Posted on by Jennifer Reed

Cookies & forgetting togetherness

It’s that time of year again. When the baubles and trimmings, cooking and gatherings remind me that I have the shortest memory on the planet.

As if we need reminding, this is the time of year when goodwill and kindness should abound, when tolerance and love should be chief. When the red kettles and bell ringers stand at store entrances; when the Santas are sitting; when the dreidels are spinning.

cookie decoratingI look at this time as a reminder to be good, not because the Elf on the Shelf is watching, but because it’s simply the right thing to do.

But earlier this week, I found myself forgetful.

Tuesday night, after Moira begged and bugged, pleaded and implored to roll out the cookie dough I’d mixed together a few days earlier. I forgot the reason I’d made the dough in the first place: as a show of goodwill, kindness, tolerance and love.

I gave in to Moira’s insistence and as we got started, felt myself begin to crack. I’d forgotten these cookies weren’t about Jenny and how tired she was, about the mess it would make and she’d be stuck cleaning up. These cookies represented an awful truth: I HATE BAKING.

I feel awful even typing the “H” word, but baking is such a messy pain. And cutout cookies? Good lord! The flour, the rolling, the sticky dough?!

After gathering the necessary gear, immediately I struggled to get the cold, hard dough from the container. It was as if the dough had turned to stone.

Moira, excited to use the new snowflake cutter, wore it like a bracelet and fiddled with the star, tree, rocking horse, angel and dove cutters. Anxious to have something to do, she chirped about school and a book she’d been reading. I forgot her excitement. I forgot how precious and fleeting such moments are.

I tried explaining cutouts aren’t really a two-person job which is code for “Beat it!” but I held my tongue and struggled to work out a two-person system.

I’ve never been the most patient person and as the dough continued to frustrate me, I started to fear it would take all night. And when I get fearful, I get ugly.

After we got the first couple pans through, me getting more crazed and upset with each lump of flour, I yelled at Moira, “I just want this done!”

I forgot she’s just a little girl.

Then I saw it. I saw that I was injuring this little girl’s spirit. I saw Moira, who’s just innocent and happy and filled with joy of the season. I saw her chin drop, her shoulders sag. She asked to leave. “Oh, no,” I barked. “We’re in this together.”

Both Marty and Maclane cut in, offering to help, but I refused, boiling.

And then something happened.

I’m guessing when I muttered, “We’re in this together,” that it was a prayer of sorts.

Instead of pushing my daughter into a state of tears, it was as if my attitude of awfulness fell away and a flow was found amidst the baking madness.

Magically, a calm blanketed me and we struck a rhythm. I rolled and we both worked the cutters. Moira lumped the scraps into a ball as we took turns laying them on the cookie sheets. When a batch came out of the oven, Moira would scoop them from the pans to the cooling racks while I’d roll out the next batch.

I felt my breathing settle and my pulse slow, it was then that I remembered.

I remembered this wasn’t about Jenny or the cookies or the mess. I remembered I needed Moira! I needed her to show me how to behave! I needed Moira to show me what goodwill and kindness, tolerance and love looked like.

I forgot all of this.

But I’m never forgotten. The love that makes this season bright sustains us all, even me, in our darkest, most-harried and wrecked moments. The goodwill and kindness, tolerance and LOVE reached beyond this Earthly plane, into the darkest corner of my soul to remind me, “Do not despair.”

Maybe a meltdown during cookie baking isn’t a big deal to most, but it’s in these moments that I see how far I have to go, how much better I want to be. I know I’ll soon forget, again, and get all wrapped up in Jenny, but Tuesday night Santa came early. That from the most feeble of phrases, “We’re in this together,” comes the most honest of prayers: “We’re in this together.”

Without Moira (and every other living entity), I cannot know and understand what goodwill and kindness, tolerance and love looks like, feels like. Thank goodness “we’re in this together.”

Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas!

Originally published 20 December 2014 in The Observer.

Posted on by Jennifer Reed

Vegas 26.2 proves too great a challenge

I’d traveled to Vegas to run the Las Vegas Rock & Roll Marathon. My husband couldn’t join me so Mom and Dad opted to go!

It’d been 25 years since they last visited Sin City. A lot has changed. We spent much of Saturday morning and afternoon walking the Strip. I booked us at The Mirage because not only did I think Mom and Dad would enjoy it, but the marathon finished there. Little did I know it was also seated at the north end of the Strip.

Strolling south we visited casinos in Harrah’s, the Flamingo, New York New York and the Monte Carlo. There were crystal chandeliers, hot pink leather seats and gorgeous silver Audis waiting to be won. Absent were the tuxedo’ed James Bond-types.

~vegas marathonThough the casinos were mostly the same, Mom and Dad both admitted disappointment with how lavish and outlandish the Strip had become. The old Vegas was gone, replaced with extravagant shops like Prada, Tom Ford and Guicci. It’s truly like a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.

We had supper at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill inside Harrah’s. With hard-working waitresses in cowboy hats and chaps, Mom and I giggled watching tables of middle aged men drool over the in-your-face breasts and butts, ignoring their poor dates.

The rest of the evening and much of Sunday I hung out in my room while Mom and Dad roamed around. The anxiety I normally feel before a marathon was amped up even more because it was a night event. Start time: 4:30 p.m.

When I joined Mom and Dad for coffee and muffins Sunday morning and again for lunch, I kept telling them, “This wait is killing me!” As with many runners, I’m used to a morning routine of coffee, breakfast, race. This was a mind game of waiting. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t relax, couldn’t calm down. Despite it being my 12th marathon, it felt like my first.

Ever since my first in 2010 when I saw a runner wearing a tall Eiffel Tower cage, I knew I wanted to run in costume. Since then I’ve acquired all sorts of tutus and shirts and tights. For Vegas, I decided to go with a holiday theme: red tulle skirt, black capri tights, candy-cane striped socks, a Santa hat, elf collar and a green t-shirt that read “Santa’s coming? I know him!” from the movie Elf.

Some people think I do it for attention, but I dress up to give other people a laugh and this costume didn’t disappoint. While waiting for the race to start, a gaggle of Santas passed through my start corral so I shouted, “Santa! I know him!”

When the Santas turned around and greeted me, I turned to my race mates and screamed, “They know me!” That’s all it took for a few of us to start swapping Elf movie quotes. Still, we were in for a long wait and though the majority of runners were doing the half, even they were antsy to get going.

I was assigned Corral 28 based on an estimated finish of 4:40—a tad hopeful, but not impossible given my marathon PR is 4:32. But this was the first I’d run with a required finish time of five hours or less. That, alone, does a number on the psyche.

Though the race started at 4:30 p.m., it wasn’t until 5:10 that I go rolling and by the second mile I knew I was in trouble. Whether it was the long wait to start, the previous day’s walking or the evening timeframe, I could tell I was pushing too hard and getting nowhere. I felt like I was in quicksand.

As the course ran along the Strip, I took in the lights, but worried. I spotted my parents and Hi-5’ed Dad, not stopping to talk. Off and on, I ran with a Quad City friend who was doing the half.

Around the ninth mile, she veered toward her finish while the full course headed to Fremont Street, which was a delight! With a massive video screen canopying the pedestrian mall, crowds lined the race course and Hi-5’ed us as we went through. I noticed my face was having trouble smiling. My cheeks wouldn’t work!

And then it happened. Just before Mile 14, as I trailed runners taking the course’s left turn, several race officials walked onto the course and formed a human barricade. I’d missed the cutoff. Me and everyone behind me were denied further progress.

I heard one runner shout at the race officials, pleading he be allowed to continue. No dice. We’d run the first half too slow. They’d turned us around and sent us back to the finish.

This was on an out-and-back portion of the course so we blended in with other runners who’d already circled through the portion we hadn’t.

I felt a weird mix of angst and relief. Like a neon billboard, the thought that crowded out all others was: “This would be my first DNF (Did Not Finish).”

I couldn’t understand what I’d done wrong. My training was solid, the course was flat, the temperature was perfect and yet none of that matter. It was a race in which things just didn’t come together.

As the course took runners back through Fremont Street I tried to smile and wave. When I headed toward the finish, I palmed the many hands sticking out. I felt like a poser, but couldn’t find another way off the course. I headed down the finisher’s chute and over the finish line. Weird.

I spotted a half marathoner sitting along the edge, pulling out a cigarette. I nearly joined him. I felt gross, on the inside.

After my parents found me, their faces falling when I told them what happened, I went to my room and messaged friends of the failure. It wasn’t long for a Facebook comment to pop up from one of my dearest friends, Observer-alum Shelly Seifert, “Your children are watching how you deal with this.”

BOOM!

Does it get any more real than that?

There is way too much heartache in this world to let a little ol’ marathon get me down. Besides, I have no regrets! It was a great way to see the city and a fabulous experience with my parents!

For all the junk that chokes my Facebook newsfeed, recently a friend posted an article by runner Dane Rauschenberg, “Six Ways You Can Succeed in Running.” No. 6 on the list was “Remember How Lucky You Are.”

“. . . the main and best thing about running is that you get to do it. . . You are traversing the world, one foot at a time . . . there are thousands who wished they had it so easy. Don’t take it for granted.”

And I don’t intend to. Hopefully Thursday I ran my fifth Turkey Trot in Davenport. Tonight, my son Maclane and I will done costumes for Clinton’s Symphony of Lights 5k at Eagle Point Park. Tomorrow I plan to strap on a headlamp and join my Cornbelt buddies for a 6 a.m. long run along Bettendorf’s Duck Creek Bike Path.

Originally published 29 November 2014 in The Observer.

Posted on by Jennifer Reed

Poetry triggers gratitude for fearless mom

In May 1970, my mom was at the halfway point of her first pregnancy. Back then, I don’t think expecting mothers were honored like they are today. My mom was probably focused on honoring her own mother.

I used to think Mother’s Day was just a made-up Hallmark holiday, but a quick Google search told me it was started in 1908 by Anna Jarvis to honor her late mother, Ann, who was a peace activist and nurse of wounded Civil War soldiers from both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Wikipedia reports Jarvis’ intention was to honor her mother’s life by continuing her work with “Mother’s Day Work Clubs to address public health issues.”

20140503_212626_AndroidIn the Land of the Free, as with so many good-intentioned efforts, capitalism and commercialism quickly turned Jarvis’ vision of Mother’s Day into a money-making opportunity for greeting card companies, candy makers and all sorts of other peddlers eager to cash in on the desire to show Mom how much she means to us. Ugh.

Even now that I’m a mom myself, I don’t think much about Mother’s Day because of the stupid pressure media and vendors put on people to prove their undying devotion to ‘the She who gave us life.’

As if with one day, we can wipe away the prior year of being too busy, too tired, too grumpy, too lazy, to simply take a few moments out of our busy lives to fold our arms around our mothers’ shoulders and sit with her, listen to her, ask her about a memory or take her out to lunch.

Recently I was listening to the public radio program “Fresh Air” in which Terry Gross interviewed poet laureate for the state of New York, Marie Howe. Of the poems featured, the one that struck me was about the death of the author’s mother titled “My Mother’s Body.”

Prior to reading it, Howe shared that she was the oldest of 9 children and that sometimes, when the oldest is a daughter, women can struggle separating from their mothers.

I don’t think Mom and I struggled. Rather, it was like Thor and Odin, lots of shouting and ranting and screaming. I couldn’t wait to get away from my mother and off on my own! God forbid I listen to her, recognize her discipline as love, see the fear behind her efforts to tame her wild daughter.

Listening to the poet Howe talk about her mother, I found myself wondering about my own, about the woman she was before she became “Mom.” Those nine months when her working and walking would rock me like a soft cradle, when her talking was the muffled song that lulled me, when her slumber was undoubtedly the time for my fetus-self to jump around and party. Who was she?

I’m sure she had all the universal thoughts, fears, hopes, dreams, hesitations and questions so many of us do when we’re carrying our precious cargo.

There’s only a few things Mom has shared about her pregnancy. One, that in 1970, doctors let women labor for hours until the urge to push came and then they were sedated.

Those of us who have labored know the relief the urge to push brings and how frustrated Mom said she was, “You labor for that long and when you’re finally ready to push, they put you to sleep!”

Mom also gets perturbed remembering that at just 2 weeks old, her doctor ordered her to feed me skim milk because I was too fat. “Can you imagine?!” she’d sigh, “but you just didn’t question things back then.”

We all get a good laugh out of it, but there’s a part of me that feels bad . . . not for me, but for Mom. Obviously she was doing a pretty great job of taking care of me and how was she rewarded? By being told she was doing it too well!

While I’m sure she was a little scared about having a child to care for, when it comes to babies I’ve never thought of Mom as anything other than fearless. Like when our own Moira came home from the hospital and I was totally freaked out and clueless. With her host of feeding issues, I felt a constant panic that she would die at any moment.

Mom instinctively knew when to step in and help. Whether it was doing dishes in the kitchen while I fed Moira in the living room, I never felt more safe then when my mom was at the house. Whenever she was there, I knew that for the time being, Moira would live and everything would be ok.

When all else fails . . . when the sky is falling and you’ve nowhere to hide . . . when you’re beaten down and no one’s in your corner, Mom arrives and things are instantly less scary.

Though I’ve never admitted it, I’ve always needed her, and no Hallmark card or flower arrangement can ever express that. My mom is in me . . . in my own hands starting to weather with age; in my own eyes, that squint shut when we laugh; in the smile wrinkles on my cheeks that no longer smooth out once our laughter subsides.

I watch her, and see that everything is, and will be, okay. . . And for that, no thanks will ever be enough. I love you, Mom.

Originally published 10 May 2014 in The Observer.