Not So Easy Come, Easy Go

My grandparents were newlyweds when the Great Depression hit. As luck would have it, they owned an employment agency. Needless to say, they didn't stay in business very long when the bottom fell out of the economy.

The current financial downturn has unfolded at an excruciatingly slow pace for my family, akin to having a limb sawed off with a butter knife. We watched college and retirement savings melt more rapidly than the Arctic ice shelf. We worried as oil prices rose to outrageous heights, only to recede and grant us an uneasy reprieve.

We fretted about job loss, especially since Rhode Island has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Yesterday my husband was told he has to take a 20% pay cut effective immediately. If that's the worst of it, we'll manage, but it's quite possible his company will close its doors in the months ahead.

Let's see. We'll have two kids in college at the same time for the next 5 years. Our annual health insurance premiums will be higher than what I earn at my current part time job. In a healthier economy, we'd be able to find other jobs, but not here, not now.

The days of easy borrowing and obese bonuses are over. Too bad we didn't experience their fleeting pleasures. On the bright side, we still have health insurance and we're healthy. I'll keep that in mind as I take a hatchet to our budget.

See Mark Run

If you tune in to ESPN2 on Friday, January 30th at 7:00 pm or to NBC on Saturday, January 31st at 1:30 pm you'll see my son Mark run the boys' high school mile at the 102nd Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Mark qualified for the event at last week's Yale Invitational where he clocked a personal best of 4:14.68. See Mark run. That's him coming in 2nd to Westerly, RI's Andrew Springer. Mark's teammate Nick Ross placed 3rd and has also been invited to run the Millrose Mile. That means that East Greenwich High School, one of the smallest high schools in the smallest state, will have two entrants (out of nine) going for the gold.

Back in the glory days (1978 or '79), Marty and I went to a Springsteen concert at the Garden. We all thought the Boss was singing about our lives in Born to Run. Now the song takes on new meaning. Was it a prophecy?

Run Mark run.

Dramatic Ironing

It's not every day I iron shirts while watching the President-Elect of the United States make moving remarks from the National Mall. There were more than a few wet faces in the crowd as the smiling Obama spoke about the hope he has for the Nation. There's no use trying to blame the steam coming off the iron--I got misty myself.

I tried to explain to my 16-year-old why the moment was so poignant, mumbling something about the Civil Rights Era, memories of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the difference a few decades can make.

I doubt he gets it, and that's a great thing.

Crazy Snowy Running

Yesterday, an early morning meeting kept me from running when I normally do which is around 7-7:30. Sure, I could have run in the afternoon, and I would have, but the mercury clawed at 20° and the wind carved the sun into tiny bits. No thanks.

Coulda woulda shoulda. This morning it was 11° and snow was falling. Disgusted by yesterday's wimpiness, I went for a run despite the weather. It was a tad slippery but conditions were otherwise fine. I rewarded myself with blueberry buckwheat pancakes for breakfast.

My boys were complaining this morning that school hadn't been cancelled, even though other schools are closed. They think I'm a mean momma for ridiculing the school districts that cancelled classes for the day. Let me point out we're expecting 3 to 5 inches of fluff, and it should warm up to 16°. When I was a kid ...

We've been threatened with 0° in the early morning hours of tomorrow. My husband and I will be driving to New York City to see our daughter run the 500 meter race for her college team at the Armory. We plan to visit friends overnight in Larchmont, and then drive to New Haven, CT on Saturday to watch our eldest son run the mile at the Yale Invitational. This is a big race for him, as he's trying to earn an invitation to the presitigious Millrose Mile at Madison Square Garden the end of the month. The field is stacked, so it should be a great race.

One more bit of parental bragging: he'll be attending Columbia University in the fall.

I Feel The Earth Move

My first earthquake occurred while I was on the checkout line at a supermarket in San José, Costa Rica. I didn't understand what was happening at first. Why were the shelves undulating and pitching forth their contents? Why had the cashier fled the store? When I realized it was an earthquake, I thought, I'm going to check out of my life waiting to pay for milk. How mundane.

It ended well. I paid for my groceries and walked out to the parking lot. When I started my car, Carol King was blaring from the radio "I feel the earth move under my feet, I feel the sky tumbling down." Welcome to the violent world of plate tectonics.

Earthshaking became a way of life. It would randomly occur while I was driving, sleeping, stirring soup. Drinking hot coffee during a temblor was especially tricky. Once, the entire country was jolted from bed at 4:00 am. A 6.2 quake had struck, and there was a whole lot of shaking going on.

On Thursday, a powerful earthquake hit the Central Valley of Costa Rica, leaving death and destruction in its wake. I saw a report on CNN, and tried to find more information on the Internet. Most of the reports were sketchy, so I went to the site of the country's major newspaper, La Nación , where I was able to find more details. I have friends who live in a little town that was especially hard hit. I called Karen's cell phone, connected briefly but the call ended after several seconds. I thought I heard her voice. I called back and was put straight into voicemail, where I left a message. Karen called back an hour later. She was in Boston, but she'd spoken to her husband in Costa Rica and he was okay.

When I moved from Costa Rica, it took some time before I stopped flinching every time the boiler fired up, or a heavy truck rumbled by. The slightest shaking still sends me into alert mode. I check for exits and am ready to flee if necessary. Earthquakes are rare here in Rhode Island. Maybe we're due for one.

Writing Notes

I went to a friend's house yesterday for a knitting intervention. We got to talking about reviving our dormant writing group. My friend's been working on a historical novel for many years, and I've been puttering around in a number of projects myself. Here's what I have on the shelf, in order of viability.

There's all the stories I wrote about our life in Costa Rica, some of which have been published in various magazines. Poems and letters, too. It needs shaping of course, and some kind of unifying device. The problem is, it would fall into the memoir genre, and do I seriously want to bring another one of those into the world? I know I don't want to read another one. Last night, as I was wrestling with the sleeping gods, I thought about putting one of the essays on this blog to see if I could stomach revisiting them. We'll see.

I might be qualified to write Leukemia for Dummies or Field Guide to Bone Marrow Transplants but the question is, again, would I want to? I might not be able to bring the proper gravitas to the subject. The potential to offend would be great, which I suppose is better than being on Oprah. No offense to the world's most famous woman, but I don't see myself baring my soul on national television. I'd feel compelled to joke about a seriously painful subject.

There's a story to be told about my son's cross country team, which won the Rhode Island State Championship in 2007. I've already given it some thought (and a title: The Little Team That Could, a small high school's cross country team's season of glory), and have discussed the idea with a young man who knows most of the history leading up to the culminating moments. Having a collaborator would definitely help. Maybe it's time to move this from the back burner.

Finally, there's my so-called novel. Doesn't every writer want to believe they have one in them? I have a working title, pages of notes and outlines, character sketches, and even some crude attempts at stitching together sentences and paragraphs. A little research is needed (but not too much), and a dollop of discipline. It's discipline I lack. It's one thing to post on a blog several times a week; quite another to nail oneself to the chair and write every day even when it's boring, painful or inconvenient to do so. That's what makes a "real" writer. I'm just taking notes.