Night Runs

Just before dusk, I headed out for a trail run. We've been staying in Pt. Reyes this week, and I've been starting many of my runs at the visitor center in Bear Valley. For some reason, I've never run here before--only hiked along the main, wide trail along the valley with Axel. So this week, all of my runs are along new-to-me trails. Can't think of a better way to transition from the end of an old to the beginning of a new year.

I lock the car at 4:30pm, figuring I have about an hour before dark. I'm going to run seven miles, so I know that the timing is close, but I also know that the trails are well-marked. Also, yesterday I started my run at 5pm and managed to find my way back to the trailhead in the gathering dusk. I carry along some candy, just in case, but leave my license in the car, since I don't have a big enough pocket for it. Nothing worse than carrying a lot of junk with you on a run.

I love running in the evening. In my twenties, I used to go for runs after my shift at the restaurant. After having wiped down the tables, stored all the saran-wrapped condiments, wrapped the silverware in napkins and counted the money. In the dark of 2 or 3 am, I would run along the edge of the street, scanning for pools of light from the street lamps above. I loved that time of night in Charlottesville, after the bars have all closed and the streets had emptied of drunken students. It's not that I wasn't a little scared; I knew how dumb it was for a twenty-one year old woman to run out alone that time of night. But the pleasure of those empty streets and my footfalls marking out a rhythm against the silence outweighed the fear. Anyway, a little bit of fear makes a run more fun.

After we moved to Oakland, I found a running buddy to run with at night. Oakland is no Charlottesville and, though the winter evenings are far more temperate than Charlottesville, I'd venture to say they're not quite as safe. She and I would meet in the dark and loop around the city streets. But the streets in Oakland are only empty early Sunday mornings, never after dark. More recently, I've been running trails in the evening with another friend, at dusk just as the sun disappears into the bay. It's harder to see at that time of day than in the pitch black of night, so my friend and I wear headlamps. Usually. I often forget mine. The familiar trails become unfamiliar; shapes loom indistinctly. Trees? Rocks? A mountain lion? The rocks and roots underfoot disappear into a murky quicksand and we have to skim our feet lightly, as if we're skating over the surface of the trail.

My run tonight climbs up to Mt. Wittenberg from the far side of the valley. The first mile and a half takes me along the gradually sloping, wide trail that borders the valley creek. Although it hasn't been a rainy winter, it has rained quite a bit for the last week. The trails are muddy underfoot and I dodge large puddles. Beside me, the creek rushes by loudly. We've started our hikes and walks on this section of the trail several times already this week and the curves and hills are familiar. The first juncture takes me up Old Pine trail, a steep, narrow path up to the Inverness ridge. The muddy trail is like chicken molé, nowhere stable to place a foot. I run along wet grass bordering the trail, but so has everyone before me: it too is muddy and slick, full of sinkholes. I head straight uphill in this manner for two and a half miles.

Finally, I reach the ridge and the trail levels out. In front of me, the sun has dipped into the pink ocean. Behind me, fog rises from the valley below. Within the tree-lined trail, I have trouble discerning the rocks and sinkholes. I run, happily, hoping that the second half of my run will be downhill and that I'll make it back before dark. Suddenly a form emerges out of the fog and dusk. A silver-haired woman walks toward me. She carries nothing and we pass one another in silence, quizzically catching each other's eye. I can't imagine where she is heading, at sunset, more than three miles from the nearest trailhead. I wonder if I should stop to talk to her, make sure she's not addled. But, remembering the flip-flop wearing Hawaiians flitting along the steep and rocky mountain trail of Kauai, I reason that perhaps she's a local and knows what she is doing.

For myself, I'm not so sure. It is now difficult to see and the trail is rising. Apparently, I am not done climbing. The trail rolls upward for another mile. The sun has disappeared entirely to the west and the ocean is now a dusky lavender under the fog. Below me to the east, the fog has crept up to the tree tops. Above, I see the marker for Mt. Wittenberg, a grassy hillock against the gray sky. There is enough light to see, but my relief disappears as soon as I begin my descent: the trail winds through a thick redwood forest. In the near-black, I cannot differentiate the trail from non-trail. I move forward, my heart beating and my thoughts racing, listening and feeling for the trail with my feet. According to the sign, I have two and a half miles of this. The panic rises and I realize that I hadn't told Mychal where I was headed. I wonder if he'll be able to figure out my route based on my offhand comment that I was going for seven miles and that it was "A new trail!"

Multiple cords of might-be trails criss-cross one another. As with most of the area, splinter trails created by scores of hikers lead to short-cuts or side-trips. In the dark, I can't tell which is the trail or which is the splinter. My feet slip on wet rocks, I slide down the hill. I force my thoughts into a calming litany, slow my breathing and steps down. Suddenly, I emerge from the forest into a meadow. Hallelujah! With the ambient light, the dirt trail separates itself easily from the grassy meadow. But my exuberance lasts only the minute that it takes me to cross the meadow and enter another, dark, forested stretch. By now, I can see nothing. But I hear a rushing creek which I tell myself, not knowing, must be the valley creek. I force myself to repeat this over and over, crowding out the anxiety that I'm not even on a trail at all, telling myself that it's impossible to get lost this close to the valley. Worse comes to worse, I just go down hill and I will inevitably reach the valley.

Luckily, worse did not come to worse. The coursing water grows louder and the trail steeper. A few more hairpin turns and slick rocks, and I find the bridge which Axel had ridden across this morning on his skuut. Only a mile to the trailhead along the gentle, wide valley trail. Even blindfolded, in the dark and fog, I can find my way to the car.

Haitch-One-Enn-One

Last night was so warm that my friend and I sat on the porch until very late, drinking wine. Mychal was out with his buddies ((Laughing, we'd waved them off: three dads making the rounds of bars in a minivan. I think I'd rather be drinking wine on the porch while Axel sleeps inside than heading to a cool, Oakland bar in a minivan.)

Every so often, Axel cried out; he was having trouble sleeping, he was hot to the touch, his breathing was raspy. He was sick. And restless. And still awake when my friend left, late for me, almost 11pm. I listened to Axel's breathing: a harsh wheezing as he struggled to get air. His cries scratched in his throat, his cough a dry bark. And he had a fever. It sounded awful and Mychal was still out; I couldn't leave him downstairs by himself, so I brought him into the bed with me. Where he tossed and turned and coughed and wheezed until 5 am.

The next morning Mychal googled "wheezing toddler fever" and determined Axel should see a doctor to rule out bronchitis and pneumonia. That was sobering, so I called the preschool and told them he wouldn't be in, and called the doctor. We showed up early for our eleven o'clock appointment and waited for nearly an hour, as I tried, unsuccessfully, to keep Axel from touching anything in the waiting room. Finally, we were seen by a student of pediatric medicine who did her stuff, but Axel's a stubborn kid, and he refused to breath in and out as she moved her stethoscope around. Luckily, she'd forgotten her tongue depressor, so she disappeared in search of one.

A roll of paper hung over the back of the door with crayons on a high shelf next to it. Axel requested each color in turn, drawing long, vertical tracks down the door. The door began to open cautiously, revealing the doctor carrying a small pinwheel. As Axel puffed on the pinwheel, she moved the stethoscope over his chest and back, listening to his breathing. It's not pneumonia, she informed me once she'd taken the earbuds out. Or bronchitis. When I continued to look at her questioningly, she said, and it's not H1N1.

Can you tell me what they symptoms are, I asked. I started to say, I haven't had time to check, but stopped myself in time: what kind of mother doesn't have time to review the H1N1 symptoms? Her withering glance confirmed my hesitation. After she rattled off the symptoms for H1N1, which, it turns out, are exactly the same as for the flu, I described for her Axel's wheezing all through the previous night. It seems the student forgot to convey that information to her. Oh, she said immediately, he has the croup. Phew.

road trips

The first rule of a road trip is, "Seize the opportunity." Even if it means a crab sandwich at 9:30, ten miles after two poached eggs and coffee in a one-gas station town. Pull off the freeway when you see the sign for Crab Shack, because you never know when you'll drive past another.
The same goes for Salmon King River; that's where you pull off, otherwise you may be going home without smoked salmon.

In some ways, a road trip is a series of dashed hopes and missed opportunities; at least, that's how it goes if you're out of practice, as I was when Axel and I took our road trip to Oregon. I took several road trips in my twenties: coast to coast twice, three times north to south.

My first drive across country started in Virginia, the day after Thanksgiving, and ended in Berkeley, the day before Christmas. I took a lolly-gagging northern route, sleeping on couches, in a motel room with a hitchhiker, in my car, on floors, in the parking lot of the Mormon Temple in Utah, and once, memorably, in the back of a university theater in Madison. (Hiding in a bathroom stall, feet pulled up, when the cleaning crew came through. It was below freezing and drastic measures were called for.)

The most fun on a road trip was with my brother, driving to Mexico. He downed two large Peet's coffees in Berkeley, I made him give me the wheel before we got out of the East Bay. The highlight of the trip was running out of gas on a private highway somewhere in Mexico sometime near midnight. There weren't any exits off the highway, we didn't have a map, and had arbitrarily decided to follow it to its end. Except that we ran out of gas. Our only options were fancy resorts or even fancier resorts, so we pulled into one and, at the entry booth, attempted to explain our predicament in some very pitiable high school Spanish. In much more sophisticated Spanish, the guard explained that this was a private resort and that they did not have a gas station on the premises. Textbook imperfectly, we pointed out that they must have some way to get gas into the golf carts. The guard --sweet faced, pudgy in his white uniform, motioned us to pull over and disappeared. He returned with a few other guys and a canister of gas which my brother fed to the car while I fed the guys some twenties and half a cake we'd brought along. Over cake, we found out that the guys had siphoned the gas from some of the guests' cars. We drove most of the night and in the morning found ourselves in a small town by the coast where we found a super cheap motel, parked the rental car, and spent the rest of the week buying cheap boots and every variety of street food.

The least fun trip was the southern coastal route with an on-again, off-again boyfriend. We squabbled most of the way and split ways, of course, well before the destination. In the meantime, though, we had some incredible pulled pork, saw Graceland, and I ran ten miles along a river at dawn one day in Texas, where the temperatures had already passed 100.

None of these trips prepared me for a road trip with my toddler, though this may be because my memories of them had sufficiently dropped into the netherland of my mind, trickling to the surface slowly as the miles ticked away en route to Newport, Oregon.

But, also, nothing really prepares you for traveling with a toddler, except, that is, the experience itself. If a road trip exists as a series of hopes and opportunities, it is, essentially, a trip dictated by your desire's whims. Unless your whims are hostage to your sweet-faced, pudgy, tyrant of a toddler. Axel threw approximately one tantrum per hour of driving; most of these tantrums were futile attempts to control his environment--such as it was for Axel, this meant expressing his anger at the fact that the armrest console was "clicked" (latched shut). Our stops were timed according to meltdowns, which took place approximately every one and a half hours. And all stops were suspended while he slept, which meant passing by homemade ice cream, fresh cherries, tug boats, crab shacks, taffy stores and a historic train from Oregon's Coastal Railroad. On our return, though, I broke down and woke Axel up so that he could see the sole train of our road trip.

Sometimes, though, instead of a tantrum, Axel would pretend he was Tuncer (our cat) throwing a tantrum. Which is very funny, for a minute at least. By the thirtieth minute of Axel being Tuncer throwing a tantrum because he wanted food, I was ready to leave him by the side of the road. So we discussed it, and it was decided that Axel didn't really want to walk home from Redway.

Stopping according to Axel's whims created a different kind of trip, one which landed us at a lot of fountains and statues, which, for some reason, maybe it's a question of scale, or perhaps because of their recognizability, he really appreciates. And also a fair share of ice cream stores, as well as well-situated benches, including the series that lined an elk prairie outside of Eureka. According to the logic of tantrums, one was thrown for a fountain for which we did not stop, as well as for the beach vista, where we didn't stop long enough. And, as the adult, whose life is composed of these stops and starts, I share the exact sentiment.

stories

When Axel just began to talk, I compulsively wrote down each new word, keeping lists alongside the notes about what he was eating, how much he slept. It's a habit of mine, this keeping track. After a certain point, though, he learned words too fast for me to keep track, and began to put word combinations together and next thing I knew, he and I were having long conversations. Axel is fairly shy, so most people don't have a sense of just how much he talks; it's a pretty constant stream, a blend of sports commentary and embellishment, and, of late, pure invention. I regret not writing down Axel's first out-right lie, which he told last fall--he delivered some pure fiction to me about Mychal, delivering it with absolute conviction, and a gleam in his eye which told me that he knew that I knew that he was making it up.

By now, his stories are more elaborate, but they're also more obviously fiction, as he throws in formulas like "one day," or, more obviously, "once there was." He tells them to himself, with or without an audience, using his little plastic guys to act them out.

Lately, he's grown so confident with language, that he'll try out any word. "Unfortunately, you can't have a cookie, because you already had ice cream," I told him, and hear in response: "Unfortunately, I want a cookie." Or, combining phrases from books with his favorite past-times, he says, "I'd be delighted to help you sweep." Or, after watching "Up!," he tells me: "Literally, that bird was a peacock." The word this morning was "serenade," a useful word if ever, given how much music he's been playing lately.

As his language grows, we get a better sense of how much he really remembers. The other day, he asked me whether I remembered the "that show we saw in the theater with the sad vampire and the puffets?" Which we saw five months ago in Lviv. After we'd gotten back from Virginia this summer, Axel told me, "Remember, Grandpa only had one fish in a bowl on his table." I'd actually forgotten the Siamese fighting fish in the little bowl on the coffee table, as I'd been pre-occupied with my grandfather, who has Alzheimer's and was repeatedly throwing up during our visit.

This is one of my favorite aspects of parenting, getting these little glimpses into his interiority. Especially when a child is learning language, there is so much repetition: it's not always clear how much of his speech is repeating formulas or codes that he hears along the way. But as he verbalizes his recollections, out of the blue as we're driving to the store, à propos absolutely nothing, I get a hint of what's going on in his little head.

in the bird sanctuary and endurance capital of the world

On Saturday afternoon, I pulled into the Overlook parking lot, the sanctioned unofficial campgrounds for the Auburn triathlon. A few patches of grass ringed the newly paved parking lot; clusters of teenagers huddled around the few cars, the thwacking of skateboards against concrete mingled with birds. Just beyond the parking lot, green grass gave way to dried brush, and abruptly the foreground disappeared, abutting against a distant backdrop of mountainous green forests. I parked, wandered up to the edge of the overlook, but all I could see below was bushes and a concrete skate ramp.

I'd arrived early so that I could go for a ride, so I left the car with the smokers and skaters, and headed out for what I hoped would be some spectacular riding. I rode about Auburn, saw many for sale signs, lots of grandly built mansions, and tons upon tons of cars. This was looking less and less like the small country town with rolling backroads that I'd imagined. Then I came across a father seated on a curb, his small child leaning between his legs, the two of them watching a parade of antique cars leaving the car show, and Auburn shifted back, slightly, towards the small towns I remember from Virginia.

When I got back to Overlook, different groups of teenagers had arrived, in small groups they headed down dusty paths, with their cold bevs and cigarettes. A few more pick up trucks joined the sparse cars; a couple of dogs added their relentless barking to the thunking skateboards. I spread a blanket on the ground and watched the world pass by--in the form of an elder gentleman who had carefully unpacked his walker from the trunk of his american car. He was dressed like my grandfather, in a short-sleeved button down, polyester slacks and probably from the same era. He took one loop of the parking lot, and on the second loop, I asked him how many laps he was going to do.

Four, he said. I figure it's about a mile, maybe more.

I nodded. What do I know, about the distance of a parking lot. And I thought about what it means to get old and require a walker, to be amidst all this spectacular beauty but prevented from taking the dusty trail, with all the teenagers, down to the overlook.

What a beautiful area, I said. And gestured vaguely to the mountains and the gorge behind us.

It's too crowded now, he complained. This used to be a nice place. When I moved here in 1946 (forty-six! I exclaimed), it was a nice town. Now it's too crowded. All those people moved up here... and he named a bunch of cities where many of Mychal's co-workers live... and they work down in Sacramento. I nodded, but didn't correct him--they work further away than that, even. They just want their kids to go to the nice schools. Again I nodded, it's true; and wondered, how this crazy experiment of America is supposed to work if we all believe that our town really is our town, and not "theirs."

The next day after the race, as I loaded my car, I saw the gentleman again. He was similarly dressed, walking his laps of the parking lot. I hailed him, and he continued where he had left off yesterday.

It used to be so nice here. All those people move up from the city, bringing their drugs. He made a fist and pointed to his knuckles--with their tatoos, he said. They were good country kids, he said, and now they've brought drugs and all that stuff.

Of course, he meant two different "they"s, his gesture made that clear, but the fact that he used the same word brings the problem to light: "they" is so impossible to define, especially when "they" begin to become "us," or vice versa, and that gesture of blame, so temptingly close, becomes all the more futile and distant.

At the edge of the parking lot, the background and the foreground merge, the unseen chasm, so deep in the gorge, doesn't provide the visual barrier necessary to keep them apart. But if you've lived there since 1946, you don't need to take the dirt path down to find the gorge. You know it's there.

once we were kings

This morning, having accidentally stepped out of routine, I ended up at Lions Pool to swim. The morning swim crew is a collection of silver-haired ladies, regulars who asked, "And who are you?" the moment I walked into the building. An elderly gentleman rounds out the group and their interrogation with the observation, "You're sitting in my place." Introductions were made while we waited for the pool to open, each of the swimmers introduced themselves, and the general conversation switched gears as one of the woman described Lions Pool as she knew it from childhood--in the 1940s. There was no building, or locker room, just a gravel spot for laying about in the sun, actually, she corrected, the shade as there were so many more trees then. It only cost a dime to swim there, in the era of nickel movies.

She had gone to Oakland High School, back when the school was housed in a majestic, pink, three-story building. In front, there was a circular garden patch, where each class buried their time capsule. Now, that area is the football field. I live next to OHS, a drab, stucco, low-slung affair. The students routinely trash the grounds and cover entire walls with gang-related graffiti. But I had to wonder, as I listened to her glowing description of this regal place, how today's students would feel, if they, too, could attend school in a castle.

Chapter 10: Everything is Illuminated

With my tutor's verbal directions, we found (one of? the only remaining?) Lviv's Jewish cemetery. Take the Simiorka to Yanivs'ke Cemetery, and ask there, my tutor instructed. Which we did, only not at first.

At first, assuming that the Jewish Cemetery would be somewhat off to the side, we walked past the big entry gate, past the Western border, past a long, tall fence (peeking through the crevices to see if there were any gravestones behind it). To our left, Axel pointed out a train in the distance. To our right, a small, dirt road cut between large cinder-block apartment houses. We took the dirt road, up a short hill, past dogs running around small yards filled with building materials, and found the cemetery wall. More dogs came to greet us.

We had a hunch that the Jewish graves would be at the farthest side of the cemetery: along the northern border, but whether it would be east or west, neither of us could guess. There was a small niche in the wall, a tiny footpath of tamped down snow. We edged in, squeezing past grave fences, trying to see the edge of the cemetery. We walked and walked along these tiny paths. Eventually we came to a much wider foot path and discovered a grid of these wider paths. But just rows and rows of crosses adorning graves stones and sites. At one broad crossing, Mychal and I decided to split up: he'd go North-West, Axel and I would go North-East.

Snow and graves were all we could see in any direction; slightly disoriented, as if we were in a forest, I tried to remember flowers and names so that I could find my way back to our parting spot. Neither of us had a watch, or a phone.

I asked a man, meticulously wiping the snow off a large marble mausoleum with a cloth, whether he knew if there was a Jewish cemetery here. Yes, yes, he said, and told me to go all the way to the top edge, and then to the right. Thanking him, I walked off with Axel on my back. The wide, packed down path became, briefly, a road with clear spots, then more packed snow paths, then tiny foot path through graves, and then untrampled snow. We walked, snow gathering in my shoes, slinking up to my knees. The sun emerged, I took off my hat, my gloves, unzipped my coat. Dogs barked in the distance, graves surrounded us. I began to despair that I wouldn't find the Jewish graves, nor Mychal, for that matter.

I charted north-west through the snowy clear spaces, saw a star--no it's just a Soviet Army star, no! It's actually a Star of David. And lo and behold: here I was amidst hundreds of Jewish grave stones. By this point, I had begun to call Mychal's name; all I heard in return were the barking dogs getting nearer. Axel, on my back, asked whether these were graves too. And these? Yes, and I read the names, read the dates. We wandered up and down a few rows, crunching through the clean snow. A few more rows, and I still couldn't see the end of the grave sites.

Still calling Mychal's name, more frequently now, Axel chiming in, we turned back and retraced our steps. Dog footprints accompanied our previous tracks, bloody marks spelled out a skirmish. I carefully placed my feet next to my earlier tracks, marking a round-trip just in case Mychal stumbled across them (was I a girl scout?!). We arrived back at the paved road, past the now clean marble mausoleum, and there was Mychal, heading in our direction.