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An Open Letter to the Mayor-Elect of Port City

Dear Sir,

Congratulations on your recent victory. I must admit, I was pulling for your opponent, because I felt that she, holding an M.S. in education, would more closely represent my interests in affairs of state, which have been (to this point) chiefly concerned with punctuation and grammar. Thus, I was quite disappointed by the returns.

Perhaps Holaday’s supporters were all rushing home to see the “fresh” episode of “Gilmore Girls,” thereby missing the polls? Since you were probably out electioneering, I thought you might like to know that it was an exciting hour of television. Jess returned, and — surprise — he’s published a book, lives in Philadelphia, and is more together than Rory! He and Rory’s boyfriend, the newspaper heir, had a little showdown over her, which even featured some literary badinage. As you can plainly see, even the WB recognizes that facility with language is a hot quality. May we learn something from this? I think we might.

You see, we got started off on the wrong foot together, but now that you are to be Mayor there is room to make amends. I urge you to manipulate the city budget to free the necessary funds to have the super-special database administrator come in and correct the punctuation on the birth certifcate templates. The adoption community will thank you, as will I.

While you’re at it, why not strive for clarity, good grammar, and proper punctuation in all your official communications as Mayor? There is a real opportunity for improvement here. Take the last bit of correspondence you sent out to the electorate. I counted at least one grammo, one typo, and this gem: “Open communication will be the catalyst for improved awareness of our city government.” First of all, do you fully understand the meaning of the word catalyst? Go ahead, click through; we can wait. Secondly, what does this mean, anyway? Breaking the sentence down to its kernel, you’re telling us that communication will result in awareness. That’s hardly big news. And is “awareness of our city government” your overriding goal? Fairly modest, that.

Please, Mr. Mayor-Elect, make Port City an apostrophe-safe zone again. Then I won’t be ashamed to tell people, “My Mayor’s a Moak!”

Two seemingly unrelated events from the day:

1. I get an e-mail from a friend: “I hope you have a great anniversary!” I start to write her back, “You must be thinking of someone else. It’s not our….” when suddenly it hits me. Our wedding anniversary is this week! Neither Husband nor I have given it the slightest thought. On no less than three occasions, people have asked us, “What are you doing this weekend?” and after checking the calendar, looking right at the date, we’ve both said, “Nothing.”

I shed a brief tear for the romance that has apparently gone out of our marriage, and suffer some minor apprehension as to what might be in store at this, the seven-year mark.

2. It is 7:30 a.m. It is “my” morning to get up with Aitch, but, unaccountably, he has slept in. I lie in bed luxuriating in the late hour, the bright sunshine, the rested feeling.

Dog, who sleeps on top of the bed at our feet, lets out a series of little howls. “What’s his problem?” I ask Husband.

“Usually by this time in the morning you’re gone,” Husband says. “Then Dog comes up and lies in your spot and we cuddle. I guess he’s telling you to move.”

So the two of them have a standing appointment to spoon that’s so entrenched that Dog is conditioned to protest when the sun reaches a certain point in the sky?

I guess the romance is not dead, after all. It’s just been transferred.

Here is something I did not consciously realize until I became a parent: The “ABC” song, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” and “Baa Baa Black Sheep” all have the same tune.

Anyone else out there realizing that for the first time just now?

Aitch has never been a big fan of “Twinkle Twinkle” or “Black Sheep.” His tastes have run more toward “The Wheels on the Bus” and “Old Macdonald” — songs that can be drawn out indefinitely, as long as you can think of another category of people on the bus or animals on the farm. (”The geeks on the bus go type, type, type” — with Blackberry thumb-typing motions — is just one example of my creative genius, but I bow to the inventive powers of Mimi Smartypants, pretty far down the page here.)

They must sing the three songs lot at school, though, because Aitch seems to have the tune stuck in his head. For three weeks, now, he’s been singing it incessantly, sometimes with the “ABC” lyrics, other times substituting a little bit of “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” but mostly just with nonsense syllables (”Me me me me ME ME me”), or with random words. He even extends or truncates words so that they’ll fit the meter — for example, “Dennis trucky Dennis truck, Dennis trucky truck truck truck.” Sometime he mixes it up completely: “A B C D E F G, Gordon Gordon three bags full.”

It’s almost as if he’s improvising, riffing on the tune. My kid is jamming. Does that make him a musical prodigy, or just prodigiously annoying? Because I feel like I’m going to jam superheated skewers into my eardrums if I hear “AB/Twinkle/Black Sheep” one more time, no matter what the lyrics.

Two days ago, he moved from random words to color commentary. For example, when someone on the street asked me about his bandage, and I told them the story of the stitches, Aitch began singing, “Aitchy doctor Aitchy doc…” and so forth. Or, if he wants Husband to pick him up, “Daddy uppy daddy up….” It’s getting to the point where if there’s a minor lull in the conversation, I can predict that he’s going to start singing and, with reasonable accuracy, the topic.

It’s like living with a tiny Greek chorus.

Aitch has learned the word “journey.” He came out with it as we were reading his “Little Train” book. I had just turned to the page where Engineer Small and the little train were about to depart the Tiny Town station (get it? get it?) for the city when Aitch said, quite clearly, “Journey.” I did a double-take — “Where’d he learn that?” until I saw the caption: “The little train is going on a journey to the city.”

Funny that he memorized that. I’ve never emphasized the word “journey” — too abstract for a two-year-old, I would have thought. When we want to get across the concept that one of us is leaving on a trip, we say, “Mommy’s going on a plane,” a plane being something for which he has a mental construct. In fact, that’s what I said to him yesterday as I kissed him good-bye before leaving for the airport, and he whined a little and then said again, “Journey.” He was playing with his trains at the time and may have just been acting out the scene from the book; who knows?

And here I am, mid-journey. My meeting in Cancun has been relocated to a desert resort in the Southwest, where the probability of hurricanes is low. The hotel is nice in a resort-y kind of way. I have a suite with a wet bar, and I really feel like I should be out making new vacation friends and having them over for drinks, or something, but I’m too antisocial to waste time schmoozing people I’ll never see again. The truth is I don’t even want to make small talk with people when I’m on a business trip.

I have, though, started trying to make trips worthwhile in some way — journeys, if you will, rather than transfers from airport lounge to conference room to chain restaurant to hotel bed. There is so much time on a trip; I like to see if I can steal some of it to do something educational or stimulating.

Yesterday I had a nice big free chunk of time after I came in from the airport. I decided to go for a hike in the nature preserve that abuts the resort. The foothills were craggy and rocky and lined with actual cacti. The weather was warm, but not stifling, and so dry, which I love. So good for the hair! For a change I looked like a Breck girl while exercising, instead of Bozo. I hiked for about an hour, picking my way around the rocks and the different varieties of animal scat on the trail. Then it occurred to me for the second time in a week: This would be a likely spot to run into a coyote.

Well, I didn’t see a coyote, but I did surprise two very large…sort of upright……jackrabbity things with ears that stuck straight up. As with the deer earlier this week, I was concentrating too hard on my footing to get a good look. Once again I was disappointed in my powers of observation. If the next bit of fauna I encounter mugs me, I’ll never be able to pick it out of a lineup.

Later that evening, I got a pedicure and asked the technician if she knew of any local animals that looked like black upright jackrabbits with ears sticking straight up. She thought for a minute and said, “No, the only animal I’ve heard of being spotted around here is a coyote. Are you sure it wasn’t a coyote?”

When I returned to my hotel room I Googled it up: Definitely not a coyote.)

Between stepping up my running schedule and standing for long hours lecturing while wearing pretty shoes, I must have done something terrible to my feet. I can’t feel my second and third toes at all. The bunions on both feet have developed calluses and turned a strange shade of green. And in the spaces between the toes, the flesh is sort of…disintegrating.

There is an upside, I suppose, to my leprous condition. My feet don’t hurt at all when I run. Not one little bit.

Today, I took Dog out to the reservoir for a five-mile run, where he can run off-leash. I didn’t really have the time, as I’m leaving again tomorrow for another trip, but the weather was too beautiful to sit inside. The trail at the reservoir is quite challenging. The first mile and a half is pretty flat and hugs the water; the trail is wide but muddy and a bit rocky. Then the trail gets extremely rocky and begins a half-mile ascent. No rolling, no plateaus, just a half mile up, up, and up again. Then another half mile down, with the road widening and smoothing out, and here’s where you start to notice how tall the trees are and how lovely and dark the woods. You approach the water again, but then plunge back into the woods, where it becomes a proper trail run. The path winds this way and that, zigs left and zags right, just like the meanderings of little Billy in one of those “Family Circus” cartoons. (If you ever want to see Husband’s blood boil, just mention “Family Circus.” He can treat you to a five-minute rant on what a waste of newsprint it is.)

On a trail run, you sacrifice speed for accuracy. You have to plant each foot carefully so you don’t blow out an ankle. But a bouncy, changing, challenging trail is the running equivalent of a roller coaster: pure fun. You’re not timing your splits or checking your watch or monitoring your heart rate. You’re just smiling and enjoying the ride. Dog was enjoying it even more than I did. For every mile I ran, he ran three, circling back, darting up hills, running into the water and back. He chased squirrels and chipmunks and barked at cows (inexplicably quartered behind a fence seemingly in the middle of the woods).

I was on the downside of the hill, finally drawing breath, and just starting to think that if I encountered a rapist or (why not let my imagination go for a run, too) a band of gypsies or forest-based terrorist cell, I would be in big trouble because I was pretty isolated out there in the deep woods. I was trying to determine whether Dog would serve as any kind of deterrent to evildoers, or if they would suss him for the big softie he is, when I saw Dog pointing at something (in a doggie sort of way, not with an index finger). There was a flash of gray, and suddenly I realized that a tussle with a coyote was far more likely than any of my scenarios. But the animal went bounding away, and although I was frantically occupied calling Dog off I could see that it was not a coyote, but two deer. Dog gave chase, but half-heartedly, as if he knew he didn’t have a prayer, and then we continued on our way.

Happily, we encountered a number of harmless hikers in the next few miles, which made me feel better about running alone. I greeted each one with, “Hi! We just saw some deer!” They all had the good grace not to laugh at my excitement.