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Ordinary People

October 20, 2011 By

If I had known I was going to meet the Queen I would have dressed up a little and put on some makeup. I wouldn’t have been in my sweaty running clothes, with a bleeding face and an ankle the size of a football. And I certainly wouldn’t have been cursing under my breath, using language that would make a sailor hang his head in shame.

Talk about making a good first impression.

I had woken up early, and because the morning looked so gorgeous, I decided to go for a run in Central Park. I only traveled to New York once every two years or so, and I relished the opportunity to run in the world’s most famous park.

On this warm Fall morning, the scenery was stunning. The sky was bright, bright blue and the vibrant reds and golds of Fall stretched as far as the eye could see. As I ran along at a brisk pace, admiring the scenery and letting the glorious sounds of early morning fill my ears, I felt at one with nature.

All of a sudden, right after I had started sprinting for my final stretch, the toe of my running shoe snagged on a branch that had fallen across the trail. I tried to right myself, but my forward momentum kept me off-balance, and I found myself crashing down onto the concrete pathway.

So much for being at one with nature. Now I was at one with the sidewalk.

With shaking legs, I got to my feet. I immediately knew that my ankle was in trouble. From the burning sensation on my cheek and the blood dripping down onto my shirt, I could tell that my face wasn’t in great shape either. My legs weren’t going to carry me very far, so I had two choices. I could stay on the path in a crumpled heap waiting for someone to help me, or I could stagger over to the nearby cluster of benches and wait until I had collected myself a little.

If I was going to wait for someone to help me, I would have died of old age, so I opted for the benches. All three of them were occupied. On the first bench, a couple were entwined in an unlikely fashion, snogging the daylights out of each other. An old lady sat on the second bench with her eyes closed, as if she was taking a nap. The third was occupied by a tall Jamaican man with purple dreadlocks, who was bopping energetically to the tune of whatever was coming out of his iPod. He was beaming beatifically at me, as if I looked like an angel instead of a road accident victim.

Hmmm. Did I want to share a bench with the canoodling couple, the bouncing music man, or the quiet old lady? I headed to the second bench, sank down onto it and closed my eyes.

My foot was already swelling up like a balloon, so I had to loosen my shoes to allow for the expansion. I tugged too hard at my shoelace and jerked my ankle, sending a wave of pain right through my leg. I swore in a high-pitched voice, using the kind of expletive my mother would have been horrified by. Then I remembered the little old lady catnapping on my left, and I clapped a hand over my mouth.

Using the water from my water bottle, I tried to rinse off my grazed cheek. I felt as if my face was on fire, and I kept cursing in pain. I kept my foul language to a whisper, in consideration for the sleeping old lady.

Clutching my water bottle, I looked around me for the first time, and almost jumped out of my skin. The sleeping old lady was no longer sleeping. She was wide awake, and she was staring at me with some bemusement.

“You seem to have had a bit of a tumble,” she said, in a posh British accent. “Are you all right?”

“I’ll be OK,” I replied. “I’m very sorry if I woke you up.”

She nodded in acknowledgement.

Her casual attire was at odds with the sense of formality that radiated from her. She was dressed in gray sweatpants, a blue sweatshirt with frayed cuffs, and running shoes that looked like they had seen better days. Her neat gray curls were topped with a baseball cap emblazoned with the words “The Aliens Are Coming.”

As I peered at her, I realized that she looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. I was undoubtedly seeing her out of context, but I definitely recognized her from somewhere. All of a sudden the synapses in my brain connected her face to a picture I had seen in a discarded newspaper on the subway the previous day.

The old lady must have noticed the spark of recognition.

“Oh, bollocks,” she said with a sigh. “You know who I am.”

This was utterly bizarre. Had the Queen of England just said the word “bollocks” to me? Was she really sitting here beside me wearing a cap that said the aliens were coming?

“You’re staring, dear,” said the Queen gently.

“Sorry!” I said. “This is just… it’s just that…” I gave up and gestured vaguely.

Then a thought struck me.

“Do the British people know you’re here?” I asked sternly, as if I was asking a teenager if her parents knew where she was.

“Sometimes I like to just bugger off and do what I want,” said the Queen, with an air of defiance.

I could understand that. Being the Queen must be dreadful sometimes. But she was sitting here in the middle of Central Park by herself. Wasn’t she worried about being mugged or something? I wondered if the occupants of the other two benches were bodyguards.

A man in his forties wearing a pair of overalls approached along the path, neatly sidestepped the branch I had fallen over, and stopped in front of the Queen. He offered her a Starbucks cup and said, “Here’s your coffee, Lizzie.”

Lizzie?

The Queen graciously accepted the coffee, and then politely rattled off instructions for the man to find a First Aid kit for me. As he trotted away, she turned to catch me gawking at her in astonishment.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my face turning red with embarrassment. “This is just so weird. I’m sitting in Central Park with the Queen of England. You’re wearing a baseball cap and you say words like ‘bollocks’. You drink Starbucks. That guy called you Lizzie.”

“Well, he’s been a close friend of my family’s for 23 years. What else would he call me?”

She had a point, I guess. I could hardly expect her friends to be calling her “Your Majesty” all the time. I glanced over at her to speak, and to my horror, I noticed a single tear coursing its way down her face. And with a flash of insight, I could completely understand why.

Here was this woman, rich and famous beyond belief, with all of the material possessions anyone could want. She had money, a family, a legacy, an indelible place in history. And yet in many ways, I had more freedom than her. I could go running in Central Park whenever I wanted. I could dress how I liked without worrying about what the media would think. I could walk into a coffee shop or a grocery store and just do my thing. If I needed a vacation, I didn’t have to sneak out of the country without telling anyone. This woman was owned by the public. Every move she made was watched. She was a public icon, sometimes admired, sometimes scorned. All she wanted was the opportunity to be an ordinary person once in a while.

The Queen, whose public image portrayed her as being tough and implacable, seemed suddenly to be a vulnerable old lady.

My face was still bleeding and I was a mess, but somehow I didn’t think she would care. Beside me, I saw a human being in need of comforting. So I reached over and gave her a hug.

Because that’s what ordinary people do.

This week’s Indie Ink Challenge came from Billy Flynn, who gave me this prompt: You sit down on a bench in Central Park. At first you pay no attention to the person next to you; when you do glance over you realize it’s someone who’s famous, super-rich or powerful – your call; how do you use this chance meeting?
I challenged Tobie with the prompt: You’re a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. One of the patients, who is known to be delusional, tells you something that could solve a decades-old murder case in your town. Do you believe the patient and investigate? Or do you write the patient off as being an unreliable source of information?

Filed Under: Central Park, Costs of fame, fiction, Indie Ink Writing Challenge, Queen, running Tagged With: , , , , ,
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The Man In The Black Cloak

September 28, 2011 By

“…and you’re next…”

The man in the black cloak pointed at me with a long, bony finger and smiled. It was not the smile of someone sharing happiness. It was the smile of someone who enjoys inflicting pain.

“I think I’m in the wrong place,” I said, my voice echoing in the huge room. “I was looking for the bathroom.”

“Honey, you don’t need a bathroom where you’re going,” said the man in the black cloak.

That sounded far too ominous for my liking. I could only think of two places where I wouldn’t need a bathroom, and both of them started with H. As I turned to leave, two enormous, angry-looking men materialized from the shadows and blocked the double doors that I had just come through.

Curiously, the people who had entered those doors before me were not in the room. There did not appear to be any other exit. Where had they gone?

The man in the black cloak fixed his gaze on me, extended his hand, and gestured for me to move towards him. I found myself rooted to the spot, as if my legs were set in cement. A shove in the back from one of the angry men set me in motion, and with shaking legs, I slowly walked the length of the room.

“So,” said the man in the black cloak, “how would you like to go?”

“What?” I asked, my voice barely able to go above a whisper. “I get to choose?”

“Well, the journey isn’t pleasant. You should at least get to choose how it begins.”

“Um, what do you have?” I asked, as if I was picking something from a menu.

“Gun, arrow or electric shock,” said the man in the black cloak.

“Erm, electric shock, I guess.” This was bizarre. Was I actually choosing how someone would kill me?

“Good choice,” said the man in the black cloak. “A lot tidier than the other ones.”

His hand started glowing ominously as he pointed at me.

“Wait!” I said.

He lowered his hand. “What now?” he said, irritably. “There are other people waiting, you know.”

I looked him square in the eye. “Please let me go. I’m not ready to die.”

“Die?” said the man in the black cloak, incredulously. “You’re already dead. I’m trying to send you back. If you wanted to stay you should have gone right to the end of the hall.”

Before I could ask him what he meant, he pointed at me. Instantly, I was thrown across the room by a bolt of lightning. And then I was falling, falling faster than I could ever have imagined. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried not to throw up. I just knew that the impact was going to hurt.

All of a sudden I was crash-landing amid another bolt of lightning. I was lying on my back, reeling from the impact and trying to catch my breath. I found myself staring at a man in a white coat hovering over me with defibrillator pads.

“She’s back,” he yelled over his shoulder.

As I closed my eyes and drifted to an exhausted sleep, I found myself wondering who would be next to see the man in the black cloak.

This week’s Indie Ink Challenge came from Kurt, who gave me this prompt: …and you’re next. I challenged eveningreddress with the prompt: The voice on the other end of the telephone uttered five words that would completely change my life.

Filed Under: And You're Next, fiction, Indie Ink Writing Challenge Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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Stopping To Smell The Roses

August 30, 2011 By

Look what I have...

For a number of reasons, I find my morning commute to be far more palatable than the afternoon commute. I rarely wait more than three minutes for a bus to the subway station. Because I board the subway at the end of the line, I always get a seat. The morning commute is faster and generally more pleasant – or at least, less unpleasant.

In the afternoon, I am tired and cranky, and my head is full of work-related stress. I am forced to squeeze myself onto an already jam-packed subway train, and when I emerge at my destination, I have to spend seventeen geological eras waiting for a bus home. Because my chances of getting a seat on either the subway or the bus are less than my chances of being ordained as the Pope, my afternoon commute involves me being on my feet for well over an hour.

By the time I got onto the bus yesterday, I was dying of thirst and my head was pounding. I stood there on the bus, one squashed sardine among many, feeling hot and grumpy. I never regard my commutes as fun, but yesterday, I was even more fed up than usual. I stared at the floor for the entire thirty minute bus ride just to avoid accidentally catching anyone’s eye. That’s how much of a mood I was in.

As the bus pulled up to my stop, I breathed a sigh of relief at having made it home while simultaneously lamenting the fact that my evenings are always filled with chores and running around after people.

Yes, I was feeling pathetic and sorry for myself. I admit it.

But then… something amazing happened.

As I stepped off the bus, I saw my husband and my younger son James sitting on the grass near the bus stop. Thinking I was seeing a mirage, I rubbed my eyes.

James jumped up and yelled, “Mommy!” The sun shone on his curly blond hair and illuminated his entire being. I swear, the kid looked like an angel – a glorious shining light that swept away every ounce of negativity in me. He ran towards me with his hands behind his back. The smile on his face as he reached me could have split his face in two as he pulled his hands from behind his back and thrust a bunch of red roses at me.

I spent a few minutes sitting there on the grass with my husband and my son, basking in the sense of love and belonging, and literally stopping to smell the roses.

I think I will regard my afternoon commutes with a lot less angst from now on. Because look at what I have waiting for me at the other end.

(Photo credit to the author.)

Filed Under: Commuting, family, life, Light, Love, Roses, Stress Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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Endings And Beginnings

August 4, 2011 By

It was bittersweet, that freezing cold day in February, 2003.

I was at a conference with a number of my co-workers, which really meant that I was subjected to a day of boring talks that I had to pretend to be utterly fascinated by. The trade-off was the free lunch, and I have to give the conference venue credit: it was outstanding grub.

After lunch, we had a bit of free time before the session reconvened. I decided to check the messages on my cell phone, so I turned it on and started fiddling with the buttons to get to the voicemail. When it vibrated in my hand, I almost jumped out of my skin. The incoming call was coming from a number I did not recognize.

Gerard, calling from a payphone. At the hospital, of all places.

He was calling to deliver bad news: his dad had been diagnosed with colon cancer. There was a possibility that it had spread to the liver. Tests were underway to find out.

I whispered a few words of explanation into the ear of one of my colleagues and ran to my car. An hour later, I was giving my father-in-law a hug at the hospital. He was looking remarkably cheerful for someone who had just received dire news. Either he was using humour as a coping mechanism, or the doctors had done a really good job of giving him hope.

Much later that night, Gerard and I left the hospital and went home. While he was Googling something-or-other, I locked myself into the bathroom and surreptitiously peed on a stick.

Three minutes later, the stick told me that while one life was fading away, another one was just beginning.

At our first ultrasound a couple of weeks later, we held hands as the technician showed us our baby on the monitor. His heart was beating solidly; and even though he was about the size of a grape, we could clearly see his little legs waving around.

Everything looks great, the technician told us. This is a good-looking baby.

Gerard and I finally allowed ourselves to feel a lick of hope for the first time since we found out we were having a baby. We had suffered a miscarriage several months previously; we had not really trusted that we would actually get to the point of seeing a healthy baby. We had several weeks to go before we would pass the point at which our previous pregnancy had failed, and we would hold our breaths until then. But seeing a strong, healthy baby was something that we had not experienced.

After the ultrasound, we drove straight to Gerard’s parents’ home to see them. Now that we had gone through the ultrasound, we felt OK about telling them. We showed my father-in-law the ultrasound picture, and said to him, “If the baby is a boy we’re going to call him George, after you.”

With his eyes flashing with humour, my father-in-law said, in his characteristic Irish brogue, “Aaaah, don’t do that to the poor child!”

Less than a month later, I stood in the cemetery with snow swirling around me as my father-in-law was laid to rest. As I said goodbye to one George, my hands protectively cradled the belly in which another was growing .

As one life ends, another begins. And the spirit of the old lovingly watches over the soul of the new.

(Photo credit to the author.)

Filed Under: Baby, Cancer, Death, life, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Loss, Ultrasound Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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Autism And Adolescence: Preparing For The Storm

August 1, 2011 By

I was educated in the 80’s at a girls-only Catholic school that was run by nuns. The school was high on academic excellence, and a high percentage of its graduates went on to achieve some pretty impressive things. At the same time, though, the school fell flat where it came to life skills training, and many of those people who wound up in noteworthy careers also struggled in various areas of their personal lives.

Throughout high school, I frequently found myself being summonsed to the principal’s office. The principal was a mean old nun named Sister Elizabeth, and she hated me simply because I was not a clone of my cousin, who she had taught at a different school several years previously. Every visit to her office was the same, regardless of what alleged infraction had sent me there. First, Sister Elizabeth would ask me why I couldn’t be like my cousin, and then she would put on a grave face and say, “Whether you throw a teaspoonful of mud or a bucketful of mud, you’re still throwing mud.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

I mean, I was the shy, socially awkward kid in my peer group. I wasn’t exactly a trouble-maker, and when I did hit a difficult patch in eleventh grade, my troubles were directed towards myself, and barely caused a ripple beyond my immediate group of peers. I was never caught smoking under the bleachers, I never swore at a teacher, and I never had a pack of condoms fall out of my pocket while running down the hall. Interestingly enough, the person who all of this did happen to was never, to my knowledge, sent to see the dreaded Sister Elizabeth.

What the school laughably called “sex education” happened in the form of a couple of talks given to us by outside counselors when I was somewhere around tenth grade. The talks had the following central theme: if you have sex before marriage, you will undoubtedly go through teen pregnancy and a life of poverty and deprivation, and your child will be a juvenile delinquent addicted to drugs, and when you die you will go to hell.

We were given some very basic information about the different forms of contraception, and then told not to use any of them on the grounds that they were a sin. The only acceptable forms of birth control, we were told, were abstinence and the Rhythm Method (which, of course, was reserved strictly for marriage, because of the whole going-to-hell thing associated with sex).

In retrospect, the timing and the subject matter of these sex education talks was kind of funny. By the time we had to listen to them, most of my peers had been sexually active for at least a year and probably knew more about contraception than the people delivering the talks. To my knowledge, there was only one teen pregnancy in my peer group, and it happened after we had all graduated high school.

Things today are very different. Kids are maturing physically at a younger age than my generation did, and for the most part, society seems to have let go of the notion that teens just shouldn’t have sex. There is an acceptance that they are going to do it anyway, so we may as well equip them with the tools and knowledge to do it safely. I am all for that, although I certainly wouldn’t want my boys to be experimenting with sex until they have reached  a certain level of emotional maturity.

The question that is plaguing me is this: how do I deal with this topic where my son with autism is concerned? He may only be turning eight in September, but time flies, and before we know it he will be entering the world of pre-adolescence. His physical maturation will far outpace his social development, and I worry about the time when he will have physical drives that he will not be emotionally equipped to deal with.

And so I have decided to start seeking out resources and advice on this topic now.

That way, when the storm of adolescence hits, I may have a fighting chance of helping my son navigate his way through it all.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alamosbasement/3661120171)

Filed Under: Adolescence, autism, High School, life, parenting, School, Sex, Sex Education, Social Development, Teenage Years Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Life And Death: No Laughing Matter

July 23, 2011 By

People are already making jokes about it.

The first news stories about the untimely death of 27-year-old musician Amy Winehouse started circulating less than an hour before I started writing this post. Within about ten minutes of me first hearing the news, fan pages started to pop up on Facebook.

Amy Winehouse is dead, at least theres enough drugs about for everyone now (with a smiley face emoticon at the end)

Police say that winehouse’s death was unexplained LOL, at that point they were probably stoned on the drugs in her <profanity>

Screw Amy Winehouse, she was a druggy and had death lined up for her

Amy Winehouse is dead…..HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Now, I don’t know much about Amy Winehouse. I don’t exactly fall into the demographic that stays up-to-date on popular music. However, I do know that she was insanely talented, even though her music wasn’t really to my taste. I know that she was plagued by substance abuse problems. I know that she was young and had a lot of life ahead of her, and that she had tons of potential within her.

I know that her death is unspeakably sad.

These jokes that are circulating, these fan pages that are being set up, and the derision with which some people are treating this story, is a sad statement about how people have become so desensitized to tragedy that they can have a good laugh about it before the deceased has even started to cool down.

Or maybe it’s nothing new. This is not the first time I’ve heard jokes about a tragedy soon after its occurrence: the space shuttle Challenger disaster, and the death of Mozambican president Samora Machel in a plane crash, both of which happened in 1986, are cases in point.

I wonder why this is, why there are people can make light of events like this. One theory is that they just don’t know how else to deal with news of tragedy. There is some credence to this idea, and I saw it in action on the day my father-in-law died. There was a mix-up that resulted in the wrong funeral home attempting to collect his body from the hospital, and when my mother-in-law heard about this, she made a joke about the funeral homes fighting over her husband’s dead body, and she laughed heartily. I believe that allowing a chink of humour into the day was a way for her to cope with the initial shock of being widowed after almost fifty years of marriage.

In the case of more widespread disasters, I believe that sometimes people make jokes simply because they don’t know how else to process the information.9/11. Hurricane Katrina. The tsunamis in Thailand and Japan. The Haiti earthquake.

Sometimes, though, people are just plain insensitive. They don’t feel any empathy either for the deceased or for the newly bereaved loved ones. Or  – and Amy Winehouse’s death is an example of this – they somehow rationalize that because the person lived in a certain way that they do not agree with, it is OK that he or she died.

Here’s my thought on all of this: Yes, Amy Winehouse was a celebrity – a colourful one with a controversial life, at that – and therefore her life was, to an extent, public property. And yes, she seems to have died in an Elvis-like manner that is bound to attract a lot of attention and speculation.

But above all, she was a human being with hopes and dreams and feelings and loved ones. The fact that she had substance abuse problems does not mean she deserved to die. It does not mean it is OK that she died. Her life – and her death – deserve the same respect as anyone else’s. Her family and friends should be able to grieve for their lost loved one without the world making public fun of it all.

I hope against hope that we as a society can somehow regain some of the humanity and compassion that seems to have eroded.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ups/2066092204/)

Filed Under: Amy Winehouse, Celebrities, Death, Facebook Fan Pages, Jokes, life, Respect, Tragedy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Getting Into Hot Water

July 22, 2011 By

Just over two weeks ago, our water heater broke.

For reasons that I will not bore you with because it’s a long story, we are still living without hot water. A family of four plus a mother-in-law. The family of four includes two children who have a close one-on-one relationship with mud.

Bath time takes twice as long as it used to. Instead of simply running the bath for the kids, we have to dump buckets of cold water into the tub, and boil huge pots of water on the stovetop that then get added to the cold water so that the kids won’t go into shock when they get in.

What’s that you’re asking? Oh, why don’t we just run cold water from the tap? Because for whatever reason, the lack of water in the hot water tank has completely messed up the water pressure on the tap in the bathroom.

On the one hand, I am glad this did not happen in the middle of winter. Because then, heating the bath water to a bearable level would take three times as long. On the other hand, though, in winter you can get away with taking fewer baths. During the dog days of summer, however, when the temperatures are well over a hundred degrees, regular baths are kind of important.

The baths just take care of the kids. Gerard has a shower in his shop, and I have to traipse off the gym in order to avoid being one of The Unwashed. My mother-in-law goes to her sister’s house.

Once everyone is clean, we then have to deal with the dishes. Running the dishwasher is out of the question because it wouldn’t do the job very well, and because it’s not even connected to the cold water anyway. So dishes have to be washed by hand, and kettles full of boiling water keep having to be added to the water in the kitchen sink. Instead of taking ten minutes to clear the dishwasher and reload it, I am now having to spend up to an hour on this nonsense.

How on earth did people five hundred years ago get anything done?

Well. While the men were out conquering whatever they were conquering, the women were staying home and taking care of it all. It’s not like they had to spend two hours a day on the subway getting to and from a full-time job at the office. And besides, avoiding body odour wasn’t such an issue with them. They had annual baths every July, and the entire village shared a single tub of water for the occasion.

Apparently – apparently – our hot water will be reinstated within two or three days. I’ll believe it when I see it.

In the meantime, I just have to make the most of what I have. And drink wine to stop myself from going completely round the bend.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dustpuppy/5371295/)

Filed Under: family, Hot Water, life, Lifestyle, Summer, Water, Winter Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Sleep Interrupted

July 18, 2011 By

Sleep – or lack thereof – has been a big issue in my life lately. I’ve never really been one to sleep for long stretches, and particularly since entering the world of motherhood, I consider six hours to be a good night’s sleep. But these days, even getting that amount of shut-eye is a challenge. There are a number of reasons for the recent sleep deficit, ranging from a run of kids’  tummy bugs to the fact that I’m an occasional insomniac.

Saturday night was particularly brutal. I went to bed early enough, because I was planning a long run early on Sunday morning. The kids were asleep, and James, who had been afflicted with a tummy bug, seemed to be on the mend.

At about midnight, when I had barely been asleep for half an hour, I woke to the sound of James crying his little heart out. My husband and I went to investigate, only to discover that the poor child had had a tummy-bug related accident. I whisked James off to the bathroom to clean him up and comfort him; my husband took care of changing the sheets and throwing soiled sheets and pajamas into the washing machine. James, bless his precious little soul, kept apologizing, even though I assured him that it was OK.

We got James settled and went back to bed. By the time I got back to sleep it was well after 1:00 a.m. A couple of hours later, I was roused to consciousness by a light tugging at my arm. I squinted in the darkness and saw James standing beside my bed. He took my hand, wordlessly led me to his bed, and plaintively asked me to stay with him. How could I refuse, right? So I climbed in and got settled, and James promptly threw up all over me.

As quietly as I could, I got James and myself cleaned up, threw yet another load of sheets and PJ’s into the washing machine, and having run of clean sheets, settled the two of us on the futon in our living room.

We went to sleep, and until about 4:00 a.m., I slept the sleep of the just.

At that point, George started to feel lonely, so he abandoned his bed and went in search of me. His first stop was my own bed, where he apparently found his Dad alone, and woke him up just to say, in a tone riddled with indignation, “You’re not Mommy.” Then he found me on the futon and squeezed in beside me.

There is not enough room on the futon for me and two long, lanky kids, both of whom sleep splayed out like starfish. But my discomfort was outweighed by the fact that I had my boys, one on either side of me. And so I (sleeplessly) passed the rest of the witching hours squished between my two gently snoring kids, with elbows and knees poking into my back, and my head bent at an uncomfortable angle.

Eventually, I gave up on the idea of sleep. I made coffee and drank some, and then, with my body screaming in protest, I went out for a 12km run.

It was not a good run, except in the sense that I actually finished it. By seven in the morning it was already scorching hot, I was not properly hydrated and above all, my body was utterly exhausted.

And because I love being there for my kids whenever they need me, at any time of the day or night, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/doortoriver/2903845014/)

Filed Under: Children, Illness, life, parenting, running, sleep Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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95 Days And 6 Hours

July 13, 2011 By

95 days and 6 hours to go…

In 95 days and 6 hours, my heart will be racing and my adrenaline will be pumping.  I will be filled with nervous energy, and all of my senses will be on high alert, even though I probably will not have slept for a week.

In 95 days and 6 hours, I will be one of 20,000 runners waiting for the starters gun to go off, signalling the beginning of the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon and Half-Marathon.

In 95 days and 6 hours, I will start my Run for Autism – the race that I do for my son George, who is my inspiration and my reason for running. My son, who has taught me so much about myself, about life, about the things that really matter. My son, who I love so much that I sometimes think my heart will explode.

Up until now, I have had a poor season of training. A variety of illnesses, extreme weather conditions and family emergencies has conspired against me. Not to mention the not-so-small matter of getting married. I did succeed in running an 8km race in the Spring, but I have had to blow off not one but two half-marathons since then, because I have just not been ready for them. I have tried to follow some kind of regular training regimen, and I have been running just enough to keep up some kind of conditioning, but my training has been very much a stop-start kind of thing.

Until now.

Over the weekend, I gathered together pen and paper, the list of races I am registered for between now and my Autism Run, and my calendar. Thus armed, I plotted out a training program, a path to get me from here to there. It is a program that will work. By the time I’m done, I will be able to run the distance and run it well, as long as I stick with it.

My impediment is not lack of discipline. If I have a run scheduled, there are very few things that will deter me. From time to time I may have to shift a run to another time, or even to the following day, but if my schedule tells me to run, then I will run.

The only thing stopping me – barring unforeseen emergencies – is my health. It hasn’t been so great lately. I have been tired, run down, and prone to getting sick. Conventional running wisdom dictates that it is safe to run with a cold as long as all symptoms are above the neck, but practical experience has taught me that it is not a good idea. It might be perfectly safe, but it knocks my immune system down a few notches so that it takes me longer to recover.

So the way I see it, the one thing standing between me and my ability to totally rock this year’s race is my health. If my health is good, my training will take care of itself.

With that in mind, I have a plan. This is all stuff that I really should be doing anyway, but if planning it is what it will take, then so be it.

Here are some promises that I am making to myself (and we all know that it’s wrong to break a promise, regardless of who it’s made to):

I promise that I will hydrate myself properly, and not only during my training runs. And not only with coffee.

I promise that I will take my vitamins every day, because I definitely feel healthier when I do.

I promise that I will see a nutritionist, because my diet is one area where my self-control goes to the birds.

I promise that I will try harder (and “try” is the best I can do at this point) to get more sleep so that I am not literally running on the smell of an oil rag.

Four promises. Anyone can keep four promises, right? And they’re not even hard promises, with the possible exception of the last one.

I can do this. I can totally do this.

In 95 days and 6 hours, I will be ready.

Filed Under: autism, Countdown, health, life, running, Running for Autism, Training Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
post

Spotlight On Friendship: Jenny

July 8, 2011 By

Today I want to tell you about my oldest friend. Not “oldest” in the sense of being geriatric, but “oldest” in the sense of being the person who has put up with my nonsense for longer than anyone else.

I met Jenny at the start of fifth grade, when we were both new kids at our school. I remember us standing together at the front of the classroom on our first day, being introduced to our new classmates. Both of us felt as if we were different to the other kids in our class, but we felt an immediate kinship with each other. By recess that day, we had become best friends.

Over the next several years, as we saw friendships form and dissolve all around us, Jenny and I were inseparable. Her personality balanced perfectly with mine. She was the one who was good at art, I was the one who was good at math. She was bubbly and outgoing, I was more reserved. Our core values were the same, and we had enough common interests to be able to bond. But we also had enough diversity to retain our own individuality.

I was shy and socially awkward as a teenager. The only person I could really open up to and be completely myself with was Jenny.

When we were in high school we made a promise to each other, that we would be friends forever, and that when we were old ladies, we would sit together on a porch doing our knitting. When we discovered just how crap at knitting I am, we amended the promise. She would do the knitting, and I would keep the coffee flowing. We’re planning to be manic old ladies, permanently buzzing from caffeine.

In my late teens and early twenties, my life went a little weird. I went away to university, and when I came back, I had learned some very difficult lessons from the School of Hard Knocks. I’m not sure if Jenny realizes how much of a salvation she was for me at that time. I was feeling out of sorts, and she was my friend. I was feeling directionless, and she got me a job in the same office where she was working. I felt adrift, and she was my safe harbour. She helped keep me grounded.

And then, to my eternal shame and regret, I let her down. I did something that hurt her, and that cost me the only true friendship I had ever had.

Life went on, but I never stopped thinking of Jenny and kicking myself for my own stupidity.

A few years after my split with Jenny, I had installed myself in a solid career and bought my own apartment. One evening after I got home from work, my phone rang. I did not immediately recognize the voice on the other end, but then the realization dawned on me: “Holy crap, it’s JENNY!”

We went out for pizza and caught up. I told her I was sorry. She said she forgave me. I cried – tears of regret at having hurt her, and tears of joy that I had my best friend back.

And I really did have her back. Over the next several years, we stood by each other for all of life’s major events. I caught the bouquet at her wedding. When she had a baby she asked me to be the godmother. When I became a mom myself, she was the first person I called when I came home from the hospital. She comforted me at my dad’s funeral, and although she couldn’t be there for my wedding, I know she was thinking of me.

The strongest of friendships can survive any storm. Jenny and I had our storm, and it was a big one. But in the end, our friendship survived, and endures to this day, even though we live on opposite sides of the world.

At some point a few decades from now, a porch somewhere will be waiting for two old ladies, one doing her knitting, the other making coffee.

Filed Under: Friendship, life Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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