Settling

“It’s so warm here, we don’t even have to wear puffy mittens!”  Lizzy is so astounded by the balminess of a New England January that she feels the need to remark upon it to the stranger seated across from her, a friend of my sister’s.  Never mind that this woman actually lives here in Cambridge, and doesn’t seem favorably impressed either by the 12-degree breeze or the latest blizzard. Fairbanks, Alaska is the center of Lizzy’s universe, so her perspective is a little skewed – and I feel guilty for producing kids who think it’s a treat not to have to wear three hats.

I cut up Lizzy’s samosa, scoop some dahl onto her rice, and try to field my new acquaintance’s bemused queries about our life up north.  Do I really pee outside at forty below zero?  How do I manage to ride a bike in January?  Are the mosquitoes as large as Black Hawk helicopters?  Is the average IQ higher than the average annual temperature?

“So, are you guys settled up there for good, then?”

It’s a yes-or-no question, and yet I find myself waffling and hedging like a senatorial candidate. “Um… well, we’re both pretty happy with our jobs and our community… and the schools are good… the outdoor opportunities…” I meander to a stop, uncomfortably aware of how unconvincing I sound – not just to my questioner, but to myself.

It’s that word, settled.  It still gives me indigestion.

“Settling” has connotations of resignation, of agreeing to something that is less than it ought to be due to some sort of miserable compromise.  Back in college, my friend Colleen described “settling down” as a process by which people pair off, go into their houses, and close the doors.  The implication was that they then become too dull to do anything even remotely fun ever again.  Parties are exchanged for potluck fundraisers, outdoor adventures disappear in favor of pee-wee soccer practice, and international travel is subsumed by staying at a Holiday Inn near Disneyland. 

I argued that this didn’t have to be the case.  I insisted that it ought to be possible to say “forever” to a person (an idea that my well-hidden romantic side rather liked) without having to say “forever” to middle-management, business-casual, and lawn flamingos.  Surely, I said, one didn’t have to stay in one place forever.  I wanted passport stamps from around the world, bus rides shared with baskets of chickens and sacks of mangos, a jar full of fascinatingly indecipherable coins, and a working knowledge of a dozen different subway systems.  I wanted remoteness, bucolic bliss, and mountain vistas, but I also wanted second-hand bookstores, museums crammed with artifacts, and an occasional night at the symphony.  How could I ever settle? 

As a kid, there were many things I loved about my hometown – the ability to bike to the beach being near the top of the list – but I took it for granted that I would one day leave. I would go off to college, and I would move on from there into a half-realized future full of job satisfaction, adventure, and hypothetical children. . . somewhere.  I was clearly either dim-witted or a poor planner or both, because I was halfway through college before it occurred to me that “somewhere” really had to be somewhere.  I balked at the mere idea.

When I graduated, I did what all over-educated, idealistic, indecisive, adventuresome 22-year-olds do.  I joined the Peace Corps.  There I got plenty of bus rides with chickens.  I learned a lot, but probably not nearly as much as I ought to have.  When I completed my service, I came back to the US and earned a Master’s degree, all the while limiting my possessions to what could fit in the trunk of a compact car.

When I completed that degree, I was lucky enough to have not just one, but two job offers to choose from.  One was based in the northeast, at a respected college.  It paid reasonably well and seemed like a stepping-stone into a professional career in environmental ecology.  The other was with a small non-profit.  It paid badly, offered no particular upward mobility, and required moving to Fairbanks Alaska.

My dad said he never had any doubt about which job I’d choose.

I moved to Fairbanks in the last year of the previous millennium, back before muffin-top and plumber’s crack became mandatory features of feminine attire, before tweeting became a means of communication for species other than songbirds, and before anyone had misunderestimated the American people.  I intended to stay a year or two -- maybe three, if I was having a lot of fun mushing or whatever the heck it was people did in Fairbanks.

Fast-forward twelve years.  A husband, a house, a PhD and two kids later, I am sitting at a restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to weasel my way around the word “settled.”  My sister’s friend is affable to her core, but she can’t quite hide her incredulity at the idea that a well-educated woman would really think of Fairbanks as home.  Forever.

Lizzy wants more rice and dahl, and some of “the thing with the peas in it.”

“Mutter paneer,” I tell her, although I’m sure I’m mangling the pronunciation.  We don’t have an Indian restaurant in Fairbanks.  I sorely miss this cuisine.

“What’s that?” Molly asks, pointing to another dish. 

“Eggplant,” I tell her.  “It’s a little spicy…”

“I want some,” she says. I do my signature eyebrow raise. “Please,” she adds, resigned to the inexplicable inevitability of good manners.

“We do have several good Thai restaurants in Fairbanks,” I remark.  My mouth is full.  I swallow, and try again.  “There’s a good Korean place, and some ok Chinese.”  I sound like an apologist for the sub-arctic.  We can practically see Asia from our igloos!

The conversation shifts to what the kids and I have been up to during our whirlwind four-day visit.  I rattle off the list of destinations: the Science Museum, the Children’s Museum, the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the MIT Museum.  “That’s a lot of museums,” says the husband of my original questioner, smiling at me over his naan bread to show that he’s not criticizing.  He probably thinks I’m starved for culture. 

“Well, they’re all so different, and besides, we spend a lot of time walking from one place to another, just kind of seeing the city.”  I feel embarrassed by how much fun this gawking is for the kids.  In Boston they can see a congested cacophony of garbage trucks, fire trucks, construction equipment, ambulances, and people.  Hundreds of people, thousands of people, people of all colors and sizes and habits.  This is a city as it exists in their picture books, not the 40,000-inhabitant strip-mall version up north.

The adults ask the kids what they’ve enjoyed most, and are treated to a disorganized litany of high points that includes meteorites, a live snake, chocolate milk, and a disturbingly wonderful display of deformed human hands that I had trouble wresting them away from at the Science Museum.

And what about at home?  What do they like to do there?

“We have our own mushing sled,” says Molly, proud as the title-holder of a new Corvette.  She soon realizes that these silly grownups know almost nothing about mushing.  She is happy to fill them in.  Molly likes to educate people.  When she is done talking about the sled and the dogs, there is plenty more to describe.  Her skis.  Preschool.  The two big kids in our community who go to big kid school and therefore know almost everything, but who are nonetheless friends of hers. 

As I listen to the twins talk, I imagine what I would have described when I was the same age.  Preschool at the YMCA.  My big sister.  The three children up the street.  The park with the playground and the ducks who struggled along on a constant diet of moldy crusts.  A “fancy” dinner out at which I was allowed to order breaded shrimp.

Kids, I realized, are the little hubs of their own little universes.  As such, they are always “settled.”  They like new experiences, but they judge them by the yardstick of their own reality.  For Molly and Lizzy, that reality includes riding to school in a bike trailer with four hot water bottles when the mercury is below -30.  It includes counting the new reindeer calves at the farm in the spring.  It includes wilderness hikes on which we can go hours or even days without seeing any other traces of human beings.  Molly and Lizzy are quite likely to leave Fairbanks when they grow up.  I know that, and I think they already know it too.  But for now, they are quite happy to be settled.

But what about me? 

Some of Colleen’s predictions have come true.  I’m married with kids, and I hang out with a lot of other married-with-kids friends.  My idea of a party these days is something that involves several different people’s salads and ends at 9 p.m.  On the other hand, Fairbanks is GOOD at doing potlucks, and let’s face it, I wasn’t the life of the party even when I was 19.  I can see now that some of my fears were hyperbolic. 

I relax in my seat, and grab another helping of the eggplant dish.  I tell the couple across from me – who are themselves married, and settled, and yet still very interesting people – that living in Fairbanks means I can combine my love of wilderness and open spaces with my desire for libraries and ridiculously intellectual friends.  I mention that we have theatrical performances, poetry readings, film festivals, visiting scientists, and a symphony orchestra.  I get to be a university professor.  I allow myself a small smile at the realization that I don’t have to worry about business casual (patched jeans and a thermal hoodie will do) or lawn flamingos (no lawn around my outhouse). 

Of course, staying in Fairbanks also means having only one real museum, very few bustling urban scenes, obnoxiously cold and dark Januaries, and no decent Indian food.  But that is what travel is for.  My passport hasn’t acquired as many new stamps as I’d like in the past few years, but I’m looking into correcting that.  I’m settled – I can admit that now – but there are still some things I refuse to settle for.

Pink

            “Do you have any slippers that would fit a four-year-old?

“Uh-huh.  D’you wanna see the boys’ ones, or the girls’?”

“Um… It doesn’t matter. Both, I guess.”

The Payless Shoe clerk looked at me as if I’d just told her I had a child with three feet.  Clearly she thought I was a drooling imbecile, but she directed me to my choices: pink shiny Cinderella slippers, or clunky rectangular Cars slippers.  They were at opposite ends of the store.

 I sighed – but I wasn’t really surprised.  Almost five years ago, I felt the leading edge of this storm, and tried to fend it off.  A friend watched with a mixture of amusement and concern as I plunged a sack of miniscule onesies into a bucket of dye.  Maybe she thought I was suffering from some sort of postpartum hormonal imbalance.  “You won’t be able to escape it in a few years, you know,” she said. The laundry sink was spattered with dark green.  “You will let them choose their own clothes when they’re older, won’t you?”

            I didn’t want to be Evil Controlling Parent, so I assured her that of course I would.  I nodded and smiled with exaggerated bonhomie. I told my friend that if my kids went through a Tinsel Princess phase and insisted on carrying sequin-covered purses to kindergarten, I’d honor their freedom of expression. 

But I wasn’t looking forward to it.

I hate pink. Ok, I said it.  I detest frills, and ruffles, and flounces.  Makeup and high heels and nylons are not my cup of tea -- to the point where I feel awkwardly cross-dressed on the increasingly rare occasions when I put them on.  Girly stuff just… grates on me. 

I’d like to think that my aversion to the stereotypical hallmarks of femininity has a reasonable basis – but I’m not sure this is true.  I can rationalize at least some of my arguments: stilettos are murder on the feet, dyes and bleaches are toxic, and waxing sounds – um – kinda painful.   Barbie might give a little girl a complex if her waist is larger than a dragonfly’s.  But Hello Kitty and Strawberry Shortcake are relatively benign, aren’t they?  Why do they make me bare my teeth?

Even as I dyed that batch of bubble-gum onesies, I felt a twinge of worry.  Maybe rejection of pink is a sign of some sort of deep-rooted hatred of myself.  Maybe it means I’ve absorbed the males-are-better assumptions of the patriarchy.  Maybe I’m a traitor to my gender – and therefore a traitor to my daughters.

Where do my biases come from?  As a kid, I was a tomboy, but not a die-hard one.  I loved climbing trees, constructing Tinkertoy and Erector Set masterpieces, and wrestling other kids to the playground sand.  On the other hand, I also liked skipping rope and playing hopscotch, and I adored a baby-faced cuddly doll whom I named, with the inimitable logic of toddlers, “Bedtime.” I took apart the vacuum cleaner and regularly shimmied up the swingset poles, but I also sewed myself a quilt and baked countless cookies.  Sometimes I wished I were a boy, but I couldn’t throw a snowball the width of a residential street, and I was so nurturing that I insisted on rescuing the ants my mother was trying to exterminate from the kitchen.  I was only really concerned with gender when it imposed limits on something I wanted to do.  I didn’t want to be told that only boys could help the teacher get the heavy textbooks from the supply closet. I didn’t want to be told that only girls could come to my birthday party.  When I grew up, I was going to be an inventor, an astronaut, a novelist, AND a mommy.

As an east-coast college student, I sometimes felt like a fish out of water in my baggy overalls.  I didn’t like Wonderbras or lipstick, but I did like boys, and for a while that seemed like it might be a problem.  But when I moved to Alaska, I found my ideal man.  Not only was he smart, funny, and kind (you’re welcome, Jay), but he also gave me skis instead of flowers, and said, with some consternation, on the morning of our wedding, “You’re not going to wear makeup, are you?” I slipped comfortably into a social and professional circle in which Carhardtts can pass as eveningwear.  Jay and I built our own cabin and dug our own outhouse.  I taught college classes and met with the mayor in my jeans and t-shirts, and felt pretty comfortable in my own skin. 

Then I had twin daughters.

Newborns are not aware of their own gender, and they are not concerned with fashion. Nevertheless, the fashion industry for the under-three-months set is booming.  To the credit of my friends and family – who know me, and who know Jay – our twins were given lots of green blankets, yellow pajamas, and snuggly teddy bears.  But pinkness is so ubiquitous that it can actually be hard to find clothes, toys, crib mattresses, ANYTHING that isn’t gender-specific.  Girl stuff has to be not only pink, but also lacy, frilly, and emblazoned with cute animals: bunnies, kittens, My Little Rainbow Sparkle Pony with Humongous Eyes.  Girl clothes say things like “Daddy’s princess.” Boy stuff comes with modes of transportation, or bigger, fiercer animals -- dinosaurs, dogs, rabid saber-tooth tigers -- and says things like “Li’l Trooper.”  Needless to say, baby boy clothes are hung on different racks from the girls’, sometimes many aisles apart, to avoid infectious cross-contamination.

What I discovered, while lugging two infant cars seats in and out of Fred Meyers, is that everyone I talked to – which was fairly close to everyone in the store, given the apparently magnetic qualities of infant twins – expected me to follow the unwritten laws of gender assignment.  Talon-fingernailed cashiers and pumpkin-shaped grandpas were embarrassed, awkward, and sometimes even openly pissed-off that I had not dressed my six-month-olds in a manner that made it obvious which sort of genitalia they had under their diapers. 

Did these people not realize that pale pink looks particularly hideous with strained carrot stains?  Frills and ruffles collect little chunks of curdled spit-up or other substances that ooze out of babies.  Some of the girls outfits on the rack defy all logic, all reason, and all laundry realities.  And if you think I am going to glue a ribbon to my kid’s bald head, I wanted to tell those well-meaning strangers, please return to aisle six: Tacky Plastic Seasonal Ornaments.  But at heart, I knew that my logic was masking a deeper annoyance.  I just… didn’t like pink.

Four years have passed by – sometimes as quickly as a full bowl of rice cereal catapulting off a highchair tray, sometimes as slowly as a toddler dressing herself.  My two wiggly squalling bundles have grown into waist-high humans with large vocabularies and even larger opinions.  Preschool gives them peers, and peers mean peer pressure. Daily, I watch, fascinated, waiting to be appalled. Let them make their own choices, my good-parent super-ego tells me, even as I try to stack those choices.

Their drawers overflow with clothes, mostly hand-me-downs, in shades and styles ranging from rose-petal-kitten to khaki-dinosaur.  Their room spills toys across the whole house: herds of stuffed animals, toe-stabbing beads, a fire helicopter that makes hideously annoying noises, and a thousand art projects made from old yogurt containers, toilet tubes, and duct tape.

Molly is my social child.  At the playground, the pool, the library, her eyes are always on the other kids – especially the bigger kids.  She can tell me who is already five, and who is still four-and-a-half.  “Alex can put on his outdoor gear the fastest,” she tells me.  “Anna skis in Junior Nordics.”  She knows who can ride a bike, who can read, and who can tie shoes. Molly has also taken note of which toys and clothes are preferred by which gender.

Lizzy, meanwhile, is in her own happy little orbit.  On Planet Lizzy, making a cardboard mushing sled for her stuffed dogs can reign supreme over human interaction for hours at a time.  She’s happy to play with her peers and their toys, but she’s blissfully unconcerned with pecking order, competition, and petty social conventions.  Lizzy has strong opinions about her wardrobe – sometimes so strong that I have to wrestle clothes off her body in order to wash them – but her three favorite pairs of pants are too-short corduroys with Dora on one leg and patches on both knees; olive drab overalls with multiple pockets and hammer loops; and navy stretch pants decorated with a skull and crossbones motif that she insists is “stylin’.”

Of course, both kids have a clear grasp on the existence of gender. A few months ago, the whole family was in the car together.  Lizzy, as usual, was clinging to a stuffed animal that apparently needed extensive care.  “She’s too jumpy.  I have to tell her to behave. Now she’s tired.  Now she’s hungry.”

Jay, perhaps feeling outnumbered, inquired how Lizzy knew that the creature in question was a girl.

In her chipper slightly lisping voice, Lizzy supplied an immediate answer.  “She doesn’t have a penis, Daddy.”

I had no sympathy for Jay’s discomfort with this response.  “Well, you did ask.  And their Mommy’s a biologist,” I reminded him, grinning.

Molly, strapped into the car seat next to her sister’s, was cogitating and extrapolating.  “All our animals are girls!” she announced, with obvious glee.  “None of them have penises!”

Maybe someone should tell the toy manufacturers that for all their efforts to maximally exaggerate the gender segregation of Toys R Us and Walmart, they’ve been missing something obvious.  Your son’s Tyrannosaurus Rex might be fierce, sure – but she’s an egg-layer.

We don’t make a lot of off-the-shelf toy or apparel purchases, but this spring it became clear that the kids’ head size had outstripped their bike helmets.  Great excitement was engendered by a foray into a remote aisle of Fred Meyers, back past the guns and motor oil.  Not surprisingly, the selection was distinctly dichotomous. 

Molly honed in on a hot-pink helmet with an air of inevitability, as if this were a multiple-choice test on which she was concerned with filling in the correct oval.  The helmet was adorned with Pet-Shop caricatures that take the big-eye thing to monstrous extremes.  It came with a mini bike bottle, which, needless to say, was also pink. 

Molly seemed pleased enough with her selection, but her zeal was nothing compared to Lizzy’s.  Lizzy chose a black helmet with silver streaks.  It came with a Hot Wheels race car.  This car didn’t leave her sight for the next three days.  “It’s zoomy,” she told anyone who would listen.  She demonstrated the zoominess on the couch, the kitchen floor, and the dining table.  She took it to preschool to show to Bodin, Callum, and James.  “They really like Hot Wheels,” she said, with great enthusiasm.  She did not seem to have noticed what other category those friends fall into – a category to which she does not belong.

The twins’ birthday is fast approaching, and since I was being given an obvious hint, I looked up Hot Wheels online.  Not surprisingly, several gazillion cars and accessories are available.  Not surprisingly, every photo depicts little boys.  No girls.  No pink.  But the thing that really captured my attention was the way the vehicles and plastic tracks are described in the hyperbolic marketing prose. Every toy seems to involve death, crashing, slamming, destroying, or exploding.

I don’t like pink, but I’m not a fan of wholesale holocaust, either.  I don’t give my daughters guns. I wouldn’t give my sons guns, either.  If I had boys, I wouldn’t tell them that “boys don’t cry”, or require that they “toughen up,” or frown upon them if they enjoyed skipping, giggling, snuggling with dolls or decorating doilies. 

As I shook my head over the Hot Wheels, I realized something that should have been obvious to me from the start: I hate stereotypical boy toys just as much as I hate the girly stuff.   Moreover, I don’t like the grown-up versions -- monster trucks, pro wrestling, Budweiser -- any better than I like Cosmo or eye shadow.  I could have saved myself some of the time and mental energy I’ve spend navel-gazing, because ultimately, it dawned on me that I don’t hate my gender.  If I’m betraying my daughters, it’s not because I’m sexist. My problem is not with the color pink, per se.   My real phobia is about being cornered. 

I really, really hate being put in a box.  When someone thrusts assumptions at me, some devious part of my soul is compelled to circumvent them.  My politics aren’t libertarian, but my toy selection is.  I don’t want the girly stuff because I want MORE than that.  Inside, I still want to be an inventor, an astronaut, a novelist, AND a Mommy.  And I want the same degree of freedom for my kids.

I found a set of Hot Wheels that come with regular tracks that can be set up creatively, with no explosions required.  I’m looking for a present for Molly that’s equally creative.  I’m ok with it being pink – or not. 

As for the slippers, I walked out of Payless without buying any.  I know the kids would love some fleecy new footwear, but I can make it at home.  I’m a decent seamstress – and I’d like my daughters to learn how to sew, too.  While we’re at it, we can sew some slippers for Bedtime.  She’s a little worn-looking these days, and could do with some new wardrobe items.  She doesn’t sleep in my bed any more, of course.  She sleeps in Lizzy’s – with the Hot Wheels race car.

Epic

Last winter, Jay competed in the inaugural White Mountains 100 -- back-country skiing a hundred miles through wild Alaskan forests and mountains, slogging up long ascents, struggling over a windy 4000-foot mountain pass, and barreling down what the official website describes as “bowel-clenching descents.” Temperatures dropped to twenty below zero. Ice, slush, bumps, tussocks, and ruts abounded. It took him over thirty sleepless hours.

While Jay skied, I stayed home playing mom.  The kids and I made congratulatory welcome-home signs, did some baking, and organized the post-race party, at which the racers all said overly kind things about the cheap Sam’s Club spaghetti, the veggies and dip, and the cake decorated by preschool artisans.  I felt tubby and torpid in a roomful of people with less body fat than Olympic gymnasts.  I saw the frostbite-blistered fingers, toes, and noses, and I heard the stories.  They were epic.

Certain members of my social circle like to use the word “epic” in its adjectival form to describe adventures that incorporate all the best components of, say, Homer’s Odysseus.  Are there seemingly impossible quests involved?  Pain and suffering?  Blood-thirsty many-headed sea creatures?  Epic.  On the other hand, outdoor adventures that include designated campgrounds, bedtime stories, or marshmallow roasts may be fun, but they aren’t epic.

Several of my friends had completed the race, and they were happy to share the details of their odysseys. Tom admitted that near the finish, snow-bent boreal spruce trees started to look like people.  He began peering over his shoulder in sleep-deprived paranoia.  His knees were swollen from repeatedly crashing on sheer sloping ice.  Amy, who received the perseverance award after 38 grueling hours, told me about high-velocity impacts between her face and the snow.  She said she spent hours longing to glimpse the next little white sign promising “one mile to checkpoint.”  She was terribly dehydrated, yet unable to eat or drink.  Meanwhile Jay, in characteristically self-effacing fashion, said that his biggest concern was the poor job he did cleaning up the trail after he sullied it with partially digested ramen and coffee. 

Jay then went on to protest that the race was “fun.”  Lots of fun, he insisted.  Boy, was he excited to do it again, he told me.  When the registration opening for the 2011 race rolled around, he stayed up until midnight to make sure he garnered a slot.

So did I.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a masochist.  At least, I don’t think I’m a masochist.  I signed up for the race because I love backcountry skiing and because I wanted to challenge myself -- not because I actively desired pain, misery, suppurating blisters, or delirium.  Still, there were issues of pride at stake.  In recent years, Jay has done a lot of trips that make for really excellent stories.  I – in part because of two fabulous little fans of campgrounds, bedtime stories, and marshmallows -- have fewer tales to tell.  As much as I wanted to finish the race, and as much wanted to avoid frostbite, hypothermia, and regurgitation, at some level I wanted my Odysseus story, in all its drama-queen glory. I wanted to be epic. 

Thanks to a truly magnificent set of friends who were willing to babysit twin preschoolers, Jay and I were both able to register for the 2011 event. But by the time late March rolled around, I was more than a little worried.  Who did I think I was, anyhow?  Not an ultra-racer, certainly.  Besides, I knew I hadn’t trained enough.  No, that was too generous.  I hadn’t really trained at all.  My total skiing for the winter added up to about 300 miles, which is mind-bogglingly little for someone who plans to cover 1/3 that distance pretty much nonstop.  The remainder of my physical exertion consisted of commuting four miles to my job at UAF, by bike or on foot, towing or pushing the kids in their nifty convertible Chariot trailer.  Granted, jogging 8 miles round trip with two four-year-olds can work up a sweat, but it doesn’t exactly qualify one to cover the length of four marathons in a row.

At the pre-race meeting, I was reminded of the fact that most of the people I’d met at last year’s party had visible sinews, complex competitive strategies, and dozens of ultra-races under their belts.  A BLM ranger sat mute at the back of the room for a full hour before offering, as a parting one-liner, the information that an early-waking bear had been sighted near Borealis.  “Early bears are hungry,” he noted, as if a roomful of Alaskans might think it was a good idea to smear themselves with peanut butter and honey.  I won a coveted door prize at the meeting, but worried that if I didn’t make it through the race, I’d feel guilty about keeping it.

When I dug in my ski poles at the start, I was sure that at some point in the next two days I was going to begin hating snow. . . and hating trees. . . and hating my skis, my backpack, all the free audio books I’d downloaded from the library, and every Ziploc of Cadbury’s Dark, Nutter Butters, Combos, and peanut-butter-and-jelly-on-pilot-bread.  In fact, I was pretty sure that somewhere along the hundred-mile course I was going to assume a personality that blended the least likeable attributes of Eeyore, Marvin the depressed robot, and a partially decayed zombie.  I wasn’t sure that I should be out there at all – but at the very least, I was expecting the race to be epic.

I hung back, watching the speedsters disappear up the first hill in a jostling rush.  The early part of the trail was back-yard-familiar to me, all rolling landscapes and easily-earned views across valleys of dark spruce and sun-reflecting snow.  The early morning sky warmed to a deepening blue.  I shared a few upbeat words with my fellow slowpokes, and at mile seven I smiled for my friend Ned’s camera, but by mile ten I was skiing alone, in a private sunlit world of shushing snow.  I was stripped down to a tank top.

Conditions in late March can range from icy slush that forces you to coat your skis in hideously gummy klister, to the -25 degrees and howling wind that froze Amy’s feet at the top of the pass last year. This year, the sun warmed the snow just enough to make it slick and quick, but not enough to wreck it.  I was slathered in sunscreen, mock-hip in cheap sunglasses, and basking Vitamin D.  After a long sub-arctic winter, spring feels like a revelation.  Constant entertainment streamed in via my headphones – novels carefully selected to include nothing in the emotional range of Steven King or Jack London.  I had forgotten just how starkly beautiful the blackened stems of an old burn can be, or how friendly the broad tree trunks look in the valley bottoms.  I had forgotten how much I like having someone read stories aloud to me. 

At mile seventeen, the first checkpoint was a flurry of goodwill and free cocoa refills.  At mile 26, affable strangers called hellos over the ecstatic barking of their dog team; apparently watching 65 people race past was canine nirvana.  I managed the precipitous drop to Beaver Creek without removing my skis or shattering anything, and made it to the second checkpoint at mile 39 feeling optimistic enough to grin for the race volunteer wielding a camera.  The long ascent to the Cache Mountain Mountain Divide lay ahead, but I had a foil-wrapped cheese-filled baked potato in one hand, and the sun was still shining.

The next eight hours were slow and dreamlike.  The trail wove through mile upon mile of grey-green forest, rolling over hillocks, but tending ever upward.  The sky darkened and snow began to fall.  At last, the trees thinned around me until I was surrounded by sheer white, windblown and austere.  I reached the top of the pass just as the very last glimmer of daylight disappeared.  The tracks of all those who had crossed ahead of me were already being subsumed by fresh snow and wind.  Visibility by headlamp narrows to a half-dozen feet in a swirl of snowflakes, a phenomenon that I partly blame for my snaillike progress – even when gravity again began to work in my favor.  Flying headlong down the slopes seemed ill-advised.  I picked my way across the sloping surface of the notorious ice lakes with my feet slush-protected by plastic bags that had once contained wood pellets, and anti-skidded with Yak Trax.  It was no doubt a stylish getup.  The medics’ wall tent glowed temptingly, but I replied to a cheery greeting by explaining that I was doing just fine, thanks.  I waddled on by.

Any dramatic claims I might have made about mind-altering fatigue or about pulling an all-nighter alone in the dark were negated by the three-hour nap I took at Windy Gap checkpoint, at mile 62. After consuming at least half a box of crackers, I lay down fully clothed on a wooden bench amidst a cacophony of comings and goings.  Three fellow races were exchanging stories around the rough wooden table.  Someone had been frozen into her own snowshoe bindings on a 300-mile trek.   It sounded epic.  I snored.

When I hit the trail again at 5 a.m., it was still dark -- but I felt rejuvenated, even ebullient.  Who wouldn’t, gliding through a winter wonderland of new-falling snow, listening to Bill Bryson’s sweetly mid-Atlantic voice reading aloud the comic escapades of his 1950s childhood, and munching four chocolate chip cookies?

It was soon after this Breakfast of Champions that I experienced a moment that might have qualified as drama, if this had been somebody else’s story. I practically ran over the obstacle before I saw it.  It was a person.  Lying in the snow beside the trail.  Face down.

I had about two seconds for all my first-aid training to run through my head in completely random order before I realized that the guy I was now stooping over was neither hypothermic nor the tragic victim of marauding yetis, but merely asleep.  I had two more seconds of confused indecision before he woke up, sprang to his feet, and showered me with thanks and apology.  He’d told himself he’d lie down for just one song, he explained, pointing sheepishly to his headphones. 

The fresh snow made for particularly slow progress.  The sun rose as I passed the dramatic limestone jags near Caribou Bluff.  They towered over me on both sides, somehow simultaneously protective and intimidating.  The mottled light filtering through dense cloud was as gorgeous as the nighttime snowfall and the clear hot skies of the previous day had been. 

Throughout that slow second morning, the weather was all magic and no skullduggery.  The temperature did not plummet.  The icy sections of trail were at a minimum, and I did not plunge any limbs into liquid slush. No starving bears appeared.  Yesterday’s views were veiled, but not obscured.  Mile upon mile, valley upon valley, in every direction, lay forests, marshlands, rivers, crags.  No roads.  No houses.  No overpasses, no strip malls, no car alarms, no Walmarts. I was soaking in the tranquility, while at the same time, with somewhat guilty pleasure, enjoying The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants -- a novel I’d selected on the grounds that if I’m going to write for teenagers, I should at least do a little research. 

At mile 82, the volunteer at the Borealis checkpoint snapped another photo.  In it, I am holding a bowl of ramen noodles and crushed Fritos, and wearing an expression that implies I am delightedly anticipating the next crunchy-soggy, tepid, salt-infused spoonful.  At mile 91, further photo evidence was recorded: I’m beaming like a kid at her own birthday party – albeit a sweaty and perhaps slightly deranged kid.

By the last ten miles of the race, all familiar territory, I was undeniably stiff and sore.  I’ve had bad Achilles tendons for years, and they were starting to remind me of their displeasure.  Crouching down for potty breaks seemed a lot more challenging than it had the previous day, and I began to regret my hot cocoa consumption.  When I reached the unrelenting mile of hill known as “Wickersham Wall” it seemed expedient not only to remove my skis, but also to walk backward all the way up it.  Three miles later, at the bottom of the last steep downhill, the effort of rigorous snowplowing made me think that my knees and ankles might enjoy a one-minute rest, which is why I was lying ignominiously in the trail when not one but three dog sleds came barreling down at me.  But climbing a small mountain while facing in the wrong direction and flailing stiff-legged in front of thirty confused canines are still not epic – especially not if one is also listening to Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits, and giggling.

I completed the race – without grievous bodily harm, dalliances with bears, or even a single blister -- in exactly 35 hours, placing me 54^th out of 65 entrants.  Since seven people didn’t finish, there were actually only four behind me.  Three of them were walking the course.  I was pathetically pokey -- but not quite slow enough for the perseverance award.  I never got dehydrated or cold. I never needed the medics’ extensive first aid kits, or even my own, which consisted of nothing but pain killers and duct tape. I was pleased to have an excuse to consume enough cheese sandwiches and Reisen chocolates to fuel an army.  In other words, my pace, my health, and my digestion were decidedly non-epic.

At the end of the race, a stalwart volunteer snapped one final photo.  I am holding one of my kids in each arm, and grinning at Jay.  Clearly, if I was still strong enough to lift 75 pounds of preschooler, I can’t have been working hard enough.  The four of us don’t look epic – we look Family Circle.

I hosted the post-race party again.  It felt different from last year – but not exactly in the way I’d expected.  My co-organizer added some fresh bread and heaps of strawberries, melon, and pineapple, to the menu, and everyone was even kinder in their thanks.  I still felt dumpy compared to most of the crowd, but I cared less.  Last year, I was looking forward to this year’s race because I was jealous of all the epic-ness around me.  This year, I realized to my own surprise, I was looking forward to next year’s race for a whole list of reasons.

Wilderness inspires me.  Exercise invigorates me.   I now have an official time to beat, and I do love a challenge.  But most importantly, it dawned on me that in my life as a busy working mom there are only rare respites in which I can experience the bliss of being on a mountaintop at sunset, or having hour upon hour all to myself, or absorbing an entire novel nonstop, or eating a gigantic Cadbury bar without even a twinge of remorse.  To do all these things at once? 

Epic.

At the race finish.  Photo by Taryn Lopez

Sideways

                Velcro-tab sneakers dangle high above the floor of the ophthalmologist’s examining room.  Lizzy’s eyes, dilated by eye drops and anxiety, look cartoon-huge in the dim light. 

Inwardly, I resign myself to seeing those eyes ringed by little plastic brackets.  I imagine years of hunting for lost glasses, fuming over broken glasses, arguing about uncomfortable glasses, and wiping off fog-steamed glasses.  The Fairbanks climate is not an ideal one for eyewear.  In January, there is often a temperature differential of a hundred degrees or more between indoors and outdoors, even for those who keep the thermostat balanced at a moderate 60.  Breath steams out in clouds, windows ice up, and frost creeps through walls, highlighting hidden nails and screws.  Take off a windbreaker after a short jaunt on skis, and ice crystals pour out from where they’ve grown among the layers of fleece and polypropylene. Defrosting a windshield requires ten minutes in the driveway, engine running full-bore.  Eyeglasses don’t stand a chance.  But I’m convinced Lizzy will end up wearing them.

                Never mind that her one-minute-younger sister has just sailed through the exam with flying colors – it’s not Molly I worry about.  Lizzy is two inches shorter, four pounds lighter, and prone to hiding behind my leg while watching all the other kids whack the piñata.  Lizzy is the one who needs six stuffed animals tucked into her toddler-sized bunk with her.  Lizzy teethed, walked, and potty-trained right on schedule, according to all the charts and websites – but nonetheless, Molly had already been biting my nipples for months by the time her twin had two bottom incisors.  With a gleam of determination in her eyes, Molly toddled across the room at ten months, graduated from diapers one week after her second birthday, and ditched the training wheels from her bike one week after her fourth.    Molly could write her own name legibly soon after she turned three.  Lizzy wrote “Li” and got stuck.  The letter Z, with the backslash diagonal it contains, is confusing enough that even our neighbor’s seven-year-old gets it backward as often as not.  Molly moved on to writing other things.  Month after month, Lizzy practiced her name.

Molly went first this time, too.  Luckily, Dr. Delzer has the kind of charisma that the front-desk receptionist and the nurse who administered the eye drops both so significantly lacked.  He would be able to serve as a judge at a dog show full of pit bulls, I think.  He could fill in as a substitute teacher in a junior high, and come out unscathed.  He is baldish, and smiling, and he knows what he’s doing.  I adored him immediately because –voluntarily -- he found a legitimate way to cover the appointment almost entirely on my insurance.  Molly likes him because he affords the kids equal measures of dignity and comfort.  He speaks to them like human beings.  I can remember a time when I was only three-foot-five, couldn’t tie my own shoes, and found Cruella DeVille terrifying, but was nonetheless affronted at being treated like a baby.  Molly made it clear that she and her sister could use the grownup eye chart.  Of course they know the alphabet!   This doctor understood. 

Molly, eager to go first, chirped out the letters to Dr. Delzer: “That’s an O… a P… an F… ” The letters got smaller and smaller, until I was squinting myself.  Twenty-twenty vision?  Where did she get if from?  Not from her daddy’s genes, certainly.  Without his contacts, Jay can’t read a font the size of a glowing red EXIT sign. 

I can’t claim that Molly has my genes for eyesight.  I have a slight astigmatism that allows me to drive, stargaze, or spot friends on the other side of the street, but makes me maddeningly inept at spotting the wildlife that Jay’s contact-corrected better-than-perfect eyes can pick out on distant mountainsides.  A bear?  Where?  Oh, you mean that thing that looks like a brown pebble?  No, that really is a rock?  I give up.  If it gets close enough to steal my raisins, let me know.

The astigmatism is in my good eye.  The other one is blind.  Not just legally blind, but flat-out blind.  People could sneak up on me from my right side, and I wouldn’t see them coming until they made it past the shadow of my over-large nose.  When I was a kid, other children would ask me what I saw with that eye.  Did it look dark on that side all the time?  “I see what you see out of your ears,” I told them.  I was born this way, so I don’t really notice any impediment – at least not until someone gets miffed about my failure to respond to a friendly wave proffered at the wrong angle, or until everyone comes back from Avatar raving about how fabulous it looked through goofy-looking glasses.

On the bright side – so to speak – the blindness isn’t genetic.  It’s a congenital cataract, a malady rare enough that medical professionals – school nurses, orthopedists, gynecologists -- all want a peek at it.  It was supposedly caused by some kind of infection in my mother when she was pregnant with me.  Ludicrously, she feels guilty about this, as if I might think she decided to contract a first-trimester virus out of malice.  It probably didn’t help that some 1970’s doctor in Ohio told my parents that their infant might have other problems, too, namely retardation.  There was no way to tell so young, he said, so they’d just have to wait and see.  “The jury’s still out,” I tell my mom, and she pretends to think it’s funny.  Now that I’m a parent too, I have a modicum of sympathy.  There’s something wrong with your baby: words to strike panic into a mind already addled by hormones and sleep-deprivation.  This same illogic caused me to badger the hospital pediatrician the day after the twins were born.  “Did you check their eyes for cataracts?  Check them again!”  He knew better than to argue with a woman waddling around with a 24-hour-old c-section incision.  No cataracts.

But the real reason I’ve dragged a couple of barely-four-year-olds to an ophthalmologist isn’t cataracts, and it isn’t near-sightedness.  The kids have another likely losing ticket in the genetic sweepstakes: ambylopia.  Knows as “lazy eye” by the syllable-challenged, this condition occurs when one eye is less developed.  The brain starts ignoring the signals from that eye, and eventually it becomes uncorrectably legally blind.  If caught young, amblyopia can be entirely cured.  But it takes years of wearing glasses, and sometimes, putting a patch over the stronger eye.  My sister had this condition.  So did one of her daughters, and our father, and our grandfather.  There’s no way to know whether I would have had it too, because, as mentioned, one eye is blind anyhow. 

“Mama?” says Lizzy from the chair.  I’m four feet away, but I can tell she wishes I were closer.  I imagine sending her, eye-patched like an incongrously introverted pirate, into a room full of loud, curious kindergarteners.  I smile at her encouragingly, knowing that my acting skills may not be good enough to fool her.

 “Ok, what letter is this?” the doctor asks. 

The little sneakers stop bouncing and swinging.  A tiny furrow of concentration crosses her brow.  Go, Lizzy, go.  Before I was a parent, I didn’t entirely understand why moms and dads were willing to eat the bruised part of the banana, to wipe noses and butts without flinching, to tolerate elementary-school violin concerts. There is a large clear N illuminated on the opposite wall.  You can do it, Lizzy.

The anxious furrow is replaced by the tiniest ghost of a smile.  “It’s a Z!” declares Lizzy.

A heartbeat passes.

“But it’s sideways, so it looks like an N.”

I sneak a peek at the doctor.  Can he possibly guess that all her careful practice writing her name has made Lizzy inordinately proud of the rare and difficult letter Z?   Lizzy has not one, but TWO Z’s – and now, finally, she can make them just right.  Lizzy can do it. 

Dr. Delzer doesn’t miss a beat.  “Ok, and what is this letter?”

Down the chart she goes, down and down, until I am squinting.  Twenty-twenty vision?  Where did she get if from?  Silently, I give thanks to recessive-gened ancestors.

I wrap both little girls in a hug, and they choose their plastic prizes – a keychain football for Lizzy, a gaudy ring for Molly.  “You did a great job,” I tell them.  The shyer twin, the one-minute-older twin, my little Lizzy, beams up at me with her inimitable smile.  Her slightly crooked, cross-bite, will-need-braces smile.  The smile that matches mine.

Tray Tables Closed

“Do not inflate the life jacket before exiting the plane.”

Molly and Lizzy, properly strapped into their respective seats, were dutifully watching as the grouchy lady with the strangely immoveable hair mimed the act of blowing into the two red tubes on the life jacket’s shoulders, the ones to be used if the pull-cord thingy failed to deploy.  They might have preferred the story of Saturday at Blackberry Farm rather than the intoning of the location of emergency exits, but they weren’t complaining.  They’d just seen what happens when a grownup tries to read aloud juvenile literature during the Important Safety Talk: Mommy was chastised by the lady in the uniform.

Never mind that we’d heard it all before – four times already this week, in fact.  Never mind that our plane had already been sitting on the tarmac at Newark airport for an hour, waiting for takeoff in an invisible but apparently lengthy queue.  Never mind that the only chance for a water landing between New Jersey and Seattle would be in either Lake Huron or someone’s backyard Jacuzzi.

“The emergency light on the shoulder will illuminate in water.”

In my own defense, I’d been reading the picture book in a very quiet voice.  The two guys across the aisle were yammering away several decibel levels louder.  Nevertheless, the authority figure in Alaska Airlines polyester told me sternly, “It’s important that the children hear this.”

Given that the twins are only four years old, this seemed slightly preposterous.  I hate to underestimate my kids, but I wasn’t imagining them leading other passengers to safety across the blazing wings of a downed craft, all the while reminding everyone to remove their shoes on the inflatable evacuation slide. 

Then again, they probably knew the shtick better than those guys blathering about the weather.  After all, kids have amazing powers of memorization, when they are motivated.  In fact, watching the safety talk the first time around, on the red-eye out of Fairbanks, had given me flashbacks. 

When I was four and my sister Sarah was seven, our family flew to England.  I was mightily impressed by the idea of flying, and by the very fact of being on an airplane.  The folding armrests and tray tables were nifty.  The drink carts and tiny snacks were immensely appealing.  And the people in uniforms obviously knew everything. 

Thus, when the nice lady began explaining emergency procedures, I was riveted.  It hadn’t occurred to me that the plane might crash!  The idea was scary, but also exciting.  No one told me that the most probable outcome of a crash would be ignominious demise, so I assumed that all crashes resulted in complex rescue maneuvers.  I also assumed that a water landing was a relatively likely possibility.  Life jackets!  Slides!  Little lights and whistles! It sounded like fun.

I remember being a trace perturbed that my parents seemed to be only half-focused on the crucial information being dictated.  Luckily, Sarah and I were on top of things.  We took the shiny laminated cards from our seat pockets, and scrutinized the little pictures, arrows, and icons.  We craned our heads under the seats to find the life jackets, and peered at the ceiling for the oxygen-mask portals.  One phrase leapt out at both of us: “Secure your own oxygen mask before helping children and others who may need assistance.”

What?! Sarah and I looked at each other.  My God, we were on our own!  This turned the normal order of the world on its head.  I mentally vowed that I would not be categorized among the helpless.  I might be only four, but I would know how to put on my own oxygen mask, darn it.

Now I was traveling with twin four-year-olds of my own.  This fact alone gave me some empathy for the flight attendant.  Not that she had any clue about small kids; no one with children of their own would even think of interrupting the lyrical verbiage of Saturday at Blackberry Farm.  But as she put away her faded-looking props, she gave me a tired half-smile, and I suddenly felt a surge of fellow-feeling for her.  It struck me that the frustrations that had apparently turned her into a humorless harridan might not be all that different from the maddening stuff that sometimes made me recoil in horror from my own persona.  Her job, as it was supposed to be, was one of control, education, precision, safety, and responsibility.  Her job, as it played out day-to-day, consisted of doling out little cups of apple juice, wiping up unspeakable spills, patiently reasoning with whiners, and trying not to lose her temper when no one listened to her.  I could relate.  From now on, I vowed, I would keep my tray table folded and my seat back in the upright position.

Despite the passage of thirty years, vast technological advances, and all the added complexities of flying post 9-11, the safety talk seems to have changed remarkably little.  For me, this only underscored the futility of it all.  Why bother invest in modernized life jackets when the old ones will fail to save your life just as effectively?

On the first flight of this particular trip, the departure was at 1:20 a.m.  Thus, I was exhausted before we’d even removed -- and put back on -- three sets of footwear at Security (with accompanying insistent questions from the twins regarding what, exactly, might be dangerous about shoes).  By the time we boarded, I just wanted the blaring announcements to cease, so that I could coax both kids and my own flagging body into an approximation of sleep – albeit cramped and jouncing sleep.  Molly, however, had other ideas. 

I saw her brow furrow with concentration as she listened to the description of how the seatbelts worked.  She opened and closed her own several times, for practice.  When instructed to consult the card in the seat pocket in front of her, she had to undo the seatbelt again, in order to reach – it’s amazing how spacious Coach Class seats are when you are only three and a half feet tall.  I watched out of the corner of my eye as one small finger traced the hieroglyphic-like instructions. 

Now, three flights later, she was hearing it all over again, and listening more carefully than ever before:  seatbelts… exits… floatation devices… Finally, the disembodied voice got to the kicker.  “Secure your own oxygen mask before helping children and others who may need assistance.”

I caught Molly’s eye.  She gave me a look of great suspicion.  I knew that look.  I’d worn that look.

I shrugged and smiled.  Yeah, kid, you’re on your own.

Half Iron, Half Jello

Last summer I competed in a triathlon. I use the word “compete” in the sense of “finished the course without drowning or succumbing to heat stroke.”  When I signed up for it, it was unclear even to me why I would even consider doing such a thing, except that I knew the threat of public humiliation would help motivate me to get into some semblance of good shape.  This was no idle afternoon’s entertainment; the race included 1.2 miles of swimming, a 56-mile bike ride, and a 13.1 mile run. 

Why such peculiar distances?  Well, 13.1 miles is half of a marathon, and 56 miles is half of… 112 miles.  I have no rational explanation, other than the fact that a race twice this long is called an “Ironman” – a name that invariably makes me giggle.  Is an Iron Man one step up from the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz?  Does he have an accent like the Terminator?  Does he channel a British butler, like C3PO?  Or is he just a real whiz at getting dress shirts neatly pressed?

If “Ironman” sounds goofy, “half Ironman” sounds both goofy AND incomplete.  But, I thought, a semi-triathlon seemed appropriate for me, because I often feel like I do everything by halves.  I work 30 hours a week at a job that could easily suck up 60 hours.  I write emails while on teleconferences, I eat breakfast while creating spreadsheets, and I plan meetings while folding laundry.  This would be great if I did a stellar job with all this multi-tasking, but I don’t.  I have Cheerios in my keyboard and a whole bag of stray socks.  I try to bake 30-minute brownies in 15 minutes – but I fail.  I knew there was no way I could do a whole Ironman, but maybe – just maybe – I could fake my way through a half.

My potential triathlon prowess, I had to admit, fell squarely into the half-baked category. I run with a lumbering gait on my iffy Achilles tendons; my bike is designed for touring, not racing -- complete with shock absorbers and a rear rack; and I swim like a cat who has accidentally fallen into the bathtub. 

My training for the event mostly consisted of hauling the kids around – either biking them to and from preschool in their Chariot trailer, or trotting along with them in the jog stroller.  The fact that we often jogged to the playground next to Hotlicks Ice Cream may have negated some of the positive benefits of the exercise.  I did TRY to practice swimming – I really did.  I got a punch card for the gym.  I put on a Speedo, repeatedly.  I slogged up and down the pool, occasionally crashing into whatever poor soul got stuck sharing my lane.  I got bloodshot eyes from the chlorine leaking into my goggles, and I earned pitying glances from the 21-year-old lifeguards, but I didn’t get much faster.

On a sizzlingly hot Saturday in July, I showed up at the start of the race – a Steese Highway pull-off -- with my inappropriate bicycle, my exceedingly cheap wetsuit, my muddy running shoes, and my cheering squad, otherwise known as my family. The kids immediately found a large dirt pile that afforded excellent mountaineering practice.  Meanwhile, I staked out a spot for my stuff in the official transition zone.  I loaded my bike with water bottles and crammed Powerbars in the snack bag.  I applied sunscreen, and snuck glances at the other competitors.  Their buff physiques, slick logoed tri-suits, and shiny, high-tech paraphernalia made it abundantly clear that I was out of my league.  I think even my bicycle felt embarrassed. 

In line for the Port-a-Potty, a woman about my age asked me a logistical question.  “Oh, I have no idea what I’m doing,” I blurted. “Actually, I feel kind of ridiculous.”

It turned out it was her first half-Ironman, too.  “You look official enough,” she reassured me.  She was obviously either very kind or extremely near-sighted.  I was wearing nothing but a 15-year-old highly compressive sports bra and a thrift-store pair of Spandex shorts.  I’m relatively muscular, I suppose, but I’m not even vaguely lithe – and I’ve had twins.  When I was pregnant, my belly expanded to roughly the size of the Hindenburg.  Four years later, my skin is still a couple of sizes too large, and my belly button is irrevocably inside out.

As in almost all triathlons, the swimming portion came first, thus giving me the chance for maximum immediate mortification.  We were tasked with doing five laps around the perimeter of a gravel pit.  Imagine swimming in a shallow, murky, weed-infested pool of water (which, it later became clear, was infested with more than just weeds).  You are encased in a hot, restrictive wetsuit, and you are wearing blurry, leaky goggles.  Now imagine that there are fifty immensely strong people in black neoprene attempting to swim beside, around, over, and on top of you. After the first thirty seconds, I was pretty well convinced that I would not survive. 

Things got marginally better when all of my competitors had passed me and were surging around the other side of the pit, but pretty soon the leaders started catching up with me again.  The water was only about sixty degrees, but I was so hot I was hyperventilating.  I couldn’t see where I was going, and kept getting tangled in the orange flags, or beaching myself in shallow gravel.  After two miserable laps, I stopped and took off my wetsuit.

Taking off a skin-tight neoprene bodysuit is no easy maneuver at the best of times, and I was panting, discombobulated, and waist deep in water, but I managed to extricate myself, and hurl the offending item shoreward, where my long-suffering husband retrieved it.  This sort of move might have disqualified me from a race in the Lower 48, but up here, no one seemed unduly concerned about protocol.  Besides, it was already obvious I wasn’t going to win any prizes.

I wasn’t the last person out of the water – I was the second to last.  However, I didn’t have long for this amazing success to get to my head, because the slowest swimmer was a woman of legendary speed on land, and she passed me about ten seconds into the bike race.

I was last – dead last – and I felt like a wet noodle.  The sun was blazing down from an unrelenting sky, I had water in my lungs, and I was practically naked in public.  The bike portion of the race would send us back and forth on the Steese, two laps to the north, and two laps to the south.  I could see one of the lead racers approaching from the opposite direction, already almost done with the first leg of the bike ride. 

This was not exactly a morale-booster… until he gave me a cheer.  Not a fake cheer, or a patronizing one, but a genuine chunk of audible goodwill.  A few minutes later, the next guy did the same thing.  And the next guy.  I waved back, nonplussed.  Amazingly, those folks with the aero handlebars, solid racing wheels, and 3% body fat had the energy to root for slackers like me.  “Looking good!” they said, with absolute conviction.  “Keep it up!”

I really dislike the taste of Gatorade, especially with overtones of warm plastic bottle, but all of a sudden it tasted like the nectar of the gods.  I slurped half-melted Powerbars.  My legs got going.  The breeze of my own motion cooled me.  The miles flew by.  I did one lap, and then another – and, astonishingly, I caught up with someone.  And then someone else, and then three more someones.  “Looking good!” I said, because the goodwill was infectious, and because they WERE looking good.  They looked like triathletes!  “Keep it up!”

When I rolled back into the transition zone to drop my bike and collect my running shoes, I was feeling pretty good.  Only a half-marathon to go!  No problem!  My legs, however, had other ideas.  Someone seemed to have replaced them with a pair belonging to a rubber chicken.  I staggered uphill like a drunk, and when I left the shelter of the trees, the force of the sun thudded into my skin.   Fairbanks has a climate that is nothing if not ironic.  Don’t like fifty below zero?  Wait a few months!  The temperature was in the mid-eighties… and that was in the shade.  The road was not shaded, and there would be no more cooling breezes.

But the forces of support and camaraderie were doing valiant battle with the sun.  At every lap, my miniature fan club waved at me.  At every water station, stalwart volunteers handed out life-saving Dixie cups, and cheered the fortieth competitor just as much as they’d cheered the first.  One brilliant individual, to whom I will forever be grateful, reached into his cooler and gave me a cupful of ice.  Having lost any vestige of pride approximately seventy miles previously, I immediately dumped it directly into my sports bra.  It gave me peculiarly lumpy cleavage, but it felt like heaven.

Despite my slow dog-trot, I passed several people.  These were the flushed, salty, panting individuals who had been reduced to a limping walk.  By now, the winners had already won.  We were the melting residue on the roadside, and everyone was suffering from the heat.  I saw one guy, who looked about nineteen, leap the barricade and hurtle down a near-cliff to the river far below.  He passed me again twenty minutes later, soaked to the skin and much refreshed.  “Smart idea,” I told him, and he grinned and told me I was doing great.  I didn’t detect any sarcasm.  So what if I was twice his age and had a bra full of ice?  We were in this together.  “Keep it up,” I told him.

Ultimately, I finished the race in six hours and forty-two minutes, good for fourteenth out of twenty-three women.  I also beat six of the twenty-six men.  But the stats didn’t really seem to matter very much.  Everyone was happy to welcome and congratulate the finishers who straggled in at seven hours, and at seven and a half.  And everyone seemed more excited about the potluck barbecue than the scoresheet. 

I was so sweat-salted that I was shedding white flakes.  My mushroom-like belly had burned to a fiery scarlet.  By the next morning, I was walking like a wooden puppet, and my entire body had erupted with the hideous itchy pustules that characterize swimmer’s itch.  “I had a great time,” I insisted, as friends and coworkers eyed me with nervous, queasy sympathy.  They were obviously convinced that I was suffering the delusional after-effects of sunstroke. 

I had to admit that they had a point; if my goal had been to get into great shape, any positive benefits were clearly outweighed by the gimpiness and pox. I might be half Ironman, but the other half was pretty much unmentionable.  And yet… if I was deluded, I was certainly not the only one.  The race organizer warned us all that the popularity of the event had grown so much in recent years that he’d probably have to restrict the number of entrants in 2011. 

I sent in my registration form long before the hives crusted over and the last of the sunburn peeled.

The Zen of Attention-Deficit Snowpants.

                I think there should be special branch of philosophy dedicated to the art of patiently waiting for twin preschoolers to get dressed to play outside… in Fairbanks Alaska… in January.  We could call it The Zen of Attention-Deficit Snowpants.

                I’m not usually the kind of mom who imagines disorders for my kids based on what’s trendy.  I figure there are more than enough parents suffering through the rigors of raising kids with disabilities.  If Molly and Lizzy are sometimes prone to asking a thousand questions before I’ve even managed to eat my bowl of Cheerios, I should just be grateful that they can talk. Sure, my kids sometimes bounce off the walls, but when I see other people’s children cannon-balling around the supermarket or escaping parental clutches in the middle of SEA-TAC airport security lines, I’m pleasantly reassured that my offspring are not, in fact hyperactive.  Sometimes, though, I do wonder if ADD can be diagnosed based solely on the inability to remember that after putting on the LEFT boot, it is almost always going to be necessary to also put on the RIGHT boot, too.

                There’s a genetic rationale for my suspicions.  At least one of the kids’ uncles, one aunt, and one cousin struggle with ADD, and the jury’s still out on the rest of us.  My husband Jay and I both have days when we forget what we’re doing somewhere between the living room and the kitchen…which are only two feet apart.  Jay sometimes has entire conversations with me that he denies recalling a day or two later.  He claims that I do the same, but he can’t be right about that, because I don’t remember any such thing. 

To be fair, though, I distinctly recall overhearing a conversation between my mother and father when I was about eight, in which they bemoaned my seeming inability to bring home from school things like permissions slips, assignments, lunch boxes, and potentially my own head.  Even then, I was dimly aware that this might be a problem, especially given that my mom, dad, and older sister Sarah never forgot anything, ever.  They were never late.  They were never unprepared.  They simply couldn’t fathom why my brain sometimes escaped from orbit and headed for Neptune. 

Faced with all this evidence, it becomes harder to cling to the notion that Jay and I – and by extension, our kids – are somewhere in the normal range when it comes to maintaining focus.  Focus.  I seem to be using that word a lot these days.  Ok, honey, you need to focus on finding your mitten right now… where do you think you left it?  I’m not sure why I bother to ask questions like this, because the answer is always the same: “I don’t know.”  This is all the more frustrating because I know I’m at least partly to blame.  The twins are four.  I’m thirty-eight.  If Mommy had been focusing, Mommy would know where the mitten was.  But I was busy focusing on the bag of snacks, the water bottles, the sack of overdue library books, the car keys, and my wallet, not to mention my own boots, hat, mittens, sweater, jacket, and neck warmer.

                To compound the problem, Molly and Lizzy like to take toys with them everywhere they go.  I started letting them do this because it seemed unfair to trap them in the car or in the bike trailer with nothing to do.  Young minds need stimulating!  But I now understand why my own mother disallowed this practice.  Just when I’m trying to get everyone gathered on the doormat, in the vain hope that being close to the boots and hats will foster a sense of urgency with regard to their proper usage, the kids are running around their room like feral cats, trying to choose what they want to take along.  “Can I bring Kanga, Mommy?” No, she’s too big.  Kanga is the size of a microwave.  “Can I bring Playmobil?” My god, no.  All Playmobil sets come with roughly eight bajillion small pieces, each of which becomes unutterably precious to a small child the moment she is unable to locate it. “Ok, well, then I’ll bring this tub of Legos.” Look, kiddo, I’ve changed my mind, how about you just bring Kanga?

                At long last, the kids make it to the doormat, and the dressing begins.  I stand by to dispense basic rules of physics (the snowpants have to go on BEFORE the jacket), and to help maintain focus.  Lizzy, can you please choose a hat?  Lizzy, please choose a hat.  Lizzy?  Hat?  HAT!  HAT! HAT!  Heaven help us if it’s a “real” winter day, because at minus forty, each kid needs a balaclava, a neck warmer, AND a hat.  That’s after we’ve already dealt with the two pairs of socks, the long underwear, and the extra sweater, and before we broach the snowpants, jacket, boots, two pairs of mittens, and head lamp.

We do, eventually, make it out the door.  We waddle down the path.  Just as we’re approaching the car, someone remembers: we left Kanga sitting on the mat.

This is the point in time at which I need to perfect the deep breathing techniques of the Zen of Attention Deficit Snowpants.  Hyperventilating inside a balaclava is a bad idea, and yelling has been proven, through repeated not-at-all-scientific trials, to be counterproductive.  But, perhaps even more importantly, I need to be calm so I can think this through, and I need to think this through so I can decide whether I should worry, laugh, or move to Barbados.

Are we suffering from collective ADD?  Are we the victims of a challenging climate?  Or is this level of discombobulation and dysfunction actually normal? 

“Normal” of course, is a matter of opinion.  On the assumption that part of my guilt and anxiety comes from growing up in a family with such excellent focus, I started looking for counter-examples, to comfort myself.

What about the friend of mine, a highly intelligent scientist, who sewed an elaborate Halloween costume for her son, but suffered a memory lapse on the crucial evening that resulted in her son being eight miles away from his ears, his paws, and his tail?  Then there’s the little girl at Molly and Lizzy’s preschool who always seems to be sitting on the bench in the coatroom with one boot on and one boot off, and a dreamy expression on her face.  I wouldn’t have though it would be possible for anyone to dress and undress more slowly than my kids, but this child has them beaten by a mile.

Yes, I tell myself, but the fact that other people are dysfunctional doesn’t mean that my family isn’t.  Shouldn’t I be looking for POSITIVE examples?  Shouldn’t I be comparing myself to people who have their proverbial ducks in a proverbial row?  Shouldn’t I be aiming for the level of focus demonstrated during my own childhood?

And then I remember.  Amidst all the perfectly-orchestrated birthday parties, on-time train rides, and well-equipped beach trips, one childhood memory shines forth in slovenly ADD glory.  Once – just once – when our family went on a vacation, my parents forgot to bring the (carefully packed) suitcase that contained clothes for myself and Sarah.  All our clothes.  We visited friends, family, restaurants, parks, and historic sites.  In every photo, my sister is wearing a rather lurid multi-colored dress.  In every photo, I, aged four, am dressed in the same pair of grubby corduroy pants, and the same suspiciously stained t-shirt. 

I am smiling a lot in those photos.  I was probably enjoying all the friends, family, restaurants, and parks.  I may even have been enjoying the historic sites, given that they included both cannons and cows.   I was easy to please, at age four.  Somewhat more surprisingly, my parents are smiling a lot in those pictures, too.  Despite the rapidly accumulating filth on their children, they seem to be having a fabulous vacation. 

Why?  Maybe they were putting on a brave face.  Maybe they were in denial.  Or maybe – just maybe – they’d realized what I am still figuring out now, three decades later.  Perhaps they were smiling because they’d discovered that there can joy amidst anarchy.  There can be contentment in the face of distraction.  There can be humor in that moment when you open the trunk of the car and realize that something is utterly, irrevocably missing. Even if you ‘re forced to explain to a whole host of distant relations exactly why it is that your kids smell funny, life is still pretty good.  And if that’s the case, then all of us can strive to attain the level of peace and harmony epitomized by The Zen of Attention Deficit Snowpants