Run for Your Life

Last summer, my older daughter E began training for the high school cross country team.  It didn’t really involve me much, so I didn’t mind. I didn’t have to drive her often, and since the season had not officially commenced, I didn’t have to sit through races or relays or meets or whatever it's called when cross country teams compete against each other.  She carpooled most mornings with a generous mom in the neighborhood who liked to get her morning run in while the team ran their designated course or did their conditioning, which mostly involved lots of crunches and planks on old beach towels in the parking lot. The park did feature a sexual deviant who hung out in his car and watched until some vigilant parents alerted the authorities, but he never really interacted with any of the kids. All in all, it was a good season, and E enjoyed it enough to go for another year.

This summer, E hasn’t really gotten into the team spirit. We spent much of the summer traveling, which put a real damper on the training and conditioning. She packed her running shoes for our trip to London and Paris, but she really didn’t have time to use them. Running in another country isn’t the kind of thing you do as a novice runner or a novice traveler, and she was both. Her running shoes sat unused for the whole trip.

We went to the beach soon after, and again, she wasn’t much in the mood for training. The beach has all that humidity, even in the wee hours of dawn, and you have to be a pretty devoted runner to get up before sunrise to get moving before the temperature surpasses the humidity level.  Add to that her fifteen years, her general ennui, her love of sleeping in, and yeah, ain’t nobody got time for that. We did have plenty of time for croissants and pastries overseas and hush puppies and ice cream at the beach. E is a trooper though, and she came home and cold turkeyed most of that at the same time she started running at least three mornings a week.

Seriously, the struggle is real.

Her cross country season doesn’t start until the school year begins, but the coach encourages the team to condition all summer long. Since we’ve been back in town, E has been getting up and out of the house before seven to meet her fellow team members at the park across from the high school. The good news is the park is as sketchy as ever.

How sketchy? Well, let’s see. Last summer, as I mentioned, there was the constant presence of the pedophile in the parking lot. During the school year, the team would meet there and run after school, where they were joined in the park by the pot heads who would get high and harass them. The coach would encourage the burnouts to leave, but he never called the police. Honestly, what was he going to do, call it in every afternoon? At some point, he needed to do the business of coaching. It’s the kind of park where you expect to see broken glass and cigarette butts in the sand box and used condoms on the asphalt. It’s a real community park, open to everyone.

This summer has upped the ante. Last weekend, a gunshot victim was found in the park. I can’t say for sure if he was murdered there or just dumped, but regardless, a lifeless body was found with some exit wounds and no breathing. This is not the kind of thing a mom wants to hear.

I waited for some communique from the coach, an email or text or something to address this little piece of  bad news, something to reassure us parents that our children would be safe, that he took their welfare seriously, that their well-being mattered to him as much as their pace.

I am still waiting for that, by the way. I didn’t contact him myself because, let’s get real, I have a fifteen year old daughter who can barely function from all the mortifying humiliation I cause her. She begged me not to say anything, pointing out that the dead body had already been collected by the coroner and, therefore, the park had returned to the status quo. So I did nothing, waiting instead for E to let me know all was well.

I played twenty questions with her that first morning practice after the alleged murder. No, there was no yellow caution tape in the park. Yes, there was a clean-up crew pressure-washing the area of discovery.  No, there was no white chalk outline. Yes, there were still some mystery stains. No, the coach wasn’t there. Yes, the team captains were instructed to warn the kids about running alone. 

E also let me know there was a new sexual predator hanging around the parking lot, although she wasn’t sure if he was interested in the cross country high school team or the little league baseball team. She also reported that someone dug a hole in the back of the park and filled it up with dirty diapers, the stench of which almost made her puke.

For all you parents who have kids on other teams, take a moment to appreciate what you have. The kids who show up in the heat to play football on the practice field. The girls hitting the volleyball court hard. The basketball games in countless gyms. Those kids all do their sportsing in a designated sporting area, the school gym, the fields near it, the swimming pool. Not so the cross country runners, who like the big mammals of the ocean, need space and miles to do what they do best. These are as close to free range children as there are anymore, and for good reason.

I have to tell you, we live in a nice area of town. I shouldn’t have to worry about homicide, sexual assault, or illegal diaper dumping when I send her off to practice her team sport. I don’t want to discourage my child from participating, so I try to disguise my fears with some advice. You don’t have to be the fastest runner on your team, I tell her, just faster than the kid next to you.

Like a Breath of Fresh Air

I had the pleasure of changing a diaper today on a rather wiggly nine month old. He is the baby boy of my friend, EL, and she came over so we could share a bit of our day. She got to tell my teenage kids what to do a few times, and I, well, I changed a poop diaper. She didn’t ask me, I just did it, because I always wanted people to do that when my kids needed to be changed, over a decade ago. I wanted the rule to be whoever was in possession of the baby when the poop occurred was required legally to change the diaper, but usually it was me regardless of who coaxed the baby to poop by excessive feeding or bouncing. I will spare you the details of the diaper change, but the hardest part was definitely putting on the fresh diaper. That baby boy can roll!

Changing that diaper reminded of me when I took my daughter, S, to the allergist’s office the other day. I had made an appointment for S because she has been breaking out in hives nightly for the past month, and I couldn’t convince myself it was a patch of eczema any longer. Also, she keeps wheezing, and her third cold in a month doesn’t seem to concern the pediatrician as much as it does me. Poor S didn’t make out well in the immune system department. She isn’t the allergy queen, but in our house, she is definitely like a duchess or princess or some lesser royalty. So to the allergist’s we went.

We waited a good forty five minutes for S's exam before her name was called. After the nurse took S's vitals, she escorted us to an exam room and asked S to sit on the table. I sat in the chair next to the table, and the nurse flipped through S’s file. The room was quiet. As we sat there, S and I became aware of the most horrible stench. It was distinctly the smell of an old dirty diaper, a smell unlike any other smell. You know it when you pass a trashcan in public, or when you go past the nursery at the gym, or when a frazzled mother is loading groceries in the back of her minivan. Dirty diaper, the smell whispers to you, a gentle breeze of stink. That’s of what the exam room reeked.

S and I gave each other that look, the one with a hate glare, curled lip and wrinkled nose, the universal face for “dear lord but what is that nasty smell.” We continued to look back and forth at each other, our grimaces growing more exaggerated. She mouthed, just breathe through your mouth, at me. I mouthed back, that’s easy for you; your nose is already clogged. I don’t know how well she can read snarling lips.

Finally, I grew a pair and said to the nurse, “It doesn’t smell very good in here.”

“I thought it was just me,” she said.

Great. We had a live one.

“Do you think there might be a dirty diaper in the trashcan?” I asked.

I want to emphasize how polite I was because A. as the exchange continued, I had no reason to be, and 2. It smelled like a dirty diaper in that room, and she knew it before she took us in there. This happened next.

“Let me check,” the nurse said, and plunged her hands IN THE TRASHCAN. She dug around for a bit, again, in a trash can in the doctor’s office, and then said,” I don’t see one.”

S gave me a look. The look said, did she just stick her hands in the trashcan? Is she going to touch me with those hands?

The nurse stepped out of the room and then came back with a can of air freshener. “Let’s see if this helps,” she said, and sprayed the artificially scented aerosol spray all over the exam room. At the allergist’s office, in the shit smelling room, with my asthmatic hive-ridden child. “There,” she added, "that’s better.”

Next, it was time to go down the hall for S’s pulmonary function test. For you regular breathers, a pulmonary function test is where you blow as hard and fast and long as possible into a mouthpiece, hooked to a computer, which records the force and rate of your exhale to determine your lung function. Normal lungs would be able to empty about eighty percent of their volume. S’s, between the asthma, the colds, and the Febreze, worked, at best, around seventy-five percent.

Once S had attempted her test three times and was completely winded, the nurse led us back to the exam room. Whatever masking effect the air freshener had was completely gone by the time we went back inside the room. We sat back down and the nurse left the door open to allow us fresh air. S had surpassed mouth breathing and was at panting. We sat there for another ten minutes until the nurse came back and announced, “It’s not any better in here, is it?”

“No!” S and I said together, rather loudly.

The nurse looked at the trash can again, and then picked it up and placed it outside the exam room door. While in the hall, she peeked at the empty exam room next to ours, and decided to move us to that room, which is how I would have started the appointment, had I been her.

It’s a good thing my kid isn’t allergic to the smell of baby shit. Or stupidity.