Month: June 2016

Continue reading We, You and Me

My children haven’t had well-visit doctor appointments since 2014, late 2014, which isn’t really the same at all as January 2014, but which my pediatrician suggested I remedy the last time I was at their office. I mean, we’ve been there for other things. That time when the stick-on craft jewels ended up in an ear. That little case of idiopathic dermatitis. Stomach issues. It’s not like we’ve been strangers.

But fine. I acknowledged the kindly judgement as our doctor flipped through their charts for “the last well-visit.” I scheduled appointments. I confirmed them. A quick click of an email link. And then I promptly forgot about them. 8:20 rolled by this morning. 8:40 rolled by. The times meant nothing to me. About 12:30, I thought, “Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot!” And… we’re rescheduled for a month from now. Not early morning, anymore, but the smack dab late-middle of the day reserved for those who can’t adequately plan ahead. It was just as well. Had I been wearing my good mother hat, I would have tipped from moderately late on several work projects to really late. Although, as we all know, you can’t be a little bit pregnant or a little bit late. Yes, yes. I know, I know! Let me just lay my head down for a minute and contemplate that wisdom. Or cry. Whichever.

I’m currently in the midst of establishing a running routine. Again. Every route is all uphill. I’m at that return-to-fitness point where every time I run, I contemplate every other form of exercise I can think of. I’ve never tried that circus acrobatics aerial silks trapeze thing. I might love that. I might be great at that. Or hiking. I like hiking. In theory. It’s just the getting there, and the crowded trailhead parking lots and the high possibility of thunderstorms on mountain tops by mid-day. Running you can do anywhere. You start as soon as you leave your front door, and it’s over as soon as you get back to your front door. It’s attractive that way. Full circle. Efficient. But what about Pilates? You don’t even have to leave the house for that… or maybe I should just start vacuuming more often.

While I’m running, I’m dividing my neighborhood into halves, and then quarters and then blocks, making deals with myself from stop sign to stop sign and wondering how Pandora’s music algorithm suddenly puts Journey’s Open Arms in the middle of a curated 130 beats-per-minute playlist. The running app voice feedback always sounds like she’s bored with me. I don’t blame her. She’s had to hang out for 11 minutes just waiting to give me my mile split times. Honestly, in all that internal rationalization and plaintive whining, I find a lot of comfort in my shadow. While I’m wheezing, she’s running smoothly. While my feet are on fire and my throat dry, she just keeps going. She’s steady.

Symbolically, shadows get a bad rap. Duality and darkness. But shadow me? I like the silent, supportive, ambiguity of that chick. She sticks with me. Shadow me, the one who scales hills without wheezing, isn’t a hypochondriac and doesn’t snap at her husband and children. She’s perpetually 26, the me before I was tired all the time, and knows how to pronounce French entrées and calls her mother and her best friend regularly and remembers to send Father’s Day cards, even when it’s busy at work. She actually actively listens as her child reads 20 minutes a day, and she doesn’t forget key talking points, or even basic words, just as they are needed. She’s great. Instead of my imaginary friend, she’s my imaginary me.

I’d like to think that I am capable of being all those things. Perhaps not at the same time. Maybe not even all in the same week. But as much as I am the woman who forgets doctor’s appointments and stress eats Almond Joys from the work vending machine, I also sometimes get it right. My celebratory pancake game is strong, and I filed our annual Girl Scout troop report on time. I sometimes remember to stick notes in my childrens’ lunches and I’ve run a 10k (that one time).

Sometimes I get it wrong. Sometimes I get it right. Sometimes I only just show up, dry shampoo and flip flops, and call it a win. As long as I keep chasing my shadow, I figure I’m in motion. Occasionally, even forward motion. If nothing else, it helps burn off the Almond Joys.

Whenever there is a mass shooting, the hash tag #prayfor appears. And certainly, prayer is a good thing. Self-reflection and positive thoughts are good things, if you’re not into prayer. But I have to agree with the New York Daily News after San Bernadino, “God isn’t fixing this”. God may weep, as Jesus did. But it’s up to us to fix it.

By all means, pray. But also, call out our hate culture. Call out those who profit from it. Call out demeaning, stereotypical jokes and rhetoric and call out misinformation. Resist the urge to oversimplify just to assign easy blame. Vote. Speak up. Give a damn. Some things are worth rocking the boat. Pray for Columbine and Tuscon and San Bernardino. Pray for Aurora and Newtown and Roseburg. For Colorado Springs and UCLA. Pray for every child who asks, But could that ever happen here? and does lock down drills in their elementary school. But don’t stop there.

I’m so tired of that Mr. Rogers’ “look for the helpers” quote. It was comforting the first half dozen times. Now it’s just another sign of another black day, as ubiquitous as the red banner scrolling across our Internet and television screens. I’m tired of that J.R.R. Tolkien quote about peril, grief, and love shining brighter. I’m tired of looking for the bright side and I’m tired of being told that good is stronger than evil, in the end.

Good may hold advantage over evil. That’s such a distinct choice. But I’m terribly afraid it will smother in apathy. The 24-hour news cycle marches on and with each new, more horrific body count, we grow anesthetized to the reality of what those numbers mean to families across the country. We’re appalled, but not so appalled as to consider compromise about gun legislation. After all, criminals don’t heed laws. We’re heartbroken, but not so heartbroken as to make equality the absolute standard of our land. The two are completely separate issues.

We’re adept at memes and hash tags. At signing online petitions. But we’re less skilled at seeing how our everyday choices contribute to our world and our news reel. We’re not evil, but we’re not Fred Rogers’ helpers, either. And until we do better, that question, Where does it end?

Well, it doesn’t.

For the sometime runner, running is a complicated relationship.

The thing about running is that it is not like riding a bike. Or maybe it is like riding a bike, but it’s like riding a bike through a route that begins with a pit of molasses up to your knees, and then is followed by weighted tires, followed by a bed of nails before finally getting to the maintained trail.

And yet.

Every time I get to a point where I am running a solid three miles or so as a regular route, in good head space with reliable oxygen levels and muscle coordination, I feel good. I’m never particularly fast. I never go particularly far. But there’s a fresh mental clarity and a mind/body link that I don’t have in the off-season. I tell myself that this time, feeling this good, I won’t let myself get derailed. What is winter compared to this feeling of fit freedom? Last fall, I leafed through catalogs, debating winter running gear. 45 degrees is pretty pleasant running weather, even in a t-shirt, so probably just this vented slightly puffy pull-over would be enough for Denver’s fairly mild winters… I felt confident. Maybe a little smug. Right up until the day I realized… I’d quit. Again.

The problem with quitting running is that you don’t realize you’ve done it. Until you suddenly do the math and it’s been 6 weeks since you laced up.

In April, I had a no nonsense conversation with myself and decided that it was acceptable to take the winter quarter off. But it was now April, and therefore as a three-season runner (which I told myself I definitely was), it was time to begin again. And so I did. And then we had an April with double the average snowfall. And April is generally Denver’s second snowiest month, anyway, after March (Denver really knows how to do spring.) And so, my restart fizzled. And somehow another 7 weeks flew by, endangering my three-season status.

But to the sometime runner, spring begins a siren’s call.

First, you start seeing other runners. And you look at them with wistful jealousy, rather than thinking, “sucker,” and driving on.

Then, you start looking at the fall’s running routes fondly, feeling slightly proprietary.

And then, when dance music comes on the radio, you start thinking about new playlists. Elle King. Walk the Moon. Andy Grammar. Suddenly, they’re just asking to be compiled. And so you put on last year’s playlists at your desk, letting them seep back into your blood, even as you create new ones in the back of your mind.

This week, our school’s child care was relocated to a neighboring elementary school, taking me directly through last year’s running loop. “I used to run through here,” I said to the girls. “Really?!,” they said. “So far?”  It’s not really so far, as the crow flies. But my heart repeated, Yes. Really. This far. This far. And I turned the radio up as Maroon 5 came on.

My youngest has had a bit of a difficult transition into summer. She has too much time on her hands, and needs more focused activities, and so she begins to act out. She’s as frustrated with her behavior as we are, not quite sure why it’s taking over her actions. Talking it over last night, while explaining why, yes, it would be an early bedtime again, I told her that sometimes when we feel things slipping a little out of control inside us, we need to be really aware of making choices to live our best lives as our best selves, including going to bed early and getting enough exercise to tire our minds and bodies out each day. And hearing myself, I knew…

It’s time to run again.

This morning, I woke up slightly sniffly. But also a little impatient. Siren song. There’s a satisfaction in lacing up running shoes that shouldn’t be discounted.

My youngest was the only other person up, so I told her I was going running. “Can I go with you?,” she asked.

And so we went.

About a hundred yards in, I remembered the pit of molasses. The siren song calls for the end-of-fall runner we were, really. This spring runner isn’t exactly the same person. It’s like you’re running in the shadow of the runner you were, trying to catch up.

But looking at my daughter, I thought, Worth it.

I pictured myself pushing through. I sang along to the lyrics of Work that Body (in my head, because my throat was dry as dust and the top of my mouth was like the Sahara.) I waved Eva back when she biked farther than I was prepared to re-route for. And when the helpful disembodied voice told me that I’d hit a mile, I thought, Are you kidding me? I revised my 2-mile plan in my head. But said firmly to myself, I will run each step of the loop back  home. Maybe I secretly appreciated the necessary pause to discuss crosswalk etiquette with my pace setter, and maybe in the final 500 feet, I thought my soles were on fire.

Maybe I’m a sometime runner. But it’s summer. I’ve got a new playlist and I hear the call of it.

Go.

 

 

I thought I was over it, but it turns out I’m still mad as hell.

I talked it over with a good friend who agreed with me and matched me point for point, which was gratifying. I had a couple glasses of wine. And then I worked out for an hour, listening to power anthem music, after the wine wore off.

But nope, still mad.

Today someone told me that he didn’t think that gender had anything to do with the presidential election and as proof, pointed out that with a gun to his head, and a choice between Clinton and Trump, he’d vote Clinton (though in actuality, he will vote white male third party). Weirdly, the fact that, at gunpoint, he’d choose the woman over the narcissistic racist did not make me feel validated. You don’t have to vote for the woman to prove your feminist bonafides. But if you tell me that women aren’t treated differently by society, by the press and by history, I’m calling bullshit.

Here’s the thing. I’ve had a pretty privileged upbringing. I own that. But 100 years ago, women couldn’t vote. Congress is currently 19% women, which makes Congress 81% men. A whopping 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. I’ve been offered a massage for a headache at work, and told I looked hot by coworkers old enough to be my father, just because I wore a skirt. I’ve been groped by nameless, faceless hands in a dark bar and club, and I’ve been audibly belittled in public by a stranger about how I looked in a bathing suit. I’ve been given a job offer at a lower title, and presumably lower pay, than a matching male applicant. I’ve been told to “settle” when I was feeling passionate about something, and I’ve been asked if my husband was home by vendors selling new roofs and windows for the house.

This isn’t about politics. It’s about culture. Vote your conscience, whatever that is. But don’t tell me that a culture that hands out 6-month sentences for rape and uses the word bitch as a stand-in for intellectual discourse is a level playing field. And don’t tell me that I’m “typical” for claiming otherwise.

I have two daughters. When I can raise them not to fear a parking lot after dark, and to never doubt they’re being paid equally for equal work, then maybe we can start to talk about fair play.

In the meantime, don’t tell me to settle down. I’m not hysterical. I’m angry.