These Dreams

Dusk had fallen. A large, vintage, light-colored car sat atop a hill on an ice-glazed driveway from my past.

The car began to roll and I turned to face an opaque sheet of ice-encrusted glass, through which only misshapen splotches of muted colors were visible.

As I fought to hold the steering wheel steady, I felt the rubber beneath me try, and fail, to find leverage on the slick slope.

The street I entered was lined, on either side, by an assortment of vehicles of similar age, but varying color. Someone was having a party.

I felt a moment of horror as I realized I had to travel, in reverse, between the icy rows. I wondered how I would do it, even as I did. As I maneuvered through my panic, an unobstructed yard, full of lush, green, perfectly manicured grass appeared through my back passenger-side window. All I had to do was get the car to that yard, and my journey would be over.

The rear wheels gained entry, jumping the concrete curb with a “thud-thud”. The car turned with the interruption, and came to a stop perpendicular to the house behind the grass, and finally, I exhaled.

While I am assured by those who should know, that I do indeed have them; I rarely remember my dreams. Even if I manage to retain some small portion of a night-time visit from my subconscious, it is usually gone by lunch. I have had two dreams in the last week which have, since slithering out of my darkest recesses, remained vivid, and firmly planted on my frontal lobe.

Though they usually evade my memory, dreams, as a whole, fascinate me. The fact that our brains continue to work, even as we drift into an altered state of consciousness during which we have little to no control, is a marvelous mystery. And, I do believe there is much to learn in what our simplest selves have to say.

I stand alone in my bedroom. Through the open door, I watch a woman moving about the den.

A confrontation ensues, just outside my bathroom, and it becomes obvious that the woman I’ve been observing is holding something I value. I attempt to take it from her, but she refuses to relinquish the prize. She mocks me with her patience. The only raised voice is mine, and, physically, she is much stronger than I.

As I wrestle with her, my image appears in the mirror over her shoulder. My face is twisted, angry, and ugly. And then I look at hers. But hers, too, is mine, calm, serene, and pitying.

The path I am traveling is treacherous, but with careful attention, will bring me to a better place. And, when I get there, I will have decided which “me” I want to be.

“Is it cloak n dagger
Could it be spring or fall
I walk without a cut
Through a stained glass wall
Weaker in my eyesight
The candle in my grip
And words that have no form
Are falling from my lips”

Martin Page & Bernie Taupin

Sudsy Serenity

As a kid, I hated washing the dishes. As I recall, the chore was assigned a week at a time, except for the weeks when my sister developed an odd case of eczema on her forearms. The doctor advised she keep those arms clean and dry, and I saw the hand-writing on the wall…

Dishwashers weren’t what they are now. There was no pot-scrubber feature, or handy disposal to get rid of all the “baked-on residue”. And, my mother was a real stickler about rinsing. Did I say rinsing? She called it rinsing, I called it washing. It wasn’t a simple matter of holding the dish under running water. My mother’s idea of rinsing involved steel-wool and plenty of elbow grease before sliding the dish between the guides. Even as I child, I thought this ritual cumbersome, inefficient, and a serious waste of time better spent riding my bicycle/Dodge Rambler, or talking on the telephone.

In high-school, my American History teacher directed us to write a personalized version of the Declaration of Independence. Before handing mine back, she had drawn a large, red “A” just above the title “My Declaration of Independence from Dishwashing”. Later that night, I offered the paper over my father’s full belly, just as my mother’s voice called from the adjoining room, “Stacye! Dishes!”.

My first home away from home was a charming, though antiquated, farmhouse on the outskirts of town. There was no dishwasher, which given my experience, only simplified the process. I washed, and God dried.

I moved, later, into several different homes with working dishwashers that I never used. I proved to be a very capable dishwasher, and as my children grew, I assigned the chore, a week at a time. They washed, and God dried, while I carried a basket of laundry outside to hang in the sun.

It wasn’t until my children were old enough to visit their friend’s homes that they began to question our routine.

“Mom, we have a dishwasher. Why don’t we use it?”

Stretching both arms out in front of me, I answered with a smile.

“Because I have a dishwasher, and now I have three more!” I finished by running one hand through my child’s disheveled hair, only slightly muffling the answering groan.

Ten years ago, I met and married a man who came with a built-in daughter and roommate, in addition to the usual appliances. The merging of our two families created a dish-dirtying machine that overwhelmed my shiny, chrome double sink. The age of mechanization began, and might have continued had it not been for financial doom and gloom.

Recent pay cuts, worthless retirement accounts, and media driven panic encouraged me to look at ways to reduce my expenses. I cancelled my mail-order DVD account, informed my son that dinner out would henceforth be viewed as a “treat”, and decided to delay buying the pair of noise-cancelling headphones I’d been eyeing. I arranged to have a clothesline strung between two immense, sturdy, southern pines, and declared the dishwasher off limits.

Monday, for the first time in over ten years, I washed our dishes by hand. It didn’t take long to wash a couple of plates, a few glasses, two coffee mugs, and several pieces of cutlery. It took even less time for me to realize why I had clung to this routine for so long.

Drinking glasses danced amidst soap suds, colliding with an occasional gentle clink, and causing me to notice that there was no other sound to interrupt my thoughts. The simple act of running a sinkful of dishwater had cleared the room of those fearful of being called upon to dry, leaving me free to consider our dinner conversation, to mull over my day, and to plan for the next.

Humming tunelessly, I dragged the sudsy dishcloth over the face of a plate, appreciating the sense of accomplishment and purpose inherent in so simple a task. I placed the steaming dish into the dish rack I’d kept in case of emergency, and left the drying to God.

Older People

I try to avoid labels, all labels. But, I particularly dislike the label we apply to any human blessed with longevity. The term “Senior Citizen” is a misnomer on a number of levels. After all, an older person may not be “Senior” at all. He might be a junior. And what is the significance of “Citizen” here? Aren’t we all citizens? We don’t call babies “Newborn Citizens”. We wouldn’t refer to a forty-year-old as a “Midlife Citizen”. The mere idea sounds awkward and ludicrous.

I have heard the argument that the term “Senior Citizen” was borne out of respect for a person’s advanced age, but I’m not buying it. I believe the term to be market driven, much like the terms “Soccer Mom”, “Gen-Xer”, and “Baby-boomer”. Unfortunately, as the media makes use of these catch-phrases, the terms become part of our collective consciousness, morphing images born as marketing tools into stereotypes with inherently negative connotations.

I don’t like the word “elderly”, either. As soon as it reaches my ear, it becomes another word entirely, registering in my brain as “feeble”. Left with few options, due to my own semantic prejudices, I refer to those “of a certain age” as “older”.

I enjoy older people. I always have. As a young child, one of my best friends was our next-door neighbor, Earl Witcher. I wish I had a dollar for every time my parents told the story of my running, with arms out-stretched, from our driveway to his, shouting “Ale! Ale!”.

As a young mother, I was blessed to live next door to Ruby Kitchens, a hard-scrabble, deeply southern woman of indeterminate age, though her tight, pewter-colored perm suggested at least sixty. Ruby loved babies, which was lucky as I proved to be a prolific bearer. She loved to hold them, sing to them, and make faces at them. And, I enjoyed a rare empty lap as I watched her love them. For eight years we shared a driveway, and our markedly divergent lives, becoming dear friends. When the walls began to close in on my burgeoning family, visits were less frequent, but no less enjoyable. The children she helped me to raise are adults now, and Ruby has been gone for many years, yet I still think of her several times a week.

~~~

Joy is a spritely eighty-five, though if you ask her, she isn’t a day over eighty-three. Lucie turned eighty this year, passing the day in the hospital bed she has occupied since she was seventy-eight.

Joy came to work in our office three years ago, and within weeks had become one of my favorite things about weekdays. Last February, Lucie was the first hospice patient assigned to my care. I fell in love on sight.

Joy runs circles around most of the much younger employees in our office, coaxing productivity out of office equipment most of us have never learned to use, and doing it with a smile. Lucie is paralyzed, from the neck down, as the result of a stroke. She lays, a helpless, horribly contracted heap, in the center of her twin-sized world. She is completely dependent on others to meet her needs, and she doesn’t mind telling you what they are. I rarely visit without a small container of vanilla ice-cream.

Joy hums. You don’t so much look for Joy, as listen for her. The one time Joy isn’t humming is when she is talking, and she loves to talk. Her conversations usually surround some form of culture; she might recommend a book she’s just finished reading, or review a night at the symphony or an afternoon spent at the museum. An avid “Dancing with the Stars” fan, she loves to rehash the latest episode while stirring hot chocolate mix into a cup of steaming hot water.

Lucie’s eyes are usually closed when I enter her room. I’m careful to bend close before I say her name quietly, while softly touching one tiny, bony shoulder. Despite her efforts to open them, her right eye never fully cooperates, prompting my perch on the left side of her bed.

“Miss Lucie? It’s Stacye…” I encourage her to wakefulness.

“Hey!” She exudes enthusiasm in a voice barely above a whisper.

“It’s Saturday, Miss Lucie, February twenty-first, almost spring-time! How are you doing today?” I slide one hip up onto the bed, feeling the egg-crate mattress beneath its thin cotton covering.

“Oh…I’m alright…” She answers every time.

I stand, and move to draw the drapes.

“You want these open, don’t you Miss Lucie? Look at that gorgeous sunshine!”

I return to the side of her bed.

“Are you eating?” At last check she weighed less than seventy pounds.

“These people don’t cook right.” She answers with a lop-sided sneer and averted eyes.

“It’s not what you’re used to, is it?”

“It sure ain’t!” Images from an earlier visit, remnants of camouflage-colored puree decorating thick, institutional stoneware, fill my head.

White noise, from the television she insists must play at all times, accompanies our words. Sometimes I carry the conversation. Raised by a father whose green thumb was more of a necessity than a hobby, Lucie loves to hear about my garden.

And, when she’s up to it, Lucie has stories to tell. Hours, spent at her bedside, have taught me much about life in pre-integration Atlanta, as she takes me along on the bus ride across town to “care for a white family”. Most interesting, though, are her ruminations on Lucie; Lucie the daughter, Lucie the independent woman, Lucie the single mother. The injured cadence of her voice urges me closer, as she shares her disappointment in the father of her only child who “…left, and never came back”.

Two framed photographs provide the only break in the institutional green of our surroundings. Lucie’s grandson smiles through an eight-by-ten rectangle of glass. And, just underneath, hangs a six-by-four photo of his infant son, also known as “the baby”.

“Did your grandson bring the baby to see you this week?”, I ask as I dab at the unbidden tear falling from an eye that won’t quite open.

“Nah…”, she answers. “He’s busy…”

“Well, I bet he’ll be here next week!” I rise to leave, readjusting the blankets displaced by my hip.

Bending, I kiss her shiny, cocoa-colored forehead.

“I’m going now, Miss Lucie. I’ll see you next week…”

“Alright…”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Worry Beads”

As a civil engineer working with a large real estate firm, my father was part of the boom that built Atlanta during the 1960’s. It was in this way we came to know the Kwechs, a family of Chicagoan transplants. They talked funny, slathered both sides of their sandwiches with butter instead of mayonnaise, and ate pickled fruit. They were also Catholic, which was my mother’s way of explaining Mrs. Kwech’s habit of pinning a handkerchief into her hair before entering a church.

As we sat down to a Thanksgiving dinner featuring butter molded into the shape of a lamb alongside pickled peaches, all five Kwechs made a mysterious hand-motion after “the blessing”. Fascinated, I studied the motion and practiced it; thinking it “neat”, until my mother reprimanded me. This was the first time I heard the word “sacrilegious”.

Of course, my mother’s horror only served to accentuate the exotic nature of this mysterious faith. Obviously, the Catholic Church was much more holy than the garden-variety, Southern Methodist church I’d been brought up in.

I am a Jack-of-all-churches, and master of none. I have studied most of the major religions, and many of the lesser known. Faith, as a practice, fascinates me. So it is, that almost forty years later, I understand that much of the mystery of the Catholic faith isn’t so much a matter of secrecy as it is ritual. Still, compared to Methodism, one of the least imaginative religions ever practiced, Catholicism piqued my interest.

It’s aura lies in its accoutrement; priests in fine robes with satin sashes and impressive head-gear, an assortment of ranked deities, confessionals, and, of course, the rosary.

The first rosary I ever saw was made of rose quartz. I remember thinking it beautiful. Respecting my mother’s admonition, I never considered I could own one until learning that Catholic’s don’t own the patent on the rosary. It seems that this, like so many Protestant traditions, is a practice borrowed from a much older religion.

Buddhists, too, worry rosaries, or malas, during prayer. Traditionally consisting of one hundred and eight beads, a mala is used to keep count while reciting a mantra in meditation. Elizabeth Gilbert elaborated on this tradition, beautifully, in her book “Eat, Pray, Love”. In the book, she points out the symbolism of the number three, inherent in the Buddhist mala. She refers to the number of beads, one hundred and eight, as the perfect number because, while being divisible by three, its individual numbers add up to nine, which, when perfectly divided, also amounts to three, a number of importance in many religions; as in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

After reading, and being inspired by, Ms. Gilbert’s book, I ordered and received a Tibetan mala. One hundred and eight, perfectly symmetrical, wooden beads line up along a piece of ordinary twine that, purportedly, has been blessed by one or more Tibetan monks. The beads came protected by a tiny satin, hand-embroidered purse, and they reside within the confines of my over-sized, designer hand-bag.

Today, after receiving several prayer requests from an assortment of friends, residing in a variety of locales across the globe, I retrieved the beads. They rode in my pant’s pocket for most of the day, and now, are secreted against my chest.

Oils, from my hands, lend a new-found gleam to their wooden faces, as my touch reminds me of their purpose, and I pray…

Through the Eyes of a Child

At eight years old, Lisa dwarfed the desk she leaned upon. Her eyes moved quickly, and side to side, as she read intently from the textbook in front of her.

“She doesn’t even know I’m here.”, Helen thought as she passed the child.

“Child”, the word repeated in her brain as she reminded herself that the person at the desk was, indeed, just a child.

“Then why do I feel so self-conscious?”, she continued the conversation with herself.

This child wasn’t just any child. This child was the boss’s child. Imagined snippets of Lisa’s privileged life played in the form of colorful magazine images inside Helen’s head, as she fed paper into the fax machine.

“What must she think of me, a grunt in her father’s office?”

“Look at the way she studies so intently! She hasn’t moved in minutes! Is this the result of parenting? Is this the effect of having a stay-at-home Mom?”

Helen stood in front of a historically moody fax machine, listening for the sounds of successful transmission, as an image of her own back presented in her head, and she wondered what the child thought of her bulky, discount-store sweater.

A piercing squeal signaled her success and Helen stole a glance at Lisa as she left the room. The child’s head still hung over the book, allowing a curtain of perfectly coiffed, shiny blonde hair to shield her face.

The conversation continued as she made her way back to her cubicle.

“She probably doesn’t see me that way at all. She probably didn’t speak because she’s shy, and I am an adult, and maybe she just doesn’t talk to adults.”

Realizing she needed another copy, Helen turned on her heel upon seeing the crowded bulletin board over her desk.

“This job is embarrassing. It takes no skill.” As she navigated the cubicle maze, the conversation began again. “That child studies that way so that she will never have to work in a place like this!”

Arriving at the antiquated copier, she raised the lid and mitered the paper on the glass.

“But she doesn’t really know what you do! For all she knows, your job is very difficult, requiring lots of skill and education!”

Helen lowered the lid and pressed the button. An image of her boss’s den filled her head as he sat upon an oversized, expensively upholstered ottoman in front of his studious blonde daughter. “We buy this education for you so that you never have to work for someone like me.”

Lights flashed as the mechanism traveled back and forth underneath the glass.
“This isn’t about her, you know. This is about you. That child has no idea what you do or why. But, you do.”

A flood of images filled Helen’s head as she retrieved both copy and original, beginning with that goofy graduation picture, complete with rakishly tilted, white mortar board. She saw an image of her first, hopelessly addicted, husband, and a succession of mindless jobs she worked at to support her children. She saw the jalopies she drove and the unimaginative boxes she’d lived in, and the puzzle began to come together.

She barely noticed the co-worker she side-swiped while rounding a corner of the maze. His “ ‘Scuse me…” brought her head up and she dashed off a smile that stuck as she realized she’d bought it.

Years of negligence and name-calling had left their mark. She saw herself as others experienced her, strong and aloof, yet, caring. Her smile deepened as she realized the permeability of her guise. Her perceived strength was nothing more than a perfected defense mechanism.

Unmasked by and eight-year-old, she filed the copy, and then the original.

Trapezoid

He runs his fingers through my son’s hair.

“Did the printout help you? Can you recognize a trapezoid?”

And, that’s all I need to know…

What is Love?

As a child, love meant racing to be the first to greet Dad as he pushed through the screen door.

As a teenager, I shared confidences with girlfriends, building a love that protected our vulnerably emerging selves.

As a young adult, it was all about the chase; romance, flowers, stolen embraces, and the fever pitch of emotion that tied the rhythm of my heart to the sound of a voice.

Mother-love is unlike any other; constant, sweeter, deeper, purer, and ever-growing.

One of the gifts of this time in my life is the ability to integrate all these different kinds of love, and to see how they build, one upon the other. And, with this cache of love stored away as reference, I now see love in places I had never considered looking before.

Love is a progression. I remember the first time I really heard the following lines, the way they moved me, and the promise in them. They were read by my ninth-grade Sunday school teacher, and many years later, served as my marriage vows.

“1 Corinthians 13:1-13

“If I speak in the tongues of men and angels,
but have not love,
I have become sounding brass or a tinkling symbol.
And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing.
And if I dole out all my goods, and
if I deliver my body that I may boast
but have not love, nothing I am profited.
Love is long suffering,
love is kind,
it is not jealous,
love does not boast,
it is not inflated.
It is not discourteous,
it is not selfish,
it is not irritable,
it does not enumerate the evil.
It does not rejoice over the wrong, but rejoices in the truth

It covers all things,
it has faith for all things,
it hopes in all things,
it endures in all things.
Love never falls in ruins;
but whether prophecies, they will be abolished; or
tongues, they will cease; or
knowledge, it will be superseded.
For we know in part and we prophecy in part.
But when the perfect comes, the imperfect will be superseded.
When I was an infant,
I spoke as an infant,
I reckoned as an infant;
when I became [an adult],
I abolished the things of the infant.
For now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know as also I was fully known.
But now remains
faith, hope, love,
these three;
but the greatest of these is love.”

Later, I discovered the writings of the ancient poet, Rumi.

This is Love

“Love is reckless; not reason.
Reason seeks a profit.
Love comes on strong,
consuming herself, unabashed.

Yet, in the midst of suffering,
Love proceeds like a millstone,
hard surfaced and straightforward.

Having died of self-interest,
she risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.

Without cause God gave us Being;
without cause, give it back again.”

A steady mist fell as I drove into work this morning. The light changed, and as I rolled to a stop, I noticed a flurry of activity to my right. A young, heavy-set, African-American man, clothed in ill-fitting blue jeans and Arizona Cardinals football jersey, filled the wet sidewalk. Drawing my attention was the huge bouquet of heart-shaped balloons impeding his progress. Blinking silver and red, they danced and bounced above his smiling face. As he wrestled with the large, red bow serving as his hand-hold, I thought, “Now THAT is love.”

“California Dreamin'”

Dean called today from California….

Among other things, we discussed the weather. The “Mamas and Papas” played in my head as I listened, expecting him to conjure balmy, beach-breezes. Instead, I saw his fifty degrees, and raised him, with my seventy.

Every call from Dean brings with it, a memory of a sunny, southern, summer day….

I held the car door open for Charlie, The World’s Best Dog, as I surveyed my surroundings. Dean busied himself in his truck-bed, in search of some kind of tool, to the accompaniment of the sort of greeting only Zan is capable of giving.

“Well…” It is one of her favorite words, and usually spoken loudly. “…there she is!”

She approached, in her uniform of Levi’s and ribbed tank, arms outstretched. Even then, something told me to savor every one of those vanilla-scented hugs…

Hallie was coming home, after an out-of-town visit, and we were preparing her welcome. Coaxing soap-scum off a ceramic bathtub, Zan sang:
“I feel lucky, I feel lucky, yeah
No Professor Doom gonna stand in my way
Mmmmm, I feel lucky today.”

I joined in, and we sang. We laughed, and we sang, and we scrubbed, and we loved, as Charlie, The World’s Best Dog, curled up in a corner, and Dean busied himself outside.

Zan and I emerged from the cool darkness of the house to the sight of Dean, and a ladder. I don’t remember the incident. I can’t recall what raised her ire. But, I won’t forget the epitaph, “Ladder Bastard”. From Zan’s lips, to my memory, the words burn nearly twenty years later.

I remembered them today, as we spoke. I wondered if Dean was bothered by them, or if like me, he remembered them with fondness for a sunny, southern, summer day.

“I’ve got some new music for your site!”, Dean started as though we’d spoken just yesterday.

“Cool!”, was my response. “What is it?”

He answered, the conversation continued, and later, I looked up his suggestions. They are what I would expect from Dean, uniquely diverse, and I’m glad for the connection…

“>

Everything…

I left home at age twenty with a nursing degree I never really wanted and no sense of direction. This helps explain why, by the age of twenty-one, I was married and pregnant. Nine years later, my daily routine began with dropping all three of my children at school on my way to work in a midwifery clinic. This is where I met Zan.

Some may call it “luck”, or “fate”; others might invoke “kismet”. But I know that the universe provides, and throughout my life, I have been fortunate to have been blessed by people Zan would refer to as “guides”.

Zan is Native American, and she looks the part. Tall, and lithe, she wore her black hair long and flowing until it got in her way, at which point she clipped it, haphazardly, atop her head. She came to work as a midwife one year after I was hired as office manager, and fortunately, my world has never been the same.

At the time we met, my life was a mess. My marriage to an alcoholic, drug-addicted, philanderer was nearing an end. Listening to Zan’s dulcet-toned words of support and encouragement, I came to believe that I could raise my children in a healthy environment on my own. Later, it was through her suggestion that I found an Adult Children of Alcoholics’ meeting, where I realized it wasn’t just me; there were others like me who had taken what life had served up, and done the best they could with the little they had been given.

When she wasn’t occupied with turning my life right-side-up, Zan taught me about Native American culture, herbology, and bred in me a love for wolves. She introduced me to Bonnie Raitt, fried bread, and the art of healing massage. Most important though, as she taught me to love myself, she demonstrated how that love could, and should, be spread. Zan grew me up.

She returned to her beloved horse farm in Virginia about fifteen years ago, and it has probably been five since I’ve seen her, but if she called right now, we would pick up exactly where we left off. Zan would start by saying “Hello, Beautiful…”

Some may call it “midlife crisis”, or “menopause”; others might just call me “crazy”. But I know that, lately, I’ve gotten off track. The self-esteem I worked so hard to bring to fruition got trampled somewhere, and I forgot to notice. Lost, too, was my sense of direction. But I remembered today that the universe provides, and while I haven’t always gotten what I wanted, I am always provided with what I need.

I realized the presence of another “guide” who, through words of support and encouragement, demanded I be true to myself, while tenaciously prodding me to find my path. For the first time in a very long time, I not only know what I want, I believe I can have it. Simply put, I want everything….

“I want to learn what life is for
I don’t want much, I just want more
Ask what I want and I will sing
I want everything (everything)

I’d cure the cold and the traffic jam
If there were floods, I’d give a dam
I’d never sleep, I’d only sing
Let me do everything (everything)

I’d like to plan a city, play the cello
Play at Monte Carlo, play Othello
Move into the White House, paint it yellow
Speak Portuguese and Dutch
And if it’s not too much
I’d like to have the perfect twin
One who’d go out as I came in
I’ve got to grab the big brass ring
So I’ll have everything (everything)

I’m like a child who’s set free
At the fun fair
Every ride invites me
And it’s unfair
Saying that I only
Get my one share
Doesn’t seem just
I could live as I must
If they’d
Give me the time to turn a tide
Give me the truth if once I lied
Give me the man who’s gonna bring
More of everything
Then I’ll have everything
Everything”

Undercover Runner

Anyone who knows me will tell you I am not, by nature, a runner. I don’t have the vibe.

Athletic clothes don’t look chic when pulled over my frame. They don’t even look particularly athletic, unless you consider a frump athletic. I don’t carry a bottle of water everywhere I go, and my sneakers don’t look as though they have been run over by a car multiple times. And, if you see me on a street corner, I will not be running in place in preparation to dart across the sidewalk. I will, instead, have both arms out, wing-like with fingers splayed, in an effort to hold back the child who may or may not be accompanying me. Old habits die hard.

I still look back in horror at the days of the one-piece, polyester, blue-and-white-pinstriped jumpsuit we were forced to wear in PE class. It was the era of the “President’s Council on Physical Fitness Award”, wherein middle-aged jocks with large plastic whistles invoked the memory of JFK to “inspire” children to meet a set of standards set by the federal government. One entire quarter of the school year was set aside for this endeavor, and it quickly became the longest three months of my life.

One day a week we began our day under a cloud of steam emitted by our pre-pubescent mouths. Inside the black asphalt track, the football field sparkled as dewdrops fought the sun’s effort to reclaim them. The runners bounced in anticipation, while the rest of us huddled with arms wrapped around our shapeless midsections, and grimaced against the cold. As the coach approached in his year-round uniform of t-shirt over unattractive, polyester shorts, featuring a six-inch waistband and very deep pockets, I scanned my group of shivering non-runners for the easiest mark, and set my preliminary goal of not coming in last. By the end of the quarter, I had reevaluated. My new goal was, simply, to survive. Recently, though, my experience has served me well.

In the public school system, PE is now treated as an elective that is placed in rotation with Home Economics, Computer Science, and Spanish. So far this school year, my son has learned his way around a kitchen, and mastered at least twenty words in Spanish. He returned from Christmas break full of anticipation for six weeks of PE. His excitement, however, ended when the coach, wearing a t-shirt over unattractive, polyester shorts featuring a six-inch waistband and very deep pockets, raised a large plastic whistle to his lips, signaling the class to run.

Shane is athletic. He has played football for five years. He has excelled in basketball for four years, and fills the time in between with baseball. A couple of weeks ago, I met his descent from the school bus with my usual question.

“How was your day?”

“Crummy.”, he growled.

“I’m sorry. What happened?”

“PE”, was all he said.

“PE? You love PE! You were looking forward to it!”

“Yeah…”, he began. “That was before we had to run.” JFK may be a distant memory, but the President’s Council on Physical Fitness is, apparently, functioning without him.

I smiled down at my notably athletic progeny before saying, “Let me tell you a story.”

I used to joke that if you saw me running you could be sure someone was chasing me. That was before middle-age, and the realization that a simple change in dietary habits no longer reaps the same reward it did twenty years ago. At this time in my life, physical activity is just as important as logging every morsel of food that passes my lips.

I live just minutes from a park that boasts two well-maintained walking tracks. White concrete snakes over several acres between tennis courts and baseball diamonds, and a “nature trail” winds through towering pines behind the football field. The sound of my hurried, measured footsteps barely pierces the music piped into my ears through tiny, white earphones. By keeping my eyes down, I can get into “the zone”, and walk for miles. But when I raise my eyes, I see them; the runners. Loping by me, their long strides mock as I realize they will probably lap me again before I reach the end of the trail.

I want to run, but find it so boring, so tedious. And there is, of course, the picture in my mind of me running, complete with blue-and-white pinstriped, polyester jumpsuit…

Last week, the sun burned the frost out of the air, inviting me to venture outside in my shirt-sleeves. Exhilarated, I fought my puppy’s gangly legs into his harness and attached the leash.

“Let’s go, boy!”, were the last words I would speak before re-entering the house.

Murphy, my five-month-old boxer, headed out at a dead gallop. I resisted him at first, but, upon seeing the joy in his limited freedom, I followed his lead. And, we ran. We ran downhill, and around corners. We ran uphill in the center of the street. We ran into cul-de-sacs, down to the entrance of our subdivision, and back.

As I repeated the harness process, in reverse, I marveled at how good I felt. I felt loose, I felt fit, I felt athletic! And, the difference was made by my companion. Running on the other end of Murphy’s leash freed me from the inhibitions inherent in my awkward appearance in athletic clothing, and stopping to catch my breath warranted no explanation, as everyone knows running dogs stop every few feet to sniff. The presence of a dog changed the entire premise of the activity while keeping me entertained. I’m not putting myself out there as a runner, I’m just a football-Mom on the other end of a leash.