Month: May 2020

The title is literally accurate, but not in the sense that I was attending school. Nobody in my family attended any type of school or program before kindergarten, which I think was normal in those days?

We lived in a townhouse in Burke built in 1972, which we moved into in May of that year when I was three months old (and where my parents still live). My world existed in that house, on the sidewalks that formed a C in front of three rows of houses, and in the small patches of woods tucked into the corners and running behind the rows of houses.

One of my earliest memories was of a tree in one of those patches of woods between our row and the row caddycorner, thankfully spared when they built the neighborhood. A miraculous tree had grown here: the lower part of it ran parallel to the ground and then stretched straight up to the sky. I knew what it was the second I laid eyes on it: a pony, just my size. Actually, I had to be lifted onto it for a few years, and then as I grew, I was able to swing my leg up and over and get on by myself. Over the years, I visited it less frequently, and I was completely flabbergasted by how small it was when I went to check on it in high school. At some point, it must have died; when I visited it as an adult, it was gone.

Another memory from around this time also involves a tree. A bigger stretch of woods ran behind the row of houses directly across from us. One day we decided to play house in these woods, and I found the perfect place to make dinner. The base of a tree had a big hole in it, so I decided to make soup for the family. It’s a simple recipe: two heaping pails of mud, a generous handful of leaves, and a small bucket of water. Stir with a stick, and voila!

My days are running into each other, and they don’t usually look significantly different, so I decided to write about memories that have stuck with me throughout my life, snapshots that have etched themselves on my brain.

The Way Back

My earliest memory consists of a few flashes of images. I am being held by someone (I assume my mom) in a quiet, darkened unfamiliar room, which I later was told must have been the hotel where we were staying in Ocean City, New Jersey when I was a toddler. The shades were drawn, but the irrepressible sun managed to shoot its rays around the edges of the shade. It must have been my naptime.

Another one, from roughly the same time in my life, is in the kitchen. My mom had just walked out the door to go to her night class at George Mason (back when it was a commuter school), and I was standing at the kitchen window sobbing, watching her get into the car, start the engine, and pull out of the spot. The light from the streetlamps stretched into long, vertical lines because of the tears in my eyes. Man, I wanted my mom.

My dreams have finally caught up to the currently reality. Up until a few days ago, the world of my dreams were still safe from Corona World. I would talk with people other than my family with only a couple feet between us, I would be out without a mask, perhaps going to see live music, lying on a beach, teaching in a classroom, cheering on a team from crowded stands.

This morning, I woke up a little out of sorts – beyond the standard out-of-sorts common these days -and realized it was because I wasn’t able to escape reality in my dreams the previous night. I was stuck in the same socially distant, homebound world of my waking hours.

Years ago, I used to be able to fly at will and jump off mountains for fun in my dreams. I think you call this lucid dreaming; you know you’re dreaming, so you can do whatever you want. I remember cruising through the air high above, scanning the landscape as it zoomed past way below. I would run up to the tops of buildings, knowing I could jump off and it would be fine – better than fine, actually.

I need to get back to those lucid dreams so I can throw caution to the wind without consequence and dance at a party, walk down a beach with warm sand between my toes, cheer on the Nats with my Dad, and be with all the people I’ve missed these past eight weeks. I know those days will return someday, but if I want to experience it now, it’s going to have to be in my dreams.

Instead of writing about how I balled my eyes out watching our students sing pre-recorded songs from the musical that wasn’t, and how I was on the verge of throwing this soul-crushing laptop out the window because I can’t reach through it and give a gentle shoulder tap to those who are not engaging, I will write about cats.

My first cat was Mama Cat. I must have been about eight when she came into our lives. I was hanging out on the next court up from mine with my sister and some other kids when we noticed a long-haired brown tabby lying in front of someone’s house with a very big belly. She looked like she wanted to run when she saw us, but she stayed put. A downcast man came outside, and we asked him if he knew this cat. He said it was his ex-wife’s cat and that we could have her if we wanted. “By the way,” he added, “she’s pregnant.”

“MOM!! We have to save this cat. She’s about to have babies and her owner doesn’t want her anymore.” About a week later, we watched Mama give birth in a wooden enclosure in my parents’ bedroom. My mom found homes for all the kittens and we were left with only her. Mama roamed the court as she pleased, but she spent a good bit of time inside, as well. We have a picture of her in a dress in my doll stroller with me pinning her down (gently) as I strolled her around the house. She never did bite me, but she would have had every right to. As she aged, her naps became more frequent, and she would often sleep in the middle of the street in front of our house, which, fortunately, was a dead end. Cars would pull right up to her and she would either continue sleeping or stare them down. Eventually, the driver would have to get out and physically move her so they could park. She lived to be 18.

Next came Papa, a short-haired brown tabby who roamed the street I lived on my senior year at JMU. We all called him Papa because he seemed to own the block. Everyone fed him, but nobody claimed him. As graduation rolled around and we began making plans to leave, people started saying to me, “I guess you’re taking Papa, right?”

A month later, as I packed my car to move out to Portland, Oregon with two friends, Papa was part of the cargo. Once we found a house to rent in Portland, Papa settled right into the neighborhood. I would call him from my second floor bedroom window, and he’d come running, climb up the cypress tree, and leap inside. He made the trek back to Virginia with me and stayed with me at my parents’ house while I got my bearings, and then moved into an apartment in Del Ray with me. My roommate accidentally let him out when he wasn’t yet acclimated to his new home, and I never saw him again. I put up countless flyers and thought every brown tabby I saw was him from afar (and my roomate felt awful).

Then there was Bobby, my buddy who was with me for over 19 years. I was living in upstate New York and was on vacation in Maine in the summer of 2000. I was determined to find a Maine Coon cat, but I was in no position to pay for one. I looked in the paper and saw, “free part-Maine Coon to good home.” It was conveniently right off I-95. I swooped in, saw a precious little fluffy, long-haired tabby staring back at me (do I have a type or what?), and scooped him up. He was with me in upstate NY, various apartments in Arlington, and finally in my current home, where he lived out the rest of his life, bringing me endless joy and countless disrupted nights of sleep. He was a hunter and liked to bring us presents, dead and alive. Locking him inside was not an option, trust me.

Now, we have two tiny babies who are just beginning their lives (and one is a long-haired…you guessed it: brown tabby). I’ve never had two cats at once before, so this will be a new kind of kitty adventure for me – nor have I ever had strictly indoor cats. I wonder what these two have in store for us.

I was pretty bummed when it dawned on me several weeks ago that I needed to stop running for a little while. My heel pain was getting increasingly worse, and I finally accepted the fact that running every day was the culprit. I reached out to a friend of mine who had recovered from plantar fasciitis a while back, and I mostly followed her advice: I stopped running, started wearing cushioned shoes in the house, and took Aleve twice a day for a few days (I didn’t last the full recommended 10 days of medication because that just seemed like a bit much).

I started doing Orange Theory online home workouts, which have been much easier on my heel but still kicked my butt most of the time. I waited the recommended 10 days of no running (which was really more like 20 because it took me a while to seriously follow all the directions), and that brought me to today.

With a blue sky, billowing trees, and a warm sun, who was I to say no to a run? I laced up my shoes and headed to Crystal Drive, where I got on the trail along the GW Parkway. I did my usual six-mile route: run along the river, almost to the Memorial Bridge, cross the parkway and pass the Pentagon, run through the Pentagon parking lot and through the tunnel to Army Navy Drive (and transition trusty Camp Jefferson buff from a headband to a mask), and cut back through the neighborhood to home. It was a good run; my heel felt fine (well, no worse), and I always had plenty of space to make a wide arc around fellow runners, walkers, and bicyclists.

In the end, I think the heel pain was a good thing. I am not exactly a spring chicken anymore, and I know running too much can cause all sorts of problems. I was lucky to get a wake-up call that didn’t ruin it for me. My new plan is to run several times a week, alternating with Orange Theory. It’s better this way.

My voice is finally 100% back after going hoarse in December. I love to sing along to music in the car, and for four months, I could only sing the lower notes, and even that felt like a strain, so I pretty much stopped singing altogether. It was such a bummer.

Well, after nearly two months of being out of the classroom, my voice has fully returned. As I drove to the Westover farmers market this morning to pick up my pre-ordered produce and flour, I turned up the music and sang to my heart’s content.

I started screencasting a read-aloud with the ebook I checked out from our school library open on the screen and a small video of me reading it down in the corner. I could feel a small strain on my voice, and I thought, “Wow, what if I had to do this five times a day?”

It’s a small consolation for being separated from the kids, but at least it’s something.

We are officially a dog and kitten family. I waited two hours this morning in the parking lot in Shirlington for my turn to pull up behind the van. It was an especially large transport, and they needed to make sure every pet and their paperwork went to the right family. Once I was in the queue, a friendly bearded young man approached the car, retrieved the carrier and two tiny collars from the backseat, and returned within five minutes. He opened the passenger side door asking, “Is this okay?” (meaning entering my personal space, not whether he could give me animals). I saw two tiny faces staring back and me and mewling and said, “Oh, yes!” He smiled and said, “These are wild ones.”

They are so tiny! So tiny! They are on a constant cycle of play, eat, sleep. She has already used the litter box twice, but he…hummm…why hasn’t he gone yet? Guess we’ll find out at some point in the next few hours if he knows how to use it. So far, he’s only been interested in playing in it.

We brought Sasha’s bed into their area so they can get used to her before we introduce them dog face to kitten face. Sasha sat breathing heavily from outside the door while Rick and Jessie sniffed her bed and eventually napped on it.

This is going to be fun.

Tomorrow is the big day. We’re supposed to pick up the kittens at 9:00AM in Shirlington. They made their long journey up from Georgia (today maybe?), and they’ll spend the night at Lucky Dog Rescue in DC before joining our family tomorrow. I’ve talked to the kids about how we need to be very quiet and gentle with them; I’m sure they’ll be a little shell-shocked after their journey.

I didn’t sleep well for a few nights, wondering if we had made a mistake. We’ll be pretty tied down for a while. These little seven-week-old babies can’t be alone for more than a few hours at a time. My bathroom now has two litter boxes and a kitty litter trash can in it. What about my relaxing lavender epsom salt baths? I have a feeling I’ll be getting a little cat litter stuck to my feet from time to time going in and out of the bath, despite our best efforts to keep it clean. What about our upholstered furniture? Will they scratch it? Maybe/probably.

It’s been years since I’ve been woken in the middle of the night by a crying baby, fussing toddler, whining puppy, or a full grown cat with prey in his mouth. What will these little guys do during the night? I hope sleep.

I decided yesterday that it would be okay. We’re pretty tied to the house, anyway, for the next who knows how long, and these kittens will bring so much joy. Plus, these little furballs need a loving home. They’re coming to the right place.