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.

A Jolly Good First Day

Have you ever taken a red eye flight? It seems like a good idea, traveling during your sleeping hours, very efficient really, unless you want to function the next day when you arrive at your destination. Shitty sleep upright in a tiny seat in a tube traveling through the air really isn’t the best way to get rest. But who cares, because you are going on a trip, or something like that.

We flew the red eye to London, which in addition to being a seven hour flight, is also five time zones ahead of us. I don’t much care for flying, which meant that in addition to a seven hour flight and a five time zone adjustment, I also was floating on a nice cloud of Xanax washed down with a bottle of cheap red wine. If you asked me what happened between our landing after eleven in the morning and dinner that night, I would have some significant difficulty piecing it all together. Let’s just see how much I can remember.

Here’s something that’s a little different: European time is a twenty-four hour clock. While we count to twelve and then repeat, those clever Europeans go from one to twenty-four. And yes, midnight is actually 00:00. For vacationing Americans, it adds a level of math to an otherwise fun vacation. I wonder if they have numbers on their watches with faces or if they went military digital.

If telling time wasn’t enough of a challenge, then why not throw in the whole money thing. We are fond of our dollars and cents here at home. In England, it’s pounds and pence, and the queen is on all of it. And coins, Lord, the coins. We never could figure out how much anything was worth, and my husband has a doctorate. Luckily, most everyone takes credit cards (with microchips, so plan accordingly) but there are times when cash was a necessity, and those times made us all feel like ignorant kindergarteners. I wanted a worksheet to color in or a play register or something just to practice.

We spent a crazy amount of time at the airport, just trying to orient ourselves.  We stood for what felt like an hour in the customs line and then stood in another line to exchange money at what had to be a pretty shitty rate. After that, we stopped at what looked like an independent coffee house, only to find out that it was a chain, before we lamented how much better the chains are anywhere but home.

My husband got in line to buy tube tickets and ask out how to get to Kensington while the girls and I protected our pile of luggage from potential pickpockets and thieves. All that took another hour before we figured out what the hell we were doing. Seriously, we spent almost as much time at the airport as we did flying there across the ocean.

We emerged from the tube station with our rolling suitcases in tow, orienting ourselves not only to the direction of our hotel but also the driving. You don’t look to the left before crossing, you look to the right. If you can’t remember, just look down, as it is written on every crosswalk. Is that just for non-British visitors, or do even the Londoners have trouble remembering which way to look before crossing the road?

While walking to our hotel, we passed the most amazing assortment of high end cars along the way. Bentleys, Maseratis, Lamborghinis, Ferrari, Aston Martins. I might see one of those every now and again at home, but this was literally every car on the street. BMWs and Mercedes in London are like Hondas and Toyotas at home, practical and affordable. Is everyone in London this rich, or is it a Kensington thing? The parallel parking spaces lined both sides of the street and even had handicapped spaces, labeled clearly on the road as “disabled.” Those Brits don’t need some cute little blue wheelchair symbol; the word disabled is bloody fine for them.

After checking in and dragging our luggage upstairs, we freshened up and headed to the Museum of Natural History. Every step reminded me we weren’t in the US anymore. The sidewalks were old. The buildings were old, each older than the one next to it. Even the signature red phone booths were old. When was the last time you saw a pay phone in America? I didn’t step inside to see if they actually had functioning phones because I didn’t want also want to find out if the booth smelled like urine.

The Museum of Natural History was not like the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian is like it, really like every museum we went to in London and Paris, only with a much smaller collection. These buildings and their contents reek of history. They are positively infested with it.

We and a few other lollygaggers were forced from the museum promptly at 17:50. You do the math, and then stop trying to make sense of it. We staggered out to the street, trying to decide what to do next. The museums were closed, we weren’t hungry, and we didn’t know where to go, so we started walking over the uneven stones of the sidewalk. We had a few moments of feeling unsafe, but that was more due to our American paranoia than any actual threat. We walked and walked, and then we looked up at nirvana, only it’s called Harrods.

Have you ever been to Harrods? It’s a department store that dates back to the 1800’s and a must-see for anyone who likes shopping and eating and people watching and creating generalizations about other ethnic groups. I only say that because the only people there besides other American tourists were Saudi Arabian shoppers, and the Saudis were ready to throw down some serious poundage. We minced from department to department, trying to not touch anything worth more than our plane tickets or stumble and God forbid break something that would cost our daughters a year in college, while all around us, wealthy, swarthy Arabic men and their insanely gorgeous and overly covered ladies who walked several steps behind them were catered to in the watch and shoe and other designer sections. Both my feet and my overactive imagination just wanted to sit down and take it all in.

We took a detour to the Diana and Dodi Memorial on the lower level. I wanted to get a picture, but the pilgrimage line was too long for me to snap a quick one. Instead, I stood behind more Saudi shoppers and tried to explain to my teenage daughters who Diana and Dodi were and why they are remembered in a department store with a cheesy statue and glamour shots. It took just enough time before it was my time to capture the moment.

My children wanted to stop by the toy department, ogling over toys they would have wanted if they were younger or those like the ones they had, only with cooler, British names. We all were a little sad that we had no reason to buy anything, no more tank engines or woodland creature families dressed in gingham.

We consoled ourselves in the great food hall. We were too late for the true Harrods ice cream experience, but we improved our moods by walking past the displays of fruits and vegetables, pungent cheeses and smoky charcuterie, seafood and sushi and meat pies and oh, the pastries and breads. It was overwhelming, really, and we hadn’t had dinner, and in our heads it was either mid-afternoon or a day later. We were trying to make a decision about what to eat, which as a family is not our strong suit, when the bakers began condensing their display before closing time. We decided to get not quite but close to one of each, over twenty pounds’ worth of flaky pastry creations.

We limped back to our hotel room and ate them all standing over our bed, flakes raining down on the covers. Our first day of London was everything travel should be, confusing and delightful and informative and overwhelming and amusing and just, just amazing.

What I Did for My Summer Vacation

I travelled.

This wasn’t my usual trip to Atlanta to see my sisters or five hour drive to the beach or even the more rare flight to Orlando to see the Mouse.

My family and I, much like the Griswolds, took a European vacation. We spent four nights in London and five, with an unplanned sixth night, in Paris. We flew from our town to Washington to Ottawa to London. According to our passports, Ottawa counts as having been in Canada, which means we had our first practice run on going through customs and changing flights in another country. In between London and Paris, we took the Eurostar through the Chunnel. We had an extra night in Paris, well, a hotel near the airport, which in itself was an additional adventure. Then we came home and our lives are forever changed.

You know a vacation is good when you take days not just to recover, but to process. To think about all the things you did and saw and ate. To consider how life is different but the same. To be glad to have the things you missed but to lament the things you don’t have that you experienced.  

My main regret is that I forgot to pack a notebook or journal. I know I am going to forget something, some thought or opinion or observation that thanks to my forty five year old brain will be lost in there forever.  As I continue to reflect on my trip, I have been increasingly unsure how to write about it. Do I write a chronological detail of every day, of every museum and meal, hoping that by retracing my steps mentally, I will recall all the thoughts and feelings I had at the time? Do I concentrate on anecdotes, telling a snippet of here and there, in no particular order other than how I remember them? Do I ponder the ways in which the little bit of life abroad I experienced compares and contrasts to my own typical days here in the Southern United States? So many options, so many possibilities, so many ways to tell my two week story that may have possibly changed my life and the lives of my children.

I am asking you to weigh in. I don’t tell my stories in a vacuum. I share them with you, when you stop by for a little visit. The truth is I have a lot to tell, and in my head, it’s all fucking fantastic and interesting. At the end of the day, however, isn’t this the modern version of having you all over for dinner and then forcing you to sit through the slide show of my vacation? I already did that on Facebook, by the way. I attempted a daily post or two of the things that captured my attention, sharing small observations along the way. It’s not the same thing as painting those pictures with words.

So, if you care to comment, tell me what you would find more interesting. Do you mind sitting through the “we did this Monday and we saw that Wednesday?” Or would you prefer a more all over the place approach, like what makes our toilets so different or who knew that was what yogurt could taste like? Granted, you are going to get a whole lot of B with your A, so keep that in mind.

And please stick around, because I am pretty sure in the story telling, I will have something for everyone, even if all of it is really for me.