Notes from January, Wondering about Spring
February 1, 2021
My house has been quiet this winter.
I work from 9 to 5. Before work, I work out. After work, I work out some more. I turn up the music, and sing along, but when the playlist ends, I can hear Sophie sigh in the basement.
I’ve been reading a lot of books, and I can hear my own breath, and the sound of each car that passes by, from my chair in the corner of the living room.
My daughter, Katy, keeps her door closed, but she doesn’t mind if I visit. When we talk, we use quiet voices, like we are sharing secrets. At this point, we don’t own any secrets, and there is no one around to overhear.
When I’m wiping the counters, or folding the laundry, I think about what I’d say to this friend from Quincy College, while we walked to Starbucks for lattes. I remember conversations with friends from church, while I sipped coffee, and munched on something dipped in hummus or cream cheese during social hour.
I think about who I should call, and when the call goes to voicemail, most of the time, I hang up because I don’t know where to start.There are big things going on the world outside of my own. I feel foolish and small because I don’t read the Times every day or, some weeks, at all.
All I can contribute to conversation is another story about Sophia that’s highpoint is she ate her dinner and wagged her tail. Since she was dying six months ago, that is a big deal, but I’ve told that story about fifty times. Though I am still filled with wonder, the miracle feels a little worn.
I watched a concert on my phone on Saturday night, Jason Isbell and Lyle Lovett, live-streaming from different corners of the world. They swapped stories in between songs, they laughed. Lyle went on about how brilliant Jason is on guitar, and Jason stood up and applauded a song Lyle wrote about his daughter. They were friends being friends, and I was as grateful to watch that part of the show as I was for the music. And the music was pretty damned good.
I am lonely, but I am blessed that the people I am most lonely for still call, text, and remember my birthday, (which is not good because I never remember anyone’s birthday.)
It is the night before snow falls. Tomorrow, when I walk, my steps will be muffled by snow.
I will think about spring, the season that is coming soon, the one with the daffodils, sunshine, allergies, when colors shift from black and white to shades of green.
I will also think about another spring, the one we are all waiting for, alone, and together.
Or maybe I won’t think at all. Maybe, I will just walk and enjoy the morning.
We will get to where we want to be.
I will try to appreciate the quiet of staying at home, with the people I love.
(I hope they still love me when this is over- the workouts are pretty noisy, and I’m not always mindful of the fact that not everyone wants to hear Britney snarling “you gotta work, bitch” at seven am on a Monday or anytime, actually- that will be another miracle.)
The Things I Can’t Throw Away
November 22, 2020
Colin’s football jersey from 2017. My son is twenty now, and I don’t know him anymore. I knew him then, and he needed me to drive him places.
A potholder with a picture drawn by Katy in third grade.
A black silk bathrobe I ruined long ago in the wash that I bought during the height of my “I’m never going to get old, rainy days are for sleeping in, and I love the dressing rooms at Lord and Taylor’s!”.
A picture of my friend Cici, who died so long ago, I’m not sure that’s how she spelled her name.
A necklace my husband Sheldon bought me at some club that looks like a dog collar for a dead stuffed poodle owned by someone who misses the 80’s and his pet, and has watched everything on Netflix.
So many single earrings and broken necklaces.
Two unopened bottles of coriander. I must have seen an incredible recipe somewhere, but I must have thrown it out.
I didn’t hold onto baby clothes and wish I could find the homemade Mother’s Day cards.
I don’t know where the tickets stubs are from the last time I saw Bruce or a baby blue sweatshirt from my friend Rachael. She left it at my house, and finally gave it me when I begged, or maybe I offered her something in return. It was the right shade of worn out blue, soft, and perfect. The cotton had a tiny blood stain on the sleeve from a car accident she’d had just after she learned how to drive and faded spots from where she’d tried to wash them out with bleach.
It’s funny I don’t have any regrets about everything I’ve sent to Goodwill or tied up in big, black, bags and left at the end of the driveway.
I still have sorting to do, and it appears I will have the time to ponder what stays and goes.
I have time to consider, reminisce, and hope.
Well, not much time, actually. I just started a new job.
My daughter is a vegetarian, my husband is a diabetic, and my dog has kidney disease, so making dinner is complicated.
I like to workout in my living room, read novels so thick I can use them to make myself look better on Zoom, and it takes me forty-five minutes to walk Sophia around the block. We have a fenced in back yard, but I don’t want her to get bored.
Watching Sophie sniff the same patch of grass for four minutes, and then move on to a bush for two minutes is incredibly boring.
But anything is better than choosing what to throw away and what to keep.
Well, not anything, but you know what I mean.
One Really Special Place I Go To, or Did Go To Until There Was a Flood, and a Power Outage and Someone Made a Decision.
September 18, 2013
Last week I wrote a piece about the places in my life that make me happy, that make me feel at home, and let me move thru them without stropping to try to remember where the bathroom is.
Right after I click publish, there is a brief period of post-post afterglow, (sometimes I think that brief period after I’ve put something out there for the “public”, when I’m just thrilled with the simple fact that once more- I found something to say- it’s bliss, it’s relief, and there’s a dash of excitement in the mix… What if nobody reads what I so carefully offered to them, what if there are better things out there on the interweb, and all of my readers finally found out about them! Oh sorry, that causes a mild blip of terror, the excitement sings when I think about what if someone new finds my words, and they work in publishing, or run the New Yorker, or are a big time Broadway producer who thinks so far out of the box she can imagine my musings as having the potential to make a wonderful musical. Off off Broadway. (As long as I got rid of my son, the snakes and the turtle, and at the beginning of the second act lose my husband for a while to a crack whore, later saved by my 9 year old daughter, who put on a show so Daddy could go to rehab.) You never know, I suppose, but for the record, I wouldn’t get rid of my son or the snakes, but the turtle, well, I would be open to a discussion.
Right after the brief period of post-post afterglow, I remembered what I forgot. Nowhere in musings did I mention one place that I have had a love affair with for years. So intense was this relationship, I went back to school so I could get a job to work at this place. It is the Quincy Y,a local branch of the South Shore Y.
We first joined when my daughter started attending preschool at their Early Childhood Education Center. We moved up to next level when she signed up for swim team, and I began to work out while she was at practice. I’ve never been a mom that could happily sit by any pool, even to watch her youngest swim laps for an hour. Pool sides are for when you are in St.Croix and I have a thick book and a really hot waiter that wants to bring me martinis. I am a kind person, if someone wants to bring me martinis, I accept them, with grace. Pool sides at the Quincy Y are places where I put my stuff before I go swimming. My daughter didn’t think it was a terrific idea for me to do laps with the team. And so…
I ventured to the world of strength training and cardio. Soon I flirted with the classes, found out I loved Zumba, and Body Pump and Definitions.
Katy left preschool, and I signed her up for a cheaper swim team in Dorchester, but I found myself spending more a time there.
Long story short, and I could essentially turn my slow journey into the world of the workout into a very, very long story, I decided to go to school to study Exercise Science, in hopes of one day working at this place that had become such an integral part of my life. I took the classes and got the job, and am proud to say I am an Ace Certified Personal Trainer working at the Quincy Y.
I’ve only been there about six months, but in that short span of time, I’ve made many friends. When I walk in that door, and glance at the woman at the front desk, I know her name. I know where the lost and found is, and that a pair of headphones wouldn’t be found there. They go in the drawer behind the desk. I know what to say to the six teenage boys sitting in a corner on Nautilus equipment, texting their friends and showing off their sneakers, I show them how to get to basketball court. In case they forgot since the last time I showed them yesterday.
But I hadn’t gone all the way, and it wasn’t that the Y didn’t make me feel welcome. So many of the trainers have become really good friends. And the members remember my name, even my name tag on order.
It’s this. I am a exercise science major. I passed my Ace exam and am a real, certified by the great people at Ace to train people.
And I’m not in amazing shape.
I work out every day. But this summer, I became a little obsessed with swimming and hiking. It has been… um… two months since I’ve lifted anything, other than my daughter off a wall. I thought about doing a plank when I was looking for my car keys under the sofa, but then I found them so I had to drive someone somewhere. But by the first week in September I knew it was time to get to the business of building the muscles, and I really do want muscles, I have wanted muscles long before Michelle Obama started wearing short sleeve shirts. So when fall came, I was happy. I knew that cold weather would soon send me inside to the elliptical, onto the sweet seat of the chest press and the assisted chin, and others.
And I would, with the help of my fellow trainers, build and lift and wave ropes around in the air until I finally got a body that looked like it belonged on a personal trainer. Since I am a personal trainer, this is probably a good idea. Swimming and hiking all the time count for something, but mostly they give you really bad hair, and an excellent cardiovascular system.
I knew once I had some muscles, the Y would be right up there with church,kids, woods and water as one of my homes away from home. And it would have to stay that way iif I wanted to keep all those muscles.
But two weeks ago, the Quincy Y succumbed to time, a water pipe exploded and the building shut for good. They are hoping to reopen the new facility the end of October, the beginning of November.
And so I’ve been missing it. I miss my friends, the seventy two difficult teenagers, and that feeling I’d get when Kim, my boss, 6’2″, told me she had something to talk to me about. I miss hearing Dani talk about Crossfit, and Angela telling enthusiastically showing off the bruises she’d gotten in kick boxing class with Mickey.
So tonight, I realized I have some work to do. I need to squat those squats and curl those hammers, I need to conquer the world of free weights, and work on my push
ups. I am going to ready when the new Y opens. I will be ripped, and taut, and strong. People will look at the new Y, and look at me, in my tank top, and they will wonder if I built it all by myself.
On opening day, when I walk in to our new state of the art facility, I will be worthy. And if I’m not quite there yet, I know I can count on a little help from my friends.
julierichmond 