Honk, honk

“Yerba Wubba Zrrrrble Uggugg!”

I hear the distinctively incoherent call as I jog along the muddy verge.  It’s springtime, and a common migratory species is once again rolling down its truck windows and exercising its vocal cords.  That’s right -- the Drive-By Warblers are back.

April offers lots of other signs of springtime, of course.  Slush and gravel whisper invitingly to small people in big boots.  Puddles large enough to be given names lurk along roadsides.  The cranes have returned to Creamer’s Field.  The swans are here, and so are the geese, the newborn reindeer and the adorably homely baby muskoxen. Flocks of bikers, their spandex plumage lurid in the sunlight, have repopulated the routes that were my private terrain in black January.  Family birthdays are gathering on the horizon, chirping “six, six!” and honking “forty!” These are iconic harbingers of the season – but so are the Warblers. 

Warblers are not just a Fairbanks phenomenon, of course.  In fact, they seem to be a species with a vast range, inhabiting every continent I’ve visited. While emphatic, their comments have almost always been obtuse.  I figure that the participants in this warm-season sport must have been cutting class on the day that the Doppler Effect was discussed in high school physics, and are thus blissfully unaware of the distortion of their voice effected by the motion of their 1989 Ford pickup, not to mention the masking effects of an elderly muffler.   They may also have missed out on the finer points of elocution and grammar.   

In years past, out-of-truck pronouncements unsettled me.  They undermined my need to be invisible, and augmented my hefty burden of insecurities. I’ve been walking, biking and jogging around -- in several states and nations -- ever since I was a kid.  To varying degrees, my non-motorized habits have been considered unusual, quirky, and downright weird.  Although I’ve always preferred to imagine that I’m utterly unremarkable while undertaking these perambulations, it’s hard to maintain that pretense while getting hollered at from a moving vehicle. 

Even when I couldn’t hear what was said, correct interpretation of the commentary always seemed like a lose-lose bet.  Option #1 was that these unknown males were making fun of me.  Maybe they were telling me that my butt looked vast and jiggly, or that my running style was reminiscent of Daffy Duck.  Maybe they thought that my speed was more glacial than their great-grandma’s, or that my bike helmet was the dweebiest thing they’d ever seen, and was buckled crooked besides.  My own imagination provided dozens of possibilities for humiliation.  Option #2 was even worse.  Maybe these guys were objectifying me, to the tune of, “A female!  In shorts!  With arms and legs in what appear to be roughly the correct numbers!  Woohoo, let’s engage in reproductive behavior immediately!”   Objectification, my angry-white-female self told me, was socially depressing, slightly threatening, and embarrassing in its own way.  In any case, whatever the options, humiliation was always on the menu.

I encountered my first Warbler a quarter century ago. I was biking back from the beach with my friend Mia, shorts pulled on over our damp bathing suits.  We were 14.  I had yet to hit puberty, and was such a blissfully clueless late bloomer that I turned to Mia in confusion and asked why some grown-up was offering up loud garbled pronouncements.  She rolled her eyes.  “Because we’re girls,” she said.  I blanched.  Because, you know, ick.

Ten years later, I was living in rural Jamaica, where it’s always the warm season, and where a young white woman on a bicycle is about as unnoticeable as a firecracker in an elevator.  No one had a truck, so as soon as my brain could parse Jamaican Patois, I understood the comments.  The many, many, many comments.  Every day.  For two years.  Options 1 and 2 were both employed, with myriad creative embellishments. My skin got thicker.  Not thick enough, but thicker.

Nevertheless, I never stopped walking, biking and jogging.  I do it because it’s a cheap and convenient form of transportation; because it’s often my sole source of exercise; and because it’s an excellent way to multi-task – I’m commuting, saving gas, saving money, trying to save the planet, and saving myself from cabin-fever in one easy maneuver. 

Fast-forward another fifteen years.  Some things are the same: it’s April, and the local truck windows are starting to roll down once again.  I still run, walk, and bike all over the place.   I still look like Daffy Duck, and I still can’t get my bike helmet to sit completely symmetrically.  On the other hand, a lot has changed.  I’m a professor – with, you know, an advanced degree and a career and everything.  I’m also a mom, and there’s often a kid-trailer or a tag-along bike clamped onto my own set of wheels.  Thus, when I met the first Warbler of the 2012 season, I was on my way from work – my I-have-a-doctorate mad-scientist job – and was heading over to pick up my kids from kindergarten.  And I was running, because, as mentioned, I’m a bit strange.

“Yerba Wubba Zrrrrble Uggugg!” shouted the guy riding shotgun.  I had no idea what he’d said, or which option it fell under.  That part was normal.  But then I realized that the game pieces had shifted.  Option #1, The Insult, now seemed to have a slightly new translation in my mind.  It sounded something like, “I am a pasty-faced under-employed young man who feels a peculiar need to shout rude things at almost-40-year-old professors.”  Option #2, The Come-On, now meant, “I am an awkward, incipiently paunchy 22-year-old who feels that he’d really like to sleep with some random almost-40 mom who is about to pick up her twin kindergarteners.”

This year, the season’s first Warbler didn’t leave me feeling irritated, vulnerable, or over-aware of my goofy, jiggling running style.  Instead, it left me laughing. 

Maybe laughter wasn’t the correct response.  I suppose I could get worried about my impending birthday.  I could develop a sudden urge to buy a red sports car, wear polyester pantsuits, or pen mournful existential poetry.  I could stock up on wrinkle cream and hair dyes and worry about my over-ripe ovaries. But, then again -- nope.  I’m not going there.  I wasted too much time in my pre-forty years feeling insecure.  It was supremely unhelpful.  Laughter is way more fun.

I think I have another ten years or so before I’m officially a crone, but I’ve already decided that I want to pick and choose the aspects of crone-ness that I embrace.  I think I’ll go with the part that allows me to wear odd hats, champion unpopular opinions, and laugh at things that I’m not supposed to laugh at.  I want to dispense wisdom on the rare occasions that anyone asks for it, and know how to shut up when they don’t. 

And of course I will continue to walk, bike, and run all over town in every season – and enjoy it. I’m already enjoying spring.  And I think I’m going to enjoy this birthday, too.

The Long and the Short of It

The cozy log shelter known as Lee’s Cabin is not a race checkpoint on the White Mountains 100.  Of course not!  Any real ultra-racer who is snow-biking, skiing, or running 100 miles wouldn’t even pause to rip open a Clif bar a mere seven miles into the adventure.  And yet two weeks earlier, Lee’s had been not a blip in the background, but the Grand Destination – and I’d spent a lot more time planning for that two-day fourteen-mile round-trip than for this (theoretically) non-stop hundred-mile one. 

As I meandered past on my sturdy classic skis, I did stop for a moment, and take a good swig from my battered Nalgene of hot chocolate.  I felt a little self-conscious for even noticing the cabin’s existence, but I could practically hear the echos of our Spring Break visit.

“Two, three, four…” The scuffling of ten small hands and an equal number of small feet in the loft of Lee’s Cabin sounded like an infestation of forty-pound squirrels.  “…seven, eight, nine…”  After several false starts, a total was reached.  Down below, the adults exchanged sardonic glances and waited for the census results to be announced.  The stuffed animal census, that is.

Placing limits on the plush beast population was part of the elaborate packing process.  So was preventing the kids from stuffing their allotted toy bags with cherished blocks of wood, railroad spikes, or chunks of granite.  But despite these efforts, the invisible gurus of Traveling Light mocked me. 

“They’re all small animals,” Lizzy told me earnestly.

Part of the trouble was that all undertakings involving kids need to be double-buffered against Worst Case Scenarios.  And if the adventure involves getting our two five-year-olds (not to mention three small people belonging to other mommies and daddies) to ski seven miles to a backwoods cabin when the temperature is hovering around zero Fahrenheit, make that quadruple-buffered. 

I knew that bringing a whole pint of maple syrup – from real Canadian maple trees! -- might be overkill.  Then again, running out of syrup?  That would be tragic.  I knew that the twins were unlikely to wear more than one sweater under their snowsuits for the simple reason that if they did so they’d be unable to move – but what if one sweater got wet?  What if it was accidentally drenched in real Canadian maple syrup?  I brought extras.  I worried that the rigors of the trail, the limitations of a cramped space, or the chill of the cabin floor might cause my kids to decide that (horrors!) they didn’t actually like ski trips.  I countered this eventuality by bringing approximately eight million snacks, plenty of art supplies, slippers, and, of course, stuffed animals.

Jay likes to spend whole evenings reading up on the riveting nuances of gossamer-light sleeping bags, tents less hefty than the average guinea pig, stoves that fold into your pocket, and rain jackets that practically levitate.  And yet there we were in the woods with not only three boxes of Girl Scout Cookies, eight bedtime stories, and a non-stick non-gossamer frying pan, but also a well-travelled Lamby and a toy cat named Dirty Snow.  I like to think I know how to prepare for the most extreme of Arctic expeditions, but what I actually prepared for was a slumber party at which the greatest danger was that someone might wet their sleeping bag or mislay a teddy.  The irony stared me in the face with its fuzzy little sewn-on eyes. 

In contrast, for the Whites 100, packing took roughly half an hour.  It wasn’t that I was trying to take the race less seriously than I took the family camping trip.  But I escaped the waiting list and inherited bib #16 only two days before the event -- and even then, I couldn’t immediately begin stuffing my old blue backpack.  I had a few other jobs to do first… starting with lining up 30 hours of childcare.

Luckily, our friends are saintly.  As far as I know, no one even groaned or rolled their eyes.  Still, I had to call upon the collective goodwill of six different long-suffering individuals, each with sleep habits to match their allotted shift.  These folks are savvy to the ways of kindergarteners (no unsupervised use of Sharpies; no eating pudding in the living room; beware of scientific experiments involving Silly Putty, food coloring, or grownup scissors), but I still needed to write a few basic instructions about things like pajamas, family doctors and school schedules.  I packed lunch boxes two days in advance, and I packed a canvas bag with enough apples, fishy crackers, cucumber slices, and smoked Gouda to fill the time in between. 

I also had to face the uncomfortable reality of my work schedule.  The race started on a Sunday morning.  I estimated that I would finish on Monday night… or maybe Monday evening, if I was lucky… or possibly even Monday afternoon, if I was an incurable optimist.  But however things panned out, on Tuesday morning I needed to wax lyrical – or at least wax coherent -- about climate change impacts to an audience of forty people from around the state.  I was planning to flagrantly violate the rule that states “Don’t Lead a Three-Day Conference When Utterly Annihilated.”  At the very least, I needed to finish my Powerpoints and put my laptop and paperwork in a bag, and make sure that bag was so handy that I could not possibly forget it, even if my Tuesday-morning brain had all the cohesion of a fruit smoothie.  While I was at it, it seemed prudent to lay out my clean clothes and semi-professional shoes.  Am I the only one who sometimes has dreams in which I show up at a podium with no clue what I’m supposed to talk about, clad in muddy overalls or Superwoman underwear?

And then there was the party planning.  Back when I thought that Jay was the only member of the family who was going to be out on the racecourse, I’d happily agreed to do all the shopping, cooking, and planning for the after-race party – a dinner (hopefully at least passably edible) for 100-ish people. I figured it would be fun to check on Jay’s progress on the SPOT tracker while stirring up a few gallons of brownie batter and simmering chili in a pot large enough to bathe a wildebeest.  Instead, I rushed to do all this in advance, my demeanor more Demented Line-Cook than Betty Crocker.  I took advantage of the vast size of our freezer – otherwise known as Fairbanks Winter – to store the results.  A hundred slabs of homemade cornbread?  No problem… so long as I didn’t also need to prepare food for the race itself.  Except that, of course, I did. 

It turned out there was one other task I’d forgotten.  It was my turn to clean our community’s shared building.  Quick, get out the mop!  By the time I’d laundered the tablecloths and played the requisite game of The Vacuum Cleaner is Going to Nibble Your Toes, there wasn’t exactly time to shop for Powerbars. 

Luckily, there’s always plenty of food in our house.  Pilot bread?  Check.  Peanut butter?  Crunchy and creamy.   I was pretty sure other race participants would be fuelled by carefully calibrated rations and high-performance brand-name gels and goos – but there were plenty of those animal cookies left over.  I filled two sandwich baggies.

I figured those cookies must be good trail fuel, because they’d been popular among the three-foot-tall skiers.  “’Nother cookie, please, Mommy?”  The treats were just the right size to stuff into Molly, one at a time, as she struggled along on her Lilliputian skis.  No need to take off your mittens when your parent is imitating a bird feeding its fledglings.  Look, this one is shaped like a lion!  At least, I think that’s a lion.  Tiger?  Endangered snow leopard?  Mmmm, chocolatey snow leopard.  Keep those skis moving, kiddo!

I kick-waxed my own skis the night before the race in the infinitesimal interval between almost-kids’-bedtime and really-truly-right-now-kids’-bedtime.  I tossed the waxes into the top pocket of my backpack, where they fought for space with the headlamp, extra batteries, and small ration of toilet paper.

On our Spring Break trip, we carried a full medical kid, complete with salves, ointments, and cherry-flavored medications for the kindergarten crowd, just in case.  In other words, we had all the necessities. My race backpack had all the medical necessities, too: duct tape wrapped around a pen, and six Alleve tablets in a Ziploc.  There were four race medics out on the course, and I had a lot of warm clothes.  I’d be fine without the Winnie the Pooh Bandaids. 

My slush-proof overboots – for use on the notorious Ice Lakes and other sections of overflow – were actually plastic bags that had once held spruce pellets for our stove.  I knew they worked.  But I didn’t exactly feel like an ultra-racer with legs that said, “Made from 100% Alaskan Wood.”

It was when I was removing this low-rent footwear for the second time in a mile, at about mile 92 of the course, that a racer on foot caught up with me.  Strictly speaking, skiers ought to be far ahead of those who are walking the course, but I knew there were already two foot travelers ahead of me, so my pride wasn’t exactly at stake. 

In fact, my fellow racer didn’t seem scornful of either my slowness or my pellet bags, although I knew that if anyone is a real ultra-racer, he is.  Not only has he completed umpteen events, but he was one of the 18 entrants who actually finished this year’s snow-mired Iditasport, a race that Jay dropped out of after pushing a heavily laden bike through drifts for three days straight.  I was very grateful to find that such a supremely accomplished walker was willing to hike the next section of the course with me, because mile 93 is Wickersham Wall, a hill just as daunting as it sounds. 

And yet, somehow, the Wall wasn’t demoralizing at all.  Oh, I’m not saying I flew up it at lightning speed.  I was panting along with my skis strapped to my pack, my knees aching, and my ankles threatening mutiny.  But as I chatted with my new friend about his background in theoretical physics, his girlfriend who had snow-biked the course and was (hopefully) awaiting him at the finish, his political frustration and amusement, and his job at Google, it seemed easy to tell him about my kids, my logistical contortions, and my hope that Jay was there at the finish, too.  Maybe this guy was a real ultra-racer in a way that I would never be, but he was a real person, too, with a jumbled calendar and competing interests.  Moreover, he had a sense of humor – a trait that seems crucial for dealing with not only sleep-deprivation and steep hills, but also Powerpoint presentations, party-catering, small children, and just… life, the universe, and everything.  Sunshine was pouring down on us, there was still enough afternoon to carry us to the finish line, and we were both having a blast.

The course of the Whites 100 is a loop with a spur at the beginning and end, meaning that I passed Lee’s Cabin at mile seven, but also passed within half a mile of it at mile 94, right after topping Wickersham Wall.  This time, I was too far away to actually see the cabin, but I gave the left-hand trail a glance and a smile anyhow.  I’d be back again.  Jay and I would bring the kids back next winter, or perhaps even in the fall, with extra sweaters, chocolate cookies shaped like bison, and plenty of cuddly toys.  Maybe we’d even beat 2012’s record – although that might be tough. 

No, I don’t mean we’d beat the four hours that it took our family of four to cover those seven miles.  Who cares about speed?  I’m talking about our stellar packing job. Because when the plush-critter census was complete, and the number was relayed down from the loft, even the grownups were impressed.

How many stuffed animals made the journey? The answer, it transpired, was eighteen.

What the DIckens?

I

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

“Too bad it costs two hundred dollars to get a snowmachine ride back,” sighed the long-haired young man. 

I didn’t know my fellow racer’s name, but I’d caught glimpses of him as I had of many others, through a day, a night, and a second day on the trail.  He was one of the runners – as opposed to a snow-biker, or a skier like myself -- but now, at mile 83, he was more of a trudger.  His hair looked like a cozy nest for a squirrel, and his eyes seemed to be focused on something a few miles beyond my left ear.  He was ten or fifteen years younger than me, but here at the back of the pack, the Susitna 100 was long enough to make us all look a bit like something past its expiration date. 

I wanted to say something peppy and motivational, but my brain was as foggy as his gaze.  Why had he wanted to take part in a hundred-mile “Race Across Frozen Alaska” in the first place?  Why had I?  Why, for that matter, did anybody?

A few competitors, of course, were impossibly buff and optimally trained: superheroes in snowgear.  They were racing to compete, and to win.  I, on the other hand, was a mom from Fairbanks with scant training and goofy skiing skills.  I was covering a hundred miles at three miles per hour – which, once I’ve worn out my initial energy in the first 25 miles of back-country skiing, is the inelegant pace I can maintain, for hour after hour.  After hour. I knew this from last year’s White Mountains 100.  And yet here I was again.

How far is a hundred miles?  To put things in perspective, it’s almost four marathons, or thirty-two 5k races, or -- for the less ambitious -- 880 laps from one end of Fairbanks Fred Meyer West to the other.   It’s roughly three times the length of the companion “Little Su” – a race that has to cap its roster because lots of people actually want to take part in it.  A hundred miles is also long enough to listen to the Audiobook version of Dickens’ classic A Tale of Two Cities – every gorgeous, rolling, imbued-with-significance paid-by-the-word syllable of it – and still have plenty of time to listen to two other complete novels as well.

It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…

At the race start, on that Saturday morning in February, the atmosphere was bustling, businesslike, foot-stompingly chilly, and slightly anxious.  People muttered about gear and trail conditions, and eyeballed their competition.  But that mood dominated for only a half mile or so, until the horde of zippy fat-tire snow-bikers and the three insanely competitive skate-skiers were out of sight.  Then the ambiance became that of a peculiarly linear social gathering.  “Are you from Anchorage?”  “Have you done the hundred before?” “Here, let me see if I can help you get that sled adjusted.” “Hey, we have the same skis!” 

I met Tom, a cheerful classic skier with a gray beard and two teenagers back at home who apparently were just not into this kind of thing (sigh).  I told him about my own kids and my secret fear that they would one day take up video games and/or cheerleading as their primary hobbies. I met Fiona, a perky young champion skate-skier who wanted to know if I recommended using her bra as a battery-warming holder for her ipod.  I did, of course.  I’m not sure how males overcome their obvious disadvantage in this arena.

The sun came out.  The temperature rose.  Sweating in my longjohns, I kept removing my easier-to-strip upper layers until I was sliding along in a tank top.  “Ooh, I didn’t know there were going to be bikini babes in this race!” teased a skate-skier who had been jealous of my classic skis on the hillocky narrow trails of the first ten miles of the course, but who would soon blast past me on the endless wide-open rivers.  My fish-belly Fairbanks-winter skin set to work producing vitamin D. 

Via my earbuds, I met the inimitable Dickensian cast: a revolutionary who never stops knitting, an alcoholic attorney, a darkly hilarious grave robber.  Their world blended with the world of bright snow and dark spruce around me.

It didn’t seem like long before I was at the first checkpoint, Flathorn Lake, amidst a bustle of skiers and runners.   We were all about efficiency and camaraderie as we filled water bottles and snarfed down homemade brownies.  All the chocolate you want!  This was why we were doing this!

It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…

I left Flathorn with great faith that I’d finish the race – faith that I lost within the hour.  I’m not quite sure how I wrenched my shoulder.  The course was almost entirely flat, nothing like the crazy descents, mountain pass, and ice lakes last year in the Whites 100.  But somehow I caught a pole wrong, and the 25-ish pounds of food, water, and required emergency gear on my back didn’t help.  A ball of muscle wound itself up into a jangly nervy mass.  By the time I made it to the second checkpoint at mile 41 -- and Madame LaFarge was storming the Bastille with her knitting buddies -- every plant of my left ski pole ached and stabbed.  In Luce’s Lodge, I could barely raise my arm high enough to take my hat off.  It was dinnertime.  Many of the bikers had already passed me, whooshing back toward the finish line.  Why was I trying to do this?  I’d never make it.

 “If you don’t mind getting a massage from someone you don’t know…”

Um, was that a trick question?  My only regret is that I still don’t know the name of the woman – the fiancée of another racer, visiting Luce’s Lodge via snowmachine -- who spent a good fifteen minutes working on my sweaty, nasty, shoulder.  She had nothing in the world to gain from this.  I was shoving a grilled cheese sandwich and fries into my face as she worked, and I’m pretty sure my greasy thanks were utterly inadequate payment for her compassion.

It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…

Fortified emotionally, physically, and gustatorially, I headed out into the darkness for the long slog to Alexander Lake and back.   The round trip was 24 miles, and I knew it would take almost all night.  With only the light of my headlamp on the snow, the voice streaming in from my audio-library selection seemed all the more potent.  The tale seemed increasingly likely to end in high-Dickensian pathos, with a woeful widow, a fatherless girl, and a mad – albeit industrious – shoe-maker.  And yet, I couldn’t help but hold out some hope for them.  The stars were out, my blood was burbling with high fructose corn syrup, and this was the section of the race in which I saw all the other racers who were anywhere close to my league. 

First, I encountered those who were outbound while I was still inbound.  “Good work,” they told me.  “Keep it up!”  I saw Fiona, going strong, still smiling, and still presumably warming her ipod.  I saw the “bikini babe” guy, skating through the darkness, cheering me on with jovial conviction.  Tom and two other fellow classic-skiers were sound asleep at Alexander Lake, but others were there to share the cocoa and gird for the return journey.

And then, in the 230 surreal minutes between 1:30 a.m. and 5:20 a.m., after I’d wrenched myself away from the snug, sweet hospitality of the cabin, I saw those who were even slower than I.  “You can do it,” I told them.  “Looking good!” 

Good, of course, is relative.  Under Dickens’ pen, it sometimes neared perfection. The story’s message of bravery, hope, and generosity mingled in my sleepy brain with the world of free massages, all-night volunteers offering soup and sympathy, and tenacious runners smiling in the darkness.  When the Tale surged to its bittersweet closing and Sydney Carton earned his “far, far better rest,” I was semi-ebullient, although there was no rest for me -- not only because there were, thankfully, no guillotines in the middle of the Yentna River, but also because I was only half way through the race.  A hundred miles is really that long.

I moved on to my next literary treat, the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy.  A dystopian tale of guerilla-style murder in the wilderness is a psychologically risky choice, on an isolated trail after midnight.  But no – the theme wasn’t really kill-or-be-killed.  It was a tale of evil governments and a subjugated populace, of risking everything to subvert the oppression, of hope and loss and the triumph of the human spirit.  Not so different from Dickens, after all. 

“Great job,” I told my fellow racers, my fellow humans.

And then, above me, the aurora blossomed.  For hours, it teased the edges of my vision.  Look up for too long, and I’d trip over my own skis – but I looked up anyhow.  The lights danced. 

We had everything before us, we had nothing before us…

Luce’s Lodge, outbound.  There was going to be a shortcut on the return route, so there were only 35 miles to go!  Wait… only?  Not so long ago, 35 miles was further than I’d have been willing to ski in a day, even with a good night’s rest behind me and no wobble in my knees.  Sleep.  Must. Sleep.

And sleep I did, for three hours, in bunkroom number eight.   I have no idea who the other two people were, sacked out with me, although one of them kindly gave me a bunk and took the floor.  I protested, but he seemed to be instantly snoring. 

Rise and shine, creaky self!  Time to half-fall out of your bunk and lurch toward the outhouse!  Around the wooden tables in the lodge, someone was eating spaghetti and meatballs at 8 a.m.  Several people were downing pancakes.  Two were fast asleep with their heads face-down on the table.  My stomach roiled at the thought of the Lodge’s breakfast options.  The rich slabs of chocolate in my pack mocked me.  I sipped warm Gatorade. I went on.

We were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way…

Between Luce’s and Flathorn, I met the Irondog.  There was something oddly comic about a snowmachine race raging past me at 80mph while I slithered along at 3.  They were, in fact, going the other way.  They were catching air.  They were churning the trail with their powerful paddlewheels.  They probably thought I was a lunatic, especially when they chanced upon me peeing, skis still on, breezy river on all sides.  They gave me a polite berth.  I sipped my Gatorade, but my pee had turned orange and I remained untempted by Nacho Cheese Combos or Nutter Butters.

At Flathorn, the cozy cabin seemed so quiet that for a moment I thought I was the only one there.  Then I saw the six or seven forms, slumped and sprawled on chairs and couches, slack-jawed, half-lidded.  Obviously I’d reached the Zombie Apocalypse section of the race.

“Would you like some jambalaya?” asked the kindly hostess. 

She’d been up for two days and a night, too, and yet she gave me her chair, and mixed me some Tang.  I tried to make my anti-jambalaya groan a polite groan. 

She looked at me appraisingly.  “How about some plain white rice?” 

I ate two bowls, as grateful as I as was incoherent, and washed it down with more warm Tang -- an epicurean’s delight – before staggering out the door.

It was then, as I was setting out on that final 17 miles, that I spoke with the disenchanted young man who was dreaming of a snowmachine ride.  I knew exactly what he meant, and he knew that I would understand.  It doesn’t take much to pare us all down to exposed little husks – certainly not 18 years in the Bastille.  But I also hoped that he would not ask for that ride, or take it if it were offered.  It never occurred to me that I was supposed to be competing against the cabinful of zombies.  In my mind, they were on my team.

“It’s not really the two hundred dollars,” I said.  My smile used up precious energy reserves, but I tried to make it speak volumes.  There was something besides lack of funds that was driving him forward – his pride?  His stubbornness?  His dreams?  Only he knew, exactly.

“Yeah.”  He took another step, and another.  “Yeah.” He sighed, as if damning the demon on his own shoulder.  “I know.”

He was falling behind me, but I knew he’d finish.  I knew we both would.  And I figured Dickens might have understood if I’d said, with no intention of being oxymoronic, that we’re all in this together… and we’re all in this separately.

I started a third novel.  It was the story of a twelve-year-old boy who finds out he’s the son of Poseidon, and has to brave a series of Greco-Roman monsters to save what really matters.   It was a story of compassion, and tenacity, and what it means to be human.  In my addled brain, I imagined that Dickens would have liked that one, too.

Six hours later, I clambered into Jay’s truck, clutching my Finisher’s medallion.  Jay, who had come out onto the course in the darkness and walked the last mile at my side, plunked a quart tub of fresh melon onto my lap.  He told me it had been selected by the kids, who had somehow psychically known that it was about the only food that I’d want to cram into my mouth in juicy handfuls at midnight.

“Did you have a good time?” he asked for the third or fourth time, as if unconvinced by my previous efforts at a positive response.

I thought back on the race – every mile, every face and hand and smile, every flicker of light in the darkness and every word that poured into my head and indelibly mixed with and enriched the experience.  Ninety-five people started the race.  Eighty-two finished it, of which I was the seventy-third.  The last one had yet to stagger in, eight hours behind me, in the early light of Monday morning.

Why would anyone want to bike, run, or ski a hundred miles?  Every one of us had an answer to that “why,” but the only answer I could ever be completely sure of was my own -- and that one was too complicated to explain.  Especially with my mouth full of melon.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

Dickens understood.  And maybe, almost, I did too.  “Yes,” I told Jay with more confidence.  “It was great.”

It was the best of times.

Bore of the Roses

A couple of weeks ago, I pushed my shopping cart into Fred Meyer and immediately winced as the Seasonal Display assaulted me:  shiny plastic hearts, fake flowers, lacy ribbons, and fuchsia teddy bears.  Near the cash registers, the impulse-purchases on offer were those heart-shaped candies that are almost as tasty as Tums.  “Be Mine!”  “Luv U!” It was that time of year again.

Based in part on what a big Valentine’s Day Grinch I am, I spent years assuming I had some kind of allergy to romance -- and indeed to all things loving, tender, and touching.  What else could I think?  I routinely scowl at jewelry displays that exhort men to show their devotion by opening their wallets.  I mock movies in which the artfully-bloodied hero wins the artfully-disheveled-yet-still-eyelinered girl.  I am ruthlessly sarcastic about novels in which brooding, rugged ‘Chet’ and sassy-yet-innocent ‘Estella’ suffer inexplicable mutual magnetism despite their drastic and improbable misunderstandings, and subsequently fall out of their clothes.  Even things I normally appreciate – luscious assortments of creamy dark chocolates that require a map to navigate their multi-layered deliciousness – seem overwrought when wrapped in heart-shaped ribbon-adorned boxes.  All this stuff is aimed squarely at my demographic, and yet it has always left me cold.  Ergo, I long ago concluded, I must be utterly unsentimental.

When I was really little, the age my kids are now, I didn’t hate February 14th, but I didn’t really get it, either.  I ate the Tums-candy with the rest of the class, and exchanged the everybody-gets-one Valentines, as prescribed.  I remember thinking that it was oddly pointless to give the same card to the kid you liked and the one who destroyed your Lego-block towers, but at that age, a lot of grownup rules seemed pretty weird.

This year, now that my own kids are in kindergarten, I was sucked into the not-really-optional kiddie Valentines vortex.  Class lists came home from school.  I figured that we might as well make this exercise as creative (read: gluey) and educational (read: “we love penmanship!”) as possible.  Besides, as mentioned, I’m allergic to the Valentines section at Fred Meyer, so purchasing the pre-fab cards was anathema to me. 

I felt a twinge of déjà vu when one of my daughters, sounding out the names on her class list, said, “Do I have to give a Valentine to ‘Warthog’?” [all children’s names have been altered to protect the innocent, and also for my own amusement].

I told her that she did.  I got out the construction paper.  It wasn’t pink.  Green and blue Valentines are ok, right?  I got out the glue sticks, the scissors, and the markers, and I even unearthed a few sparkly things.  Then I looked at the lists of names, and sighed.  Fifty-six hand-lettered cards amounts to a Herculean effort for two small people who have only recently become semi-literate (“I do not like green eggs and ham… and I also do not like Valentines Day, Sam-I-Am.”)

As the twins worked away, making cards not only for Alligator, who invited them to his birthday party, but also for Albatross, who apparently spends work time staring at his pencil, and Lemur, who has Serious Behavior Problems, I wondered who was going to be left out later on, when everyone gets a little older and the rules change.  Because if making Valentines for everyone at age five seems like a rather pointless exercise in sweatshop labor, sending flowers only to the popular kids at age fifteen is far worse.

When I was in high school, Valentine’s Day was used as an excuse for a fundraiser/popularity-contest called Carnation Day.  Kids were encouraged to send color-coded dyed carnations to friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, and crushes.  By the end of the day, the popular girls had dense bouquets, rich in reds and pinks.  I had one or two crumpled yellow blossoms hanging out of my three-ring binder. 

It only got worse in college.  There were plenty of Valentines events, university-sanctioned and otherwise.  Such proceedings required (or presumed) an actual date.  I had plenty of terrific male friends, but they generally treated me like one of the guys -- unless they preferred guys as dates, in which case they treated me as one of the girls.

Sometimes, my friends asked me for advice about romance.  I protested that this was akin to asking me to translate Swahili, but they kept right on asking.  In the dramatic screen-play of college romance, I didn’t have a role – but I was the script prompter. 

In my senior year, my roommates and I held an Anti-Valentines party, complete with black torn hearts.  After that, I ignored the pseudo-holiday to the best of my ability.  Still, I was pretty much convinced that I just didn’t belong in the same universe as anything even vaguely romantic.

Roughly five years later, I met Jay.  I immediately thought he was pretty fabulous, of course – but that doesn’t mean that there were any hearts, or doilies, or icky sentiment – of course not!  We went hiking together, and talked about good books, and recounted past outdoor adventures, and discussed world events – you know, the sort of things one does with a guy who is not prone to brooding or improbable misunderstandings. 

One October day, about two months after we’d first met, as the first snowflakes of the season drifted down, Jay met me at the door with a gift.  “I thought of giving you flowers,” he said.  “But… you aren’t really a flowers sort of person… so I got you these.”  And he handed me a pair of back-country skis. 

I’d never owned my own pair before, although I’d skied quite a bit on borrowed ones.  When I protested at such a gift, he demurred that they’d been heavily discounted.  “Besides, I wanted you to have them… because… well, I want to spend a lot of time out skiing with you,” he explained simply.

I skied with him.  I married him.  We produced two children, and had yet more adventures. 

Twelve years later, there I was, watching the kids working away industriously at their Valentines.  When one of them proudly showed me the one she’d created for her bestest friend, ‘Pterodactyl’, I found myself grinning at her kindergarten spelling. 

“Happy Valitis Day” the card proclaimed.

Valitis!  So that’s what it was!  Back in my not-ill-spent-enough youth, I spent far too many years suffering from valitis.  But luckily, sometime just before the turn of the millennium, aided by a pair of skis in the hands of the right person, it became obvious to me that I can be plenty loving, and yes, even a true romantic, without subscribing to the maudlin, mawkish version of Valentine’s Day being served up to me in the aisles of Fred Meyers. 

This year, on the 14^th, Jay bought us all fresh strawberries, melon, and pineapple in blessedly ordinary packaging.  The kids handed out their paper missives -- even to Warthog and Lemur.  They seemed to buy into my explanation that these examples of kindness and generosity – not to mention Very Best Handwriting – might help make the recipients nicer kids, in the long term.  I may have almost believed it myself.  And this past weekend, I skied a hundred miles through snowy forests and beneath dancing aurora, [but that’s the next blog post] while my fabulous husband took care of the twins and held down the fort. I had plenty of time to cogitate on what I think Valentines Day ought to be about.

I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out the variety of romance and the brand of sentimentalism that doesn’t give me hives.  I certainly know I’m lucky.  But I reserve the right to ridicule the February Seasonal Display – and I’m still not going to eat those chalky little hearts.

Holding the universe together

“Mommy… how do you spell ‘duct tape’?”

I was standing at the kitchen counter, grouchily attempting to make tea in an electric kettle with a jammed lid.  My daughter was kneeling on the floor, pen in hand, brow furrowed in concentration.  She was writing out another section of her science fair project report.  The text below each section header was short and to the point, in keeping with the attention spans of twin five-year-old scientists.  The handwriting wobbled precariously.  Hypothesis: The big parachute will be slower.  Methods: We dropped the dolls and timed how long it took.  Now she was up to Materials: Two dolls, stopwatch, trash bags, scissors, string…  duct tape.

This, I thought, was not going to be one of those shiny, polished, no-expense-spared projects that wow the judges.

Sometimes I feel like my whole world is patched, welded, crazy-glued, jury-rigged, re-strung, puttied-over, wired together, and – of course—duct taped.  My right heel is wrapped in the stuff.  So is my left thumb, my bicycle seat, and both my old ski poles.  For the most part, the repairs are perfectly functional.  The gray sticky stuff works better on winter-cracked skin than any salve or balm I’ve tried.  The bike is oddly comfy and fabulously theft-proof in its taped-up glory.  Still, shouldn’t my world look a little less slap-dash and a lot less redneck?  I can’t help thinking that I probably shouldn’t be living a lifestyle that includes rolls of duct tape in every color of the rainbow.

Back east, where I grew up, duct tape was neither a fashion accessory nor a structural housing component.  Thus, I didn’t start out as a duct tape addict – at least, not exactly – although I have to admit that the inclinations were there from an early age.  I didn’t have eleven rolls of the stuff when I was a kid.  In fact, I’d never even heard of it.  But I was a big fan of all the other kinds of tape I knew – scotch, masking, and the coveted electrical – and I also had a heavy hand with the household supplies of string, cardboard, and glue.  I took apart the broken vacuum cleaner, built elaborate doll furniture from Quaker Oats boxes, and hoarded magnets, binder clips, shoe boxes, popsicle sticks, and wire. I suspect that if I’d known of duct tape’s flexible strength, its wondrous stickiness, its almost-waterproof resiliency, and the satisfying noise it makes as it comes off the roll, I would have saved up my twenty-five-cents-a-week allowance for almost nothing else.

Back then, I hadn’t yet internalized the stigma of looking like a half-hearted hobo.  Aesthetics and propriety meant nothing to me, and I didn’t know the jokes about blue tarps.  But now I look at all my repairs and Rube-Goldberging with a more critical eye.  I COULD afford a new bike seat.  I don’t HAVE to wear a jacket with a zipper that has blue teeth on the left and black teeth on the right.  The extension cord hanging from the ceiling is not particularly attractive.  And do cardboard boxes really constitute a filing system?

I tell myself that I could give up my string, my cardboard, my glue, and even my tape habit – really I could – except that things keep breaking.  In twelfth-grade physics I learned about entropy:  no matter what we do, the overall orderliness of the universe is always going to decrease.  Potential energy turns to kinetic energy, the energy of motion.  Kinetic energy, under the influence of friction, is wasted as heat.  Heat dissipates.  Things fall apart.  And when they do, we all have to fight uphill against entropy by borrowing orderliness from some other corner of the universe.  Some people do this by buying NEW things.  Shiny things.  Smooth, glossy, matching, professionally painted things.  Nancy gets out the duct tape.

The hope that I’ll be cured of all my patching is stymied by my surroundings.  If duct tape has a hometown, it’s Fairbanks Alaska. I’ve seen people using it to hold together clothing, trucks, and heavy equipment.  I’ve heard it works pretty well short-term in lieu of stitches, if you happen to have any gaping wounds.  But for all its uses, popular wisdom nonetheless labels duct tape as tacky, slip-shod, and possibly even a sign of moral decay.

I banged the kettle on the countertop slightly too aggressively.

“What are you doing, Mommy?”  The young scientist was temporarily distracted from her writing exercise.

“Trying to fix this… problematic… kettle,” I growled.  I have to be selective in my use of adjectives in front of the kids.

“Can I help you?  Please, I can fix it!”  My wannabe-helper was already reaching for the large plastic bin on the lowest shelf – the one that holds the duct tape.

“This isn’t a duct tape problem,” I explained.  The lid on the electric kettle was stuck open.  This made the water boil more slowly.  More importantly, it prevented the kettle from turning off when it did boil.  For someone like me, with the attention span of a gnat, auto-shutoff is a must. So I took a good look at the lid.  There was a little poky plastic thingy on the inside of the hinge that needed to be pushed in, but I couldn’t do it with my fingers without jamming a hole in my thumb.

“Let me!  Please, can I try?”  This was my fix-it kid.  She knows the difference between Phillips and flat-head, between D-cell, C-cell, double-A, and triple-A.  She knows that Elmer’s All-Purpose only works on porous surfaces, that bike tubes should be gently abraded with sandpaper before application of the glue and patch, and that seam allowances are a must.  She wouldn’t be able to fix the kettle, I thought, but she’d nag me about it insatiably until I let her try.  Sometimes, as I supply both my kids’ cardboard, string, and paste habits, I have an eerie feeling that I’m being charged for my own crimes, with thirty years worth of back interest due.

 I handed her the ornery thing, and started packing school lunch boxes instead.

She examined the kettle carefully.  “The problem is this little poky part,” she said after a minute or two.  “But I can’t push it in, because it hurts my fingers.”

Well, yeah.

We puzzled it out together.   “I’d use a thimble,” I said, “but I don’t have one.  At least, I don’t think I do.  But how about this pen?  It has a small indentation on the lid, and it’s narrow enough to do the job.”

She nodded earnest agreement.

 Pop.  The little plastic gizmo slid back into place.  The kettle shut with a click.  I smiled at my accomplice, and she beamed back.  The lid was still crooked.  As far as I could discern, it would always be crooked.  But I was pleased – more than pleased.  I realized that I wasn’t just compromising and making do with a less-than-perfect hot-drink appliance.   I actually liked it better that way, crooked lid and all.  I’d shared a sense of victory with my young co-conspirator.  We’d overcome an obstacle.

Moreover, we’d kept one more chunk of stainless steel, copper, and plastic out of the Fairbanks landfill.   Recycling is the guilt-panacea of a throw-away society.  Not dumping stuff in the first place is recycling's old-fashioned predecessor.   So what if the kettle didn’t look perfect?  Fixing it made it more mine – more ours – than it had ever been before.

 My fix-it kid hastened back to her original task.  “Look,” she said, proud of herself.  “See, I’m all done with the ‘Materials’ part.”  She held up her work for my inspection.

As I carefully examined her efforts, I recalled the peculiar sight of the identical naked dolls hurtling off the cabin loft, each with her own trash-bag-and-string parachute.  The larger parachute was indeed slower.  And the duct tape harnesses held up beautifully.  I imagined these items artfully arranged on a table in front of the kids’ display board – which itself was re-used, with telltale rips from the previous scientific efforts of my neighbor’s kid. 

I thought of the emails that periodically circulate around the university, in which biologists, physicists, and chemists are asked to please please please offer up a few hours for such-and-such elementary school.  It dawned on me that the project would be graded by off-duty scientist-parents – people like me.  And, perhaps more to the point, the scientists would be fellow Fairbanksans.

D-U-C-T  T-A-P-E.  The words stared up at me in purple marker from the bottom of the page.

 “The judges,” I said, “are going to love it.”

Poor Resolution

When I returned home after our family’s winter vacation – with a backpack crammed with dirty laundry and a feeling of nagging panic about all my unanswered work emails – I discovered several New Years letters and photos in my mailbox, snuggling up against my burly credit card bill.  That is to say, some of my friends sent actual mail, in envelopes.  They put appropriate postage on the envelopes, along with my full address, correctly spelled.  In the letters, they described noteworthy happenings and momentous achievements of 2011.  In the photos, all members of their families, even their dogs, were smiling… at the same time. 

These, I suspect, are the friends who not only make New Year’s resolutions, but also keep them.

I’ve sent out my share of December-ish emails over the past fifteen years, and even a smattering of cards, but I’m beginning to realize that the true Holiday Letter may not be an art form that’s within my reach.  I have trouble keeping track of what continents my friends inhabit, let alone their street addresses.  When I take photos, I usually have to crop out whichever kid has a finger up her nose.  When I try to characterize my family’s  achievements, I end up with a blog full of essays with titles like “Jedi Dentistry” and “The Zen of Attention-Deficit Snowpants.”  The proper ushering in of a new calendar year is beyond me, because I am the kind of person who not only fails to keep New Year’s resolutions, but cannot even remember what, if any, I made. 

I sat down on the floor with my daughters and let them open the cards.  They scrutinized the photos and eyed me suspiciously.  “How come we don’t know who these kids are?” they demanded.  The idea that I can have friends whom I haven’t talked to in twelve years makes no sense at all to people who are only half a decade old.  The previous millennium seems as recent to them as the Pleistocene.

Because Mommy is not very good at keeping up with people.  Wasn’t that one of the things I resolved to do better last year? 

I don’t recall exactly, but I’m pretty sure 2011 was the year in which I was going to (1) become vastly more organized at work, (2) author three or four academic publications, and (3) finish all projects ahead of deadlines.  I also wanted to (4) get a novel published.  I hoped I’d teach my kids to (5) swim like guppies, (6) ski like miniature Norwegian Olympians, and (7) read books with chapters and actual plots.  At the very least (8), I’d make sure they regularly picked up after themselves. I’d acquire (9) such unflagging patience that I’d never say things like, “I don’t care if your crayon masterpiece is incomplete, just put on your jacket before I start screaming.”   I’d become (10) a real athlete, as opposed to a person who just kind of happens to run and bike and ski a lot.  I would eschew (11) chocolate – at least in unreasonable quantities.  In 2011, I intended to (12) clean up my piles of paperwork, sacks of unlabeled sewing stuff, and topsy-turvy bookshelves.  I was going to be (13) less wasteful, more charitable and less hypocritical.  And I would (14) send personal mail to all the friends whom I really think about a lot -- really I do.

That hypothetical 2011 was an awfully good year.  A landmark year.  A year worthy of real envelopes and commemorative seasonal postage.  Alas, however, reality intruded.  

“Who’s this?”  One of the kids handed me a photo.  I named the college friend smiling next to his wife.  They are having a baby.  Either that, or she swallowed a cantaloupe.  I found the announcement of the good news in the attached letter, and immediately felt the urge to start talking parent-stuff with them.  Don’t worry, I’d say.  You just kind of learn as you go along.  But I’m not sure I’m a credible witness.

In the non-theoretical 2011, I didn’t drop a single Santa-stamped missive in the mailbox – and my good-intentions tally-sheet is looking a bit bare.  My desk at work (1) is littered with crooked stacks of paperwork, dirty dishes, and semi-legible exhortations to myself.  The only journal articles I’ve gotten my name on (2) include me as the eleventeenth author, along with someone’s third cousin, the local barber, and a stray Golden Retriever.  As for deadlines (3), I am now working on not one, not two, but three overdue projects.  My current goal is to avoid having to extend the extended extensions.

Three novels (4) are festering ignominiously on my hard-drive.  The twins can only swim (5) if I strap plenty of Styrofoam around their torsos and allow them to abstain from all contact between their faces and the water.  They can ski (6) a couple of miles at a waddling shuffle, falling spectacularly at every hint of a hill.  Their reading skills (7) extend only as far as “Biscuit’s New Friend” and “Puppy Mudge Has a Snack.”  I won’t even comment on (8) other than to inquire as to whether you have ever stepped on a piece of Lego while barefoot?  The answer to this question links directly to my abject failure in area (9), particularly pertaining to use of the Mean Mommy Voice.

As for (10), I was the second-to-last swimmer out of the water in last summer’s half-Ironman, and the second-to-last skier across the finish line in the White Mountains 100 last winter, and in neither case did I look even vaguely dignified. 

What was (11)?  Oh.  Chocolate.  Ummm… have you got any?  Because I think I already ate everything left over from Christmas. 

My personal organization (12) sadly matches my organization at work.  Although some of my stray bits of fabric turned into heartfelt kid-woven potholders at Christmas, the remainder have taken revenge by multiplying.  Likewise, when I take unwanted books to the charming folks at Gulliver’s, they reward me with credit towards more second-hand books.  I lug around a weird assortment of necessities – spare bike tubes, Dora Bandaids, plastic spoons, banana chips – in a bag that squirrels chewed holes in five years ago.  I have fourteen unmatched socks.

I flew on far too many planes in 2011 to qualify (13) as un-wasteful or un-hypocritical.  I deleted nine out of every ten emails imploring me to take important political action.  I sent my kids off to school without even considering volunteering for the PTA.  Finally, number (14) brings me full circle, because, as previously mentioned, intending to write to friends is not the same as actually doing so.

Zero for fourteen. Clearly, I missed the mark on every resolution I made.  Or perhaps I only flubbed every resolution I didn’t make.  And therein I spy the loophole, the glorious ambiguity, the escape route for my guilt.  Because if my primary flaw is inability to remember my own goals, then perhaps I can engage in a little after-the-fact bar-lowering.  What if my resolutions were just a trace more lenient than I recall them being?

In that case, I can revisit my intentions with a rose-colored spotlight.  I can feel pleased that there is nothing (1) actually rotting in my cubicle. I can take comfort in the fact that three lead authors (2) remembered how to spell my name in the et al. section, and that I managed to (3) secure all necessary project extensions before anyone at Grants and Contracts suffered apoplexy.  The three novels (4) will serve as good practice for the next three, which could turn out to be startlingly publishable.  My kids are at least willing to get into the water (5), to get back on their feet again seventeen times in half an hour of skiing (6), and to attempt to decode the drastically un-phonetic mess that is written English (7).  Upon at least one occasion they have put away Legos spontaneously (8).  Even if I have not acquired greater patience (9) I’m pretty sure I’ve never shrieked at them in the grocery store or started swearing like a sailor.  I did manage to finish (10) a triathlon, a marathon, and a hundred-mile ski race. I’m pretty sure that along with all the chocolate I ate there was some (11) that I resisted.  There was that one day when I cleaned out a box or two of stuff (12), and I did give both time and money to good causes (13), albeit in a sporadic sort of way.

And number (14)?  Keeping up with friends?  Well… I’m flat out of stationery, but there are outlets for people like me.  E-mail.  An online kid-photo site, for those who are genetically programmed to appreciate that sort of thing.  More email.  Facebook.  A third e-mail account, just for good measure.  And, of course, the last resort of the desperate mass-communicator: a blog.

As I wrote a check to cover the large credit-card bill, the kids were still looking at the photos.  They honed in on one.  They liked the look of this family.  “Let’s go visit them,” they proposed.

So… if we show up on your doorstep one of these days… it wasn’t my idea.  But I wholeheartedly approved it. Because, you know, even if I’m a little uncertain about my resolutions, and even if I’m incapable of maintaining an address book, I’m sure I miss you guys.

Happy Belated New Year, everyone.

We Wish You a Merry... Something

"Just put the food wherever you can find a spot."

I struggle to comply, bumping shoulders with a hundred or so other parents. We are bracing ourselves for the peerless form of entertainment/torture/instant nostalgia known as a Kindergarten Holiday Program.  

As the first dissonant notes of "Rudolph" bombard my ears, I plunk a steaming plate of latkes on the potluck table.

I'm not really sure why I brought this particular contribution to add to the array of mac-and-cheese, peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwiches, and green-and-red-frosted cookies. Am I trying to make a point about diversity?  Am I just trying to use up the summer-farm-share potatoes that are sprouting in the pantry?  Or am I, in my irreligiousness, perversely insistent on the misuse of holiday traditions? 

Two days previously, I served up a similar tray of steaming, satisfyingly crispy-with-oil potato pancakes with apple sauce.  My neighbors and family dug in.

            "Ok, so tell us about Hanukkah," one of my friends prompted.

"Um." I felt a moment of latke-imposter panic. I muddled my vague way through the story.  Maccabees.  Oil to burn in the temple.  Only one day's worth, but it miraculously lasts for eight. The tale is a parable of hope in the face of fear, oppression and darkness.  But I was afraid I was getting the details all wrong, and mangling other people's beliefs.

Not that this was anything new.  I've been wreaking havoc on rituals all my life - although it never occurred to me to worry about it when I was a kid. Growing up, I happily wallowed in a cultural mishmash.  It was my not-at-all Christian father who played carols on the piano, because he's got a good ear for a tune, while Mom is 97% tone-deaf. It was my not-at-all Jewish mother who relished hot latkes, whereas Dad was not convinced that potatoes could masquerade as a main dish.  My father was a fan of big, burly-looking Christmas trees laden with skeins of lights, shatter-hazard glass baubles, and awkward craft projects created by my sister and myself.  Mom made black, dense, weirdly alcoholic-smelling Christmas pudding -- being British, she simply couldn't help herself. 

My cousins celebrated Hanukkah and were Bar- and Bat-Mitzvahed, but they came over for Christmas anyhow.  My grandmother, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, and my grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Turkey, wrapped presents in red and green paper and shouted "Ho, ho, ho," as they came through the door.  To complicate my ethnicity further, "Fresco" was originally a Spanish name, not a Turkish one -- although I didn't learn this until years later.  When Spanish Jews became unpopular during the Inquisition, their more tolerant Islamic neighbors offered hope and sanctuary in the face of tyranny. 

We kids, of course, were big fans of Santa Claus, and loved making a huge mess with reindeer-shaped cookie cutters.  I also liked the secular version of the Christmas story.  It included a new baby, brave young parents, and a whole menagerie of animals.  It involved a bright star -- a symbol of hope in the darkness.

"… On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…"  Seventy-five little voices valiantly surge on, each in their own key, as Mrs. Claar kneels on the floor holding up cue cards in rapid succession.  "… two turtle doves…"

Mrs. Claar's kindergarten class is awash in paper poinsettias, Santas, and menorahs.  For all I know, my quarter-ethnically-Sephardic never-been-near-a-synagogue kids may be the most Jewish five-year-olds in the school.  Nonetheless, they've all been learning about traditions -- lots of traditions.  The other day the twins came home with crowns of paper candles on their heads. I was not previously acquainted with Saint Lucia -- thank goodness for Wikipedia.  According to legend, she took food to fellow Christians hiding in catacombs in Rome.  Her candles are a symbol of hope in the face of oppression and darkness.  The kids insisted on wearing their faux-candles up and down every aisle of the grocery store.  I hoped no one would ask me any questions.

It wasn't until I was an adult that I began to feel guilty about co-opting traditions that didn't belong to me.  Was I annoying people?  An irreligious Christmas, I know, offends some Christians.  I feel anxious about that, and at the same time grateful to my extended family-by-marriage, all much more religious that I will ever be, who have accepted me so unreservedly.  I love this season -- the warmth, the sharing, the music, the joy, the cookies.  I love selecting the presents and squirreling them away.  I like the tree, the lights, the chestnuts, and the snow. But I will never be a church-goer.

Borrowing a different religious tradition would be, of course, no better.  Over that first dinner-time batch of latkes, I asked the kids, "Does anyone in your class celebrate Hanukkah?"

They both thought about it.  "Abdul doesn't celebrate Christmas," Lizzy offered.

Well, no, I'm sure he doesn't. I see Abdul's mother every day at pick-up time, smiling and modest in her hijab.  I'm guessing he doesn't celebrate Hanukkah, either.  Maybe New Years?  Will Abdul's parents fill their house with delicious baking and roasting smells?  Will they buy some ribbons and fancy wrapping paper for New Year's presents for their little boy, big-eyed-adorable behind his glasses? 

I scan the rows of eager little faces, and there he is, two rows behind Lizzy, singing his heart out.  "…eight maids-a-milking, seven swans-a-swimming…"  So far, the songs have all been Christmas ones.  Non-religious ones, to be sure, but still… isn't there a solstice tune on offer?

The kindergarten concert is, in fact, taking place on the winter solstice.  What's more, it started at 11:00 - almost the precise moment at which the sun was scheduled to rise on this shortest day of the year.  From here on, the days will get longer -- and all of us in the far north will get just a mite less lethargic, less crabby, and less downright morose.  Solstice in Fairbanks is not just a minor celestial phenomenon - it's a mood-altering Very Big Deal. Moreover, it seems like it should be a holiday that we can all agree on.

Solstice customs make all other traditions look positively new-fangled.  From Amaterasu (Japan) to Ziemassvētki (Latvia), Wikipedia details thirty-nine different holidays centered around the darkest days of the year.  Many are old-new chimeras of ancient customs and more recent ideas.  Decorated trees, candles, gift giving, singing, and feasting are all solstice traditions that predate Christmas, so my religious ritual-pilfering is, in fact, rather broad-brushstroke – as is everyone elses.  The timing of all this merriment is not coincidental.  For ancient people in cold climates -- with limited sources of food, light, and warmth in the winter -- celebrations offered something they desperately needed, regardless of the details of their beliefs: hope in a time of fear and darkness.

I could be much more creative with my borrowing.  I could cover my doorposts with butter for the sun-goddess Beiwe.  I could leave a colander on my doorstep, or try spraying red bean porridge around my house to keep away ghosts.  Or perhaps I might run around the neighborhood singing and carrying a dead wren.

Or I could relax, brush the proverbial chip off my shoulder, and attend a concert at which no animal sacrifices are required, and the kids do the singing. 

The partridges and pear trees have finally ground to their climax, and the kids have started a new tune.  "All I really need is a song in my heart… food in my belly… and love in my family…"  Seventy-five pairs of hands are pantomiming the song in sign language along with the words.  Unexpectedly, I find my enjoyment crossing the line from semi-ironic to genuine.  "…and I need the rain to fall, and I need the sun to shine, to give life to the seeds we sow, to give the food we need to grow, grow…"

There's my little Molly, wearing a red shirt, red pants that are too loose and keep sliding down to show her underwear, and a long brown skirt on top.  "Did she pick her own outfit?" a classmate's mother asks me, grinning.  Her own son is fidgeting and making faces.  I nod, laughing.  There's my Lizzy, shyly pink-cheeked and relegated to the front row because she's a short kid in a tall family.  There's Alito. Therese… Kaya… Sneferu… Ta'kosha… Ayla… Jamal… John.

"…and I need some clean water for drinking…and I need some clean air for breathing… so that I can grow up strong and take my place where I belong…"

And there's Abdul, who I now realize is looking right at his mom and dad, both proudly in attendance.

"…all I really need is a song in my heart and love in my family…"

It's snowing outside, so even the brief allotted hint of solstice daylight is obscured.  But unlike our ancestors, we know the days will get longer.  We know the light will return.  Unlike many people out there in this small-large world, we know the potluck table is groaning with hotdogs-in-blankets, spaghetti, and latkes.  Not everyone is so lucky.  Not everyone has hope in the face of oppression, fear, and darkness.  Mentally, I estimate how much I've spend on gifts this year.  I double it.  And I vow that when I get home, I'll send it to Oxfam and Amnesty International.

The kids finish up their program with "Jingle Bells." They pour off the makeshift stage, still jingling. Moments later, I have one over-excited kid hanging off one arm, and one off the other.  I can barely move.  I look up and see a set of parents smiling empathetically at my predicament as they collect their own hyped-up kid -- Abdul. 

"Happy New Year," I say.  They return the good wishes.

            Then the kids and I line up to get some latkes.