I Can See Clearer Now

Someone threw a Chobani out the window, like a water balloon. A flavored one, possibly Black Cherry. If I had crossed that section of the sidewalk five seconds later, it could have hit me. If I had looked up eight seconds earlier I would have held out both hands and caught it, carried it home, and eaten it for dessert. In the past eighteen months, I’ve made many dietary adjustments and Greek yogurt has become a special staple.

In the past eighteen months, my vision has gradually, somewhat astoundingly, improved. When my mom used to lecture me about how sticking to a predominantly natural-foods routine can transform the body, mind, and mood, I rolled my (frailer?) eyes.

I still went in for an eye exam the other afternoon because my insurance covered it, I had nothing better to do, and I have a weakness for the letter-reading drill, which I presumably aced this time around. If there’s enough caffeine in me, I could sit upright in that chair, guessing/shouting out the tiniest rows of letters for up to an hour.  P K L Y R G : I can read all of this. Can you?

On the mind-transformation front, my skull isn’t doing any shrinking. The new guy behind the optometry-office counter said the prescription reading glasses I’ve had for more than two years, but haven’t needed to wear in almost one year, are freakishly small for my head. “Child-size,” he murmured. I never noticed and nobody else has pointed anything out. He said another pair of frames I tried on made me look like I belonged on Star Trek. The next time I go important-clothes shopping, who better to tag along? 

7 (Unrelated) Musings Mustered Up in the Mountains Last Week

1. It is possible to downhill ski in 70-degree weather.

2. Walmart really does sell guns.

3. Is the coffee, including what’s served at local chapters of national-chain eateries, weaker in rural areas? I have had my suspicions for three or four years and now call for a special committee to investigate.

4. I would give up guacamole for the opportunity to become a farmer. What I may lack in experience, I make up for in terms of good intentions. I’ll need a farm husband who (among other duties) will screen my visitors and have a hot breakfast waiting for me as soon as I wake up, ready to dive into the workday, between 10 and 11 a.m. each morning.

5. The uppermost points of mountain ranges are unlevel. Even that high in the sky, nothing is completely equal at once. One of the shorter trees might rise past those that currently tower over it, and then another smaller tree might later rise above that one. In the race to the top, there are no finish lines.

6. What’s the best time of day to witness a Moose Crossing?

7. I have to do something for the kidnapping/rape survivors in my hometown of Cleveland. Anyone else who wants to donate any dollar amount to help fund their healing-related expenses can do so at: https://www.clevelandfoundation.org/give-now/?existing_select=cleveland-courage-fund-of-the-cleveland-foundation-exfund

Getting the Terrace Summer-Ready

An innocent one, who has never seen my apartment or lived in a city, asked whether I have my own balcony. I do, only it’s more commonly referred to as a “fire escape.” When I’m home alone between sunrise and sunset, I spend much of my time at my desk or on my bed, the two command centers, looking out onto it. I’m looking at, through, and over it right now, wishing someone would spray-paint a colorful mural on the walls of bricks it faces.

The next time my super makes a house call, I need to ask him how to safely unlatch and roll back the complicated-looking window gate that separates my inside from the outside. I could take a folding chair out there, with a crossword puzzle and some lemonade, to feed the birds and sit four feet closer to the bare brick walls. I see room for two people and a small end table.

When I lived elsewhere and came into the city for job interviews, I stayed with a friend or a cousin. One weekday morning, hours after my hostess left for work, I looked out a window and watched a young man/old boy in a long coat crouching on his fire escape, a screenless open window behind him, smoking a cigarette, lost in thought. He seemed like an on-the-up local musician, a front man, emotionally prepping for a rehearsal or soundcheck. If I saw him on a downtown stage, I wouldn’t recognize him. But I won’t forget what he stood for – or stood on, and now it’s my balcony that beckons. I’ll wave, say a few words, and drape a flag from it as soon as I learn how to get past the gate.  

The Alternative Troopers

As I exited my bank’s ATM annex yesterday, I saw a flock of locals feverishly congregating around a table of children. I’ve craved two kinds of Girl Scout cookies for almost three years (and, for just as long, I’ve griped about not being able to find any). The agony was over.

When I come across girls on Scout business, I like to share that I was once a Girl Scout too. But the more I think about it, who knows how technically accurate this is? If I were hooked up to a polygraph machine and answered, “Yes, of course” to “Were you ever a Girl Scout?” would there be consequences?

A friend recruited me into a troop in fifth grade. Our leader, a new acquaintance’s hippie mom, seemed fearless. We never had uniforms (I fuzzily recall a sash of some sort, but that could be all in my head). We never went camping, unless taking one unchallenging nature walk counts. Although the “meetings” were invigorating and hilarious, I didn’t stick with the group for long and wouldn’t be flabbergasted to learn that it was unaccredited.

Since my troop time didn’t amount to much more than socializing in a somewhat organized manner, I’m fascinated with the lines of text (aside from the “Nutrition Facts”) on my Thin Mints box. There’s a list disclosing that the Girl Scouts experience (or at least the cookie-selling component of it) is designed to help girls develop 5 skills: Goal Setting, Decision Making, Money Management, People Skills, and Business Ethics.  

(Money Management? Should this have been a topic of discussion in between rounds at the bowling alley we went to?

Business Ethics? When the town mayor’s granddaughter and I spent an afternoon going door to door and deliberated whether to call it a day and “go to Dairy Queen now or do a few more houses first,” I’m 70% sure we opted for the latter.)

If any future tween of mine wants in on a stimulating organized troop, I’ll be a hippie-mom overseer. We’ll bowl and kickbox, have tea parties and dance marathons, travel to the nearest trampoline park, deify the arts, practice eco-consciousness even when it’s not Earth Day, and donate more snacks than we sell. 

School Zone – Slow Down

I live within a 10-minute walk of a university campus and treat its grounds the way others treat their backyards or a spa. Less crowded (particularly when most of the students clear out for summer recess) than the city parks, it’s become one of my nice-weather, daytime decompression spots. Passersby assume I go there (enrollment-wise) and the reading I’m engrossed in is my schoolwork. Parents on the guided tours glance over and smile approvingly. “That could be our little Natalie in a couple of years,” they’re thinking. I lead some of my overnight guests through the quads and we might take our morning coffee and the Sunday Times to a table outside of what could very well be the fine arts building.  

I was on campus the other day, tanning, texting, and reading the Times on my phone, behind a professorial-looking man and his young daughter. There were several open tables on that empty patio, thus it beats me why they chose the one closest to the ledge I sprawled out on. Maybe it’s because I looked so scholar-chic with the unassuming canvas bag, sensible shoes, and unopened library book at my side. I was role-model material for this guy’s growing girl, which put an added pressure on me to do everything I could to shield her from seeing me pop ibuprofen tablets like they were Skittles.

If I’m even considering the idea of swallowing an over-the-counter pill, it means I’m melting. I’ve reached last-resort row, where it’s swallow or be swallowed. When I’d been writhing in toothache pain the night before, I thought about the first time (and one of the only times) a similar 5-alarm fire broke out across my jaw. It was years ago, when I lived in Boston, a metro area that had been on my mind all day. After monitoring my mouth and asking all the right questions to size me up as a compulsive gum-chomping, teeth-clenching Type A personality, the late-night Emergency Room examiner advised me to cut back on stress and periodically toss back ibuprofen tablets like they’re Skittles until the symptoms sail away. No problem. 

Sunday in the Family Room

After hours of pulling out my wallet every 25 minutes, I desperately needed to end an afternoon of non-stop commercial transactions with some culture, preferably at a quiet and climate-controlled indoor venue. Guess where I happened to be? Across the street from a museum that’s free on Sundays. Timing, probably more than money, changes everything.

I could hear them as I walked down a staircase toward the exhibit hall. A multigenerational family carried on as if they were at home, keyed up after Sunday dinner. So much for noiselessness, but they were likable and the gallery space had central air.

The room was devoted to a photojournalism project on civil-rights-era urban poverty, spotlighting a married couple who had 8 of their 10 children living with them in an Upper Manhattan tenement. Many of the photos ran in a 1968 issue of Life magazine, every image slayed me, and I wondered where everyone was today.

Now a few of the talkative visitors were taking pictures. One was crying.

“If she was in the midst of a struggle, how come her curls were poppin’?” a teenager asked.

“Because she was an unlicensed beautician.”

These visitors were younger generations of the family featured on the walls. I thought two of the older relatives in the room might have been kids in the photos, but now that I’m obsessed with their story, I just Google-read that only one of the photographed kids made it past the age of 30 – and this longest-living offspring died at 48, 5 months ago, 3 days after the exhibit opened.

When I was on my way out, most of the clan posed for a picture taken by another not-tacky-at-all visitor who must have overheard who they were. The one who’d been crying said this family’s second generation “has done just fine.” It was nice to have that confirmed, but I’d suspected as much midway through my first lap around, when I really got a sense of this team’s spirit.

Let the Tear-Jerkers Take All

As the head of my household, I go to great lengths to keep the overhead low, the décor distinctive, the refreshments flowing, and the clutter at a minimum. I give away, throw out, recycle, or shred anything I don’t like, need, or have any conceivable use for, and only hoard the sentimental stuff.  

It takes hours to go through my keepsake stash and I don’t have the time to do so more than once a year. I’ve saved Valentines, personalized cards and letters, bibs from the first road races I ran, ticket stubs, formal invitations, playbills, my ID badge from when I volunteered at the state mental hospital for an Abnormal Psychology class, notes sent on frou-frou stationery from individuals who drafted statements like “I’ll always be there for you” mere months before they were nowhere to be found when they were needed the most.  

The best recent addition to the collection comes from a co-worker who filled his Christmas card’s entire left-hand side with a series of beautiful handwritten sentences. When someone has had a uniquely positive impact on you, it doesn’t require much to make this person aware of it. The last time I saw my childhood dentist I basically relayed that I place him in the top tier of the most honorable human beings I’ve ever known. He, who might not hear explicitly heartfelt praise very often, looked ready to cry. If I have regular contact with people whose character, caliber, or contributions are above average in any way, I’ll tell them - and there’s usually that similar element of choked-up surprise on their end. They don't necessarily need the validation to continue on as themselves, but the immeasurable extra incentives that come with it stretch deep and far.