How’s My Driving?

I saw this on my drive: a truck bed carrying a truck bed pulling a truck bed carrying a truck bed. It was almost too much absurdity for me to handle. I was sure I was passing the ends of the earth.

So, last week I made plans to watch my son’s final cross country race in Knoxville, Tn.  My son is living with his dad this school year, while my life steadily declines in the hopes of some veritable phoenix rising from the ashes of it. But that is not yet the case. It seems as though, daily, things get wronger and wronger.

To be at the race with time to spare, I had to leave Louisville no later than noon.  I set my alarm for 6:30am, and promptly hit the snooze until after 10am. I have time, I thought.  Laziness is not a good platform for reason.

So before I left, I tried to tie up some loose ends to feel less overwhelmed. I went to pay my court costs for my DUI, only to find that since it was a BANK HOLIDAY I couldn’t move money from my savings to cover it. I don’t understand this. I was trying to make a fucking ELECTRONIC transfer. It’s not like there’s a mouse in the middle of this deal, spinning in a wheel to make my money physically move from one place where MY money is to another place where MY money is.  All an electronic transfer does is make numbers move. It’s not even real cash, it’s just numbers. But I guess numbers need a holiday too.

I did manage to drop my comforter off at the cleaners, which was good because I was starting to feel pretty filthy for sleeping next to a massive red wine stain. Which also served as a reminder that I feel fine with drinking wine in bed. Which served as a reminder that I am a complete and utter sloth.

While driving around all day, I did what I usually do which is drain my phone batteries by being feverishly addicted to all forms of media one can access from a phone.  Texting everyone to say nothing, calling people to whine and bitch about nothing, checking your facebook interminably because I’m obsessed with you…. These are the important things that make my battery go from fully charged to about 10% life within 2 hours.  But, No sweat, I thought to myself, that’s what car chargers are for.

My last task of the morning was to get a new car charger, as I had left mine in the car of a friend. So, I went to AT&T to buy a new one, not wanting to make the 20minute drive to pick mine up from my friend. I got into my car, plugged the thing in, and nothing. There was no juice in that Hi-C box. So, I went in and I started like heckling the guy like it’s his personal fault the charger is defective, he tested it, and said it was fine. I refused to believe this, because when I set my mind to something, I have a hard time giving up the dream.

So, I huffed off to find my friend at work to locate MY car charger. Because I’m  100% sure MY car charger will work and everything else is the store’s fault.

No.

I got my car charger from my friend, plugged it in, nothing again. So my friend explains: “You might have a fuse out.” Like I have time to deal with this. ANOTHER thing. ONE MORE fucking thing.

By this time it’s 12:15pm. I’m 15 minutes behind schedule, it taking 4 hours to get to Knoxville and the race being at 4:30pm. Still, though, I knew I could make it if I left no later than 1:00pm.

So, I searched for a solution the Allison way: by freaking out, calling everyone I know, and yelling.

Though I may appear to have it together, I assure you, I don’t. I was fiercely committed to the idea that I could not drive to Knoxville without a charged phone. A million worst-case scenarios ran through my mind: getting a flat tire 15 miles from the nearest service station, getting into a wreck and the other person passes out and I can’t call 911, getting somehow kidnapped by an angry gang of Mexicans who force me to traffic drugs, alien abduction…. I don’t know. But I was sure all of these things would happen if I didn’t have my phone.

One of my friends simply said, “Just go, Allison. You’ll figure it out. Just go and worry about it when you get there.” That answer seemed too easy and to make too much sense. In my mind, everything is arduous and anywhere I’m not familiar with is like the movie Labyrinth, with its impossible mazes, riddles, creepy puppets, and of course a super sexy David Bowie at the end.

The clock was then reading past 1:30pm. I called Aiden’s dad, almost cancelling. He, too, said, “Just come, meet me here, you’ll get here when you get here, even late.” So, against my internal sense of impending disaster, I got on the road… 8% battery to spare.

Before I left, I stopped back at AT&T to pick up my only phone-charging option: a solar-powered phone case. The sun was out, the phone charger boasts 8 hours of extra life, and so I threw $100 at the problem, snapped my phone into it, and set it on the dash.

I’ve never owned anything solar-powered, as I am not a hippie and have gotten on well with electricity for 29 years, but I’m beginning to think the sun is full of shit. This case did not charge, and in fact lost what little power it had within an hour, draining my phone of 3 extra precious percents of power. As I read the instructions, it stated that the solar-powered charger must first be wall-charged BEFORE it can be solar charged. So, wait, what? What’s the point? If you need power to solar-power, then what good is solar power? No good, I realized. That’s why the sun goes down at night. It has to be plugged in.

So, I’m on the road and I’m listening to Less Than Jake and I’m trying to be steady and stoic and not shrivel into a sniffling ball of bratitude.  As I headed down the on ramp to 64, I passed a hitchhiker who promptly gave me the  middle finger. Really? Could things possibly get any more totally fucked up? Even the hitchhiker was foreboding, and I was certain that I was heading towards disaster.

But the thing was, the thing that kept me all along the while, was thinking about how disappointed my son would be if I didn’t show up, even late. I had to disappoint him the weekend I got my DUI, missing an event I promised to make because of my own irresponsibility. And he didn’t ask me to come to his race, I made that commitment, I told him for weeks I would be there.  I just couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing him AGAIN, as I know I’ve been such a disappointment in so many ways over his 9 little years on this planet.

As soon as I arrived in Knoxville, my phone completely died. Though I had the wherewithal to hand-write directions to the race location, and though I thought I was thorough, I missed some specifics on the last part of which interstate to take.  At the crossroads, I held on tight and went with the wind, immediately being sure I had taken the wrong exit.  I began to sweat, becoming more and more desperate, no phone to check directions or even call for them, no idea how long I would drive until I could turn around.

4:26pm, the clock read. I’ve lost this battle.

Just as I had given up hope, I looked up to realize the next exit, the one at which I was going to turn around, was actually THE exit, my exit, the right exit. My heart swelled with a weird form of gratitude and my eyes welled with tears, and I just cried a little in the relief of it. That’s the thing about Me vs. The Universe: we are always butting heads. But somehow, when the Universe gives me all kinds of shit and I choose to move along with it, the cosmos give me a strange sort of pity-pardon at the eleventh hour and I end up coming out ok.

I looked at the clock: 4:29pm. One minute. The Universe gave me one minute.

I parked about a mile away from the race site, this particular race being attended by over a thousand people. So I got out of my car, and I ran. I ran in the rain with no umbrella, in a white top and my favorite Frye leather boots. I was soaked to a visible bra and ankle-deep in mud when I arrived at the meeting place, my attempt to look like a put-together mom trumped by the elements.  I looked everywhere, no sign of them, no sign of what race was going on, panic again setting in. I was sure they’d raced, and I was sure I’d missed it.

Just then, I heard, “Allison, Allison!!” It was my ex, running at me “They boys are about to start!” He wasn’t at the meeting place because my son was at the start line, running, literally within two minutes. I had just enough time to get to the start, hug my elated son, and watch him take off.

When I saw my son running towards the finish line, I could see the determination and pain in his face, his little body wittering with the empty-fuel shake of being pushed beyond its limit. I knew what he was doing: he was trying with everything in his little self to impress me.  Because he loves me so much. Because despite all my shortcomings as a mother, he wants my attention, my praise, and my love above everything.  Because he was so happy I was there to watch him.

I guess that’s the thing about unconditional love: You can be shitty six-ways-sideways and still be worthy of it.

He came in second for his school, timing a mile in 7 minutes and 12 second, over a full minute better than his best mile previous.  So there I was, in now-ruined boots and a see-through top, hugging my sweat-soaked son in the pouring, cold rain, and I doubt I’ve ever felt happier than I did in that moment.

As we were driving back to the hotel, I said to Aiden, “I can’t believe I made it.” I hadn’t stopped, I hadn’t peed all day or eaten or anything. If I had, if I had just been two minutes behind, I would have missed the whole thing. Two minutes. And I almost, almost…. I was two minutes away from never leaving Louisville.

“I knew you’d make it, Mom”, he said. “Whenever I would think about it, I knew, I had the feeling you’d make it.” And I wondered: If there is an all-driving force governing what I believe is chance and circumstance, was it his determination, his positivity, his unwavering belief in my making it that ultimately made it happen, when I was two minutes shy of almost giving up?

Whatever it was, we drove to our hotel, happily, hungrily and soaking wet to the bone. There we ordered a ton of room service, dried off, plugged in all our electronic devices, and fell asleep…

Everything recharging.

There’s “The Chase” and Then There’s Cutting To It

( I originally wrote this story on 9/19/2010, and am reposting it because it goes along with the post I’m making next 🙂

Aiden and I, after ordering all the desserts on the menu at the Ponce de Leon in St. Augustine this past summer. He said it was the best day of his life 🙂

My son has joined the Cross Country team at his elementary school and I couldn’t be more proud and by “proud” I mean “crazily promoting my kid as a future star athlete”. The school had their first meet this past Friday, and Aiden did amazing.  He came in fourth within his school group, and within the top 20 over about 200 kids.

Two hundred kids in one race… it’s almost militant, that kind of force running at you. They line these kids up in a row unending as the shoreline, with no real consideration for ability or likeliness to win, shoot the start gun, and let them flow forward at random and with varying degrees of effort. The most aggressive kids, of course, are leading the pack, followed by the kids who will never be more than average at anything followed by the kids who are busy looking at butterflies followed by the kids who will eventually shoot them all in high school. It’s like looking into a little character-development crystal ball.

My son ran his ass off. I have never seen my child work so hard at ANYTHING. I think that’s a shining moment as a parent: watching your child’s first desire to whoop it up on other kids.  As team parents, we congratulated each other and complimented each other’s child’s job. I walked around saying, “Oh Johnny did so awesome!” while thinking, “Johnny might do better without such butternuts for parents.” And “Oh Cole did sooo great!” while squinting my internal eyes and thinking “Oh Cole…you may have won this time….just you wait, you little….”

Because, while I may have never been accused of being “careful”, I have DEFINITELY been accused of being “unnecessarily competitive”.

I run drills with the kids during practice and I show no mercy. I don’t care how young you are or how delicate your self-esteem is, given the opportunity to whoop you, I’ll take it. When it comes to me, glory is gladly accepted in any form, even undeserved, and it is my staunch belief that you are never too young to learn your place in the food chain. 

Look, kids, there’s the chase and then there’s cutting to it.

Before many, many practices this year, Aiden has complained: “I don’t WANT to go!!! It’s harder than I thought it would be!!!!” But I’ve kept strapping him in, making him go, tailing him with a bull whip until the bitter end of practice.  The other day I got fed up and said, “Look, son, welcome to Life. Everything is hard work and that’s what you do and then you die, sometimes violently. Have those nature shows on Discovery taught you nothing? You don’t see antelope playing video games.  Antelope run their ass off. Get your shoes on before I turn lioness on you.”

I’m not cruel-hearted, it’s just that at my older age I’ve come to realize that everything I’ve done well, everything I’ve accomplished, has been as a result of choosing something and sticking it out. Everything good I’ve lost has been from behaving exactly opposite: quitting early.  This is not the result I want for my child. I want him, among other things, to develop fortitude.

Fortitude is something I see so lacking in people, almost epidemically.  I see so much starting-and-stopping, so much never-trying, so much co-dependence, and as a result, so much misery. Instead of BECOMING what they want to be, I see people simply hating each other for having what they want. It’s disheartening. Life is already hard, why throw so much effort after tripping up the runner next to us instead of quickening our own pace?  I have found that the quickest way to make someone hate you for no reason is to appear confident in your own performance. 

I got news for you, peeps: Life doesn’t give a shit about you, it doesn’t want to be your friend.  Life does not care if you’re having a bad day or you don’t like strawberry and there is only strawberry or if Phil doesn’t like you or if Carol is hotter than you or you wished on that Zoltar machine and you never grew big or your dad was cold-hearted or your mom’s nickname was Mussolini or you couldn’t sleep because you think your office is haunted because your printer keeps going off at 4am or because you’re too thin or because your boyfriend broke up with you to date a chick who’s fat enough to be silhouetted before a Hitchcock film or because you didn’t get enough to eat at Thanksgiving fucking dinner or any of the other things that people blame their shortcomings on.

So I got my kid up this morning and we ran in the park ALL day. Literally, all day. We jogged and sprinted and jogged and sprinted and drilled and drilled and talked race pace and course strategy. Currently, we both have all the flexibility one could expect from a NASCAR roll cage. I’m not trying to teach my son that winning is the goal; I’m trying to help him show himself something about himself, maybe something I haven’t even seen yet. Something worth all this effort. But I believe something good will happen. I guess that’s what faith kinda is.

And if it’s not being the winner every time or ever, there is definitely something self-proving about whole-heartedly putting one foot in front of the other…  until you either cross the finish line or pass out trying.

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Edison