Hot Flashes

A while back I was strolling through a community garden, and came across a blaze of color. First I registered the deep pink, almost with hints of red in it, then the shape. They looked like calla lilies (I don’t know tons of flowers, but calla lilies are so unique I can actually remember them). But I’d never seen a hot pink lily, fading ever so magically to ivory at what one grower calls the throat of the plant. I was in love, then I looked to the sign to find out the name: Hot Flashes.

I laughed and laughed and laughed. No dry, parched, colorless skin on these beauties. No widower’s hump or stoop in their stem. Just glowing pink and the tiniest striations of white, leading seductively to their yellow stamen. They were lush and vibrant and, if flowers could have an age, in their youthful splendor.

Something I apparently don’t share with them. Soon, oh so soon, I’ll have my first hot flash. My OB/GYN will be happy to learn of this. He’ll be the only one. He’s basically my age, and if I weren’t married and if my butcher and my 80+ acupuncturist weren’t already taken (these are my first alternates if I ever leave my husband, who completely understands why he’s in the running with our butcher, and may even harbor his own fantasies of leaving me for someone who invariably supplies the most amazing cuts of meat), I’d give this man a go. If he’s my age, his wife must be my age, so it’s probably hot flashes all around. But still.

Oh, was that an estrogen-deficient flight of fancy? I can’t recall.

I might need to plant some of these lilies next spring. And maybe intersperse them with some called, enticingly, Lipstick (slightly elongated, more red and burgundy with velvety petals), Purple Sensation, and maybe even some Blush Blend. Then it will be hot flashes inside and out, surrounded by the sensual feminine curves of every age that preceded them.

The Matinee

It’s summer: the time of baseball games, waterskiing, overnight camping, barbeques, boating and swimming and biking and . . . outdoor musicals. Brigadoon was on this year’s docket at our local theatre-in-the-forest. I’ve always like this story of a perfect place lost in the mists but for one day every hundred years. The promise of a community theater production in an outdoor setting, uncomfortably perched on wooden benches with (new this year) wooden backs, plaids and plaids and kilts and under-produced vocals was, well, almost like . . . being . . . in love.

I invited several families to join us. The one that did was the family of the girl my son had a crush on during the school year. The day promised an element of romance for my son, even though scaled back to 10-year-old romantic yearnings, which neither he nor his friend comprehend fully.

There are lovely bits and bawdy bits in this show, and my son laughed deeply at the sexual associations soaring just above his head. He’s just beginning to get the idea that something unique happens when you pair a (lusty) woman with a (love-lorn) man, sprinkle in a bit of roguish drinking, and move the whole thing to the mystical land behind the mists (or behind your parent’s bedroom door). He preened and pranced for his friend in a before-show hike, demonstrating his adventuresome spirit and skill at rock scrambling and his ability to beat her in a race back to the car. He was proving himself to her, not yet aware that his feats of bravery and skill weren't quite on her radar screen, and certainly not yet aware of the cache that awaits when a young woman does note this worthy young suitor's bravery and skill, and bestows her favor in return.

It was a matinee performance, perfect for families with kids, friends and family of the cast, and older adults. We sat in the second row. Behind an entire octogenarian first row. Old woman next to old woman next to . . . . and on and on until the one old man, then the old woman/old woman pattern repeated. Walkers, canes, silver, white and grey hair, wisps of auburn or deep russet hair combed and poofed over white, white scalps, scarves and floppy hats and one fedora (on the one old man), loud, very loud whispers about how to get back to the van . . . A group from a local retirement home that took it’s own mini-bus to the performance. These folks must have been the brightest and the best of the residents. They were mobile, alert, and dressed in their Sunday casual finery.

In our row, we were the older parents kept jauntily young by the shenanigans, friendship and courtship of our kids. I was in my Sunday casual outdoor attire -sleeveless shirt and zip-off hiking pants – surrounded by youthful gear - a backpack, snacks, water bottles, sunscreen and, yes, bug spray (toxic and natural, as I wasn’t sure which type the other family would want).

Several times during the performance I looked down the row in front and thought, this is where I’ll be sitting, not too long from now. In just a few decades, when the activity director posts the sign-up sheet for the outdoor musical matinee, I’ll be first on the list. I’ll be in that front row, tapping my feet, wearing my jaunty cape, with my too-dark tresses barely covering my aged scalp. I’ll be singing along, swaying my arthritic back to the most exciting field trip my senior center can arrange. I’ll wear layers and a big brimmed floppy hat to ward off the sun; perhaps I’ll even wear an attractive brooch. I’ll put on my finest for the chance to hear lyric versions of romantic love. I’ll remember the moments when I was like Fiona, holding out for the right love, and when I found my Tommy – the one who gave up everything to join me. Camelot, Brigadoon, Eden – I’ve tasted these mythic places on Earth, and have even broken out in song and dance. And when I’m an old lady in the front row at the summer outdoor matinee, I will savor these joys again.

And when the whole group returns to the home, well before dark, still within the early-bird dinner hours, I hope I’ll have enough energy to extend the day to dine with friends, hum tunes from the show, and talk about the youthful actors (to our group, anyone in the play will be youthful). If I get on a roll, I’ll sing a few Brigadoon verses with the ladies. Maybe I’ll even sidle up to the one old man for a duet. I’ll repeat the story of my college-era performance in a Gilbert and Sullivan show, brag about the busty-frocked, bawdy chorus wench I got to be (just like I couldn’t help tell this family, albeit a PG version boast because of the kids), despite swearing that I never want to be an old person who recycles the same worn stories over and over. Maybe I’ll even tell the story of how I used to take my son to plays and musicals and outdoor summer adventures, even once took him and a schoolgirl crush to see this very show, and how I hope those memories are alive in him somewhere, but who can understand the music these young people are listening to these days, anyway?

Lancelot is Growing Up

At times, my 10-year-old seems quite grown up, with opinions and ideas about how the world works that are sophisticated and have an internal logic, even if they don’t always match facts that he hasn’t yet encountered about the world. At other times, he still responds as the young boy he is. He is both, simultaneously. Not for long, of course. The balance will shift and he will be more man than boy. But for today, he walks the tightrope of both worlds.

I

In a matter of just a few days, my son has grown taller, about a good inch, When I commented on it, showing him that now the top of his head is almost to my shoulder, he replied cheerfully, “So that’s why you look so small.”

He seems to like the idea of gaining on me. When all three of us were in the kitchen this morning, he told my husband how he thinks I’m getting smaller. Gleam in his eye.

I told him that soon he’ll be looking down on my pointy little head.
“You don’t have a pointy head,” he said, defending me against my own statement. “You have no idea what the top of my head looks like!” I replied, joking. “I will soon,” he proclaimed, half a dare, half not really believing it.

Much merriment, as three bodies swerved and collided in our too-small kitchen, hot cereal and coffee on one counter, camp lunch preparation plus breakfast on another, and dinner fixings edging close behind.

“When you’re looking down on me from up above,” I added, “be kind to me.”

“Of course I will,” he professed earnestly, embodying the grown-up good guy he’s becoming. And I believe him.


II

The other night, during a terrific Macbeth performance in the park, somewhere between the pasta salad and the roast chicken, my son lost another tooth. A back tooth – a substantial-looking tooth – yet he was rather laissez-faire about it, and kept on munching to the sword fights and witches and bloody mess that Lord and Lady Macbeth create every time.

I’m pretty sure he knows – and he’s pretty sure I know he knows – that the Tooth Fairy isn’t real, or rather, that I’m the Tooth Fairy. Once the Tooth Fairy left him a computer-generated note, in pink script, signed, “T.F.” – which created only a slight vacillation between belief and disbelief. His last tooth was met with a fresh $10 bill from the relative he was spending the night with – not even a pretense of magic, but as it was the highest amount he’d ever received for a body part, it seemed to work.

The night before last was my turn to vacillate. I know he doesn’t believe, yet I saw him take the tooth and wrap it up in a paper towel, slip it in his pocket, and take it home from our picnic. Saw him take it down to his room and put it under his pillow. But he knows it’s just a pure cash-for-tooth transaction, knows that it’s my wallet the cash is coming out of – and I let my sun-drenched, post-Shakespearean fatigue lead me to just go to sleep.

“I guess the Tooth Fairy was busy last night,” he said, before even “Good morning.” Hmmmm, I thought. “Hmmmm,” I replied, buying some seconds. “There might have been a lot of kids who lost teeth yesterday.” A slight twinkle in my eyes. And that was the end of it. He went on to have a full 10-year-old day at camp, and as he was heading to bed last night, he took the paper-towel tooth packet, which I didn’t realize had been on the kitchen table all day, and took it back down to his room. “For tonight,” he said.

“Got it,” I said, but not to him. This was direct, clear communication. Even as he’s getting closer to seeing me – literally – eye to eye, even as he has adventures on his own (like yesterday’s first day at a camp he’s not been to before), even as he moves closer and closer to that external world, where Mothers are left behind (and returned to – for all the mothers of boys out there, don’t fret – we don’t lose our sons permanently, but we do stay in a realm they often leave, and we cannot, should not, follow them out, but wait for their return. Our job is to build up that realm so that it doesn’t have big gaping holes in it that we then require our children to fill . . . that’s the surefire way to eject boys from our lives and make it so they don’t want to return – but that’s getting me off topic). Even as all this is happening, his young boy self still needs the magic.

So this morning he’ll find five far-less-than-crisp singles under his pillow – it will look exactly like the stack of non-ceremonial singles he’d find in my wallet, although now my wallet is empty.

I’m not sure what he will say, but that probably doesn’t matter. For this moment, he wanted – needed – the magic of childhood, where parental reliability forms the backdrop of safety. For a mere $5, I gave him just that – the magic of being seen by the people he loves, which will create today’s fuel to head out into the large, unpredictable world.

The Invitation

A few days ago, a dear friend invited me to join in something that pushes the edges of my sense of self. Nothing dangerous or illegal, not even too silly (which I’d rarely decline anyway), but something that would require me to enhance and enlarge a part of my identity, and to move toward reclaiming a part of life I’d long ago given up as being impossible for me. I based my sense of self on what I thought I could do in life, and the types of things that were for others, but not me. So I excluded these things, without much regret, as it’s fairly easy to adjust to not having what’s not yours to have. I went on to build a fruitful and successful life within the confines of my mind and my personality, leaving out the bits I thought needed to be left out.

I’m fairly sure I’m not unique in honing myself down to some of my better qualities and characteristics, and foregoing others that seem out of reach or unlikely to work out. We’ve all given up ways of being in the service of promoting our development in other ways. We give up study for sports, travel for gardening, risk-taking for safety, sexuality for sleep (or sleep for sexuality!), intensity for stability, career exploration for insurance benefits, creativity for practicality, commitment for adventure . . . There’s no end to the variety of human experiences we could embrace and own, but instead we tend to limit ourselves to a very small slice of life’s pie.

Most people I know attain some level of their identity and there they stop. They create a life around that identity, which further reinforces it and makes straying from it impossible. And for many people, this is enough. This is life. On the other end of the continuum are the serial seekers – who want more and more and pursue path after path, which may or may not result in growth, but definitely in shifts and jolts of their sense of who they are.

I’m on neither side of that continuum. I don’t want to stop growing, but I don’t want to be forever searching and therefore unfulfilled because I’ve not arrived yet. I can look back to a few deepenings in my own life, so that the person I am today is not exactly the person I started out as. I’m not so different as to be unrecognizable as me, but I’ve not sat idly on a once-built sense of self. Some of these changes I sought out, some bonked me over the head when something essential in my life was challenged or taken away.

I like to think that I see the purpose of human experience as being additive – that we grow and peel away old and no-longer-useful ways of being and replace them with people and experiences and a sense of self that is stronger and more flexible. That the journey unceasingly goes from one moment of doing OK to taking a deep breath and starting the path to the next, deeper, more authentic us. And the cycle continues, without any finish line. Not quite like Prometheus, who pushes the same boulder up the same mountain, and not necessarily like the Phoenix, who is reborn after going down in flames. I’m thinking of something far less dramatic, but also something that most myth and fiction evade: the quest that doesn’t end, the journey that never leads back home. Becoming as a process. I am becoming. I have become. I will become. I am never done becoming me (if I am, I’m either stagnating or dead or holier than I will ever be, so I’d prefer the journey – I think).

Back to the invitation. I love this friend. I’ve shared some of my journey with this person, and it’s led to opening and growth, a deeper, truer sense of identity. Now it’s my friend’s turn, offering up a compelling invitation to me to add something in that will broaden my life. I have heard myself give me every reason to go ahead and step into the unknown. I can’t come up with a single “con” to counterbalance all the “pro’s.” There’s really no foreseeable drawback, except for the reworking of me, the giving up a strong sense that I must remain in the confines of the self I’ve built. And just so we’re clear, I happen to like the self I’ve built and rebuilt up to this point. It’s my best self to date. It’s this pull to stay the same that makes me hesitate. It’s one thing to rebuild ourselves from pain or the sense that if we don’t we risk staying in an unpleasant and unfulfilled version of ourselves. How do we rebuild if we risk losing a pretty good version of ourselves? I, who am involved daily with people reworking their sense of self, am at a crossroads to do a similar thing. Again.

Recognizing the internal belly flops and restless sleep as I pondered the invitation has shown me that I’ve fallen into the trap of resting on my identity laurels. I haven’t been journeying quite as much as I could have recently. I’ve paused the growth cycle, spending so much time reveling in this destination that I forgot to keep going. I basically have been on an extended picnic blanket when I should be packing up and heading onward. But here is my friend, extending a hand to help me up, encouraging me to pack up the basket and all the treats I've brought, brush the leaves and grass from my clothes, say goodbye to this beautiful place, and continue on. “There are more wonders ahead,” my friend is saying. “I’ll lead you there. Come with me.”

It’s a chance to become more. I’d be me but not me. Me more fully me. Me in a way I haven’t been before. I’ve been secretly hoping for this invitation because I can't get here on my own; I’d built all the usual beliefs around why I'm not that kind of person. But maybe I will be that kind of person.

All that remains is for me to say, “Yes.” And, “Thank you,” for inviting me.

I'll leave behind the best me I’ve ever had the pleasure of living in, with the hope that what’s next will be worth it. I’ll have new areas of insecurity, new victories, new ways of being vulnerable and hurt, and new ways of experiencing myself, others and life as a whole. I could grow old with these new ways of being, and at some point in the future these will be embedded in the Me that underlies my next reworking.

I realize I’m hurrying now, my thoughts are short and breathless. I don’t want to miss this opportunity. I have my answer:

Give me a moment to pack up my picnic things.
I’m coming with you.
You lead this time; I’ll follow.
Yes.
Thank you.

Harry Potter – Good. Voldemort - Bad.

Sometimes it’s good to keep things simple. To refrain from overanalyzing, sorting though, figuring out, staying in the gray between extremes or opposites.

Hot/Cold.
Good/Bad.
In/Out.
Soft/Hard.
Open/Closed.
Love/ ?
[What’s the opposite of love? Perhaps I’ve just stumbled on a topic for another day.]

Anyway, in everyday life, there is likely to be no absolute in these terms, and most of our time is spent in the middle. From childhood on, we work with kids, teenagers, and adults to understand and live in the complexity of life. To avoid polarities. No situation or person is all good or all bad. No one is all right or all wrong. There is a multicultural, deconstructionist framework to be applied to every person, every situation, every emotion and every thought. And once we can understand this complexity, we can figure out what to do in a given situation, and this is the path to healthy choices. This is the sign of advanced, mature functioning.

There are times, however, when I prefer a Sesame Street kind of simplicity. The show has become a present-day global, multimedia, educational force, but previously, before the plasticene era (which I love the sound of, but don’t really know what this term means, so forgive me for using it without knowing what I’m conveying), it focused on the simplest learning tasks for toddlers and preschoolers, teaching them fundamental building blocks that would later serve as the basis from which kids would have to form complex and mixed thinking.

Sesame Street used to teach word opposites, just like my list. And as I got older, way older, I learned that they also did these in Spanish. They’d use a sing-song melody, words flashing in large white font, set against a primary color square, divided into four rectangles. First in English, then in Spanish. The voices would repeat, the white words would shimmer and shake when they were called out.

For some reason, Abrido/Cerrado has stayed with me all these years. I’m pretty sure it means open/closed, but even if it doesn’t translate exactly, that’s what’s in my memory. I’ve used it more times than I should probably admit, with friends, colleagues, even students or people at work. It’s a quick and useful metaphor to cue people to stay emotionally open, when the urge is to close. People seem to recognize intuitively that they have such an opening/closing process, even if they’ve never thought of it in that way before. We’re a lot like poppies, which open and close daily, turning to the sun and then closing down for the night to protect our precious pollen. Nyctinasty, it’s called, this process of closing at the onset of darkness.

The other day, I was driving home, reciting “abrido/cerrado” like a mantra, over and over. I was anticipating some bad news, and could feel the darkness of my worry. “Can I stay open for 30 minutes?” I asked myself. “I don’t know,” my overly emotional self replied. “Let’s see.”

I used every bit of Sesame Street coaching to keep me in check. I did OK, staying open and receiving the news, and moving quickly to an analysis of the complex ways in which it was neither all good nor all bad, the strengths and possibilities inherent as well as the meaning for possible losses. By the end, I had sorted it out, felt a variety of emotions, and concluded that indeed the situation was not that great, but was certainly livable, and the essentials of life in my known universe would go on.

Sometimes life shows up like the twinkling magic of Hogwarts’ dining hall, and sometimes like the darkness of the Forever Forest, instead. I stayed open in the face of darkness, then rallied my higher level forces to figure out what to do with the shadows and gloom. This might be how we’re all supposed to do it, to stay open enough to create light and goodness in the face of what seems initially like a Dark Lord’s wrath.

A Bit of a Slump

I was in a bit of a slump the other day, piggybacking on other people’s slumps the way a summer cold passes through a household, and you end up sniffling and chilled after watching everyone else go through it yet somehow telling yourself you’ll be spared. I shouldn’t have been surprised, really, as the slump was so palpable around me, but there’s nothing like a good education, lifelong dedication to personal growth, and years of experience in the helping professions to cultivate little moments of personal surprise.

So I was surprised and in a slump. Hmmm. Best way out? A good book or an episode of Glee. I know I’m late to Glee, even later to Netflix, but so be it. Just the fact that the entire first season is on my “instant queue” is enough to lift my spirits. The idea that there are enough people in the world who would make a musical TV show popular is reassurance enough, as I rarely meet others who will watch Grease, Momma Mia, West Side Story and all the rest as many times as I can, not feeling the least bit foolish crooning every word to every part, swaggering the male vocals, swooning the female ballads, shouting out the choral parts, with surety and sensual sass about love and lust and love lost and love found and love transcending. Of course, I can’t really watch Glee unless I’m alone – the content is too mature for kids, I don’t care how catchy the tunes are, and I need to be completely alone so I can turn the music up, way up, and shake my stuff with the dance scenes. I’m sure it’s quite a sight. I love to hate the despicable characters, ache with the as-yet (and I’m only on episode 6, so no one tell me how it turns out) unrequited love between the OCD guidance counselor and the married head of Glee Club. But more than anything I can convey in print, I loved watching the football team dance in formation to Beyoncé’s Single Ladies. I watched that scene twice. I’m sure I'll watch it again.

Since the house was peopled with others-in-a-slump, my instant-fix was unavailable. On to number two – a good book by an author who can provide a little pick-me-up. I’m 15 years late to Marian Keyes, as her first novel was published in 1995. (So my lateness to Glee is actually less late than . . .). I picked up her latest novel and listened to it, enjoying the lilt of the Irish, the delight of unexpected Irish profanity, and the satisfaction of the story line. Then I went on to listen to her first collection of first-person journalism essays, and found myself laughing and nodding my head in agreement as she described the surprise of her life becoming a writer. I see from reviews that her writing falls into the category of Chick Lit, but that seems a bit condescending. Jane Austen wrote about the same things, but we call her oeuvre “romantic fiction” and we look back on her writing now as historical or period pieces. Perhaps, then, Chick Lit is our period’s romantic fiction, and will one day be elevated to regular literature - we just need another hundred years or so to pass.

I decided to read her first book, since I’d started with her last. Where did this author begin? What were the ideas and who were the people in her mind as she made the transition from accounts clerk to writer? Was she as strong a writer out of the gate, or has she matured over time? And, less loftier, did the book come on CD so I could listen to it at the gym?

The book came the other day, so it was a fresh start with it. I took my slumpy self off and got on the eliptical and listened to what turns out to be a story of a woman whose husband leaves her the day their baby is born. It’s set as a comedy, and perhaps it will become one, but the first 40 minutes (duration of my cardio workout) left me a bit saddened. I don’t yet like these characters very much, but I imagine I will, as I like the author so darned much. Just like reading People magazine and finding out what’s wrong with, well, the People, then feeling better about ourselves, I did feel a tiny bit better.

Until I got to a small passage, nearly at the 40-minute mark, about the way people create a narrative of how life doles out bad things, that ultimately did the trick:

Up to now I suppose that I'd thought that life doled out the unpleasant things to me in evenly spaced bite-size pieces. That it never gave me more than I could cope with at one time.

When I used to hear about people who had serial disasters, like having a car accident, losing a job and catching their boyfriend in bed with their sister all in one week, I used to kind of think it was their fault. Well, not exactly their fault. But I thought that if people behaved like victims they would become victims, if people expected the worst to happen then it invariably did.

I could see now how wrong I was. Sometimes people don't volunteer to be victims and they become victims anyway. It's not their fault. It certainly wasn't my fault that my husband thought that he'd fallen in love with someone else. I didn't expect it to happen and I certainly didn't want it to happen. But it had happened.

I knew then that life was no respecter of circumstance. The force that flings disasters at us doesn't say "Well, I won't give her that lump in her breast for another year. Best to let her recover from the death of her mother first." It just goes right on ahead and does whatever it feels like, whenever it feels like it.

Now I realized that no one is immune from the serial disaster syndrome.

-Marian Keyes, Watermelon (1995)

Nothing in my mostly great life is as bad as this. I don’t have even a single disaster, let alone multiples, on my plate. De-slumped, I took my post-work-out victorious self home, and then spent a day in the sun with my clan. By the end of the day, there was overall less slump-age, and the trajectory is good for this bug getting out of our household and moving on to the next, just like our summer cold did last month.

Summer Rain

I woke up early this morning, and heard the sheets of rain as they were coming down, the loud, individual drips from the drain pipes, and from the window in my office, I now hear the water pooling, gurgling almost, in a part of our lawn which has insufficient drainage, and the additional drip of water into the eddies and puddles on our patio, because it has, I guess, insufficient drainage.

I grew up with Midwestern summer rain – thunder storms and lightening and the way the air got warmer and wetter and thicker as rain approached. Rain that might not break the heat. Rain that, in combination with humid air above lakes and rivers, fomented into the perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes. If I’d bothered to take Zoology 101 in college, I’d have learned the reason: A warm, moderately humid climate and fertile soil are favorable for insect population growth. I’d have also learned that some mosquito species fly into the wind, others against the wind, so no matter how much wind we’d have, it would help these little critters, dispersing them to even more favorable breeding grounds. What the Professor and the textbook wouldn’t have explained, however, is how it was that the entire mosquito population in the Midwest seemed intent on one destination: my body.

Apparently, some people are more sensitive to the chemicals the mosquitoes leave behind – some people barely feel the itch. I, as will come as no surprise, am on the sensitive side of things – emotional and physical and, apparently, metabolic. So when I get bit, I itch. A lot.

This was the era of calamine lotion, which, given as much time as I spent sporting a body suit of pink blotches, would have been a better era if the lotion had worked. This was the era of sleep-away camps and cans of Off. I sprayed myself until I had fumes rising off my clothes and hair, but still, put me in an area with other humans and mosquitoes, and the outcome is reliable – I’m gonna get bit. A lot.

When I was in my 20’s, and headed off to my first and only Club Med experience, I’d pre-dosed myself for two weeks with Vitamin B tablets, as I’d heard that if I ingested enough of this vitamin, my blood would change, making me no longer the human equivalent of a mosquito meth lab. I took a lot of vitamin B. I got bit less than my travel companion. But I got bit.

Over the years, my plight has been shared, and the war against mosquitoes has become more effective. Citronella candles – where were you when my folks wanted to eat on the patio in summer? DEET, oh DEET, why did you stay away so long?

Last summer, on a weekend trip to a National Park, I found the perfect combination for me: I pre-treated my clothes with stuff that was supposed to get in the fibers and repel insects. I combined every possible high-level topical repellant and slathered myself multiple times a day. I sprayed additional stuff over my (pre-treated) clothes. I wore multiple layers. I sprayed the tent, inside and out. Sprayed the sleeping bags. I stunk, my clothes stunk, my skin had a yellow-green sheen, and my Off™ Clip-On battery-operated fan made a low, consistent noise everywhere I went, sending toxic fumes circulating around me. At night, I hung the Off fan inside the tent. My trip is underscored by the white noise of the continuous murmur of the fan.

Other people who visit National Parks are apparently there to celebrate Nature. They might wear a layer or two, or even put on a “natural” repellant. To them, I was the eco-anti-Christ. It’s possible that there will be mutant forms of fauna and flora that will one day be traced back to the introduction of my chemical warfare last July. But, by the end of our trip, I noticed that the most virulent of the eye-ball starers sidled up to me at the campfire, surreptitiously standing in my circulating stream, stealing my protection like it was the neighbor’s wi-fi.