But yesterday I was made to see something else.

I took her to CVS to pick up gift wrap and Christmas cards.  I’d forgotten to pull the handicap placard from her car so we couldn’t use one of the designated spaces.  Her hand on my arm, we shuffled slowly the short distance to the entrance.  I found her a cart so she’d have something to lean on as we negotiated our way through narrow, irregular aisles.  Mid-way down one, uncertain what we were there to get, she’d freeze, a look of confusion on her face.  “You need wrapping paper mom and cards, we’re here to get those,” I reminded her twice per aisle.

We found the paper, cards and other things – ribbon, gift tags, stocking stuffers.  I was trying to steer her toward the check-out counter when again she froze.  “Don’t I need cards?”  “Yes mom, they’re in the cart.  You picked the snowman ones.”  She paused as i walked around the cart to retrieve the box so she could see what she’d selected.  I looked up and saw that we were blocking the path of five Hispanic women.  “So sorry,” I apologized to them as I tried to maneuver my mom and her cart out of their way.  The first woman slid past my mom.  “So beautiful eyes.” I heard that woman say.  I didn’t take much notice. The next woman followed behind her.  I was busy putting the cards back into the cart and shifting my mom more to the side to make room for them to pass.  A third woman,  elderly herself, most likely in her mid-seventies, passed and smiled at me.  “So beautiful.  She has the most beautiful eyes.”  Who were they talking about I wondered as I glanced around.  A fourth woman passed and just nodded her head.  My mom spotted something at the end of the next aisle and was headed toward it and away from the check stand when the final woman passed me.  She was an attractive, silver haired woman in a stylish black coat.  She touched my arm.  “That your mother?  You’re her daughter?”  “Yes,” I acknowledged.  “She is so beautiful.  She has the most beautiful eyes.”  “Thank you, thank you very much,” I replied but I was thinking “what are you talking about?”

In my opinion, beautiful eyes are large, framed with thick, full, dark lashes.   My mother’s eyes are small, nestled deep in slack skin, her lashes barely perceptible, like my own.  Her eyes are not, in my estimation, notable.  But these woman had seen something else, something beautiful.  What had they seen?

I looked at my mother’s eyes.  Not at the surface around her eyes but at the actual eyes.  I saw what I hadn’t previously seen.  I saw sweetness, trust, kindness, joy, life, empathy, wonder, intelligence, caring, happiness.  So that is what these woman call beautiful?  They were right.

One note for anyone who plans to participate in any upcoming rallies, if you’re at the mic and using the crowd to repeat what you’re saying from the dais so those in the back will hear  - keep your sentences short and sweet.  Some people rambled on for a good minute so that those who were supposed to repeat it, lost the train of thought and sort of half heartedly repeated a few key words. Three words max at a time, please!

For all the energy and good intentions, the rally lacked a single cohesive statement beyond “we’re the 99%.”  Great, now what?  It’s fitting that the Martin Luther King, Jr. tribute was officially unveiled during this time of unrest.  We need a MLK Jr, someone who can frame the problems and lead us toward a solution.

In the meantime, the best distillation of the issues that I’ve heard came from Josh Brown the self titled “Reformed Broker.”  His explanation is available on the Marketplacemoney.org website (http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/10/14/mm-dear-wall-street-this-why-the-people-are-angry/).  Read it and if you’re not already a supporter of the Occupy (insert name here), you will be afterwards. He presents the issues in a straightforward, matter-of-fact manner that will make your blood boil.  No wonder we’re mad, you’ll think.

I’m hoping that someone out there isn’t simply getting mad but is getting a plan together for how we’re going to deal with this mess.  If that’s you, THANK YOU and please hurry up!

When I was younger and the skin on my legs still defied gravity, did I appreciate them? No.  I wanted them to tan better, to need shaving less often, to be longer.  I didn’t relish what I had; I lamented what I didn’t have.

This morning I was feeling less than motivated.  I managed to get myself out of bed and to the gym but I wasn’t given it 100%; I wasn’t giving it even 75%.  As I was doing the last of the stretches before hitting the shower, I realized something.  There will be a time, hopefully not too soon, when I won’t be able to exercise the way I can now.  When I would be happy to do 50% of what I can do now.  It’s the legs all over again.  Instead of feeling sorry for myself that I didn’t get to sleep in, I should be appreciating that I am fit enough to get out of bed and to the gym!

I don’t want to look back when I’m 80 and regret that I didn’t take full advantage of what I could do when I was in my 50′s.  I am going to drag myself to the gym and I’m going to do whatever I can do and be pleased.  No remorse when I’m too feeble to lift the kettle bell or jump rope.  I want to know that I did my best when I could and I didn’t crap out and waste the opportunities I had.

It felt odd then wonderful to be her guest.  I had to ask her where things went.  How she wanted things done.  I was definitely on her turf.  I forced myself to be a guest and not a mom.  A mom would have cleaned the bathroom and done laundry.   A guest accepts the towels offered and uses the shower with appreciation not guilt.

I hope I was a good guest.  I did my dishes, and my daughters when she was short on time.  I treated my host to dinners out.  I purchased some groceries so I didn’t leave her short on anything.

We had a great time.  We enjoy the same activities so there was no coercion involved when selecting what movie to see, what museums to visit or what show to go to.

The worst part about spending time with her?  Having to leave.

She texted me that she felt lonelier now that I was gone.

Welcome to my life.

Growing up it was just my mother and I.  When I was eight we moved from our apartment to a house which, though I didn’t learn the term until much later, was a fixer-upper.  What’s a single mom to do when faced with hanging lights, sanding floors, fixing leaky pipes?  Back in the early sixties she did what my mom did, she called in a handyman and became a helpless female.  It used to annoy me to no end to hear my mom say things like “I don’t know what I’d do if you hadn’t shown up.”  In all other situations, my mom was a take charge, strong woman.  Introduce a handyman into the mix and she became a blithering idiot.  ”Why, I had no idea that was how you did that.”  She would even feign ignorance when I knew for a fact that she had read up on a particular repair and understood as well as that potbellied, dirty t-shirt wearing oaf what was required.  When I called her on it once she explained that she had to be that way to get their help because “she had no man around the house.”

With YouTube, things have changed.  Just recently a friend, a single woman maintaining her own home, didn’t call a handyman when her kitchen sink backed up.  She turned on her computer, consulted you tube and tackled the job herself.

My mother taught me to knit many, many years ago.  Before my daughter took off for college I decided I needed to teach her.  Problem was, I couldn’t remember the first thing.  Did I call my mother for a refresher?  Heck no, I went on You Tube and found any number of useful tutorials that helped bring it all back.

I needed a solution for a female malady – the sort of thing you turn to an older sister for.  As an only child, that wasn’t an option.  Where did I turn, you guessed it, You Tube and clearly my problem was a common one because there were a half dozen useful links.

That same well trained knitter of a daughter recently moved into her first apartment – in Manhattan.  The previous tenant had left behind a window air conditioner.  Summer was approaching, we knew we needed to install the unit. I looked at the rather large piece of equipment, at the five stories it could fall (not only ruining a perfectly good AC unit but potentially killing a pedestrian),  if we didn’t install it correctly and wanted to wait until we could get some help.  My daughter, correctly, scoffed, turned on her computer and logged onto You Tube.  In no time that unit was securely latched into the bedroom window, humming nicely.

From how to sew on a button to how to change a tire, it’s all on You Tube.  Go check it out there’s no telling what you’ll learn to do!

Fathers, I was told, are the rock upon which the family rises above the floodwaters of life.  It is his strength – moral, emotional and physical – which keeps the world turning.  Anyone growing up without a father was to be pitied.

I used to actually believe that crap.  I was certain that my fatherless childhood would render me unable to make my way in the world.  Who would teach me to throw, ride a bike, make a campfire, fix a flat?  I came to accept that I wouldn’t know how I was supposed to be treated by men because I didn’t have the example of a father caring for and fussing over “his little princess.”  That I would be preyed upon because there was no shotgun wielding father to tell those evil boys not to mess with his daughter, was a given.

I went out into the world certain that I was damaged goods, and perhaps I was.  Not by the absence of a testosterone driven parent but by the father-centric propaganda I’d been fed.

I was determined not to perpetuate the cycle.  Thus when I realized, five years into my marriage and three months into my daughter’s life, that I’d made a huge mistake, I didn’t pack up and leave.  I was determined that she would grow up with a father in her life.  I convinced myself that to do otherwise would be to straddle her with the same handicap with which I’d grown up.

Instead I weighed her down with a different burden.  She wasn’t lacking a father but she was lacking all that I thought a father should have offered to her.  He made no effort to establish a relationship with her when she was young.  He was impatient and often lost his temper if not at her then around her.  He was hypocritical, using as his excuse the outdated “do as I say not as I do.”  He broke promises.  He burned bridges.  Her expectations of men are so diminished by the example of her own father that she might be worse off than if she’d never had one.

I’ve realized that nine out of ten fathers don’t measure up to the fairy tale picture of fatherhood perpetuated most likely by men who have neglected their duties and abandoned their children to be raised by women.

If you are that one in ten – congratulations!  If you’re married to or fathered by that one in ten – bravo!  I have no hope for the other nine.

There’s a war waging in my hand

My thumb the battlefield

Infection’s infantry invading

Each heart beat a canon blast

Each throb a bomb exploding

I wait for my army to defend

Reinforcements to turn the tide

As the wounded retreat and hope for

Another chance at victory

The Battlefield

I was thrilled to discover that my stateroom was only one flight of stairs from the well equipped on board gym.  The first day I actually made it to the gym – where I used both the bike and the treadmill.  Despite my good start, I didn’t see the inside of that gym again.  My motivation to work out was trumped by the allure of a mocha cappuccino in the Cove Cafe.

Then I heard Rachel, Cruise Director extraordinaire, announce that there would be a 5K run the morning we arrived at Castaway Cay.  I recalled those 10 miles on the bike and the 1 mile run I’d become used to doing at the gym.  I’d never run on anything but a treadmill but I was familiar with Castaway Cay.  It was a small island.  I’d biked it easily.  How much more difficult, I asked myself, could running it be?  To make sure I didn’t back out, I announced to my fellow travelers that I would be participating in the 5K run!  Luckily none of them offered to accompany me.  I was already convinced I’d be the last one to cross the finish line and didn’t want a witness to my lackluster performance.

The run was supposed to start at 9am.  I skipped the after dinner drinks and tried to get to sleep early so I could be up bright and early the next morning – with time to eat and digest breakfast before my run.  At 7am, while loading up on carbs (isn’t that what all runners do?) at Cabanas, I heard an announcement from, who else, Rachel.  The ship was going to be delayed into Castaway Cay because of an unexpected return to Nassau the previous night.  It was nearly 10 am – an hour and a half late – before we were cleared to disembark.

I had joined the throngs crowded into the stairway ready to leave at the earliest possible moment.  After a half an hour we began to move forward and gradually I began to get glimpses of the island.  When I’d scanned out I made a bee line for the 5K rendezvous.  Despite my efforts, I was the last to arrive.  Almost immediately we were off following bright red 5K signs.  We were, I realized running the bike trail – twice!

The first thing I noticed was that the late start meant that it was already pretty hot. Much hotter than it had ever been inside the gym and, unlike the treadmills, I couldn’t push a button and have cool air blowing on me.  The next thing I noticed was that running with sunglasses is difficult.  It was too sunny and bright to consider not wearing them but I’m sure I used almost as many calories pushing them back up onto the bridge of my nose as I did running.  The final difference, and this was a huge one, I couldn’t distract myself by watching Jon Stewart!

I tried to silence the competitive voice within my head.  ”These others,” I rationalized, “are runners.  They probably do a 5K before coffee.  You are not a runner so don’t try to keep up!”  Normally I fast walk my mile or two on the treadmill (4.0 – 4.2) and will, only during commercial breaks, sometimes sprint at 6.0.  But I hated to fall behind so I pushed myself to try to keep up at least even if I was last.

Jogging slowly and steadily along the route I suddenly found myself passing some of the other runners – they’d already begun to slow down!  Whoo Hoo!  I wasn’t last!  That buoyed me and I kept going but soon, with sweat pouring off me, I needed to take a water break.  While stopped at one of the water dispensers along the route, I was passed by those who I had passed just a short while ago.  ”What are you waiting for?  Pass them!” screeched the competitive voice.  And so it went for most of the 5K.  I’d pass them then revert to a fast walk until those I passed were passing me at which point I’d push myself to once again jog.

At the last stretch, I was behind the pair so decided I was going to really turn up the heat and actually run the last few meters.  Bad idea.  I was only steps from from the finish line when I felt certain I was about to throw up.  I was reduced to a slow walk all the while just hoping that I could find a bathroom before I was sick.  Luckily slowing down was enough to eliminate the nausea but, as I’m sure you guessed, as I was slow walking toward the finish line the couple and two other people I didn’t even know were still behind me, ran past me to a triumphant finish.

I was exhausted, soaked through with sweat and my eyes were stinging from the sun screen that was dripping into my eyes.  I swore then that I’d never run anywhere but on a treadmill ever again.  I was proud that I’d completed the run – in 45 minutes! – but there was no way I could have claimed to have enjoyed the experience.

So I couldn’t have been more surprised when waking up from a nap this afternoon I decided to head to Echo Park Lake for, are you seated?, a run!  The day was cool and overcast. I thought of the calories I’d consumed on the cruise – I had not one, not two but three desserts on the day of the 5K! – and the next thing I knew I was lacing up my tennis shoes and headed out the door.

I ran-walked the first loop around, fighting with ear buds that kept falling out of my ears and holding a heavy water bottle that I thought I’d be sipping from.  Before the second loop I ditched the ear bugs, iPod and the water bottle.  I challenged myself to run that entire loop.  I was able to run it, at a pretty good pace if I don’t say so myself, without any feelings of nausea.  I didn’t want to push my luck so I fast walked/ran the third loop.

When I got home I went onto www.mapmyrun.com and was able to confirm that my circuit had been just under three miles – or just under 5K.

I’m going to make the Echo Park Lake run a regular part of my Sundays!  OMG, does that make me a runner?  Who would have guessed!

No one is to blame.  That’s not what this is about.  This is about jealousy.  Yes, I’ll admit it.  I’m jealous of my daughter.  Is that terrible?  I envy her education.  She’s going to an excellent small private college on the East coast. She’s lived in dorms, off campus housing and shortly will be living in her own apartment near campus.  I went to a local school, albeit an excellent one, that was huge and impersonal and I lived at home.  Being a commuter student you miss about 75% of the college experience.  Had I begged, my mom probably would have found a way to afford on campus housing but I hadn’t been raised to ask for things.  I always knew that money was tight and frugality was the norm.

I envy her travels. I never had a semester abroad – I don’t remember any of my friends doing that – perhaps its an East Coast thing.  Anyone I’ve spoken to who did a semester or a year abroad always gets a far away blissful look on their face when recalling that time – trekking across Europe, making friends all over the globe, sampling new cuisines and lifestyles.  My daughter started her study abroad in high school.  First there was the month in France studying French then the school sponsored trip to Thailand with some community service at a local school thrown in for good measure and lastly the senior class trip to Peru.  Compared to those her college semester abroad in Bath, England felt, well, dull.  She almost didn’t go but I encouraged her and I’m so glad I did.  She made great friends, traveled not only the English countryside but took a Spring break trip to Italy that included stops in Venice, Rome, Florence and Cinque Terre.

This summer she’s going to be living in Manhattan –  The City, the Big Apple, the Great White Way, the hub of civilization in the United States.  Sure, LA is pretty terrific.  Certainly I’d take our weather over New York’s any month of the year but it’s just not the same.  I don’t want to live in Manhattan but I’d love to possess the confidence to live and work there. She’s got that at twenty, wow!  That’s what I wish I had even now.

I envy her courage.  She’s never played it safe.  Her choices always involve some risk – what school to attend, where to travel, what courses to take.  In comparison, I ‘see all sides of a situation and weigh the pros and cons to arrive at the logical, safe conclusion’.   But that’s changing.  I’m going to be bolder, live life more fully and take some chances – and that is due to her excellent example.

I just got an email from her – it being Mother’s Day and all.  She sent her love and reminded me that it is the independence I’ve always allowed her and the support I’ve always offered that gave her the strength to be the person she is and to do all that she’s done.  I may not have had the same opportunities she’s had but it feels really nice to have given them to her because, isn’t that what motherhood is all about?  Now I need to thank her for being my inspiration.  I encourage her and she encourages me – nothing could be better.  I’m one lucky mom.