Just a Pebble

 As always, the morning run starts my day on the right foot, and not just literally.  Just me and my dogs, no podcasts or music to interrupt the swirling thoughts of the coming day.  Simply the pre-dawn quiet padding of our feet down the road or trail with an unfettered brain allowed to wander farther and deeper than my feet can take me. This morning, on a quiet residential alley that winds its way up to the trail, we paused as Meg squatted to relieve herself of last night's digested dinner. As always I diligently pulled a bag over my hand to retrieve her deposit. Once I made the grab and began to invert the bag, I noticed a pretty little pebble embedded in one of the soft, steaming logs. I felt a twinge of guilt as I tied off the knot and sealed the fate of this lonely bit of stone.

This diminutive rock had grey-and-white stripes with a jagged edge that sparkled in the beam of my headlamp.  I looked around and noticed that the humans who own this parcel of alley had blanketed the driveway in many such pretty little pebbles, likely ordered from a quarry and delivered to the address in the back of a dump truck, or perhaps purchased from the local hardware store in several 50 lb bags, hauled home in an SUV and spread lovingly and evenly with a rake.

How long had these tiny rocks congregated along this strip of alley?  Decades?  Crunched under the feet of school children walking to school, scattered by an occasional tire peel-out by an anxious driver, frozen into ice sheets in winter...these pebbles have endured.  

Before they were small bits, did they all belong to a single boulder before being blasted into bits to be sold as gravel?  Or did they come from a number of large rocks, with subtle different colors and textures, chosen together in a visual recipe proven to please the eyes of the humans who would purchase them?

These pebbles have stood side-by-side for years, and possibly came from one or more mother rock.  Today one of them has been removed from its cohorts.  It no longer fills its spot among brethren.  How would it feel to be separated from the place you've belonged for so long, that brought you comfort with simple familiarity? Will the tiny rock be missed by the new, tiny gap in ground cover? 

Is it such a bad thing to be swooped up into a mass of organic matter, sealed up and deposited into a public garbage can?  Then transported to a landfill to be mixed with other filthy, used and spent items that humans will never put thought to again -- all of these items taken away and no longer exist as far as we humans are concerned?  Maybe the tiny stone will become part of something again, or stand out as an individual, beautiful treasure to be found by wondrous eyes and itty-bitty
fingers some day?

Most days we do things.  We run, we eat, we drive, we pass humans and other creatures during our journey through the day. We leave bits of ourselves, physically and in our actions, wherever we go. We consume. In all of our endeavors, we encounter things big and small.  Our actions have consequences, from miniscule to huge, whether the outcomes are immediate or well into the future. Whether we are conscious of it or not.

Tortured Ted

NOTE: On this day (Jan. 3) I used a writing prompt (in bold below) and found myself in a certain senator's head in this moment in time. It's not a pleasant place to be and I hope it never happens again!

Staring at his reflection felt like looking at a stranger.  What had he become? He used to be the guy with an easy smile, always with a joke at the ready to put people at ease.  He was the one that friends would go to for advice or to share big news.  But now he was alone. Those same friends and colleagues would not return calls, and acquaintances pretended not to know him.

He tried to smile at himself in the mirror, tried to look like the jovial man he once was.  But something was missing - his lips turned up at the ends like they were supposed to, and he even managed to make a dimple appear in his cheek ever-so-briefly.  But the problem was his eyes. When his mouth smiled, his eyes didn’t smile.  There was no shine, no lines radiating out from the corners of his eyes to match his lips. Eyes don’t lie like lips can tell lies.

He had noticed that Heidi seemed to be holding back with him.  She was quiet and avoided meaningful conversation.  She moved in ways to avoid his touch, even stepping to the side when passing him in the hallway. Sure, she was used to his ambition.  As the good wife she had vowed to be so many years ago, she had always supported his decisions unconditionally,  but this time it was too much.  Around their girls she would create normalcy - family meals, small talk - but when the kids went to bed her silence became unbearably loud. “This stranger in the mirror…is this what she now sees when she looks at my face?” he wondered.

“She’ll get over it”, he murmured to his reflection. When his devoted wife questioned him on the decision to go ahead with this, he had reassured her that this was just another important step in his goal of winning the presidency in four years.  From their very first date, years ago, he was honest with her about his ambition to become the leader of the free world. When she agreed to marry him, she agreed to support him the whole way, through the good AND the bad.

As he groomed his beard, he continued to rationalize his defiance, “When he made fun of your looks,” referring to his wife in the next room, “Remember that I defended you!”  He and the president had a complicated relationship that had evolved over time. Even though POTUS had called him ‘Lyin’ Ted’ and accused his father of involvement in JFKs assassination, he knew that was just politics. Or at least the new politics he had embraced.  And now, he needed the president, or at least he needed his fanatical followers that slurped up every lie and conspiracy their dear leader spewed.

This was just a strategy. He thought that if he repeated the president's lies about voter fraud, pushed them in Congress and put on a big show for the big boss, the president’s minions would vote for him in the next round.  He knew that the effort to keep POTUS in office wouldn’t succeed, and honestly, he didn’t want it to work. Life would be easier with the loudmouth out of office. This was merely his attempt to win the affection of the 45’s base.

“It’s not lying,” he reassured his frothy face in the mirror, grumbling.  “It’s just doing what I have to do, to get what I want. Calling this anti-democratic is such an exaggeration. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

After plucking some rogue nose hairs, his grooming was to his satisfaction.  He once again tried to put on a friendly face.  This time he chose an open-mouth smile to showcase his white teeth.  His mouth widened and his lips again turned up at the corners.  But the eyes, rather than showing a twinkle of optimism, revealed a dull deadness. He remembered that old saying about how the eyes are the window to the soul. For a brief moment, he felt the hair raise on the back of his neck and his shoulders trembled in an involuntary shiver.

 

He shrugged it off, inhaled deeply and exclaimed to his reflection loud enough for his wife to hear the in next room, “You’ll see. I’m not being foolish. This will all be worth it when we’re in the White House.  You’ll see…”

A Good Man

I know I lost the Dad that most people knew a few years ago, bit by bit.  Dementia had slowly robbed him of his memories, his passions, talents and social warmth over the last couple of decades.  Although he did maintain an ability to banter with silly jokes that weren’t connected to a place or time.  The hospice nurses and social workers laughed and were charmed by his wit and wise cracks during their weekly visits

But today, when his physical body stopped breathing, rhythmically beating and creating heat…that is when his loss hit us so hard.  It’s easy to be lulled into a feeling of relief when we see his struggling body give up the fight and surrender to nature and what awaits beyond.  When we know that he will no longer have to fight the limits that illness had put on his body and mind, there is a sense of peace when we know it is over.  Dementia had slowly morphed our Dad, who lived his life by doing right by EVERYone even at the detriment of himself or his livelihood, to a confused and meek “old man”.

As he took his last breath, I still had this physical body to talk to, to touch, to treasure, with all of the lovely memories attached. But within hours after he passed, the nice young men with the gurney dressed in a hand-stitched quilt came and took my Dad away in an unmarked van at midnight.  My Mom, who had been stoic and ridiculously matter-of-fact until that moment, was greatly shaken by the physical removal of her life partner…her sidekick for 65 years, her co-parent of six children, sobbing like I’ve never heard her sob before.

We all knew that he would be leaving us.  He had been in hospice care for nearly 2 months and had been declining in physical, but mostly mental abilities for years.  But reality is hard and reality can really suck.  I think it’s okay to say that.  I think it’s okay to be really, really sad.

Life goes on, as we always say.  And it does…in kids and grandkids…and GREAT grandkids (of which Dad has three and counting)  But life also stops.  And we should all stop, and think, and raise a glass to Dad - a really really good man.

T'was the Christmas House

If you had walked into my childhood home during the month of December, you might have asked if Mr. and Mrs. Claus resided there.  You would have seen a fourteen foot tree in multicolor-glory packed with unique ornaments, a variety of nativity scenes, nutcrackers, toy soldiers and sparkly surprises on nearly every surface of every room.  The surprise of mistletoe hanging above the toilet might have triggered you to lock the bathroom door, just in case.  The miniature toy train chugged to holiday tunes while itty-bitty ice skaters twirled on the frozen lake.  When gazing out toward the view of the bay, you would spy a life-size Santa clinging to the boathouse chimney.

Mom worked on the sparkly details, while Dad took the job of lighting up the house, both inside and out.

My favorite job as his helper was to go through all of the light strings for the tree, inspecting every bulb and replacing as needed.  In those days you could revive a dead string with the repositioning of a wire, planting a fresh bulb, or by splicing a new plug onto the cord.  Nowadays I grumble as my early-learned skills are ineffective on the throw-away cheap light strings manufactured to be replaced, not repaired.  I relish the memories of the hours spent picking through the bag of bulbs and the nuggets of wisdom I received from my Pa.

Once he had the ropes of incandescent outdoor bulbs placed along the gutters and around the front door, my sisters and I would make toast by smooshing crust-less white bread into “dough” to wrap around a relatively clean colored bulb.  The heat of those old-fashioned C9 bulbs cooked the bread into a crispy little shell in a matter of minutes.  Making them was the point, but we ate the warm, sometimes gritty treats too.

When I was really little, Dad spent the late weekends of November chopping yule logs for every friend and aquaintance for miles around.  Glitter was added to spark colorful flames, along with the traditional berries and greens.  Come Christmas Eve we would drive around the neighborhood and plop the decorated hunks of wood on porches with a hearty “Merry Christmas!!”

Every fall our entire family became a Christmas Card Workshop.  You see, my dad is an artist and has painted beautiful things his whole life.  For a few weeks each year we would spend our Saturday and Sunday afternoons painting individual, original Christmas cards for everyone we ever knew.  Dad pulled out his water color tubes and pallets and we learned about color mixing and how water interacted with the pigment.  We had some examples to follow, but we were free to embrace our own creative impulses.  We painted and sent at least a hundred, if not more, very original and often extremely rustic cards every year.  After we child-labor elves grew older and busier, Dad printed his original cards at the family print shop and hand painted each card before Mom added a personal note and affixed the festive stamp.  I have saved them all.

Dad’s holiday music library is unrivaled.  From Johnny Cash to Elvis to Vince Guaraldi to the Nutcracker Suite, we had all the genres covered.  Not to mention Alice’s Restaurant was considered a MUST LISTEN during this time of year.  Holiday music would play for hours on end with never a repeated song.

Every single year, from the first of six children to the last of many, many grandchildren, Dad spent the last minutes of every Christmas Eve sitting beneath the sparkling tree surrounded by young’uns while reading aloud from The Night Before Christmas by Clement C Moore.  As he closed the tattered hard-bound book, we were enchanted, excited and ready to run off to bed in anticipation of Christmas magic.

This Christmas, as the more recent years have foreshadowed, our Papa is slipping far into dementia.  When I am able to make the trek over the mountains for a visit, otherwise quiet he announces, “That girl is here again!”  At other times he asks Mom repeatedly, “When was Christmas this year?” noticing the decorated tree and colorful lights surrounding the house, but not sure if the holiday is coming or going.  He then retires to his room to watch Jeopardy and fall into the comfortable, yet confusing routine of his new life.

He may not engage in the season like he used to, but the holiday magic he created for decades has passed on to a few generations of Stones and to others beyond our family.  Each December when the task awaits, I always look into my inner Puk (his family nickname) when I decorate and embrace the beauty and music of the season.  I am so grateful for that.

This winter I can’t help but feel the great weight of melancholy, as I no longer know how to connect with my incredible father whose gifts have gone silent - or so it seems.  I will do my best to carry on his lessons, and to continue to pass them on to my family.

Happy Christmas to All…and to all a Good Night!

My Leaf's Purpose

A while back, I can’t quite recall when exactly, I heard/read somewhere that if you catch a falling autumn leaf in the air before it touches the ground it is a sign of good luck.  I fell in love with that idea.  The thought of this leaf, with a lifespan of one single season having never touched the ground - will never-ever touch the ground - because I caught it in my hand.

For all I know I may have made this up in my own head or in a dream and accepted it as a real thing.  When I shared this superstition with the children with whom I ran through the forest (a perk of my job helping coordinate running programs at the YMCA), they asked, “Who said that?”  I couldn’t recall, but it didn’t matter.  We started turning our faces up to the trees, awaiting the random flutter of a yellow, crispy leaf to chase.  

This leaf we sought had never been touched, altered or interfered with by our modern, tech-obsessed world.  This leaf that  likely interacted with ladybugs, birds and other flying beings, but lived entirely separate from our terrestrial reality.  It turned it's broad surface toward the sun, and was later washed by the spring rain.  Battered by the wind, it clung to the tree with a strong and flexible stem along with it's green, chorophyll-fortified brethren.

Now weakened by the shorter, cooler days of the season's change and facing the inevitable fall to the ground  -- if caught it in the air by one of us, we might somehow save this innocent leaf from corruption!  It could remain a pure element of the natural canopy from which it tumbled.  Immortality?

Yet, that leaf did serve it’s life purpose.  Aiming it’s broad face toward the sun's warmth, it transformed solar energy into food for it’s mother tree.  Fruit and seeds were nourished by this energy to guarantee generations of trees to come.  And critters sheltered within and beneath for the spring and summer months.

Then the days get shorter.  Once these leaves wither and drop into our world below, who knows what might come of them?  Someone may rake, bag and send them to the dump.  Or maybe they all are doomed to be stomped by boots, rolled over by big rubber tires and turned into pulp.  Then mixed with litter and road run-off to be forgotten.  Hopefully they land in the soil from which the roots grow and become one again.

Regardless of the truth (or absolute nuttiness) of this superstition, we - the children and I, spent the next hour dashing side-to-side, on-and-off the trail, to try to snatch these brittle beings before they touched the earth.  In almost all cases we failed.  And we nearly flew off of steep banks or ran head-on into trees in our desperate efforts. We debated whether it was bad luck to shake the tree first to loosen leaves…and decided that  it would, indeed, be cheating.

At the end of the run I had one trophy, fallen from a maple, that practically jumped into my fist.  Spencer had nimbly nabbed a small handful of various sizes and colors.   Alisa had tried SO hard, zigzagging at every possible target, but she didn’t catch a single fluttering leaf the whole time.  As we boarded the vans I offered Alisa my prized leaf to take home.  She declined.  It wasn’t the same if the leaf touched another hand before your own.  I completely understood.

Since then I keep wondering if I just made up that whole “good luck” thing in my mind or in a dream.  But it doesn’t really matter.  We all could use a little hope, good luck and magic to make it through life.  And just maybe there is more to a leaf’s life purpose than we know.

To Wear or Not to Wear...Underwear?

This all started years ago.  Like any lifetime runner, actually like ANY runner, I love to recruit converts to our sport.  I had photocopied a walk-to-run program from a book to share with a curious fellow pre-school mom.  After six weeks or so she came up to me excited to share that she was running miles at a time and feeling great!  She had even convinced some friends to join her and she now had a real-live running group.   Then...she scooted up close to me and half-whispered, “Can I ask you a question?”  I nodded and waited.  She looked around to make sure that nobody was close enough to hear.  “Do you wear underwear when you run?”

“Yeah!” I answered without hesitation, not at all taken aback by the question.

She went on, “Well…then why do running shorts come with built-in briefs if you are supposed to wear underwear, too?” 

Have you ever had one of those moments when a question or idea just smacks you in the face and changes your perspective forever?  BAM!!  This was one of those moments for me. A palm-smack right to the forehead.

“Good point,” I stammered, “I haven’t ever really thought about it…”  She looked disappointed in my answer.  She was sure there was a TRUTH out there that only real runners knew, and I was supposed invite her into this exclusive club by sharing the insider information.  Watching her face go slack, I felt so ignorant and unworthy of my “mentor” status.

After that day I continued donning my undergarments, whether I was running or not, because that was what I had done my whole life.  However my husband, who is a high mileage trail runner, began to discard underwear completely.  He had fallen in love with compression gear and decided “Why wear underwear when there is cozy spandex?”  No matter if he is dressing for work complete with jacket and tie, or for a 3-hour run in the rain, the first item of clothing he puts on is a stretchy short or half-tight.  He sits on the chair and squeezes his muscles, much like sausage into its casing, into the black spandex container.

Over the years I have occasionally brought this subject up on long runs with friends.  I have been surprised by the range of answers and reasons that bubble up.  Mary dislikes briefs so much that she won’t even wear running shorts that include briefs - she’s all about smooth running tights with no creeping or binding, even in the summer.  Tammy agrees and adds, “For the record, there is ruthless mockery when ptl's (panty lines) are spotted in my group.”

Deb swears by finding the RIGHT underwear for running - high quality with no seams or fancy trim.  Denise likes a layer between herself and her tights, but is fine with the coverage the built-in brief that running shorts provide.  Mark prefers a lycra under-layer, even with shorts that have briefs, and avoids cotton because of the dreaded chafe risk.  Carol is all about business - tighty-whiteys at all times.

Here is a summary of my informal, non-scientific poll (of people I wasn’t too embarrassed to ask):

• ·         Some folks’ number one concern is panty-line with tights, yet others regard comfort as most important, panty-line or not.   (By “Some folks” I mean some women)

•          Most men like to go free and easy when it comes to tights.  They don’t claim that it has anything to do with panty-line.

•          A slight majority of men and women leave the undies at home when wearing shorts with built-in briefs.

•          Anything that chafes during a run, undergarment or not, gets donated to a local charity.

Apparently there is no one TRUTH to the question.  Going Commando appears to be a matter of personal preference.  People choose what works for them, or like me, they do what they do because that is what they have always done.  So…to wear or not to wear underwear? Whether you are a newbie runner or an old timer with thousands of miles under your feet, what you are wearing under your racing shorts and tights is entirely up to you!

You Can't Digitize Poop

Despite the popular emoji 💩,  you just can’t digitize poop.  This statement came tumbling out of my orifice recently when discussing a local news story on our morning run.

It’s true! There isn’t a “send” button on your touchscreen that sends that unmentionable brown matter into cyberspace where you no longer have to deal with it.  At this moment you’re thinking, “Flush handle…DUH!”  You’d be correct in that the handle acts as a message SEND button, and may as well give you the reassuring feedback message, “Your poop has been sent!”  But to where?  Mind you, it was not simply translated into computer code and transferred as a nanobyte of information to The Cloud , an odorless invisible infinite place that we can ignore.

In the real world, poop takes up space and has weight (and a smidgen of odor). In other words, poop has mass.  Mass cannot be created or destroyed - Law of Conservation, baby!  Did you know that there are four bags of astronaut poop on the moon, left behind by Neil Armstrong on his Apollo mission?  Poop is basically forever.  What I do know is that I bag my pooches’ poo every day and it certainly adds up over a short period of time…and it doesn’t go away until the garbage truck comes. And I have been on plenty of school field trips as a mom and a teacher to the local sewage treatment plant.  I’ll avoid graphic descriptions.   Just take my word - it does NOT simply disappear.

According to the book The Truth About Poop, people produce one ounce of poop for each 12 pounds of their body weight.  For the average man that is almost one pound per day!!  (Many of us may have the urge to deny that amount…and we smell like roses, no doubt.)

Add that up.  For the average life span of the male human species of 70 years, that means over 25,000 pounds of excrement!  Do you want that piling up around you?  ‘Course not.  And you don’t have to live with that. WHY?  Not because of high-tech fiber-optics or itty-bitty computer chips (although they help) or solely due to brain-geek-created binomial code.

Plumbing is our REAL hero here.  And plumbers, and folks who understand the workings of the massive invisible infrastructure that lays beneath our feet.  Without that infrastructure, and the people who have spent their lives as students, apprentices and professionals, that POOP might be what is beneath our precious little feet.

A recent local news article lamented the coming shortage of plumbers and other hands-on trade workers that keep our quality of life moving, literally.  Apparently the older generation of those who keep electricity running to our homes and water moving in and flushing out is nearing retirement and the new generation doesn’t seem to appreciate their importance.  Everyone is scrambling to learn the computer-based skills…and if you talk to any young teen these days many will tell you that they plan to become incredibly successful video game developers and testers, with their bums taking the permanent shape of the recliners in which they reside.  There is a fear that there will be a shortage of non-digital trade workers.  If this happens and all of the youth do do the technology thing (oops - did I just say“doo-doo”??) we could theoretically end up knee deep in our own 💩.

Reality is if those young-uns want to succeed, a bunch of them would take a look at the technical schools and apprentice opportunities. Because soon enough we are all going to be paying top dollar to ensure our poop leaves the premises in a timely manner…as well as receiving electricity to our homes and sound, structural roofs over our heads.  

And schools might well bring back an emphasis on mechanics, wood shop, automotive repair and real world, hands-on experiences.  We ought to give those areas of study the level of respect they deserve!  We don't call it the porcelain throne for nothin'.