kick the can. I ran for Allie-Allie-in-come-free. I ran through the sprinkler. I ran and dove upon the three Slip-n-Slides laid in an epic, yellow Slip-n-Slide row, inevitably drawing blood on the jagged sharp edges where the water sprayed out.
My Mom played catch with me, her arm informed by her days as the only girl playing for New York City's Little League. She played shortstop. I played softball, and was the pitcher. My mother once convinced me to eat a plate of disgusting canned spinach because it would do for my arms what it did for Popeye's.
Not to brag but we rode our bikes all day long and without helmets. We skated and skate-boarded without pads. We had exactly two choices on a hot summer day:
1) Go outside and play
2) Or I will find something* for you to do
*involving miserable house cleaning chores
* we did NOT have play-dates**
**I wonder... were play-dates the beginning of the end of Homo sapiens ability to survive in the wild?
I was thinking about my friend and I being California Condors. Soon after, she moved to Idaho and the day she left I watched her climb up into her family's truck and I cried.
I do not recall the California Condors having any specific mission. We just flew free, in Zips sneakers, for hours, by ourselves outside. Likely we were watched more than we realized by our parents and neighbors, but it felt like we were soaring independently, with endless wing spans, coming in for a landing only when we felt the animal urge for Red Kool-Aid and fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. My Mom even had one of those glass pitchers, as in the advertisements, with large ice cubes clinking as she poured the summer's wine, like communion, into our dixie-cup chalices.
I swam in the Mississippi and would dare myself to open eyes under water, though mostly finding a silty darkness looking back at me. Once, briefly, I shared my inner tube on a tributary, the Black River, with a long water snake. I caught it on my shin, legs bent over the tube, butt hanging in the holy center, and kicked it in the air, watching it arc and splash down river while I screamed and it did whatever the equivalent snake sound of horror might be.
Hot summer evenings, at dusk, in those, the days of laCrosse Encephalitis, brought the mosquito spraying truck through our neighborhood, first spraying one side of the street, then the other. It made a particular deep, sonorous hum that attracted groups of children, not unlike an ice cream truck with its creepy tunes. We would chase it and feel the poison mist falling gently on our faces and scrawny, bare arms and legs. Probably our parents were never aware of this pastime. My mother, who was up every day at 5 o'clock AM to braid my hair, make breakfast, make lunches, then work all day and come home to make dinner and clean the house was likely at this point in the evening curled into a corner of the couch watching Hawaii Five-0, as well she should have been.
My tree house had a ladder and a trap door. Inside was a musty carpet and homemade curtains on each of the four square windows. Daddy Long-Legs considered it their vacation home of choice. One of the neighbor boys used to catch Daddy Long-Legs and chase me and my friends then pull their legs out. I suspect large, angry Daddy Long-Legs will be a prominent part of the Karmic payback for many a neighborhood boy, come judgement day.
My father would stand outside on summer days after work, shaking his fist and swearing in German at the deer eating his tomato plants and flowers. They would stare back at him like a pack of teenagers, unconcernedly chewing. My job was to lug the watering can up and down our steep hill to water the plants. I also mowed the lawn and at least once during every four hour mowing session, the mower would take off on some hillside and threaten to slice off a body part and I would run in the other direction until I was sure I could turn back and catch the thing on my own terms and keeping all of my toes. I hated accidentally running over toads, and was constantly stopping to move those guys out of the way.
On hot summer days growing up, I ran all the time. Walking was inefficient and a waste of my little muscled, mosquito-bitten stick legs. I ran to kick the can. I ran for Allie-Allie-in-come-free. I ran through the sprinkler. I ran and dove upon the three Slip-n-Slides laid in an epic, yellow Slip-n-Slide row, inevitably drawing blood on the jagged sharp edges where the water sprayed out.
My Mom played catch with me, her arm informed by her days as the only girl playing for New York City's Little League. She played shortstop. I played softball, and was the pitcher. My mother once convinced me to eat a plate of disgusting canned spinach because it would do for my arms what it did for Popeye's.
Not to brag but we rode our bikes all day long and without helmets. We skated and skate-boarded without pads. We had exactly two choices on a hot summer day:
1) Go outside and play
2) Or I will find something* for you to do
*involving miserable house cleaning chores
* we did NOT have play-dates**
**I wonder... were play-dates the beginning of the end of Homo sapiens ability to survive in the wild?
I was thinking about my friend and I being California Condors. Soon after, she moved to Idaho and the day she left I watched her climb up into her family's truck and I cried.
I do not recall the California Condors having any specific mission. We just flew free, in Zips sneakers, for hours, by ourselves outside. Likely we were watched more than we realized by our parents and neighbors, but it felt like we were soaring independently, with endless wing spans, coming in for a landing only when we felt the animal urge for Red Kool-Aid and fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. My Mom even had one of those glass pitchers, as in the advertisements, with large ice cubes clinking as she poured the summer's wine, like communion, into our dixie-cup chalices.
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