Ramblings

Free Write Friday: Track

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On rainy days they start in the smaller gym behind the high school, line up on the basketball court for drills: high knees, butt kickers. They stretch into a runner’s lunge as sweat beads inside their hooded polyester tracksuits. 

She heads out with the sprinters for a warm-up run, worn sneakers pounding on the asphalt. Up the street, past the 7-Eleven, winding through trails on the office business complex, then back to the track, powder blue with white accents, modeled after school colors. 

They run drills, the sprint coach standing on the football turf, stopwatch in hand. He shouts instructions, encouragement, critique of form. They stretch and socialize in between. She watches the teenage boys, tries to be nonchalant. Their skin is greasy, awkward bodies too short or too thin. The stench of dysregulated pubescent odor is far enough away to still render them somewhat appealing to her adolescent eye.

On meet days, her stomach churns, she hardly eats. She forces bites of bagels and grocery store fried chicken (someone told her chicken was good: protein) and Power Bars. Sips of Gatorade colored unnaturally green, blue, red make her feel athletic and replenished. Unfortunately, her events are always near the end of the meet. She has to wait in gastrointestinal distress, rushing to and from the bathroom, for the 400 meter dash, the 4 x 400 meter relay. 

Finally her turn, she strolls out to the starting blocks, placed with the stands mercifully behind her. She sets them up to her specifications, right foot back, left foot forward. She checks her spiked shoes, slim white with a neon green detailing and magenta Nike swoop. Her wide feet and long toes always feel overly compressed in the racing shoes, like she is trying to squeeze herself into something that doesn’t quite fit.

The gun sounds and she’s off, pumping arms, cycling legs. She’s ahead going into the first straight away. But they’re staggered, it’s deceiving. She never was good at pacing without someone in front to follow. She always goes out too hard, too fast. She sees opponents emerge from behind her: one, two, three. Heading into the second curve she begins to hear the crowd, their voices register in her ears as one dull roar. As if surfacing from underwater, the wave of sound is suddenly upon her, the cheers. 

Sometimes her dad stands small at the chain link fence, right before the final straight away shouting, “C’mon! C’mon!” She hears his words echo in her head as the lactic acid takes over, rounding the final curve. From behind more emerge: one, two. She slows. Out too fast again, there’s just nothing left to give. 

She keeps moving, somehow, to the finish line, crosses over without her legs giving way. She leans forward, hands on knees, lungs burning, legs screaming with fatigue. The release then comes, a dissolution of tension as the stress, now behind her, lifts. She always thinks after: I could have run faster, could have tried harder, could have given more. 

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Ramblings

Free Write Friday: Night Out

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You invite an old friend, a friend from high school, one who you’ve recently reconnected with because of the kinds of things that bring people together in middle age, when life is not as polished, but laughs are more appreciated, tears are more warranted. The venue is near your old college alma mater. Neither of you partied much at the time, and now, twenty years later, you’re even more out of touch with where you should go to enjoy a drink together before a concert.

So you meet up at an old haunt, a place college boyfriends frequented to play shuffleboard, drink beer, eat bad food late at night. You laugh together, but there’s also a weightiness to the night out, the kind that middle age mothers can’t escape. You both have children at home, professional jobs to keep, mortgages to pay, the worries of a changing world order, of elderly parents, of home maintenance and friends in distress. So it’s hard to let go, even in this place of millennials, of libations, of inebriation and escape. 

You drive to the venue up the street, a remodeled theater. You think the last time you were here it was a movie theater. You were a teenager and your boyfriend took you to see Titanic. You had a poster of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in your room at the time. Or maybe it was Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. You were so young. The crowd here today is old, unpolished. You feel comfortable. The singer is thin and taller than you expected. She sings in melancholy tones of melancholy topics: love and loss and loneliness. You stand, sway to the beat. You like the darkness and the warmth of being so close to so many people who aren’t really aware of you; the mutual anonymity and perplexing intimacy of a crowd. The singer strums her guitar, your feet ache in a satisfying way. 

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Ramblings

Free Write Friday: Band

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We played musical chairs in the high school band, every few weeks had the opportunity to challenge the seat in front for a better position in the concert band hierarchy. The director limited the frequency of a challenge so it wasn’t an incessant churn. It was a matter of pride, a source of anxiety. On the designated day we’d draw slips of paper to tell us who would perform first. The challenged and the challenger would retreat to the hallway behind the band room for the sake of fairness, ensuring anonymity, playing the chosen piece, notes echoing across the linoleum floor. 

I played the clarinet because my older brother played the clarinet and I suspect my parents didn’t want to buy another instrument. So I was convinced that the clarinet was the only instrument I wanted to play. A practical choice, a safe choice, a non-choice. Easy to lug home as a fifth grader, enough compatriots to sink into a sea of black woodwinds. Disappearing was the thing you wanted as a preteen anyway. Some brave souls chose the French horn or the tuba, the cello or the oboe. The coolest kids played the drums or saxophone.

I did practice, was decent enough. No real musical talent but I could play with feeling. It got me far enough to be one of the first few chairs. I was challenged or challenging all the time. Sweaty palms, I’d retreat behind the heavy classroom door with my opponent, often a friend. Fingers slipping off the silver rings, compressing and popping in cadence. I liked to go first because I got it over with. I liked to go second because I could tailor my performance to the weaknesses of my opposition. I liked to win first chair; felt full of myself, a boost to my fragile teen self esteem. I liked to be second chair so I didn’t suffer the angst of playing solos in the heavily attended concerts. 

Now, decades later, I have nightmares that I’m supposed to play in a band concert and haven’t practiced at all, can’t read the music, don’t remember how to play a single note. I’m embarrassed, mortified I arrived so unprepared. I try to disappear into the sea of instruments, remain undetected. Instead I realize that not contributing to the wave of melody is just as problematic as inserting an errant note. 

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