Active, dormant, and extinct

It’s Saturday afternoon, post-swim meet, one of the few unoccupied bits of time that I have this weekend, so here I sit, writing all about how little time I have, thus leaving me with even less time than I would have if I wasn’t so compulsive about writing every day, no matter what. I’m an enigma wrapped in a riddle surrounded by stupid. 

I was listening to NPR on my way to pick up my son from work, and All Things Considered was airing a story about dinosaurs. I don’t know what the story was about, because it was almost over when I turned on the radio. But it occurred to me that it’s so rare these days to hear a news story about dinosaurs. “Extinct” and “newsworthy”--these are usually mutually exclusive terms. I was pleased to listen to a news story about something other than politics, and I found it utterly delightful that the anchor referred to dinosaurs as "dinos" throughout the broadcast. 

*****

I swam later that afternoon. After several days of too-cool-for-summer weather and correspondingly cold water, it was nice to swim on a legitimately warm summer day. The water was still cooler than normal for late June, but old age must be toughening me because cold water doesn’t bother me anymore. According to the weather forecast, we’re about to enter a brief but intense heat wave, with three or four days of temperatures in the high 90s and humidity that will be visible, shimmering from the asphalt on the pool parking lot. The water will go from slightly too cool to just right. 

When I got home, there was a small murder of crows on my front lawn; maybe a dozen or so. It was a third-degree murder at most. But crows in any number larger than one creep me out, and this property isn’t big enough for them and me. They or I had to go, and it’s my house. I honked my horn and chased them away. 

*****

It’s Monday now, the first day of the promised or threatened heat wave, depending on your perception. I worked inside my air-conditioned house, and then stepped outside from the relatively cool, darker than usual house (shades drawn to keep the temperature down) into the merciless bright glare of 3:30 PM on the hottest day of the summer so far. 

Last June, I worked outside a lot, my laptop and notebooks spread out on the patio table and shaded by an umbrella. This June, the cicadas made working outside impossible. The noise didn’t trouble me (though it was pretty loud) but cicadas landing on my head and my arms and my neck and (shudder) my face absolutely did trouble me. Three weeks ago, my backyard was swarming with the little pests. Our back fence was studded with resting cicadas, hundreds of them. The deep end of the pool was a cicada Viking funeral, a flotilla of dozens of cicadas who learned too late that they can’t swim. And now all of the cicadas, dead and alive, are gone, leaving behind practically no trace. The birds (maybe even the crows) might have feasted on them, and the rain washed some of them away, and maybe the rest of them just decomposed, returning unto the dust whence they came. All I know for sure is that they’re gone, and good riddance. They’re not extinct like the dinosaurs, but at least they’re not active like the crows. They’re dormant, and I hope they have a nice rest for the next 17 years. I won’t miss them. 

Too much

When does too much become really too much? When can you just walk away, or when should you? When, for example, does the terribleness of an absolutely terrible situation outweigh whatever you hope to gain from it? I am asking, as the Internet says, for a friend. 

No, that’s not true. I’m asking for me. I’m in a terrible situation that is unlikely to get better but is entirely likely to get notably worse and yet I can’t walk away without causing a lot of difficulty for a lot of people, myself included. And I don’t really know what to do. My head hurts and my stomach hurts and I don’t think I’ll sleep tonight. I don’t know what to do.  

*****

That was last night. And now it’s the next morning. I did sleep, but I woke up extremely early, knowing immediately that sleeping time was over and that I was wide awake for the day. When you wake up too early, sometimes the best thing is to realize right away that there’s no more sleep available and that you shouldn’t waste any time looking for more sleep and that you should instead just get up and out of the bed, and so that is what I did. I don’t feel much better than I did yesterday. In fact, I might have cried. Or maybe that was just the shower. 

*****

In the midst of last night’s crisis, I thought about stopping this, “this” meaning my daily writing habit. I have an unbroken streak of over three years. And when I say “daily,” I mean 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I write on weekdays, and I write on weekends. I write on Christmas and Thanksgiving and Juneteenth. I write on my birthday. “Daily” means every single day. And I thought that while I’m on the subject of things that are too much, maybe writing every day, no matter what, is too much. 

But it made me sad to think of stopping, and not just because of the streak because who am I, Cal Fucking Ripken? No one is counting my consecutive writing days. No one is keeping track of this, and I have no proof of my daily word production, so you will just have to take my word for it. And I don’t know if there’s a record to break, but if there is and if I break it, ESPN is not going to broadcast a highlight reel. There won’t be a “30 for 30.” All of that is to say that the streak does not matter, but I look forward to doing this every day, even when I don’t have time, even when it is, in fact, too much. Something might have to give, but it won’t be this. 

*****

I started writing this on Monday, which was a particularly difficult day. Tuesday and Wednesday were no better, until late Wednesday afternoon. I was walking around the Leisure World Giant, shopping for my old lady (so much bleach!) and all of a sudden, things just fell into place and I saw just enough of the big picture that I knew that I could live with the immediate terribleness and could figure out a way forward that would make the whole situation not only not terrible but entirely reasonable and in some ways, even an improvement over the situation that preceded it. It’s Thursday now and while I am not quite as optimistic as I was yesterday in the warm embrace of the natural foods section of the supermarket, which is always so much nicer than the rest of the supermarket; I am back to my almost-normal self. This too shall pass. And the nice part is that even if it doesn’t pass, I’m pretty sure that I can live with it. 

Regular hair, don't care

I got my hair cut last week. Google Docs is flagging the separation between “hair” and “cut,” but Google Docs is wrong, wrong, wrong, because I’m using the word “cut” as a verb. I could have written that I got a haircut last week, and then haircut as one word would be appropriate, as a noun and the object of “got,” but that’s not how I wanted to play that sentence, and Google Docs shouldn’t try to exceed its authority . Unless it wants to write my blog for me. Go ahead, Google Docs. Walk the plank. It’s all yours. 

*****

Anyway, back to the haircut  (see Google Docs? I know the difference between "haircut" and "hair cut"). I don’t do very much with my hair. My hair is fairly thick, not quite straight but not quite wavy. I have a few cowlicks, and a few places where the hair turns its own way, no matter what I do to it. I used to have a very simple seven-to-ten minute styling routine, with a blow dryer and a brush. When my hair didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, I pulled it back into a clip or a headband, and I went on my way. 

Then March 2020 hit, and we all came home; some of us for months. I’m still working from home. Without a reason to get dressed and leave the house every day, even my minimal hair routine seemed unnecessary, so I stopped doing it. I showered, washed my hair, combed it, and let it dry however it would. I used the headband and the clip and the hair tie (sometimes all three at once) as needed. 

Last year, I was cutting my own hair, and that is not as bad an idea as you might think. It turned out that I could cut my own hair. But I’d rather have a stylist do it, and so now that hair salons are back in business again, I’m happy to turn myself over to the professionals. 

My hairstylist is an immigrant from Nicaragua, a 60-year-old lady with an elderly mother who suffers from dementia, two grown daughters (one of whom is also a hairstylist), and a husband who I think is her second husband, and not the father of the two daughters. She talks about her elderly mother a lot. Her mother was a businesswoman, very successful and energetic and capable, and it’s difficult for Angela to see her once-brilliant mother become forgetful and almost helpless. LIke many people with dementia, Angela’s mother has good days and bad days. On good days, she remembers Angela, and she talks about business and current events and family and friends. On bad days, she forgets who she is, and she forgets her daughter’s name, and she demands to be taken home, to houses where she lived in other cities, many years ago. It’s sad for Angela and it must be frightening for her mother. But Angela goes on about her life and her work. She takes care of the people she needs to take care of, and she cuts and styles and colors hair, and she laughs at my jokes. 

Angela works in a salon that has a large elderly clientele. The salon is in the shopping center attached to the Leisure World retirement village, which is a pretty huge complex of high-rise apartment buildings, low-rise garden-style apartments, tiny one-story cottages, and an assisted living center. Every time I go to the salon, I see maybe one other person younger than 65, but they cater mostly to very old ladies, the kind who get their hair washed and set once a week. 

A very tiny old lady in a wheelchair, wheeled by another tiny lady, a few years younger than herself, was in the salon for her first haircut since the pandemic began. Her fluffy, slightly yellowed white hair was piled atop her head like buttercream frosting on a slightly desiccated but still-sweet cupcake. The lady and her companion talked loudly, as old people tend to do. One of them got the Pfizer vaccine and one got the Moderna. Both ladies were getting haircuts. The lady in the wheelchair was having her hair cut short and her companion was getting her stylish little bob trimmed and styled. They chattered with excitement, happy to be out of the house and happy to return to their normal weekly beauty routines. Old ladies like to be pretty, too. And why shouldn’t they?

The very old lady had very specific instructions about how much length she wanted to cut, and how she wanted her hair shaped and styled. And again, why shouldn’t she? It’s her hair, which she has to live with. Her stylist listened patiently, nodding her head and asking questions. But the client at the next station felt moved for some reason to comment. “She knows just what she wants, doesn’t she?” The neighboring client’s stylist nodded. “Oh yes, she does, and she’s not afraid to tell us, is she? Good for her.”  

Good for her? First of all, neither of these women seemed to understand that talking about a person who is 18 inches away from them as if she’s in another state is inexcusably rude. And their amused surprise at the idea that an old person should express her own opinion about her own hair that she is paying money to have cut and styled was downright offensive, and not just because I myself expect to be a very old lady myself someday. It was just upsetting to see the lack of simple manners, and simple respect for another person’s dignity. 

The very old lady either didn’t hear these idiots or she wisely chose not to acknowledge their presence in her vicinity and their unnecessary comments on her demeanor. She sat straight up in her chair and watched calmly in the mirror as her stylist brushed out her fluffy yellow-white hair and began snipping off a year’s growth. 

*****

When I arrived for my appointment, my stylist was finishing with her earlier client, and she handed me over to the very capable salon assistant, who washed and conditioned my hair. I love having someone else wash my hair. It’s lovely. The assistant was lovely, too. She complimented my handbag, and she told me that I have beautiful hair. She was perfectly right about the handbag, for which I can take no credit other than for my own good taste. 

The “beautiful hair” remark was sheer flattery.  I have hair, is what I have. It’s neither beautiful nor ugly. It’s nothing special; especially with my styling routine, which as we have established, consists of almost nothing. Sometimes I see a woman with flawlessly cut, beautifully colored, and perfectly styled hair and I think “Hmm. Maybe I should make more of an effort. Maybe I should try to have amazing hair.” But then I think about the work that it would take to achieve and maintain hair excellence, and I realize that this effort would put an unacceptable burden on my life, and I pull out my trusty clips and headbands. I’m not a #hairgoals kind of woman.

The older I get, the more I care about living and the less I care about how I look when I'm doing it. That is not to say that I don’t care at all about appearance, and should you ever hear me claim not to care one bit about how I look, you can call me out as a liar, because that will be a lie. I wish I didn’t care at all but I do. But after 50 plus years, I think I have reached a point at which my concern for my appearance and my anxiety about what others think when they look at me are manageable.  

*****

My hair turned out fine. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted because I wanted something very slightly different from my usual haircut and I think that maybe Angela was afraid for me; afraid that I thought I was ready for something new but that I’m really not, and so she just decided to take the safe route and cut my hair the same way that she usually cuts it. I have had some really bad haircuts in my time, and I do tend to project fear when I sit down in a stylist’s chair. 

The very old lady was still in her chair when I left, her once-long, still-wet yellowish white hair now shaped into a chin-length bob. She seemed quite happy, and I wish I could have stayed to see the final dried and styled result. If I knew the lady’s name, I’d try to find her on Instagram, to see if she posted a selfie. Hashtag: #shorthairdontcare. 

Barn burning

Oh, I had such a day today. I had such a day that I almost forgot to write, and then where would we be? Luckily, we don’t have to contend with the outcome of a me-not-writing day. Here I am, tapping away. Later, I can write about WHY I had such a day, but all of that is need-to-know right now, and nobody needs to know. Trust me, you’re better off. 

*****

Last week, I attended a celebration of life for a family friend, who was also the father of my younger son’s oldest friends, two brothers ages 16 and almost 18. The almost 18-year-old is graduating from high school next week, without his father. It’s heartbreaking. 

It was a celebration, not a funeral, in accordance with the wishes of the deceased. We convened at a beer garden/farm type of place in Brookeville, on a beautiful hot summer afternoon, and then we sat under a huge tent and heard funny stories about his life from his friends and his family, and we listened to Little Feat singing his favorite song, “Willin’,” and then we ate and drank and told more stories. It was rather lovely. 

As always at such gatherings, I got to see lots of people whom I haven't seen in a long time. And as always, we hugged and told one another how good it was to meet again, despite the sad circumstances. 

*****

My son's other best friend's parents, who are also my close friends, were there. We talked for a while and then we looked at a barn. Apparently, my friends want to buy a barn. It takes all kinds, doesn't it? I can't think of one single thing that I want less than a barn, but my friends include barn ownership among their fondest dreams. 

It was a nice barn, as barns go, if you like that sort of thing. The farm is both a working farm and a party venue, so the barn was sectioned into little gathering spaces with rustic furniture and decorative items. It was kind of charming, really. But not so charming that I was possessed of any desire to own it or anything like it. To each his own. I hope my friends get the barn that they hope for. 

*****

Why was it such a day, you are probably asking yourself by now. If you're not, then you suffer, as Captain von Trapp said, from an appalling lack of curiosity. Or maybe you’re just a big jerk who doesn’t care about my problems. I’m just kidding. You’re probably a lovely person, even if you don’t care about my problems. 

But let me tell you all about my problems, in veiled and mysterious terms, because my problems involve work and I can’t tell you anything about work. Except that a project that I loved abruptly ended for no reason that I can discern or understand and that a group of people whom I love are on the street, so to speak. I’m among the few survivors and I’m not particularly happy about it. I have a job, and I’ll be fine, as far as paying the bills and keeping the household running goes. But the proverbial writing is on the proverbial wall. I’m here to wind things down and I don’t like to wind things down. That’s not what I do. 

*****

It’s been a few days since all of this happened. A little over a week since the funeral and three days since the job news. I’m still reeling a little bit. My problems are minor--infinitesimal, really, when compared to those of others--but they’re still problems. I’m sad for my friend and her children, still grieving the loss of a husband and father. And the sense of loss that I feel for the work that I have loved doing for the last almost four years and the wonderful people with whom I did that work, feels a lot like grief to me. 

But I will get over it. Four years is probably a long enough time to do one thing, and it might be time to move on to the next thing. There won’t be a barn in my future; I’m pretty sure of that (but never say never, either). But there will be something else. 

Freedom

“It’s not bad; that is, if you don’t mind really cold water and a few dead cicadas.” 

That was the less-than-promising answer to my question about pool conditions last Saturday, as I arrived at the pool for my first outdoor swim of the 2021 post-corona summer. A lap lane was wide open, and my neighbor, another lap swimmer, was breast-stroking in the adjacent lane. Other than cold water and dead cicadas, he thought that the pool was just fine. 

Really cold water and dead cicadas are not among my favorite things, but the pool looked beautiful; blue and sparkling beneath the high summer sun, and it was hot, and I could feel the water calling me. So I got in and started swimming, and you know what? I found that I don’t mind really cold water or dead cicadas at all. Not at all. There were only a few cicadas in the pool, and you know what they say about cold water. It’s fine, once you get used to it. 

I used to be very particular about pool water temperature. I’d dip a tentative foot into the water on Memorial Day weekend, but I’d wait to get all the way in until the water temperature climbed up to my preferred bath water warmth, which usually happened some time around mid-June. Then I returned to work full-time, and my time was limited, and if I wanted to swim, I had to get in the water no matter how cold it was. Last summer, the pool was open, but occupancy was limited to a handful of people at a time, and swimmers had to make reservations. Surprisingly, I was able to get a swim reservation almost every day, and I’d share the pool with the same small group of dedicated hardcore swimmers. We got in that water no matter the temperature, because that 45-minute swim was the most freedom we’d have all day. 

*****

I packed my swim bag on Saturday morning. Sunscreen, lip balm, goggles, a coin purse for soda money, and shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel. I like to use a shampoo and soap that I don't usually use, so that I can save whatever is left over for the winter. Then I can shower with my pool soap and feel like it's summer again. 

*****

Every year, I feel like I won't want to swim again in the summer. Some time in early March or so, I look at my pasty soft winter body and think "swimwear? No. Never again." But then it's summer again, and I get in the pool  just one time, and it calls me back again and again. After months out of the water, my first lap swim on Saturday left me second-Moderna exhausted, but I was right back in again on Sunday. 

I could have gone swimming during the winter, but I don’t like to swim indoors nearly as much as outdoors. Indoor pools, even nice indoor pools, are a bit dank and dark. The water doesn’t sparkle, and the chemicals burn my eyes. And I like testing my muscle memory. I just swam for the third time, and it’s getting a little easier each day. I like rediscovering unused muscles. I like when I forget what it’s like to lie in bed and feel like you’re still floating; and then I swim for the first time in a summer, and I remember.

*****

As I swam on Monday, I watched a group of neighborhood kids, finally free of COVID restrictions, playing together in the deep end of the pool. They play a water tag game called “Beaver.” Swim team kids have been playing that game forever. My kids played it when they were younger. Sometimes, they still do. I can’t explain the rules of Beaver. I just know that someone screams “Beaver!” and then all of the kids dive in together and they have to swim to the rope and touch it before they get tagged. I don’t know if the kid who is “it” is the beaver, or if they’re all beavers? (And I know. Beaver. Shut up.) 

These games always start out of nowhere. Sometimes, everyone is playing ball in the shallow end, and sometimes they’re playing volleyball or wiffle ball on the grass, and sometimes they’re all lining up to take turns on the diving board, and then suddenly, it’s time to play Beaver. When that happens, every swimming child from age 7 to age 12 convenes in the deep end. It gets really exciting when the older kids join the game. 

One girl, age 11 or so, stood on the deck watching her friends and shouting directions and advice to the players, but not joining in. She wore an oversized t-shirt over her bathing suit, and her hair was dry. I know this little girl, and I know that she is a very capable swimmer, so I know that she wasn’t afraid of the deep end. Maybe she wasn’t afraid of anything. Maybe she just didn’t feel like getting in the water. But something about that big t-shirt, and the way she crossed her arms across her body as if to hide it, to hide herself, reminded me of myself at that age. I didn’t like showing my body either. Sometimes, well into my early adult years, I wasted hot summer days because I didn't want to be seen in a bathing suit. 

As I said, I know this little girl, but not well enough to tell her to just take off the t-shirt, jump in the water, and everything will be fine. What do I know? Maybe everything won't be fine. Maybe she didn't even want to swim. 

*****

I swam for five days in a row. It's Thursday now and storm clouds are hovering, threatening a deluge. I probably won't get to swim today, and then I’ll have to readjust to water that will get a bit colder again after the rain. This is the thing about summer, that you have to take the good with the bad. 

But yesterday, the sun was still high in a still-clear sky, and the humidity shimmered off the deck and the cicadas hummed insistently, and as I rounded the turn for my 18th lap, I saw the little girl again, running on the deck until the lifeguard’s whistle reminded her to walk. She wore a bathing suit, and her long wet hair streamed down her back. “Beaver!” The shout came from the deep end, and speeding up just enough that the lifeguard couldn’t accuse her of running again, she crossed the deck to join the game. I love summer.