~Upstream and Down~

I stood on the sidelines at a high school baseball scrimmage today with my husband and two other Dads, watching our sons and chit-chatting about the coach, the team's strengths, the field needing work, the beautiful weather. One man I didn't know-- his son played for the opposing team, a private school, although they live in town-- was chatty and pleasant on a superficial Saturday morning level. It turns out he'd lived in Ohio until ten years ago. He told us how unfriendly the people in New England are. "But I don't even know your name, and I've been talking. My husband, too," I pointed out. Bruce dug his elbow into my side, unobtrusively, a warning I don't need. I'm subtle. Apparently our talking, laughing, and joking with a stranger on the sidelines on a Saturday morning was somehow less friendly than an Ohio person's Saturday morning sideline chat. Maybe they serve breakfast to spectators in Ohio. I don't know how to be any friendlier th

Dr. Sridhar H. Dasari is a "sleep medicine specialist." (A what?) He's quoted in my local daily paper, "A lot of us don't realize how important sleep is in our daily lives. People take it for granted." I am not one of those people. Ask my husband, who's fond of saying, "Sleep is more important to you than anything." Do you know what he means by "anything?" That's right. He doesn't believe me when I tell him that's not true. Actions speak louder than words, he says. I say, wake me up when you finally decide to come to bed. But I'm going off topic, here. I read the article in the paper called, "Sound Sleep." I read everything I come across on the subject of sleep, all the magazines I see in the supermarket line that say: "Ten Things you never Dreamed Would Put You to Sleep," and "Lack of Sleep Causes Weight Gain." (Good excuse. I'll use it.) Dasari says we're a driven society. We

I left the doctor's office, with an appointment for, among other things, a pelvic scan. From the description, I gathered the procedure would be just like the ultrasound I'd had when pregnant with David: drink 32 ounces of water to fill my bladder and provide a clear window through which to visualize the uterus; lay on the exam table while a cold gelled probe is run across my belly, directing rays of some sort into my internal parts. At first it was exactly like that. Quick and familiar, done fully dressed, with my jeans unzipped. If I craned my neck, I could see my uterus on TV, not as icky as the show I watched when my routine age-fifty colonoscopy was done. The technician finished and told me to empty my bladder. Medical people never say, "Go pee." I thought I was done, but there was part two. She told me to undress from the waist down-- they never say, "Take your pants off," either-- and lie back down on the table. There was an internal scan she neede

It was late. We should have been asleep, but we weren't-- David because he's eighteen, and me, because I lose track of time when I'm at my computer. I'm usually in bed long before he is, reading or maybe curled with the cat. Sometimes he stops outside my door and says goodnight. Other times, he comes in, pats the cat, and gives me a kiss. If I'm really lucky, he stretches out beside me, and shares his day, talking about kids and teachers, making it live for me with his talent for imitation. He's eighteen now, six foot four, already in charge of his own time and activities-- up to a point. But he's still my baby, so when I heard him whisper, "Night, Mom," when I walked past his room on my way to bed, I pushed open his door, and sat on the edge of his bed to give him a kiss. "Remember when you used to fall asleep on the floor beside my bed?" he asked. I do remember. It eased him through his nightmare stage. I'd lie on my back,

I stand in the exam room with my Johnnie tied tightly in back. My clothes hang on a hook, underpants and bra rolled and hidden in the pocket of my jeans. I look down at my brown knee-hi socks, trying to decide if I should leave them on. Of course I should, but they look weird, the way socks on a naked man making love look. I pulled them off. Perched on the exam table, feet dangling, I wait for the doctor, flipping through People Magazine and wondering how the heck the two women on the cover managed to loose over 200 pounds each, when I can't even manage to lose ten. The doctor, a slim forty-ish woman enters, and trips over the shoes I'd placed carefully out of the way to make sure she wouldn't trip. We laugh about that as she sits on the little stool on wheels that let her skitter from counter to exam table and back, without standing. She skims the notes the nurse had entered in my chart, commenting to herself: takes multivitamins, occasional glass of wine, doesn

I take a shower with my muse every morning. Actually, he's too much of a gentleman to follow me into the tub, at that time of day at least. He leans against the sink, and speaks through the mist in a whisper of words that blend with the shush of the water, but I hear him clearly through the shower's white noise. I listen, still half asleep, while water rinses last night's dreams down the drain in shampoo swirls. The best thing about my muse is that he knows when to be quiet. He lets me ramble; he grants me my voice. And I chat non-stop-- internal chat, not spoken words-- rambling on about this and that, my feelings, my thoughts, my confusions, my joys. When he particularly likes something, he prods me in a gentle muse-like manner, "Remember that. That's good." So I repeat it, and embellish it while my muse nods in the fog. I turn off the water, wrap in a towel and give my muse a great big morning smooch. He's good to me; I need him. Then I put him on hold

The sixth graders in the hall were noisy. They were changing classes, slamming lockers shut, chatting loudly. A former student waved to me, her hand winging back and forth like she was wiping fog from a window. I smiled and waved back, a baby bye-bye fingertip wave, and shut my classroom door. I faced my fifth graders. Together we'd explore "matter and energy," something fifth graders have little prior knowledge of, and lots of misconceptions about. Everything in the world-- not just the *world,* the entire *universe*-- can be divided into two categories, I told them. Imagine that. The whole universe can be categorized into two groups. I was vastly oversimplifying for ten year-old minds, but they were with me, eyes wide. Classifying, and categorizing things based on their attributes appealed to their sense of order. They liked knowing there was a place for everything. We talked about matter-- something that has mass and takes up space-- and compared it to energy: the ab

It is tough being perfect, my husband tells me. He says this in response to my remark. "My God, it must be absolutely wonderful to be so perfect!" I know. My comment smacks of sarcasm. I don't deny that. I spat it out in the car on the way home from dining out at a local restaurant we often go to on Friday or Saturday night. It all started well. We were chatting, conversing about all sorts of things: local gossip, local politics, the state budget, what the name of the man at the bar was-- on this we could not agree-- the family sitting behind us, those kind of married topics, safe and un-erotic, as married conversations often are. The thing is, we were not bickering. This was a good thing. We've been in a bickering mode lately, and it followed a pattern: I would make an innocent remark. He would react, badly. I would softly explain that I was innocent of whatever crime he thought I committed. He would get loud and angry. Back and forth we'd go. I'd try to expl