Sea of Unease

             “This is not good,” I tell my husband. We're in bed. From the house in which we will soon slumber, or try to, we can hear the ocean stirring. It pounds against, and gnaws at, one of the most exquisite islands in the Atlantic. I have been searching for suspicious moles, moles that eat away bodies, since the morning of my physical. I've stretched out my naked right arm and, with my iPhone, taken a picture of what I consider to be a particularly suspect mole, centered, and burrowed deeply along the outer ridge of my armpit, and I am comparing it to the onerous looking moles of the online medical journals that I’ve culled from the Internet with my laptop. Mine is an old, curmudgeon of a mole. At one time it was a pageant-worthy beauty mark, whether adorned by a simple black camisole or a paisley silk sheath. It was a freckle at birth.

Now, it is swelled in various shades above the skin where it meets a charbroiled crescendo; it seems as maddened as a volcano on the verge of blowing, like the sick, angry moles I see on the vast Internet: multilayered and gibbous, some with dry, crusty patches, areas that look like burnt chicken skin, or tiny clusters of flying fish roe. I am jumping from website-to-website for evidence that will justify my fears, and with each hit my anxiety balloons. I see more: cancerous black lesions with uneven borders, red and blue-gray blemishes that indicate malignancy. The photos I’ve taken just won’t do so I tuck my head into my armpit, even though it’s nearly impossible for me to get a decent view of the mole from this angle (or any angle for that matter), and stretch the skin around the dark nub. Michael pulls his book away from his face and gives me a look. What am I doing? I know that he thinks I’m loopy. But this doesn’t prevent me from searching, armpit and Internet, even as I become aware of the increasing anxiety that will keep me from a solid night’s sleep.

“This is bad,” I say to Michael, as if he has not heard my first complaint. “Does this not look like melanoma to you? And why is my doctor concerned about this one?” I point to the dark nebula. “This one looks like all the others. Should I be worried about the others?”

I know Michael wants to say, Yes, you should be worried about the others, just as you worry about everything else. Yes, worry, dammit! Worry and then shut up. But he doesn't say this. He tells me simply to have it removed when we return home. We are on vacation, after all. But I take Worry with me wherever I go.

Instantly I want to shout, Easy for you to say, you're not the one with all the raging moles! Instead I say nothing and he tells me to stop reading about melanoma. I think about my father, my brother-in-law, and one of my closest friends, all of whom I’d lost to cancer in short time. I think about my sister whom had layers of squamous cell carcinoma shaved off her nose. She is in the clear now. It was just last September when my now annoyed and fatigued husband spent three hours on the operating table having his prostate removed. (How in the world could I have wished to utter, Easy for you to say?) Cancer. I’ve become hyper-vigilant. It is quiet, quiet, and we can hear the sea, in and out, and the constant wind gusts, and we can smell the mist from the ocean that comes up in squalls, over the dunes, into the hollow and through the house. We are on the eastern side of the island and the beach is a walk away over the dunes. A large, gentle pond sits on the other side of the sandy, rosa rugosa-lined path that divides house from water. I could be anywhere, though. Anywhere, and I would still tend to Worry.

Earlier in the day, we had taken the high-speed ferry from Hyannis to Nantucket with our two teens. We’d come to visit and relax with my in-laws who own a small home in Quidnet. My father-in-law met us at the wharf where the ferry pulls in. It’s a lovely area of the harbor, trimmed with grey wooden docks, shingled structures and bricked and cobblestoned roads which spill into the island’s historic downtown, where, by way of special zoning bylaws, no large restaurant franchise or retail chain can be found with the exception of a Ralph Lauren store, which Lauren acquired at a cost of more than six million dollars prior to the passing of the bylaw. It all seems so quaint and pristine, so very removed from the rest of the world and all its commercial trappings and corruption. Madras-clad, Sperry-footed people strolling the streets, no hurry, no worry, no mission other than to pass the moment blithely. During one of our previous trips to Nantucket I had read that the island’s early settlers, the Wampanaug Indians, referred to this golden bib of land as a Place of Peace, or in their own language, canopache. To the native peoples, this island was also removed from the world, a faraway place, and so they named it Nantucket, meaning, in their native tongue, faraway land. And it occurs to me now, as I stretch out my armpit mole that the only thing that seems faraway to me is my ability to relax.

We loaded our bags in my father-in-law’s black Range Rover and he drove us out beyond the slick cobblestone, alongside lush, undulating pastures, and pretty ponds dotting the salty landscape, east, down Polpice Road and out to Quidnet, where we quickly changed into our bathing suits and charged back out to the island’s south side, to the narrow strand of beach known as Nobadeer.

But even on Nobadeer’s ribbon of packed, turbinado sugar-like sand that falls out into the wide-open Atlantic, into the blue, blue horizon, I was too anxious to relax.  On the shore I wondered how this fine-grained land must have looked when it first rose from thawing ice sheets, when it was nothing but sandur, an outwash plain from Earth’s last glacial period, separated from Cape Cod’s mainland by the icy retreat; how pristine it must have been! Pristine it still is, in many ways, and even more so during the off seasons, fall through spring, when the island’s population is one-fifth of what it is during the summertime.

Yet, it is not entirely unsullied. It overpopulates in the summer months, especially during the time when we are here—the days that flank both sides of the 4^th of July—with a noticeable accrual of noise and litter, especially downtown. This summer, it may be even more populated due, in part, to being recently named the best island in the world by National Geographic. But even with its quaint village, and remarkable landscape, its dramatic drops from highland to sea, it’s hard to imagine that Nantucket would be more beautiful than, say, Bora Bora (though I’ve never been to a land that faraway).

Just above Nobadeer’s dunes is Nantucket Memorial Airport, and early afternoon during the week of July 4^th planes descended above heads every ten minutes or so. Later afternoon, the same planes took off with such reverberating thrust that we could not hear one another speak across a beach blanket.

On this island, a place where money is no object, where waterfront is often reserved for the rich, I peered out at the sea before me, at the narrow shoreline, at Max and Lulu on their boogie boards searching for the big wave to Bliss, and then turned back behind me to view the shedding dunes that make clear this earth is still undergoing a glacial warming. Nobadeer slowly erodes, I am told, by ten feet per year—which, to me, hardly seems slow. What was once a wide swath of silky sand is now this narrow strip of beachfront. One can still maneuver a car along the edge of the sandy fraying ribbon just above the high water mark, but it is tricky and, at times, hazardous. There are no lifeguards, no restrooms, nor any facilities, for that matter, at Nobadeer. Summer residents drive out to the beach in SUVs or Jeeps packed with provisions for the day. They open the backs of their vehicles, tailgate style, set up tents and tables and large, colorful beach umbrellas, and spread their feast across the sea-green tablecloth.

Nantucket style—as if there were never meant to be a care in the world.

I sat in a canvas chair by the water at low tide until tall, foamy swells began to wash in and overtake my canvas nest, and observed the busy airport. How long would it be before the constant process of the wearing away of expensive soil and pebble cut into the airport proper and all the turbinado sugar washed out to sea? It appeared that there was hardly a hundred yards from rolling tide to runway. Let's see, ten feet per year, a hundred yards, in roughly thirty years there would be no more fine dining at Nobadeer.

Already, a good portion of Nantucket's seashore had been closed to protect the nesting piping plovers, so access to the ocean was restricted. If you are on Nantucket in the summertime you may not be happy about this, especially if you’re a big beachgoer and the island is swollen with company. Or, you may be elated and thankful for the efforts of conservationists. I was happy that we’d found a beach where the piping plovers do not nest, where we could gather with our hosts and new friends, and watch the children surf and in the rough littoral, and literal, tumble of the breakers, and rake up smooth, white shells. This was a place where the sun stayed pasted in the sky all day and I could simply be there, without obligation, except to sit in a low chair, half-way under a beach umbrella, book bag at my side, consuming food and drink enough to last us a week. Soon, though—maybe it was the pulsing heat—my attention to the distance from shore to airstrip, the sloughing of the beach and dunes, and the private jets and puddle jumpers descending above our sunburnt heads faded, and in a seamless shift I found myself hyper-focused on the itchy, dry, raised mole perched at the nape of my right armpit, above the grooves and swells of axillary folds; it was the nub that was sure to keep me from vacationing. Had it changed over the years? I wasn’t sure. Why didn't I know this? The more I inspected it, the more uglier, angrier looking, it grew. This was not the mole that my general practitioner tapped with her index finger and insisted—as she did the day before we left for Nantucket—must come out. That mole, what she called “irritated and suspicious looking,” floats atop the soft, creamy skin of my upper abdomen and is part of a constellation of small, chocolaty moles that, together, if closely observed, resemble the inverse image of the Little Dipper. That little nebula hardly looks suspect to me.

“She’s wrong about this,” I say to Michael. I’m irritated. “The sick one, the angry one is this one!” I shove my iPhone before his face so he can bear witness to the gruesome, pixelated details of my monster mole, the one that’s infiltrated my body.

“You’ve got to stop thinking like this,” he sighs. “Let’s get some sleep, please.”

The ocean stirs a savory potion, and I want to gulp it down, I want it to magically quell my nerves, to melt the stone in my chest, to make worries go Poof! But I torment myself with Worry into the wee hours before I'm finally lulled to a half-sleep by the salty elixir.

It is like this for the next week. We are on Nantucket, then the Cape. The mole stays angry, I double up on sunblock and get little sleep. A rock stays lodged in my chest. I know it's bad. I wonder if my GP should be the one to disturb the suspicious mole and the hostile armpit mole; mining them from my body. (Where are all the mined moles stored?) There had been a prior excavation—neighboring moles had merged just above the belly button. Moles that merge are always suspect and they are excised with little inquest. In the case of my conjoined moles, former constituents of the abdominal constellation, a half-inch core of skin, fat and tissue to which the moles were attached was cut out with a sharp knife by a Boston dermatologist, who dropped the gory specimen in a liquid preservative housed in a glass jar and jiggled it before me, like I was a spectator at an old wild west hanging. I later learned that the procedure was unnecessary as the mole cluster was determined to be benign. Yet, I was glad for the news, even the cutting, despite the fact that now set at a 45 degree angle a few inches above my navel is a one-inch scar that looks like the fossil of a centipede. I do not wish to have my torso marred by ghostly arthropods.

But I worry.

I say nothing to anyone but my poor, patient husband. I am disgusted with myself. I should be happy, carefree, grateful for the opportunity to be vacationing with Michael’s extended family, all of whom generously host our Cape Cod and Island excursions (of which, otherwise, we couldn’t afford). I resolve to find easy moments with family, and I do: warm, sea-salty moments that are sprinkled, no, flooded with lively, fresh seafood dinners, quiet walks on the bay, excited faces on the little Boston Whaler that takes us out to the little barrier island of Sandy Neck. I am able to shave layers of weighty anguish off the rock. The sky is blue, the weather temperate, and in the late evening the empyrean vault sparkles with amazing firework. All is well until I go to bed. There, I tell myself I am eroding. Like Nantucket’s ecosystem, my body is bearing its fragility. I am aging, deteriorating, and well, something is bound to go seriously wrong with this body. Can't we reasonably expect this?

Back home, where there is no ocean to see or smell for miles, I unpack my suitcase and empty the contents of my book bag. Tucked inside the bag's zippered pocket I find two well-preserved seashells that I'd plucked from the shoreline of Nobadeer. They are large, beautiful shells that look like marble or limestone spiral igloos, not the common mermaid's slipper found on Nantucket's beaches. These shells had once protected muculent inhabitants: snails of deep water—the moon snail. He burrows, too, into mud bottoms, searches for prey, clasps a clam with his gelatinous foot and bores a hole through his prey’s armor with his toothy, chitinous tongue, an acid-tipped killer drill. Even soldier crabs run from the moon snail.

But the shells’ inhabitants are gone, dead, their flesh devoured by other sea creatures, their armament souvenirs. Nothing is immune. I place them on my writing desk.

Monday morning I call my dermatologist's office and beg for an immediate appointment. I have a seething mole, I tell the receptionist. The offender should be extracted at once. I have another, less benign looking mole that my GP, with whom I don’t agree, wants removed from its cosmic configuration. The receptionist slides me into an 8:30 a.m. opening on Tuesday. She'd prefer, I'm quite certain, to slide me into a psychiatrist's schedule. I would not argue this. I try to remember when I'd last seen my dermatologist (or psychiatrist). Why had she not noticed the armpit mole? Or had she?

It was this time last year, late July, early August, that I observed my children digging trenches in tidal flats at the tip of Sandy Neck—a Cape Cod barrier beach—constructing hermit crab hotels designed for the protection of vulnerable crustaceans. This, they did, despite the shifting tide which would soon send these crabs scattering beyond the hotel, abandoning their fabricated home. They knew then, too, that as the crabs grew larger, they would eventually toss their borrowed shells in search of roomier ones. The borrowed and discarded shells were small, tiny snail shells, not at all like the heavy shells of deep seas (yet, as my moon snail shells reveal, weighty armor does not insure defense). Watching the kids attempting to offer the crabs a safe harbor reminded me that they would soon shed their own shells. It could be this very summer. Soon, they’ll traverse a world foreign and potentially dangerous, treading further into the deep sea. To where will they retract when threatened? Do they possess the moon snail’s killer instinct? Should they be fearful? Do they sense my fear? I try, I try hard, to keep Worry at bay. I wish them not to be frightened, only aware.

Tuesday morning Dr. Kirk circles the innocent abdominal speckle with a purple indelible marker, writes "2 x 3" above it and takes a photo. She does the same with another in the constellation. With her magnifier, she zooms in on the mad, bulging blot

that now spits from the ridge at the nape of my armpit. This one looks...hmm, she says, as the magnifier scans the surrounding skin, fine. Given my skin's pigmentation, she explains to me.

It is as if she has waved smelling salts beneath my nose. Fine? Fine! I breathe again. I am lucky. (But acutely aware that luck is the card not dealt to all, reserved for no one, and the game invariably changes, so I do not apologize for being an alarmist. I have lost my father, my dear brother-in-law, and one of my closest friends to cancer, all within short time.) Nevertheless, I explain, I would like it removed before it is un-fine. It has been bothersome and prone to snags. This is fine, too, she tells me, but today is not her surgery day.

The others, she points out, are on watch. Should these change, darken, enlarge, action will be necessary. In three months I will return to her office. It will mark one full year from my first skin scan. (Skinscan, I later discover, is an Apple application for the monitoring and analysis of moles. I don’t download the app.) At that time, and though she thinks it’s harmless, Dr. Kirk will remove the underarm mole at my command, along with another mole she’s deemed odd; she’ll hew them down like cleaved trees that do not bear good fruit, slicing them from where they’re rooted with a hand-held straight edge blade. Later she’ll tell me that the mole that kept me up for nights on end is normal. No sign of cancer. The other odd one, she’ll say, is atypical, which means I’m oddly fine for the time being.

“The internet is the worst thing to ever happen to doctors,” she tells me.

“And to patients,” I concur.

I thank Dr. Kirk for her support. I call my GP and cancel the procedure. The rock in my chest is a pebble, my face pink with embarrassment. Unlike the moon snail, I have no knack for slaying. Beneath my pale outer covering is only accumulated fear and worry. It feels counterintuitive, yet I know I must do this, I clearly sense it, I must shed fears, let them loose in my Sea of Unease, expose this timorous being to the elements, the rough seas, the cold winds atop ice-capped mountains, or to things like jets and puddle jumpers that I no longer board, or zip lines, any lines, the aging lines, rimples and knots of my body, all conditions approached with trepidation. Yet, the instinct is to flee.

Here is the rub. I cannot flee. Can anyone? Not even to faraway lands or islands where money is no object. It’s futile. Danger and risk are not unique to the mainland. I can only be aware. Watch the coastline and all things that sail on the horizon, listen to the ebb and flow of its waters and their simple message. Don’t make more of it. You just get in the current and float—you’ll drift right back in round the other side, I was told just days prior, as I stood on the beach of Sandy Neck’s duck-bill tip, fretting about my flimsy aquatic abilities. “Oh, yes, it looks so easy,” I’d replied, while surveying the cold current running a hook around the shoreline. And as I gazed out as a crow flies, into the bay’s channel, drifting peacefully in the horseshoe flow were my two children and Michael, coasting along, round to the other side.

What She's Thinking About When She's Alone in the Car Thinking

Usually, she tries to think about the road. Ordinarily she listens. To NPR, to which she is utterly addicted. Sometimes she fantasizes that she is working for NPR. Or with NPR, with its brilliant reporters, producers and commentators. Maybe she's assisting with or producing a show for Ira Glass. Or Terry Gross. Or Bob Boilen. Or Robin Young. Or, Wait, Wait!, Peter Sagal. And Carl Kasell, who's taken her under his wing, not only records dulcet-toned voice messages for her answering machine, but personally delivers them to her home, and stays long enough to personally answer at least one phone call. She wonders how long he'd have to stick around. She reminds herself to keep the fridge stocked with his favorite crudités.

She speculates that perhaps she's been away from the office for too long. No one, with whom she might bounce around an idea, sits within earshot (or footsteps) of her kitchen cubicle. Her mind is beginning to atrophy, working from home. This would never happen at NPR.

She looks at the great green sign hovering over the highway, announcing the number of miles to the next exit, and questions how well it's mounted onto the steel tubular mast arm, and whether or not the tubular supports have been compromised, corroded by exposure to the elements, like rain and natural wind gusts. She considers the stress of wind shears, cracks in truss connections, welded joints and anchor rods. Have the high strength threaded nuts and bolts, by which the sign is pinned to its mast, been installed properly? What's to prevent these fasteners from being stripped and loosened? How tired is the sign? Who manufactured the bolts? How shoddy is the overall work? If that sign drops from its arm, she concludes, it becomes the supreme guillotine.

She imagines it slicing her car in half. Or worse.

And then there are the bridges. She doesn't want to go there: pondering the percentage of time truckers ignore load carrying limits, or, given state and federal budget constraints, how often these structures are actually inspected. She recalls certain steel deck truss failures and mulls over the integrity of design, the condition of the piers and cantilevers, reinforcements and anything else that might have anything whatsoever to do with preventing the bridge from its almost certain doom of sudden collapse.

The wooden crosses on the side of the highway unnerve her, but she reckons they're a sober reminder for her son, who, within little more than a year's time, will acquire his driver's license. She reminds herself not to remind him of this. Then she reminds herself to remember not to remind him of this. Perhaps he'll forget that he wants to learn how to drive.

She doesn't like the guy in front of her who is on his cell phone and swerving from lane to lane. She beeps her horn. Wake the HELL up! 

She gets irritated by the big Peterbilt trucks that box her in. She wonders if the trucks might hit the overhead signs, or blast them from their nuts and bolts by the sheer force of truck-induced wind gusts. And if the guy on the cell phone, weaving in and out of three lanes, might be right behind the truckers. Hmm.

But now she's slipping off the highway, right at the exit, the sky is ablaze in blue, and the static crackling of radio interference has subsided. Composer Philip Glass fades back in. On Point. The furling and unfurling movements of Symphony No. 9 illuminate the airwaves, and her mind wanders off to the fields and the geese, pushing, flapping, harder and harder, determined to lift themselves from the grassy glebe. Suddenly, they are off, in flight, in harmony, with springtime's cerulean breeze. And in the driveway, she listens, and dares not turn off the engine.

 03 Symphony No. 9 Movement III by Suburban Soliloquist 

Brushing Up

From Max's Art Journal

Yesterday I saw the GI specialist in Boston. Months of pain has held me hostage from feeling well, and emotionally, it's taken its toll. My refusal to undergo the usual diagnostic course of action (you know, the 50+ poke and scope plan) has been unproductive, I know, and it's time to take a deep breath and say, Fuck it. Alright, already, I'll book it! Let's start with something light, though, shall we? Like the endoscopy? Can we start there, please?

I'm a terrible patient. Fortunately, my mother-in-law introduced me to a doctor who is remarkably patient. Still, I'm not a pretty sight in the doctor's office. When Doc told me blood had to be drawn I nearly cowered in the corner, and I was glad M-I-L had left the room by then. And when we talked procedures, I think the good doctor understood that he was going to have to hold my hand. I know this is a teaching hospital, but no fellows! I said. I am paying for him, after all.

Anyway, what I'm doing here today, on this little blog, is taking a break from the penciled notes and sketches I've been making in my lined notepad (where I'm making progress, my friends!). The flip side of the front durable-covered, college-ruled pad has two columns. One lists Parts of Speech, and the other, Punctuation. At the very bottom is a list of Figures of Speech. And why I hadn't noticed this until today I do not know. 

Except to say...

Punctuation: apostrophe ('), colon (:), comma (,), period (.), exclamation point (!). You see what caught my eye? No, not the period (.). I've no longer any use for them... No, it was one particular punctation: colon (:). Colon: COLON! 

I'm searching for the metaphor under Figures of Speech. (:) When perhaps, I should be looking for a simile? (:)

A brush is like a pen is like a pencil is like a scope: All tools of the trade. (:)

(Natchez Steam Colliope--Sugar Blues)

Mac and the Learning Curve

The Suburban Soliloquist a/k/a Mom (or Mother or, as Daughter likes to say now and then, Jayne) is on her own roller coaster of a ride—figuring out how to maneuver about a new piece of technology. And while she does that, she's sent the kids off to school or the park or the ice arena or the corner deli or wherever their little hearts desire—she almost doesn't care—as long as they do not return until late afternoon because she has a lot of work ahead of her.

Learning curves. At fifty. At least there are still some curves.

While she manages new hardware and software (and shaky internet connections), she'd like to offer one of those letters she mentioned in her Meet the SS page. Here, a look back—nearly four decades earlier—to sixth grade:

Note, in particular, the limited answer choices for how she felt at the time.  Was she, in sixth grade, always either very good or very bad or just plain mad? (One might argue that she's always been just plain mad.) It appears she did not care to answer any of Keith's questions, nor comment on the color of Jackie's fanny. In fact, she does not even remember Keith (triple underscore), but is pretty sure of which Jackie he speaks. Every class has its own Jackie.

She wonders if her little sprite and knight pass around their own notes in class. Perhaps not. Perhaps they fear detention and the consequential black fanny for note-passing. Corporal punishment is not still employed in Catholic schools, now is it?

Come to think of it, the Suburban Soliloquist does not remember hanging out with Jeff either. Oh, but Jackie. One never forgets a Jackie...

Smuggling Sleep and Other Stuff

And this:  “Sleep Deprivation Increases Risks of Strokes, Heart Attacks”—a headline that Coyote Prime posted on his blog, which is an extraction of written passages, stories, aphorisms, and any other newsworthy, noteable, quotable material. (Coyote—a smuggler is what he is, and a good one at that.) 

Well, no kidding. And migraines and sinusitis, too. Can you add that to the headline Coyote boy? And I'll bet getting sugared up on Jelly Belly's doesn't help much, either. But that's what I'm doing right now, to keep my eyes open, because I've gotten so little sleep (and bone-dry mouth from a daily Sudafed diet) in the last few nights that perching myself on the swivel, poking keys, and thinking in this condition may very well place me in a near perilous position. So this may be short.

Or not.

My little muse has gone off on a three day excursion with her school-mates. Every year the middle-schoolers set off to a semi-remote location to get some hands-on environmental education. Where she is right now, on a couple thousand acres of forest, farmland and lakes, is also a place that provides a retreat setting for adults. Hmm, no wonder there's no lack of parent and faculty chaperons. She will be sleeping (using that term lightly) in a heated knotty-pine cabin with all her girlfriends, dining on home-cooked comfort food by a fieldstone fireplace, running outdoor challenge courses in the snow, tapping maple trees for syrup, roasting marshmallows by the fire, and learning about how animals adapt to cold winter months, and about a thing called hibernation.

Sounds pretty good, huh? You know what the best part is? As a condition precedent—and as a sort of right-of-passage—to this excursion, the children had to leave all electronics at home, including iPods, Kindles, radios, laptops, flashlights, electronic games of any sort, and cell phones. That is the short list. What they were permitted to take along: non-cyber books, journals, teddy bears and other fuzzy luvvies. Ah, nothing like getting back to nature with spined paper leaves and Teddy in your arms.

Isn't it fabulous?

And what all of this means, what is even more fabulous, is that perhaps tonight, tonight will be the night of full-on sleep. Not to put my insomnious issues on my little sprite, but sometimes she does wake me from a deeply satisfying delta or a rather pleasurable REM, if you know what I'm saying. See my muse doesn't slumber, forever gets up with a novel idea bobbin in the noggin, why she may even be... *ha! moment of realization* ... is it possible?... a.... somnambulant-somniloquist!—talking and walking in her sleep—and as I work this all out in my fuzzy head, I'm thinking I should maybe get her tested. Really, she ought to have sea-legs in the morning, swaying all night like she does. You can get away with little sleep and sea-legs when you're eleven, but hell doth loosen when you're considerably older than that. But tonight, tonight is my repose. 

Only... the last time my daughter went away for an extended time, a weekend in New Jersey to visit her Gramps and K and her adorable year-younger, half-aunt partner-in-crime, she called me three hundred times. Ok, well that's a bit of an exaggeration. She was, after all, with the kindred spirit (to whom she refers as her "cousin", a sly attempt to preserve the pecking order), the one who can party down like no pre-teen's business—'xcept for the muse herself. Rock and roll all day and night, those girls cut a path of chaos like a double typhoon. Truly, truly adorable.

Did that packing list say no cell phone?

A promising tidbit, which I happen to know for a fact by way of my other muse—the bigger one, the quiet, artistic one, the happily-lives-in-his-head one—who has also been on this very school trip, that students are not allowed to call home unless, and only in the rare case, of an absolute emergency. And should anyone not obey packing list orders, they'll be shipped back home on the next bus. That little man also left on a Wednesday and we didn't see or hear from him until he returned on Friday evening. But he's a by-the-book kind of guy. He doesn't prescribe to the "rules are meant to be broken" theory (although it happens on occasion). He wouldn't think to smuggle a phone in his duffel.

Here's the thing: My daughter is my son's polar opposite, a precocious provocateur. She'd think to smuggle in her cell phone. She'd find the slice between the lining and shell of her suitcase and slip her phone right in. She may even be packing a flashlight. Then, again, she'd hate for the fun to end prematurely. But that phone.

She wouldn't have. Would she?

You know what one of the biggest causes of insomnia is? Anxiety. Stress and anxiety. Not muses. Prowling the internet, I can't pull up "muse" anywhere as a reason for sleep disorders. Try it: muse + sleep disorder. Although, Mommy Muse Blog does solve your sleep problems via the ”Pantley Pull-Off” process—or, How to get your newborn to sleep. (Oh, how I loathe the How-To.) Yep, anxiety. And here I am going on about hoping to get some sleep, praying I won't get a middle-of-the-night call. Enough. 

I'm gonna go slip on my Coyote clothing and smuggle me some sleep.

And don't be fooled by all of this, I will miss my muse.

Boys-n-Guns

I watched my thirteen year old son leave the house this afternoon with a semi-automatic NightProwler SA rifle swung over his shoulder, and a Stinger P36 pistol stuffed in his pocket, and I felt rather, shall we say, muddy—grappling with an uneasiness, somberness. After all, I had made the purchase. Me, the one who'd always been philosophically opposed to firearms in the house, and especially in my son's hands. And while Max's weapons are not real guns (well, actually they are real guns), as they are of the AirSoft variety, I still didn't feel quite right about his mission.

These guns are supposed to be toys, a caricature of the real thing, yet they have the potential to harm. They are modern day versions of the BB gun, only, unlike the BB (with some minor exceptions), the point of games played with the AirSoft include—for the most part—other boys as target. Max claims that the ammo, 6mm pellets, doesn't hurt a bit. (You mean that red welt didn't bother you one smack?!) I tried not to think about him getting sprayed, or loading the magazine, as I watched him gingerly bound down the snow-covered road.

Yes, I bought this gun for my son. Me. The neurotic mother (I wasn't always this way). But it was not an easy purchase. About a week before Christmas, I still could not bring myself to buy an AirSoft—safety concerns overwhelming me. I knew, though, that Max had been out with his friends, had borrowed guns, had already ducked behind woodland trees and scrub, shot at targets, other kids, battled in semi-pretend warfare. But he wanted an AirSoft of his own—so that he could freely engage with his friends. I had said No for the past two years. Two years. That's a lot of Nos.

Those two years ago, when Max first asked for an AirSoft gun, I did my research, poked online and found that most dads considered them harmless, thought they were great. Moms even found them safe. I nearly felt betrayed by this, having trouble digging up an argument to support my polar opposite beliefs—until I found an article from a California Police Department warning parents that if a gun looks real, whether a toy or not, they must respond in kind. I even found this Special Public Safety Notice from the Salem County Prosecutor's Office. It's all I needed to place an immediate moratorium on even the thought of guns.

But only a few days before Christmas, my husband put it to me this way: Look, what's the worse of two evils, an AirSoft or an XBox? At least the AirSoft will get him outside with his friends.

Are you kidding, I replied, these are our only options? Indeed, the two items were the only items on Max's Christmas list.

So I did it. I held my breath and went straight to the Hunting department at Dick's Sporting Goods. A young man behind the counter was too eager to assist me. You don't understand, I said, I don't want to make this purchase. Give me a gun that doesn't look like a gun. Give me a gun that won't hurt a fly. Give me a gun my son would hate.

We worked it all out, the young man and I, and I left with the camouflaged NightProwler, biodegradable pellets, camouflaged gloves, a full face mask, hard plastic goggles, a padded hat, a bright orange vest, and targets (as in paper targets).

Christmas morning was bittersweet. Max was ecstatic. I felt... well yes, muddy. But after the present was opened, after Max had fondled and stroked and admired the hardware enough, after it had all been expended, splayed out on the floor, I read him the riot act—told him he'd be taking a gun safety class, listed caveats, blah, blah, blah (the blah blah part most likely being all he heard).

Today he went into combat without the benefit of the gun safety class. But we'll get to it. Soon. He's read the manual, though, he's keeping the safety on, safely storing the guns. Yet I don't feel like it's quite enough. I keep searching for evidence. I want him to know that there's always a horror story.

This evening, I read another, more ominous article, warning parents to not view these types of guns as harmless toys, that they in fact had the potential to seriously injure, even kill. I thought about my teen years, and the Jaycee shooting classes I took with my brother. I thought about the competitions. I thought about the day, not so many years ago, I went sporting clays with my girlfriends. I thought about how surprisingly good I was at it—how I actually enjoyed it.

Oh Hell, I need to let go of it, don't I? I guess I have. Sort of. He's out there in the brush isn't he? But I still don't like it.

Signs Of The Time (Around Town)

I ask myself that everyday. What's my purpose here? Where was I going? How do I get there? What was it I was doing? Gah, I forgot the market list! As if I really need to be reminded of my thought process on a billboard. Though it appears I do.

Driving or walking around town can be pretty humorous when you have funny neighbors and equally entertaining signage. Some neighbors love to expound pertinent news—or gossip—while others live in caves. The signage, however, always keeps us informed.

For instance, I didn't realize that this town still had farmers (I thought, in fact, that almost every square inch of this formerly rural area had been developed—such are our zoning laws) until I saw this:

Can you imagine my surprise? And on Industrial Drive, no less.


I know I've driven by this a thousand times, but something about it struck me today:

What do you think this curve could have possibly done to be so labeled? Talk about a scarlet letter. It's got lots of letters to tell us how awful it is.


Perhaps that bad curb was why this sign went up a few years back:

Every time I pass this sign, I half expect to roll through some kind of vortex that forces all moving objects to operate in slow motion; whereupon, such objects are released after the 0.5 miles odyssey and instantaneously propelled forward, turbo charged. I call this sign "Flux". It's my life in a nutshell.


And then there's this, that gives me vertigo every time I look at it (so I try not to):

Geesh. I don't know what the hell to do here.


And I feel sorry for this driveway, and wonder if it was born this way or involved in some terrible accident:

(I know, I  just couldn't resist. Go ahead, slap my hand.)


And then, today for the very first time, I saw this:

Holy cow, there are still farms in town! Hallelujah. Actually, this is right by Franklin Farm. A nice little slice of heaven. And those farmers do good work.


And this:

Hallelujah again. Yes we can! Can what remains a mystery.


The below sign has been around for a while. I never really read the fine print, and I see now that I've been missing some rather critical information.

I wish I had had this phone number sooner. I've so many questions... like, what if I have some even numbers in my odd numbered house?


And our town's pièce de résistance:

I'm tongue-tied. No, actually I'm not. I'd be very interested to know who the graphic designer is for this piece of work. I need some help with my website. I'll bet she charges a fortune.


At least one neighbor had the good sense to dress up her sign for the holidays:

And for Heaven's sake, who the heck is throwing their poop bags down the drains?! Shame, shame.

Feeling Negative, Anxious, Frustrated... Change Your Trailer

Feeling low, negative, anxious, suspicious, angry, frustrated, intimidated, trapped, misunderstood, paranoid? Dr. Wayne Dyer (and who doesn't love Dr. Dyer?) talks about paradigm shift, casting away conscious and unconscious crutches, taking a look at old habits and excuses and recognizing the absurdity of these crutches. Once one has acknowledged ones vices, one is freed to turn it all around, alter the path. Well, that's only a smidgen of Dr. Dyer's philosophy, in a bitty brown nutshell, but it's healthy advice and good therapy. 


I've been feeling a little defeated lately, unsure of the direction in which I'm headed and whether I've got the tools and chutzpa to get me there. A little concerned about this semester's writing workshop which starts tomorrow (haven't got a single idea in my head, completely, utterly blocked). And then I saw this—a bit of unconventional therapy and inspiration (click on the arrow!): 





So there you go...  think of your life as a movie (oh, the drama—or maybe it's more like Monty Python, in which case you need not read further). How's it playing? Having fun? Waking up with a bright smile on your face or dread hovering over your head? Feeling like it needs a little recalibrating, take a few things out, move some items around? Here is another mode of paradigm shift:  Change your movie. Change your movie's trailer (after all, do we not review our life as a series of snippets?). Edit and tweak until you are beaming with benevolence, have affirmed your self-worth, inner-goodness. Re-write the whole damn thing if you have to, but make sure its ending is heartwarming. Change the soundtrack, too—to something that makes you want to clap your hands and roll your shoulders. Let the revised version play over and over in your head. Self-affirming trailer.


Oh, happy Sunday. Glorious, rainless, staggeringly brilliant day. Absurdly bright. Shining. A hummingbird breezing about my hanging fuchsia. Today, is the perfect day for a hike up Solsbury Hill, a paradigm shift, a trailer transformation...

This Boy-Man Whipped Me. And it wasn't a dream.

Look at him—look how happy he is, how satisfied. That’s right, this boy, on the cusp of Teendom (he’ll arrive there in two days, in fact), beat me mercilessly. Without so much as a drop of sweat.

“Hey Buds,” I said casually this morning. “How ‘bout we go out and hit some balls?” I should have known, of course, it’s never quite that simple. You know what happened next—one doesn’t just go hit some balls on those pristine clay courts. One doesn’t slip into a tennis skirt and flat-soled shoes, pull back hair just-so, fill a half-dozen sport bottles with icy H2O, grab the best of last year’s beaten, hollow tennis balls, check the vibration damper on the racquet, and with a ring-less right hand, load the car with all the gear for just a quick drive to the courts to lob the ball around. No, one engages in a bloodthirsty match when one steps on that hard clay.


I told the little man that he had an unfair “advantage.” Mother’s adult-onset asthma was acting up again (what with all this damp weather, indeed, it was!). But he knew the truth, even if he kindly kept it to himself: that unfair “advantage” is a little thing called YOUTH. And when you no longer have it, you realize what an advantage it is. But I never gave this much thought until I got on the court today with my near 13 year old son. We were both a little rusty—my first time, and the little man’s second at tennis since, probably, last September. We approached the court cautiously, chose our sides and began a low-key, friendly rally. Then it happened, one of us (I can’t remember who) suggested a game—a real game. “Oh, you sure?” I asked. “You remember how to score, Bud?” Of course he did; quite precisely, in fact.


It’s a somber day when your kids surpass you, whether on the court, or otherwise physically, athletically, or intellectually (and in my case, that’s pretty much already happened in the math department)—and Lord knows, at times, even emotionally. Yet, any sentimentality is eclipsed by parental pride. It’s what we all want for our children—we want more for them, we want them to meet (and maybe exceed) their potential, reach for their dreams, grab 'em and run, do even better than ourselves. And I’m sure that both of mine will (there’s just no comparison!). But I remember, not so very long ago (well, ok, maybe more like a decade—but what’s a decade in parental years?) when the little man used to refer to those tailed, flying-buckets in the sky as “hop-a-copters,” and red, sirened fire responders as “fly trucks.” I'll remember and keep those toddler days in my heart forever. But those days of toddler neologisms and playing with Tonka trucks are long forgotten by the boy-man, although he'll always have the stories.


“This isn’t the French Open, Big Guy,” I reminded him, as I rifled through my bag for my inhaler, and gulped down the last of the water, grunting to myself: enough already with the drop shots. “You can hit the ball directly to me, you know.” Well, isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work? Oh, I’m supposed to run for the ball? Somehow, that wasn’t such a big deal in the first set, but in my fairly advanced age, stamina plays a serious role in this game, and I didn’t feel much like hoofin’ it anymore—not in this painfully extended set. It was the boy-man's advantage, and the last of the three-set match. His last serve to me was a perfect low slice through the box, which, not even from well behind the service line—not in my wildest dream—could I return.


“That’s game!” I shouted quickly and jubilantly. Game over! Happy to lose! But summer’s just beginning, and if I’m going to keep up with this rapidly budding teen, and the girl-Tween behind him, I’d better get out there and start pounding the pavement; get serious about hitting those balls. I have a feeling I’m going to tire of being whipped; even so, I’ll never tire of that boy-man's joyous look of satisfaction.