for the love of dog

Studies have shown that pet-owners live longer, happier lives. Apparently, the joy one experiences from petting a dog, snuggling with a cat, or caressing a ferret (?) triggers the "happiness" chemical, which in turn reduces stress, which in turn contributes to one's longevity. And I get this, I do: what's better than consistently being greeted by a panting, exuberant, ridiculously jiggly pup? And black labs, in my experience, make great running partners.

So here's how my dog brought me joy yesterday: I arrived home from strawberry picking to find chewed-up foil packets scattered about the floors. It took me a moment to discern what they had once been. A quick investigation proved that they were packets of sweet, sugary, sticky (this being the operative word here) flavoring for coffee, accessories for the Flavia instant coffee machine we received as a gift a couple of years ago. These packets were stashed in a box underneath three other boxes in our extra bedroom. They've been stacked there for at least a year, and we generally leave this door open.

Let me backtrack a bit to tell you how I had spent the previous day. While Alexa napped and Dylan read books on the couch, I put on the gloves (well, not really) and did a relatively thorough cleaning (for me) of the extra bedroom in preparation for some guests who will be arriving on Saturday. I moved bags and boxes to the basement, washed and vacuumed the carpets, rearranged furniture. At the end of the day, I proudly displayed my work for Bryan, who was visibly impressed with the room.

Back to our life-enriching pet. Something must have been in the air on Tuesday, something that smelled enticingly like vanilla and chocolate and Snickers. And what was in the air ended up in Sasha's teeth, and then, of course, all over the carpet, so that walking in the extra bedroom was like wading through a marvelous sticky morass. And oh, how I expressed my joy in that moment!

To many more years of dog-owning bliss!

hail to thee, blithe spirits

it's official: the boy is a convert

On Sunday, Dylan took his Dad to "Ankees" Stadium for his birthday. It was about 102 degrees in the Bronx, but Dylan was a real trooper. It was painful for me to have to play a role in Dylan's conversion, but I thought he should see the original Yankee Stadium with his Dad before it gets torn down.
And it was bat day! So, Dylan made off with a fancy Louisville Slugger, his new favorite toy (watch out, Alexa!). This photo conveys the effects of the heat rather than Dylan's excitement, but you get the idea.
Now I'm no Yankees fan, but Derek Jeter does have a nice, um, uniform, doesn't he?

if you build it, they will come

For the past several months, the residents of Cheshire have been watching the construction of a new playground next to the town pool with eager anticipation. A few weeks ago, the playground finally opened, with much pomp and circumstance, and man, did people come! The Cheshire Herald reported that 800 people showed up to the ribbon cutting (we were included in that number).

I know, I know: a lot of hoopla for a playground, you're thinking. But what a playground! Most of the funds came from companies and private donors, and it was great to see so many folks come together with a common interest: a safe (but not obsessively so), friendly, and enclosed play place for kids--active kids.
The climbing wall looks so real you expect to see water trickling through the crevices. This, and the spider web (below) are, by far, Dylan's favorite attractions. He's a pretty natural climber, so this is definitely the park for him.
The spider web is actually quite tall, so tall that when Dylan made his first full ascent, I was biting my nail and trying to disguise my rising sense of panic as my mind calculated the potential damage to a 4-year-old body. But he was extremely proud, and yelled to everyone who could hear, "Look at me! I'm at the top!"

With gas at 4.35 a gallon in this area, and with the park in walking distance, I'm pretty sure we'll be hanging out here a lot this summer. And did I mention the town pool is right next door? So, instead of going to Colorado as originally planned, we'll be staycationing at Bartlem Park (and spending a week at a cabin in Vermont--ahhhhhh. Can't wait).

nipmuck trail marathon: a gathering of friendly die-hards

Warning: It is possible to get a serious injury in this race. If you run recklessly you'll increase your chances but even if you are careful it's still possible to get tripped up or slip on something. This could result in an immobilizing injury that could put you a few hours away from medical attention. It could mean expensive medical care and an extended period of time away from work. To run this race you have to accept full responsibility for what happens to you. If you don't have health insurance don't do this race. No matter how careful you are plan on falling.

(excerpt from NipMuck Trail Marathon application)

On Sunday, June 1, I ran my first trail marathon: 26.4 miles on the NipMuck Trail in northeastern Connecticut. This year marked the race's 25th year anniversary, and some of the runners looked as though they had been running it since its inception: in the last third of the race, I caught up to a lean, muscular, grey-haired fellow who informed me that he had recently celebrated his 79th birthday. And it took me four hours to catch up to him. Hope I'm still dodging roots and rocks and landing softly in muck when I'm approaching my octogenarian age!
This photo of the inside of the port-a-potty, taken by running photographer Scott Livingston, really captures the spirit of the race. Race director "NipMuck Dave" brings an in-your-face humor to the event that keeps die-hard trail fanatics coming back. The application declares that "All complaints about getting lost will be laughed at." Fortunately, the trail is very clearly marked, and Dave manages to round up scores of volunteers who really make the event possible. Many, many times during the race I thought I was done; my legs would lock up in protest and insist they couldn't take me another step. A few minutes later, I would stumble upon an aid station, load up on Gatorade, potatoes, bananas, and chocolate, and somehow I would get through another hour.
A trail marathon has been an aspiration of mine ever since I discovered that such things existed, which I think was back when I was living in Anchorage and hiked Crow Pass, the site of the infamous Crow Pass Crossing, a trail marathon rife with black bears and bees and water crossings. I never did run that marathon, and at this point probably never will, but NipMuck was an incredibly exhilarating--if excruciating-- experience. Trail races are, in my experience, more informal affairs than road races: they have to be, as the measurements are inevitably imprecise, a runner's performance is subject to any number of obstacles, from twisted ankles to wildlife to slippery rocks, and it's even possible to lose your way, in spite of the bright blue blazes. After a few hours, you begin to hallucinate a bit, and it's easier than one might think to get turned around. But the genuine camaraderie that one encounters on the trail gives an exhausted runner a mental push. While it is a race, and folks are vying for position, the runners look out for one another, so you never feel as though you are out there alone.
The application states that if you add an hour to your slowest marathon time, you'll get a rough estimate of your NipMuck Marathon time. This was pretty true for me: I managed to finish in 4:54, which allowed me to meet my goal of running in under five hours. But holy hell! I was more tired and sore than I have ever been in any other marathon, including Boston, which always does me in. When I called Bryan to tell him I'd made it out alive, I was biting my lip to keep from crying. But when it was over I proudly carried my souvenir trophy--a piece of wood with a blue blaze painted on it and a laminated piece of paper that read "25th Annual NipMuck Trail Marathon--to the car and drove my aching body home.
When I ran my first marathon, my friend Amos said, when it was over, "Now you never have to do that again!" I felt that way immediately following NipMuck, but now I'm starting to think about shunning all road races and sticking exclusively to the trails. So maybe another NipMuck will make the race calendar. We'll see how I feel when I recover. . . .

riding in cars with noise

Something happens to me when I get into the car without my kids. When I put the key in the ignition and back out of the driveway, away from the endless loop of "Mom?" and the cute but sometimes tiresome questions about who makes the road and why the sky is blue and when can I go to the bathroom, I am suddenly overcome with a craving, a need for really loud music. And generally really raucous music. Yes, my musical tastes have mellowed and matured as I've gotten older, but when I'm alone in the driver's seat, I am suddenly nineteen again, at a Lollapalooza concert with my long crimson hair and nose ring, rocking out to the Smashing Pumpkins or the Beastie Boys or Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (who I still love, by the way). Alone in the driver's seat, I summon my old pals Pearl Jam or the Red Hot Chili Peppers and press the "+" on the volume button until electric guitar is streaming wildly from the speakers. On the road, especially the highway, where I'm less likely to be spotted by a parent of one of my kids' friends, or a student, I can bellow along to Eddie Vedder with feverish abandon, until my throat is scratchy (this used to happen often when I was commuting back and forth from Burlington, VT every other weekend to visit Bryan here in CT) and my ears are ringing and I'm out of breath.

And there is another kind of freedom that comes with these solo car rides: the freedom to swear, to --dare I say it?--yell the "f" word as the lyrics require. Now, I'm not given to dropping expletives in my every day speech, but there's something liberating about being able to belt them out without fear of having them repeated back to me in toddler-ese. In the car alone, my inner twentysomething is released, and it feels soooo good. Each tune is like one of Proust's petite madeleines: my whole body shudders with the memory of a city where I once lived, a mountain I once hiked, a friend I once had. The other morning, on my way to physical therapy, Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" dropped me into 1984, when I was on the cusp of adolescence, fervently writing fiction on my typewriter in the basement of my parents' house, imagining novels drawn from Springsteen's motley characters and New Jersey backroads; driving later that afternoon, Widespread Panic's "Travelin' Light" transported me to Red Rocks Stadium in Denver on a hot July day in the mid-90's, the air pungent with sweat and draft beer and sweet gange fumes; on another drive, Pearl Jam's "Rearview Mirror" has me driving a minivan from Boulder to Portland, Oregon with five other folks from Sierra Club, on our way to a conference. At twenty-two, the Age of Narcissism, I didn't need to be alone in the car to sing without restraint, to let the lyrics punctuate my mood: Saw things clearer/Once you were in my/Rearview mirror

On the way home from nursery school, of course, we're back to the Wiggles or "Baby Bunglebee," as Lexi likes to call it, but that's okay, too, because, truth be known, I'll sing along to anything. Well, almost anything. And belting out "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" requires a certain shrugging off of inhibition, too, and there's no shortage of memory-association with these innocent tracks, whose words seem to have been preserved in the far recesses of my brain all these years.

After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music. --Aldous Huxley

kid-ness

Free man, you will forever love the sea!
The sea's your mirror, you observe your soul
Perpetually as its waves unroll
(Baudelaire, "Free Man and the Sea")

There's almost nothing I enjoy so much as watching Dylan and Alexa on the beach. The wide open expanse of sand and sea seems to incite in them a primal joy that ignites their spirits from the moment their little toes touch the shore. And those same little toes are impervious to the water's icy chill: while I quickly withdrew my own foot about a nanosecond after I decided to test the temperature, they raced toward the waves without hesitation, not stopping until they were waist-deep.

Alexa became one with the ocean: she emerged with hair full of sand and seaweed, her skirt and diaper soaked through, her skin glistening with salt and granules. "That's a big pool," she declared happily.

It was Dylan who initiated the impromptu yoga session (see above photo). I guess the sound of the surf reminded him of those "sounds of nature" yoga cd's.

I used to worry about how being a parent would inhibit my innate love of spontaneity. All that planning: diapers, food, extra clothing, bathroom stops, et cetera. But we drove out to Hammonassett State Beach on a whim, in the middle of a Friday afternoon. I threw a few necessities into a bag, grabbed the sunscreen, and we were off. And as I sat back on the sand watching my children frolic, I realized that while I can't exactly run off to Colorado or even New York on a moment's notice, I can still derive great pleasure from basking in Dylan and Lexi's unbridled joie de vivre. It's spontaneity of a different nature: the thrill of being "surprised by joy" in observing the simple beauty of kids at play. None of the photos I snapped accurately captured the vivacity of the moment, and by summer's end, the kids will likely have forgotten the trip altogether, but for me, so much of what makes the memory precious in the pure sense of the word is that I'm acutely aware of the fleeting nature of little kid joy. Before long, Dylan will be checking out the chicks in bikinis, and Alexa will be worried about how her behind looks in her own two-piece (which, by the way, had better not have anything scrawled across the butt! God, how I hate that fashion trend!).

But there's no point in dwelling on the future when the present is so much fun.

Live in the sunshine, drink the sea, swim in the wild air. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)