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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This One is About Running

Crush despair
Impulse by impulse
Launched, landed, launched
Redwoods fronds like the high dive
Some kid behind you yelling hurry up
Brooks slapping path, bouncing, committing
Six times up the hill they call the beast or is it
The bitch. Pit bulls on leashes strain to nose sweaty
Practically fifty year old runner and the phone rings, the work phone,
Pulling up to a burnt out 300 year old stump, tending suffering, catching breath
With calm words in the redwood cathedral, itself a healer of brokenness.
Confessed sins scamper under ferns and swaths of three leaf clovers
Attaching like ticks to the next ankle or dog passing through.
No matter created or destroyed just redeployed
Under canopies, salamander playgrounds,
Neon slugs consume shit,
Dopamine rush, I care.
Crush despair

Power

I would like to consider power, which I can do only from my own perspective, which is both steeped in power and roasted in powerlessness, giving off the aroma of fragility with an after-burn of ferocity.
I would like to consider the potential power of unpopular opinions, the power trapped inside the magazine gorgeous body of my eighteen year old daughter who is unafraid to speak her mind. The power she showed looking her school administrator straight in the eyes and declaring she did not need him to tell her she is intelligent. Nor does his opinion much matter.

I would like to consider the power of being in power. I have watched hospital administrators crush the souls of physicians and nurses. I have watched my childrens' school allow racism and bullying to run freely while pretending to be representative of our self-proclaimed liberal town. I am watching and not doing a thing about children being imprisoned by my government, kidnapped from their parents, and placed in facilities not fit for any living thing. The power of those in power is they make the rest of us feel paralyzed with uncertainty. How can it be true that homeless people are disparaged by a Catholic hospital? How can it be true that a school protects itself on the back of a child who just happens not to be white and who happens not be able to remain silent? How can it be true that the country that once elected Obama is letting babies die in captivity? It is all so unfathomable, I feel like I spend half my life just trying to pick my jaw up from off the ground.

It can be hard to consider power when you come from feeling less than. Not pretty enough, not talented enough, not a good enough mother, not a competitive enough medical student, not a well-dressed enough physician, not fast enough, not thin enough, too thin. Staring in the mirror at boobs too small, unless wearing a cross country uniform, in which case I should have no boobs at all.

Power without wealth is rare. A favorite quote of administrators, and one I have even spouted once or twice myself is "no mission without money". Healthcare without resources is only cool if you are in the wilderness, on purpose, and remember the tricks you learned at your wilderness medicine conferences.  In my rural area, where poverty reigns, we are lucky to have specialists and some technology. But don't ask for a hysterectomy at our hospital, nor a tubal ligation, nor anything that might have to do with transgender healthcare. Jesus was very clear about these things, in his sermon on the Mount of Majesty, where declared blessed were those who did not act weird, smell funny, request birth control, or kiss people of the same anatomical sex.

I was thinking the other day that one of the most dangerous types of people is a wealthy, white liberal. I am white and liberal and compared to most people on this planet my wealth is grand. I know what is right, but spend my free time going on trail runs and reading fiction and playing piano. Meanwhile, a young black college student was murdered in my town and no one ever figured out who did it or why, my daughter was treated like shit at her high school and no one ever apologized, and little children are sitting in their own excrement in cement cages on our border to make a political point. I am mad as hell, and not doing anything about it. Dangerous in my complacency. Dangerous in my desire to just keep my children safe in this scary and unjust world, even if other people's children are having a hard time.

Having a son in prison reframes things, with the perfect family portrait tinged with a backdrop of the noir, the family theme song slightly ominous, and the proverbial neighbors looking knowingly at our particular failure to thrive. I used to dread lunches in the doctor's lounge, with everyone's children winning the state science fair. I often quipped about being glad my son was not in jail. Definitely a conversation stopper. Let me eat my gorram peanut butter and jelly sandwich in peace. Course he did end up in jail, then prison, and let's consider the power dynamics he faces every day. Young, baby-faced, not terribly tall, a goof ball, and irritatingly smart. A target for those who find power in physical prowess. The guards steal things from the letters I send him (like stamps and envelopes so he can write back). If he does well at work (which he has been), the guys there longer and much older give him grief. If he has one impulsive reaction to someone making him feel small and insignificant, it could lead to more time in prison, and the endless cycle of taking young men with addiction and short fuses and making them even more angry and scared and so powerless that they finally just give up. Blessed be the Prison Industrial Complex.

I would like to consider the power of women. At a recent writing and running retreat, led by and attended by women, there was so much power in the room that it felt like I could breathe for the first time in a long while. Because the power was not toxic. It was steady and fierce. Like one of those redwoods that it would take ten people to wrap their arms around. Like the way the ocean rolls in and in and in with a roar of serenity. The food was also good and I don't think we talk enough about the power of good food, good water, and a decent bed to sleep in at night.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has that kind of power. Nourishing and honest. Can you see how she makes the very house of representatives quake in its boots and powdered wigs? Can you bear her truth telling? Can you believe she started her campaign with $2 and a job as a waitress? The scariest thing to those in inherited and bought power is a pissed off, highly educated, brown-skinned waitress from the Bronx.

AOC reminds me of my daughter, the one who has been standing up for her rights despite the perturbed discomfort of angry administrators and challenged teachers. I worry and worry that they will try to hurt her further. Let's consider the misuse of power and its penchant for destruction. Abuse of power will, in the not too distant future, be the end of homo sapiens. Unless...

...power is considered less important than courage. And compassion. And speaking up for those that may not be able to on that given day, and when they are able to, stepping aside so they can speak for themselves.

A bunch of small, insignificant people could theoretically decide as a group that they have had enough and it could change everything. And can we please elect a woman to the presidency of the United States of America?

It is time someone magically awakens the inner vampire slayer so many seemingly timid beings possess. Blessed are the slayers, for they will inherit the earth.