It's Saturday night and I ain't got nobody . . .

Ok, so that is not true. I have a family-spouse, 3 kids-so I am almost NEVER alone. I've taken to hiking in the woods for my private time, something I was apparently really missing but didn't realize until one day, this winter, when I hiked with my kids as it snowed. The crispness of the air, the sharpness of the colors, everything reminded me how much I had loved the long, solitary jogs of my younger days. I would run 5, 6, 7 miles without feeling it, really, restricted only by time and the need to get other things done. I always felt I could have run forever and sometimes now wish I had, just to see what would have happened. Would I have gotten bored? I never did on the runs I took. Would I have gotten tired? Probably, eventually, maybe . . . I never pushed myself for speed, just enjoyed the rhythmic motion of my body, the feeling of power with each lift and step, each pump of an arm. Running felt like floating above where no one could touch me, where I was in a universe of my own making, immune to the weather, separated from man-made noise. Luck endowed me with a place for running unlike most will ever experience, at least in the US, a long, wood and field stretch of land that could not be developed because it lay on a river's flood zone, once pasturage or corn fields (and, one summer, a brief marijuana crop was there, although i never saw it). This Eden lay so quiet, waiting for nothing, needing nothing; it called me so often and although getting there and back meant running sometimes through enormous spider webs built across the trail-a trail only I ever used, for many years-it was always worth it. Even with the beautiful state park I now enjoy, I cannot recapture that silence-the absence of cars or other motors. It is never truly quiet for me, anymore, although I have moments of pure peace in the deepest part of the forest I now frequent.

Wow, this is so boring I don't even want to read it. But I was reawakened to my need for silence and solitude by that one moment of vision on a snowy day, and since then I have made the effort to indulge myself. I have had dream after dream about those old running days and maybe, with God's grace and a bit more o' Irish luck, I'll relive them yet.

Happy trails.

Prom Night!

I will be chaperoning Prom for my high school students tonight, and I am looking forward to it! Seeing them all dressed up is such a treat. Yesterday, they had a "formal Friday," when they wore pretty nice clothes--past prom dresses or really nice dresses, suits for the boys, etc.--and that was fun. The girls will have their hair done up for tonight, makeup, etc., adding that extra touch.

Still, I'm so sad that my own son could not get past his shyness to ask someone to the dance. The pain of watching one's child be left out, always, always--I cannot describe it. Would it matter if the child was senseless of his own isolation? One student is physically handicapped but intellectually normal, and I imagine it is very hard on her family. No one can see my son's difference, and he gets labeled "lazy" and "weird," when in fact he is scared and lonely and often unable to absorb all that is said to him. But because he's bright (when he has information, he can use it so well) and strong and tall, no one has any clue, no sympathy--not my colleagues, his teachers, not his peers, whose ignorance I can more easily excuse because they are so young. I know he seems indifferent and we talk with him about body language--reading it, signaling it--but these are recent conversations, opened up only by his own desperation. God willing, he will make friends at college. I can only hope and pray; my heart sticks in my throat when I think how I will be unable to help him there.

How many other people share his loneliness? I am good at reaching out, but I vow to be better!

Me, A Mirror, and a Strapless Bra

Not pretty; not pretty at all. It had never really occurred to me that I'm actually carrying around 70 pounds of fat--seriously. I know I'm overweight (and this will not be a blog about that topic, I promise!!) but somehow the reality of what that means has escaped me since gaining the weight during my final pregnancy. I never was one to try on much in the "weigh" of clothes (haha, I crack me up!!) so this whole seeing myself in the mirror thing is pretty rare, and although I'm sure I've had this shock before, I've allowed myself to forget it right away. Didn't have a blog to record my humiliation for all time!!

Well, if you have never been in this position (for example, you are genetically thin and nothing you do seems to change that, like my husband) you need to imagine a hippo trying to crawl into a hula hoop. My first attempt involved snapping the bra and then trying to pull it down over my head. I don't think so!! Then the standard "reverse and inside out the bra, snap it in front, and twist back around the right way." It would not budge for the twisting; my flesh would have torn first, I swear. The damn thing was made of industrial-strength synthetics, perhaps something the military has developed for snaking men down the sides of mult-story buildings for the SWAT-type crash through the windows--can't have the fibers breaking on that, no sir! Finally, with considerable contortioning and swearing, I got it on, only to realize that not only did I have "bra fat" (the clumps over the strap in the back), but also top boob, side boob, and bottom boob--where one's cup runneth over, all over, in this case. A bit of further adjustment and voila, the bottom boob disappeared and I could see that, in fact, I did not have top boob or side boob--it was all just plain old non-breast-tissue fat! Rolls and gathers and wobbles and divots of it. I looked at my upper arms--the pitting and dimpling of flesh there would make the moon's surface look smooth by comparison.

I could go on, but why bother? Even with this post I will probably block out the entire nightmarish vision and return to my serene view of myself as "pleasantly plump," secretly thinking that "I still got it, baby." A healthy self-esteem, or delusional? What do you think?