Ewte Talk

“Mom.”

“Yes?”

“Mom, do you know what I found yesterday?”

“No, what?”

“Mom.”

“What Max?”

“Well, yesterday I was outside and you would not believe it. I saw a bee even bigger than this!” He holds up his hands to show. I look.

“Oh my goodness. That’s huge.”

“And mom?”

“Hmm.”

“Mom.”

“I’m listening.”

“Mom, I wasn’t scared of it because that kind won’t bother you.”

“You’re learning so many things about bees in class. You can teach me.”

“I know. And mom?”

“I’m right here.”

“Mom.”

“Max, you don’t have to keep saying my name. I’m right next to you. I can hear you.”

“Okay. Well, Mom, did you know that the queen bee lays 15,000 eggs every day?”

“Every day?” I’m skeptical. “Are you sure? Maybe it was ‘at a time’, meaning each time she lays her eggs. Do you think?”

“Well, maybe, but I’m not sure. But, yea, I think so, that’s it. Not everyday. That would be too many eggs, huh?”

“It would be quite a bunch. We’d have bees all over the place.”

“Oh Mom, that would be crazy.”

“Yea.”

“Mom.”

“Max.”

“Mom.”

“Max.”

“MOM!!”

“My name is Penelope all of a sudden.”

“MOM! Stop it!”

“Stop what?”

“Stop saying that. I’m trying to tell you something.”

“Join the club.”

Max and I are eating lunch and he’s staring past my shoulder, intent on a fixed point on the wall behind me, chewing. What is it? What’s in that little mind of his? He’s so much like me, I am finding out. It’s odd, to see a young boy who looks not much at all like me, act in ways very similar to my own, and to know perhaps those ways are driven by genes I harbor in my own bones, ways manifest daily in the habits I exhibit, the temperament I display.

“On the bus, Ethan Waple sometimes tells Chris that he will sit next to him tomorrow,” Max begins, “but then Ethan Waple forgets and sits next to me instead,” he says with a huge satisfied grin.

Ahh. Ethan Waple. My son’s one consistent obsession. This is just like me, to have obsessions, though mine ebb and flow. I suppose his do, too. He’d be talking Nintendo DS if it weren’t for the tragic demise of both the boys’ machines from grappling over who was to play with them when.

Obessions are good, but I want to teach him how to keep them in balance, or is that an oxymoron? Maybe I might teach him how to take breaks from your obsessions, or where to put them so that the rest of you can breathe with a certain dignity on occasion.

Obsessions get you places, but they can trap you into thinking some days that there is no other boy to love other than beautiful Ethan Waple. And, don’t we all know, as beautiful and captivating as Ethan is, and as much as I adore his mother, it’s wise to have your eggs in several baskets. More than one basket can broaden your world.

But that is love, and love is an obstinate obsession, wholly mute to suggestion. Work is another, and one that we all fall captive to. I used to walk around proud to fall under the Judeo-Christian work ethic: nose to the grindstone. I still do, but sometimes after a particularly hectic period I am left wondering if it wouldn’t be wise in life to slow one’s pace enough to discern the huge underworld of subtlety that underlies all things. It can only be heard in an exquisite quiet that comes when we slow and allow ourselves to pay attention. When our lives are loud, brisk, frenetic, how unlikely it is that we find ourselves face-to-face with that which is subtle and fine and essential. We pass it by a hundred times completely unaware, a world unknown to us though necessary.

But none of this isn’t to say that it isn’t also necessary to sink your teeth into your passions, your obsessions. They give you purpose. Hopefully they also at the same time don’t rob you of it.

And, oh, to be in love.

“Mom?” my son then said to me, his focus now suddenly shifting onto me.

“Yes, love.”

“Guess who sat next to me at Art.”

“Ethan Waple?”

“You are right,” he smiled, “And, Mom?”

“Hmm.”

“When can Ethan Waple come to our house?”

“Let’s call his mom and see.”

“I’ll go get the phone book for you.”

Runners wait for Boston Marathon to start.

What do you get when you line a twenty-six mile stretch of urban road with sundry folk who have come to scream, hoot, cat call, yell, or otherwise generate whatever loud commotion they can muster, all for the benefit of twenty thousand runners who pass them by over the course of hours?

An incredible party, that’s what.

People keep asking me about the Boston Marathon because it was scheduled concurrent with a nor’easter that the media dutifully made known to the public as the Perfect Storm. I’d say it was perfect alright, perfect for running, not much rain, not much wind that I recall, and the temperature was perfectly not a problem.

It added interest to the run that I repeatedly put my hat and gloves on, took them off, put them on, took off. No biggie.

Okay, I lie. It was a pain in the ass, but it’s a necessary evil if you want to run in the winter, or in April in Boston apparently. You start out your run sometimes dressed for one set of conditions only to find your waist later tied up and wrapped around like a mummy’s because the day has warmed itself. Yet, necessity is the mother of invention, and this gives me an idea even if the running world would balk at the thought.

The elite runners are allowed sometimes to have pacers in marathons. Actually any of us mortal idiots could, too, but we call them ‘friends’. Anyway, pacers help an elite runner, obviously, maintain a given pace throughout a race. What the race organizers might want to consider, however, is opening up the field to sherpas. Sherpas for the middle and back-of-the-packers. It’s not as crazy as you might think.

Sherpas are Tibetans who are human mountain goats, serving as porters on mountain-climbing expeditions in the Himalayas. I doubt we would be able to recruit actual sherpas from their mountain home to labor in our flatland, capitalist venture, but I’ll bet we could train locals to resemble the original as closely as we’d need.
Here’s the situation: in my twenty-eight years of running I have still not learned how to carry exactly what I need. Sometimes I do, but many times I don’t. This error comes in the form of too much clothing and too much food. I know exactly how much food I will eat. I’ve tested it many times, but nevertheless I opt to carry nearly double what I’ll expect to eat. Why? Am I expecting to entertain along the way? When it comes to clothing, I never pack light anywhere I go. Why? I can’t answer that. But I do know that a sherpa would be the perfect complement to my run.

Why would race directors be interested in adding girth to a sport that must now resort to the use of lottery in some cases to limit its entrant size? One word: profit. If you hired a sherpa then a certain percentage of their fee would go into the race’s coffer. Now who’s listening?

Think of Americans and their stuff. They love it. They roll in it. They can’t get enough. Distance running is problematic in a materialistic culture such as ours. So far to run, so heavy the cargo. Can’t carry. What to do? A sherpa would be a veritable animate Christmas moving in tandem for a good four to five hour time span bestowing goody after small luxury after treat after cozy pampering. Everybody would want a sherpa. Race directors could smell the gold.

Can you see it? Sherpas trotting along beside their clients bedecked in singlets with a large ‘S’ on the front, a backpack on their backs, passing back and forth various needs to the runner: energy bars, fluid, clothing, ipod, cell phone, Blackberries with current game scores. You could practically run in the buff with a moving closet next to you. Need a jacket? Ask the sherpa. Don’t need the jacket any longer? Here you go, Sherpa. Snagged a nail. Nail file, please. Hmmm. I’m hungry. Oh, Sherpa. . .

Of course, all of this flies in the face of standard racing convention. The runner is supposed to be self-sufficient, but I’m a relativist. I see a very fine line between a stationary table with hundreds of cups on it (aid), and an ambulating presence equipped with aid (aid). Where’s the difference? I think it all wraps up to be the new face of marathoning if you ask me.

As for Boston, because I was born now and not a bit later when sherpas in racing will be de rigeur, I labored under the weight of my things from Hopkinton to Boston in a relative state of joy. The crowd along the way was all the fun I could have handled for one day. The Wellesley women made this sound that I heard perhaps a half a mile before I saw them. It was high-pitched because they are all female, and it was lovely and powerful and unbelievable. I ran over to the side to slap every hand I could get. A man next to me swerved over to kiss one of them. It was one of the very few brief moments I wished I were male.
The Boston College students were smelled before seen. Drunk off their patooties since early Friday evening no doubt, (it was Monday) they cheered us on in a deafening stupor. I laughed so hard my core seized up.
For me, this race was a celebration. My friend kept telling me, “You earned it,” meaning I qualified for the race so I had a right to be there. I showed up on race day undertrained due to injury, overly rested, not having put so much as even really one thought into running the course. I was completely relaxed at a race I’d dreamed of doing for years. Normally at a race I’m jacked up by the time of the start on adrenaline which carries me through to two days later when I crash. For this race’s start, it was like I was standing in line at the grocery store.

But things started to get fun as soon as I put one foot down to go: I was running: my old friend. An afternoon of that would always turn out fine. Boston was one very fine party that day. I don’t remember running much, but I remember the people and laughing and the children and the students cheering us on. I remember peeing in front of the windows of a sports club and saying, “Screw it,” if anyone was watching. Lucky them, I was saying.

That day, lucky me.

Tents provided for shelter before start of Boston Marathon were puddled.

I enjoyed a short but rare visit with one of my favoritie of my husband’s many cousins, Tanya, at her home in Westport. She put together a perfect Greek lunch for her friend and I while the three of us sat around her kitchen counter and yakked. It is an innate talent women are born with and delight in.

I had dinner with my friend later that night back in town the night before the race when service was slow because of all the marathoners in town but conversation flowed and it didn’t matter. The wind and rain flipped my umbrella inside-out as we made our way to the trolley afterwards. So this was a nor-easter. The trolley was warm inside and people a whole lot friendlier than on a New York subway. When I hopped off to walk back to my hotel I eavesdropped on this young guy trying to appeal to two cops to please check with his friends over in the bookstore that he was, in fact, an accomplished climber and climbs tall structures all the time. The cops stood there shifting their weight from one leg to the other. I tried to get a good look at the nut without seeming too obvious. Unfortunately, I guess I missed a good performance on the side of some building.

Later when my flight home was canceled I had the huge fortune to be stranded with my friend, Farouk, who was on the same flight. A day in rainy, cold Boston is better done as two or more than as one.

Farouk and I began our tour of damp Boston with a man on the sidewalk who had just gotten out of jail. The three of us walked for a bit in amiable conversation before Farouk and I learned of our new friend’s recent whereabouts, at which point we found ourselves stuck with this new companion and his sudden interesting history. And, yet, he was charming if not a little needy and with nowhere in the world to go on that day. It was just him and his black plastic bag of things clutched to his chest. If my father ever reads this, which I’m sure he won’t, then he’ll certainly have his usual to say to me, “Stephanie, can I just say something?” (Meaning, can I offer loads of unsolicited opinion about how you live your life in clear and imminent danger?)

After politely ditching the ex-con, Farouk and I spent the afternoon eating and poking around Faneuil Hall among a crowd that appeared to be in a similar situation to us: limbo. Quite a few marathoners were present, stiff and wobbly, though otherwise fulfilled.

I tell you, it was not a bad way to spend a few days. I am certainly wondering when I can do it again.

So Max is telling me, “You know, Mom, I just love cats.”

“Of course.”

“Because they’re my favorite animal, you know.”

“Certainly they are.”

“And you know Ethan Waple loves cats too, but not as much as me I think.”

“I would expect he wouldn’t.”

“And he doesn’t have any cats, of course, because his dad is allergic to animal fur.”

“Oh?”

“Yea. He’s allergic to lions.”

“Lions?”

“Yea. Lions, but not rhinoceroses.”

“Oh no? Why not rhinoceroses?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Is it because they’re bald?” I ask him.

“Oh, yea. That’s why. They’re bald.”

Every single night of his life since he’s acquired sufficient language to do so, my son Max has asked for his bedtime back scratch. Most nights he gets one. Presently he asks in this fashion:

“Back scratch?” to which I will reply in the affirmative and our ritual begins.

The boy wriggles his shirt up to his arm pits, I sprawl along the length of his bed and we two laze in the glow coming in from the hallway light. I know Quinn is next door intent on his reading and my husband is no doubt on the computer. Sometimes Kitten is curled up near the foot of Max’s bed.

Very often, over these years, over these hundreds of back rubs, I have recalled the times my own father gave my sister and I each a back scratch before we fell asleep when we were small. He would sing Danny Boy to us and rotate between our twin beds, giving each a short scratch, to which inevitably the other would complain that her sister got a bit more time. Sometimes I remember my father being game and going back to even us out, giving us each another bit of a gentle massage. It was so golden because I don’t remember so much in the way of touch otherwise growing up or since, though I’m sure there must have been. Nothing stands out the way those brief moments do which were purely about touch.

My son Max loves this time that we share. It is quiet and soothing for him, meditative for me. Tonight I felt close to him and I wanted to express how I felt, so I did.
“Maxie,” I said to him, “You know what, honey? I love you.”

“Mom,” he told me in a perturbed voice, “You tell me that too many times.” This did not shock me. This has become our way.

“I do?” I said, “Oh. Yes. I guess I do.” And I thought for a moment. “Why don’t you like me to say that?”

“I don’t like you to say that because you say it too many times.” he answered. This told me nothing of course, but I wasn’t exactly looking for an answer per se. More I just wanted to chat.

“I see. I’ll try not to say it so much. It’s just sometimes I have these feelings of love,” I explained, “and sometimes I just want to tell you about them.”

“I said I wouldn’t like it very much if you did.”

“Oh yes. Very much, you wouldn’t like it. You told me. Definitely.” Right-o.

Our back scratch eventually came to an end and I tucked him in, said goodnight, climbed down the ladder of the bunk bed. Next door the lights were already off in Quinn’s room which never is the case. He must have been tired. He’ll read all night if you let him. I stuck my hand up onto his mattress and whispered, “Goodnight sweetheart. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Mom.”

Quinn will lay there through a back scratch, enjoying it, but pop up immediately when I say I’m finished so that he can begin reading again. He has no qualms with my “I love you’s”. Sometimes I see these two as night and day.

I wandered down the hall. Bill was still on the computer, on the phone: work, so late. I retired to my room with the cat who curled up next to me waiting to be scratched just so behind the ears.