I had a terrible weekend, one filled with little sleep, a very long drive, and a personal crisis whose provenance need not be revealed. It was a weekend that called for real strength and compassion, a far harder endeavor that the standard bluffing and blustering that pull me through most hard times, and a weekend that left me exhausted to my bones. To recover, I very clearly needed vast expanses of home and all that that entails: a comfortable bed, unlimited wardrobe choices, a sizeable pile of books, an enormous leather chair, a dog, a husband, a child. And I was able to return home, at least for a while. When I arrived, Chris fixed one of his favorite meals, if not exactly mine, an array of superfoods that confidently assures the eater I am going to live forever! (This assurance was not quite what I needed, for if forever involved the continuous loop of anxiety and need presented by the weekend, perhaps I was getting the short end of that stick.) But exactly 15 hours after I walked in the door, I again walked out.

Instead of home, I got Cincinnati.

Don’t be jealous.

I remember well the first time I flew, for it involved new clothes. And not just any clothes: My mother bought me a collection of separates, all mint green polyester, a crème-de-menthe explosion of trousers, skirt, jumper, and belted jacket, probably from some child’s line that bore an unpretentious name like Little Lord Fauntleroy . . . for Girls!  Feeling undeniably swank, I wore the trousers and belted jacket on board, and even as a child, I remember thinking that my wardrobe could single-handedly blow the plane if I got too close to the many smokers populating our flight.

But air travel has changed, and as I sat on the plane in decidedly not-new clothes, I noticed that the flight attendant was walking down the aisle, sniffing like a bloodhound. She had hair styled in a wind tunnel, and crazy eyes that I recognized, a familiar combination of too-little sleep with a massive caffeine chaser. Leading with her nose, she came closer until she stopped by my side and announced loudly, “Someone sure smells good. Is it you?”

Smelling good seems like such a low bar, a minor courtesy owed to the world, to the point that I hope that “smelling good” is my default mode and that only my “smelling bad” is noteworthy. As I mulled this around in my noggin, the flight attendant blared, “Is it you? Do you smell good?,” and after discreetly taking a sniff in my environs, the only thing that I could muster was, “I sure hope so.”

But the flight was to get stranger.

At the airport I noticed a young woman who looked like a Lesser Kardashian, arrayed in an odd combination of tight black workout clothes, a short tight sweater, an enormous baseball cap worn slightly askew — and the highest cream-colored patent leather pumps I have ever seen. She minced onto my flight, and sat in the row in front of me to the left, next to an older German man in an impeccably cut suit. He could not help it — he flirted with her for the next hour — and when he offered her gum, she pulled out her phone and showed him a snapshot of herself, where she was entirely nude. The German recoiled, turned beet red, pulled out his own phone, and reciprocated with a picture of his fully clothed wife. For the remainder of the flight, he became terribly engrossed in something that I could not entirely figure out. (I don’t think he could either.)

These distractions, as puzzling as they were, were welcome, for they took my mind off the latest crisis. But going directly to my hotel room and working alone, files out on the bed, for the next three hours did not. I thought about prior visits to downtown Cincinnati, the dark buildings and the aggressive panhandlers at every corner. I looked around the room and thought mostly of pulling the shade, pulling up the covers, watching TV, and wallowing. I thought about how age has conspired to make me a little more hesitant to venture out alone, the fear of the unknown always gnawing slightly at me. And I thought that if I stayed in that room, I would simply and completely lose my mind.

When I asked the attendant at the front desk where I should walk, he said to take a right on Vine Street and head down to the river to the park. The downside, he said, would be the return home: It was all uphill. “Isn’t that always the way?,” I said, and I took off.

In recent years, I have been to Cincinnati a handful of times, and I have never ventured out from my hotel room except for work. On a beautiful Monday, with perfect weather, I walked downhill to the river, and I literally gasped at what I saw. It was beautiful. There was a bridge built in 1865.

I am no fan of heights, and bridges are best viewed from the shore, but I walked up the bridge’s stairs, followed the walkway to the center point, and looked all around. I saw in the park below a flying pig, its wings flapping.

When I left the bridge, I wandered over to the pig and read the warning signs: Danger! Do not leave children unsupervised! Use caution! At my age, physical activity has begun to generate its own brand of Danger!, its own need for Caution!, and with that in mind, I slowly and carefully shinnied up the cargo net and sat in the pig’s cockpit and made the wings flap on my own.

I climbed down and walked past gardens, dogs, an ultimate frisbee game, and a row of bright red rental bikes, making me wish I’d brought a credit card. And after walking and breathing and just being for an hour or so, I began the walk back uphill, past this sign:

All of this was a surprise to me, a gift waiting to be unwrapped. And near a giant robot,

I stepped into a doughnut shop. I took a deep breath and got a contact high from the sugar, but before becoming completely intoxicated, I purchased only a diet Coke. “You’re not from around here,” said the lady behind the counter. “Is everyone treating you well? Because if they’re not, send them to me.” I loved this thought — a protector, a heavy, a huckleberry: Cheryl in the doughnut store.

It was good to float independently of my troubles, although they were still with me. How could I tell? I almost brushed my teeth with Retin-A. I grabbed one of the toiletries from the bathroom counter, a bright minty green, to discover that I was gargling not with mouthwash, but with shower gel. And in court the next morning, I struggled to put on a good show.

And then I went in reverse. Two plane rides home, a cab to the house, an open door, a large dog serving as a speed bump, the smell of comfort food wafting through the air. I shuffled through the mail and weighting down the letters addressed to occupant, the credit card offers, the bills, I found a package addressed to me.

Almost exactly seven years ago, I had left a job at the Department of Justice. My liaison in D.C. was Tom, with whom I had spoken many times on the phone before I actually met him. He looked exactly like he sounded  — except that he was 30 years older. He is a man with an interesting life. (Among other things, he was a Jesuit priest who left the priesthood on good terms and shortly thereafter married a woman whom he met on a blind date when they were college freshmen. He was absolutely crazy about her.) I once read that the word “encourage” means “to give courage to,” and I think that was one of the things I liked about talking to Tom. I felt encouraged.

The package was from Tom. He had written a book of poetry, the card said, and he wanted me to have a copy. He wanted to remind me of life after work. I nearly burst into tears, holding the volume in one hand, holding in the other the handwritten note from such an important, but largely unsung, person in my meager life. The timing was impeccable. The message was clear. There is beauty after toil. The trick is to move forward. The trick is to persevere.

ALC

Several years ago, Chris and I were talking about “I Love Lucy,” and he mentioned that he really did not understand the premise. Why, he asked, would there be a series about the marriage of a crazy redhead and a Cuban bandleader? Who, he said, would have come up with such a thing? Clearly, I had some explaining to do. So I told him that Lucy and Desi came up with such a thing: They pitched their unlikely marriage to television and they made a show.

Chris and I are very different. I am (literally) the crazy redhead and he is (figuratively) the Cuban bandleader, and I credit our longevity to the fact that we are so very different, at least outwardly. Just the other day, he was bemoaning some part of my extroversion that he did not quite understand, and I told him that he needed to find an introverts’ support group. And then I laughed. For if there were an introverts’ support group, it would be attended by exactly one person: the introvert who was hosting the meeting in his own home. All of the other introverts would be safely alone in their own homes, enjoying their own company, and solving their own problems — or reading books and taking naps. If the introverts were smart (and they are), they would host these meetings during an extroverts’ support group meeting, a loud and boisterous affair. And perhaps even better for the introverts, the timing would ensure that no one was tapping them on the shoulders, constantly asking, “Is everything okay? Because you sure are quiet.”

Together we went to Music Midtown in Atlanta last weekend, a two day affair with plenty of bands on four stages in Piedmont Park. It was a perfect fusion of our strengths: I came up with the big idea, suddenly appearing in his office to announce that the wristbands had been purchased, and Chris handled the logistical details, which is to say (mainly) that he drove. I grew up in Moultrie and learned to drive on a four speed pick-up truck on an abandoned airfield, with my poor, brave father in the passenger seat, eating boiled peanuts, clenching his jaw visibly at regular intervals. To drive in Moultrie, at least in the 1980s, involved wide-open roads and friendly drivers. (Sometimes too friendly: a police officer repeatedly pulled over a friend of mine just to say “hey,” for he had a crush on her.) But I had a pulse, a pick-up truck, and insurance, and I could navigate without much difficulty. After receiving my license, I had a collision with stationary objects once a month for four months: a concrete pole at a drive-through, my grandparents’ fishing boat, a football player’s car, a trailer hitch. At that point, my parents had my eyes checked, found that I had no depth perception, and paid for the single contact lens needed to restore visionary order. I remember the first time I wore that contact lens and saw a bouquet of flowers, seen for the first time in 3-D. It was beautiful.

But none of this (not even 3-D vision) prepared me for driving in large cities, like Atlanta, where people hold up only one finger instead of all in a gentle wave, where there is no space, where officers rarely desire to make your acquaintance for friendly reasons. And this was where Chris — a product of the mean streets of Macon — came in. So we drove up and went to the festival on Saturday. Our son had expressed some interest in going, which cooled quickly after he found out that we were going. He should have come anyway, for it was a young person’s sport.

The first clue was the mom jeans. Yes, I am talking about the unfashionable, high-waisted denims that ride barely under one’s armpits, unflattering to all and disguising any sense of attractiveness. (Are you tired of announcing to the world that you regularly take Pilates classes? Have I got the jeans for you!) Except that young women, non-moms, now wear them. Ironically, no doubt. I did see a mom dressed like her daughter — both in mom jeans, both in Twenty-One Pilots T-shirts. The daughter looked like a teenager. The mother did not. All to this end: Either do not try so hard, or visit the Gap with an honest friend.

The second clue was the beer vendors. At Music Midtown it was easier to buy beer than to refill a water bottle, mostly because the beer vendors rolled their coolers among the crowds, wearing yellow shirts emblazoned with I CARD EVERYONE! As it turned out, this was not true: The beer vendor did not card me. This was a tremendous disappointment, for I had really looked forward to that fleeting memory of youth. I would like to announce a new rule. If you say you are going to card EVERYONE, then you must card EVERYONE. If you say you are and do not, then you must offer me a senior citizen’s discount. It is only fair.

The third clue was the physical toll. Chris and I arrived around 2:30, walked around, sang along, and danced to the music. By 7:00, having walked for miles in the heat, we sat down on the grass to relax. At 8:30, we stood up again to see another show.  “Stood up again” is too kind of a description, for it was like two pieces of plywood trying to walk. (Actual thoughts: How long has it been since my feet began to hurt? Exactly when did my hips get so stiff? Why are my wrists so tender from leaning back?)

But I had a terrific time. There are few things more enjoyable than people watching, especially when set to music and involving the occasional ice cold beer. There were all sorts of combinations of people, mostly young but some not young. During one performance, I saw an older couple dancing. He was dressed as — I kid you not — a swami, and he and the woman who accompanied him had an odd, almost synchronized dance that attracted a lot of attention. There was an older couple, impossibly elegant and crisp, that sat near us in the grass. There were girls walking together in bras, fishnet stockings, and little else, and there were boys walking together looking at those girls. And in line to get food, there were two boys, my son’s age, who started talking to me about concert minutiae, because it is always safe to ask a mother for help. (“Language, boys!” I yelled at them once, after they used expletives. And then I laughed.)

But mostly I watched men and women. I saw a few arguments, all of them involving women yelling at men. I watched men and women walking side by side, the women yammering away and the men listening and laughing. I saw men holding purses for their women and carrying blankets that they clearly did not pick out. And I saw men acting genuinely goofy — doing little dances, doing big dances, mugging it up, engaging in physical activity that shouted “look at me! look at ME!” — all to please women. It was a good sociological experiment, what with men often seeming so foreign, so unknowable, so different.

And I looked over at the man next to me, the Cuban bandleader with no musical talent. Rather than reading a book in the quiet of his air-conditioned home, he had succumbed to a day of crowds, sweltering heat, and loud music. I had just purchased a beer, and I held the very cold can to his neck, first on the right and then on the left and then at the back. He gave me a big smile, and we started to dance, because he knew it would make me happy.

I felt a tap on my shoulder, and I saw a flash of grey hair. It belonged to a 20 year-old woman. Grey hair, like mom jeans, is a big thing, an irony never lost on me while I wile away my time in a salon. I want to take your picture, she said. I held my hand up and told her no. I have this Polaroid, and I want to take your picture. I tried again to wave her off, telling her not to waste her film and to photograph her friends. Sweetie, we are your parents’ age, I said gently. She would have none of it: We looked like we were having such fun that she wanted us to have a little memento of it. She was young. She was persistent. We relented. And she shot.

Polaroids (which are also a big thing) are now small and rectangular. Even in the new size, they require patience as you watch them develop. Even though Polaroid says not to, Outkast tells you to shake it, shake it, shake it like a Polaroid picture. I could not help myself, and I shook and I sang along in my head to that song as our forms came into being. There we were, sweaty and close, in a sea of people, my mouth open wide (as it always is when I am truly delighted), Chris looking genuinely pleased. It may be my favorite picture of us ever.

The grey-haired girl reappeared. How is it? she asked. Do you like it? she said. Oh, very much, I assured. Very much indeed. It was serendipity, this quiet moment in the midst of all the noise, the young girl with grey hair and the middle-aged woman without, the transfer of a Polaroid in the age of camera phones, the introvert and the extrovert.

It was so perfect that it almost made me forget that I hadn’t gotten carded. Almost.

ALC

One of the best things about growing older is that I can sleep as late as I want, as long as it’s not past 7 a.m. So I rolled out of bed on Saturday morning at 6:42, both slightly groggy and wide awake, and padded down to the kitchen to make a playlist for my spin class. I chose three of my favorite Jacksons (Michael, Janet, and 5); added 10 more songs; and then selected “It’s Raining Men.” When the last one played in class that morning, I found myself telling everyone just how terrifying that song was to a lawyer: If it was raining men, then people — standing defenseless under their flimsy umbrellas — could get really hurt.

It is that sort of insight that packs them in.

When I got home, I was delighted to see a text from my sister, and after exchanging a few messages with her, I realized that  it would be far easier to harness the power of technology, albeit slightly older technology, and simply give her a call. She answered, and I put the phone on speaker, and I sat in an oversized chair in such a way that if I still lived with my mother, she would yell at me. For 30 minutes or so, I knitted and talked and listened and heard the dog snore.

It was bliss.

My sister is one of my favorite people in this big old world. She is 12 1/2 years younger than I am, meaning that I left home for college when she was four. Before I left, I referred to her almost exclusively as “The Baby,” and in my teen-aged modesty, I steadfastly refused to be seen alone with her, lest anyone think that she were my baby. As an adult, The Baby has been my constant friend, a source of amusement, and an intriguing combination of me and not me. I understand her mistakes (I have made them); I cheer her triumphs (I wish for them); and I cry when she cries (oh, girl, I have been there). The Baby has been on a zen god kick lately, a rash of sensible and considered decisions at the tender age of 35, and I just sit back and marvel.

Well, I marvel when I’m not laughing, which is frequently. In this call she told me about a website — I lost WHAT? — where you can plug in your weight loss and have it converted  to tangible things. The Baby, for instance, had lost several steam irons. I plugged in my recent eight pound surplus, only to find that I had gained the equivalent of a human head.

An additional human head, and the neck that supports it, would be handy with my recent knitting binge. The Baby started knitting a few years ago, and not to be outdone, I taught myself to knit all wrong and to purl not at all. Through trial and error, the accumulation of enough yarn to knit a flock of sheep, and finally through a class that was far beyond my abilities, I know how to knit all right, and I can tell you proudly that I am now an Advanced Beginner. Failing at the harder stuff has made the easier stuff easier, and nothing still is perfect. But that does not stop me from knitting constantly. (Here’s a pro tip for you: If you receive anonymous knitwear in your mailbox, it’s me.)

I was going to take my latest project — a wrap knit from a linen blend yarn (color: turmeric) — to watch the Georgia game that afternoon, and then I received another delightful text: My football friends invited me to over to their friends’ house, which had a pool. I love a sport that allows access to a stranger’s pool. Since it was game day, and since a fan has to represent even while underwater, I wore a black top and a red bottom and I headed over.

The game was terrible in that we should have won by 30 points, and managed to eke it out by two. But it is funny to watch a game played by the school where your son attends college, for you cannot escape this fact: The players are just kids. Can you really get angry at a 19 year-old for being clumsy, making a bad decision, moving at the wrong time? Is it genuinely fair to question the judgment of a 20 year-old in a pressure-filled environment? And can you actually enjoy a sport that occasions so many near disasters? As I watched the game, I realized that I had turned from a rabid football fan into the most rabid fan of all — someone’s mother — and I thought less of success and more of everyone’s getting out of the game unharmed.

But there was the pool. As I bobbed in the deep end, the host recognized me: Wait. You used to swim, didn’t you? So we started talking about swimming, and then open water swimming, and then I found myself telling the story of That Dam Swim.

After I had been swimming for five or six years, I decided to sign up for a marathon swim: a 12 mile lake swim in Florence, Alabama. Intellectually, this was a ridiculous idea: I was in my late 30s, with two small children, and no real swimming experience. But I wanted to do it. So I trained like a fiend. I swam a timed 10K in a pool. (I don’t recommend it: Once was more than enough.) I jumped into every waterway that I could find. My shoulders grew, and my hunger woke me in the middle of the night, and still I swam. I could bench press my body weight. I smelled constantly of chlorine. I had at all times faint impressions around my eyes from my goggles. And the day that I swam 10 miles, I knew that I could swim 12.

Chris and I got to the lake the day before, and while he paddled a canoe beside me, I swam a leisurely few miles. It was beautiful, and it was perfect, and I was about to do something big.

The next morning we drove to the lake, and we met the captain of our support boat: an overweight, affable, older man who may or may not have been terribly hungover. He tossed the keys to Chris, said you’re in charge, and settled in to nap on one of the benches. Having trained for months, I jumped into the water and started swimming.

After four miles, I began vomiting uncontrollably. I became disoriented. I grew weak. It never occurred to me that I might drown. At one point, I looked over at the boat and saw the owner sitting up, taking the wheel, and Chris taking off his belt, his shoes, his wallet, his sunglasses. I yelled, you’re an idiot! why are you taking off your clothes? I yelled, don’t touch me or I will be disqualified! I yelled, I can outswim you! I am stronger in the water than you are! And I began to yell something else, and I vomited again. At that moment, I looked in Chris’ eyes and saw the fear of someone who would have to rescue a drowning swimmer at the risk of drowning himself. And I swam to the boat, and he and the other man pulled me in.

The only thing I remember from the boat ride to shore and the car ride home was the vomiting. And that’s it. Later, I remember berating myself because I did not finish, and I remember being ashamed. I even remember calling Swimming World magazine after it published the results of the swim and telling a bewildered staffer that the “DNF” (did not finish) next to my name seemed so terribly rude. I got sick! I said. I got sick.

So I told this story to a stranger and a few friends on Saturday afternoon, and for the first time in the decade since the swim happened, I realized this: I was really proud of myself for trying it at all. It would have been far easier to talk myself out of it. It would have been much simpler to sleep late, stay out of the water, avoid the gym, cheer on someone else. But I tried. And all sorts of hard things seem much easier.

Maybe everyone feels this way about failure. Maybe everyone else has come to terms with sometimes trying very hard and not succeeding. Maybe I, as usual, am the slowest runner in the pack.

Or maybe — just maybe — it’s that new human head that I’ve put on recently.

ALC

My mother started calling me at two-hour intervals yesterday, worried about the storm that was heading toward Savannah. Her fear of technology does not extend to Doppler radar, and from her land line, she phoned repeatedly to warn me of the projected path of the storm. Mom was not the only one who worried yesterday, for city schools announced that they would be closed today, and our office building locked the doors and battened the hatches. This left me scrambling yesterday afternoon, e-mailing myself various projects and grabbing files so that I could work from home all day today.

The rain started last night around 10, heavy but not torrential, its insistent drumming making for near-perfect sleep. As I started to drowse off, I allowed that I could stay in bed until 9 a.m. this morning — practically the middle of the day! — and I thought happily of a glut of sleep in my very near future. Fortunately, a dog’s stomach (and bladder) keep very fine time indeed, and I woke instead at 7 a.m. to the sound of Buddy’s heavy breathing and the smell of his swampy breath and his own insistent drumming, tail whacking the nightstand, nails clacking the floor. And so my day began.

An hour and one-half later,  I — my own belly full, my limbs tired from exercise — climbed back into bed. How could I not? For the rain had continued; the air had a peculiar quality about it; and the wind had picked up. Bed felt safe, and bed certainly felt warm, and bed had next to it a 620 page book that I was dangerously close to finishing.

Selecting a book is always a tricky business. For one thing, you cannot judge it by its cover. (Ha!) But if you are cheap, like I am, and prefer used books, like I do, the market becomes limited, for you are confronted with fewer choices. At the airport a few weeks ago, I perused the “Read and Return” half-price book rack and saw “We Are Not Ourselves” by Matthew Thomas. The cover touted “#1 International Bestseller” and bore a sticker “100 NOTABLE BOOKS The New York Times Book Review 2014.” So ignoring the old chestnut, and happy that my $8 would buy a heck of a lot of book, I gave it a try.

The book follows the protagonist, Eileen Leary, from her childhood to her marriage to the heart-breaking illness and death of her husband at the age of 58. I knew that I would end up crying as soon as I read the epigraph:

Darling, do you remember/the man you married? Touch me,/remind me who I am.

— Stanley Kunitz

The first four hundred pages of the book were curiously slow. And then the book found its steam and the last two hundred twenty pages flew by. (Its pacing reminded me of life, the endless days of childhood giving way to the blink-and-you-miss-it days of older adulthood.) The protagonist is both likable and unlikable, caring and selfish, striving and accepting.

The writing is beautiful. After announcing the death of her husband on page 569, the author writes this:

. . . This was life: you went down with the ship. Who was to say that wasn’t a love story?

She slept on his side. She didn’t like his side particularly, but she couldn’t bring herself to sleep on her old one. Whenever she did, she lay there thinking of all the nights she’d slept facing away from him, and she wanted one of them back — a single one would be enough — so she could turn her body toward his.

And with that, the floodgates opened for the next 51 pages, and as my pillowcase became more and more damp, I finished the book. I liked it so much that I read an additional few pages — “A Conversation with Matthew Thomas” — and learned that the author spent ten years writing the book. He noted that writing a novel was “more often like long-haul trucking than some ineffable mystical experience.”

When I shut the book, it was 12:30. Half my day was gone. Why work now? Why not play hooky on a rainy day with the office closed and a long weekend looming? So Chris and I ate lunch, and I went alone to a movie, “Southside with You,” a fictionalized account of the first date of Barack and Michelle Obama. (I have read that the Obamas have wondered why the movie was even made, and by the end, the why did not matter much to me at all.) It evoked so well the heady experience of meeting someone you really liked, the probing cross-examination for details, the drinking water from a fire hydrant feeling of learning all about the beloved, the discovery of common ground.

After the movie, I waited outside the theater for Chris to pick me up. As I watched rain blow sideways, I thought about the trajectory of love. About our first date, almost 31 years ago. The chance meeting through a mutual friend in a college lunchroom. Goggle imprints on his face. The falling away of the rest of the world. The sudden, surprising, and sure realization that I was going to marry him. And then I thought about the times that I had turned away, and I wondered about how woefully easy it was to get angry at the person who shares your daily life, to snap and to harp, to treat the person you love best the worst. I thought about the description of writing as more long-haul trucking, less an act of magic, and I thought that it applies to love, too:  a careful stewardship of cargo that one must navigate along many roads and obstacles from beginning to end. I thought about the week I had had, from mourning the tragic death of a loved one’s dog to celebrating our son’s making his college rowing team, and I thought of the constant in that week: Chris. Steady Chris.

As I waited for him to pull up, my phone rang. It was my mother. Before I could say anything, she told me that she had not slept all night due to her worry about the storm. I could not get a word in edge-wise as she told me everything that she had seen on TV, 10 hours away. Mom, I finally said. Mom, I’m fine.  And I told her the truth — that some limbs had fallen, that some people had lost power, and that my little corner of the world was riding it out in air-conditioned comfort at home, at the mall, at the movies — and I searched for how I could comfort her. Mom, I said, interrupting her again. Mom. Here is what my friend John says. So I told her. The Weather Channel sent a reporter to Savannah to begin storm coverage at 5 a.m. today. That reporter was not Jim Cantore, the guy that they send to the worst spots. Unless the Weather Channel sends Jim Cantore, we don’t need to worry very much.This successfully comforted my mother, my very own Weather Channel superfan. She brightened immediately, and then she volunteered, You sound good. I can hear it in your voice.

She was right, of course. She is my mother, after all. As she yammered on, all happy and relaxed, I caught sight of my beloved, coming out in the storm to take me home.

ALC