EG had the Today show on as I puttered around the house. Unpacking and sorting laundry, I overheard a feature story about how the FDA is considering the regulation of salt. In our great land, any yutz can get their hands on a gun. Beer is sold in kegs and tobacco owns half of Washington D.C., but the FDA is fussing over salt.
I am a member of the TV dinner generation. Bonding time in my house consisted of Swanson and CBS. I considered Archie, Edith, Gloria and the Meathead among my family members. Florida and J.J. were like cousins to me. When Sherman Helmsley moved on up, I went with him, and I didn’t separate my own experiences from those lived through these characters on television. Perhaps growing up in a world where there was always a punch line and a happy ending has skewed my expectations for adulthood. In my adult reality I don’t have the luxury of being the zany, scheming housewife who is always forgiven by her handsome Cuban-American husband. I’m not the wise-cracking wife of a bus driver who always finds a way to love her stubborn, chubby husband in spite of his many faults. Real living is much more complex than the 30 minutes of family life I saw on the screen, but I still hold fast to my childhood TV family.Getting out to see the world and visiting places I'd never otherwise see, that's an incredible perk of my job. I don't begrudge the travel, but I miss my family terribly. I mourn the loss of each and every minute we didn't have together. Yet this morning, as Delta 1272 ascended over North Florida, I was thinking about some of the simpler things I'd be missing the next few days.
I'll miss our morning run. At home, with my running buddy, we can run the same route every day and it never becomes boring. In fact, the sameness of our route is comforting. Mile markers are noted with the passing of a sign or a tree, not a cold, impersonal LED display. The run outdoors is a rarity when I'm on the road. Either the climate or the traffic is unfriendly. Running on a treadmill is pure drudgery. Even with the distractions of television, iPod, and a magazine all I can do is count down the minutes remaining.
I'll miss my breakfast ritual. Lately I've been enjoying a tall post-run cranberry pomegranate spritzer. I fill our biggest cup 3/4 of the way with seltzer, 3/16 with cranberry juice and 1/16 with Pom Wonderful (give or take). It's bubbly, full of antioxidants, and the cranberries are supposed to keep the parts clear of bad fungi. The spritzer is the perfect cocktail to wash down the melty peanut butter coated English muffin. That customized meal is an impossibility on the road. I usually settle for a Styrofoam cup of instant oatmeal and a mini box of raisins, a meal I can prepare in my room using the immersion heater in my self-fashioned frequent traveler's survival kit.
I'll miss Big Pillow. My trusty body pillow, a friend I found more than a decade ago during pregnancy. Snuggling up with this 5 foot long squishy pillow has cured many an aching muscle. Because of its size, it cannot stow away on the plane with me. The best I can do is bring one of Big Pillow's cases with me and stuff it full of lumpy hotel pillows.
For so many big reasons, and many more little ones, there really is no place like home.
Thinking about opera and my ancient history as an ingenue of the operatic stage has really brought me back. My roots and interests in the arts didn't grow out of a childhood packed with exposure to the finer things. I was brought up on Long Island, exposed to a steady diet of Laverne and Shirley, TV Dinners, and Land of the Lost and David and Goliath weekends. Others who studied opera in the New York area were weaned on Mozart and The Met.
I think I was attracted to the arts because they have a transforming quality. A performing artist lives twice as much: once as herself, and once through the character. I was also attracted to the promise of the immortality of fame. My naive teenage thought process had me convinced that with "Fame, I'm gonna' live forever.." and living forever sounded a lot better than dying. I guess I assumed that my rendering of Papagena or Marcellina would be a hot conversation topic for centuries to come.
My line of thinking was reflected in a memoir I just finished reading, Alan Alda's, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself. In a chapter he titled "Celebrity and its Discontents" he reflected on his relationship with fame. At first it was a slice of his motivation to pursue a career in acting. He said of fame, "Of course I'd wanted it. It was a way to live forever. There was even a moment in my life when I'd worked out a strategy for eternal life." He certainly attained a fame that was widespread. He noted that a poll conducted in the 1970s found that more grade school-aged kids recognized his face than the image of Abraham Lincoln. He wrote that in his twenties, he'd determined a new method of acquiring immortality, writing. "...I wanted to write really well because otherwise my work wouldn't last very long. Writing lasted..." But his years and his experiences have taught him something else about living forever, that "It all evaporates."
So if someone with the wisdom and world view of Alan Alda has come to recognize that everything we do simply evaporates, where is the motivation for living well? For making art? For doing right? He answered that he finds wisdom in Bosco's Belly. Bosco, his grandchildren's dog, has attained life's true meaning. Watching Bosco lapse into dreamland while having his belly scratched reminds Alda that there is a point to life. "Of course there's a point. Life is the point," he wrote.
So, my friends and fellow blogistas, I urge you to take a moment today and make a point. Stop and smell the roses, or the freshly laundered, warm towels. Savor that sip of tea, or that crumbly melting biscuit. Pause to listen to birdsong, cat meowing, or baby cooing. Take the sun on your face, because fully living every moment may be the only way we can live forever and make a point with our lives.
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And now, taking a cue from Cora Spondence, blogger extraordinaire, what was your moment of immortality today?
I really like doing the laundry. There's something gratifying about the process. Clean becomes dirty. What was soiled is fresh again. Folding it, warm and smelling good from the dryer, satisfies all my senses.
Puttering around the kitchen makes me happy. Last night, for no good reason, I made 2 kinds of soup and a loaf of bread. I conjured up a vat of Split Pea because I was chilly. Then I tried a new recipe from Women's Health magazine for a turkey, barley and greens soup. A great way to use some leftovers, low fat, high-fiber and scrumptious. Isn't it something about soup, how the whole is greater than the sum of the parts? Wonderful chemical reactions made for a delicious 7PM snack, alongside a 3 ingredient (dairy free) recipe I found for beer bread. Having also nabbed this one in Women's Health magazine, I had no regrets about our late, light supper.
As I think about our day, I'm looking forward to our simple plans. We'll try out the legs again, having rested according to published advice after Thursday's big run. 7-8 miles ought to do us. Then maybe some light yard work between the raindrops: a little hedge trimming and whacking back the crepe myrtle and bottle brush beasts. Doing nothing special on a cloudy Sunday, it's delicious.
I skipped a day of posting.
I know I didn't pinky swear to the 30 day challenge like some other blogistas, but I was feeling pretty good about the streak of blogs I was cranking out. Yesterday I didn't post because I reconvened with The Mouse.
We departed at 7AM, minivan full of cousins and coffee to journey to the land of happiness. Yes, the place is friggin' expensive. My sis bought 1-day tickets for herself and my nephew. $120 plus tax, no park-hopper options. EJG and I buckled and decided to renew our status as passholders. 4 single day visits equate the cost of a Florida resident seasonal pass. We'll surely be back 3 more times before November 2008, especially if we're invited to the LMJ inaugural Mouse run.
After running 13+ miles, cooking and cleaning on Thursday, the legs held up remarkably well. We were in the Big Kahuna of Family Fun, the Magic Kingdom. In an effort to maximize my sis's one-day ticket dollar, we just about closed the place at midnight. Images of roller coasters, parades, fireworks and more than a few snacks filled our heads as we climbed back into the minivan for the return trip. Feeling peppy (and recently caffeinated) I volunteered to drive, reserving the right to call EJG up from the farm team, should the starting line poop out.
Somewhere north of the intersection of I-4 and I-95 I was slapping myself, blowing pitches into my diet coke bottle, and making my own words up to the nonstop Christmas music on the radio (damn, that I forgot the XM hookup). I decided to do something totally out of character. I gave up.
Off the exit ramp, EJG and I switched places so quickly, I don't think the car ever went out of drive. He was rested, having snoozed from the park exit forward, so he was ready to step in and take over. We arrived safely, just after 2AM. To sleep in our own bed was worth the grueling late night trip. But I lay in bed for a while, reading yet another sign. There was a time I could fight the urge to doze. Clearly, I ain't what I used to be.
Half of a marathon was a whole lot of running for us. The cool, wet weather was a help in managing the trek (which clocked out at 14.2 miles on my GPS). Near the race's end I cranked up the iPod to hear the tunes over the screaming of my knees. How smart I was to have downloaded a good chunk of an iTunes essentials list. Some dude must've graduated high school when I did. His HS Faves list propelled me through the last 5 miles. Thank you Thomas Dolby, Duran Duran, A-Ha, and Falco.
Even with the tunes for mental inspiration and the caffeinated power blocks for physical inspiration, it got a little rough at the end. Turning a corner and heading for mile marker 13 I was questioning the sanity of this running habit we've developed.
Then something occurred that is truly beyond my explanation. Maybe it's the same motivation that compels people to donate a kidney, or to fall on a grenade for a comrade. Truly, an act of nobility that was amazing in its selflessness. In the chilly morning rain on the Thanksgiving holiday, 3 of the most special people I know willingly left the warmth and comfort of home, drove for 2o minutes, and waited for an hour on a strange street corner just to be there for us.
Forget about Black Friday, 4 AM sales or the presents under the tree. One of the best presents I ever received can't be gift wrapped.
