Leaving Lola

I recently returned from driving for six days, 2,500 miles, from my digs on the East coast, to the heartland and back. With me for half the trip: one daughter, a stressed out cat, numerous card board boxes, a beat up desk chair, several road maps, a carton of puppy pads. 

I sat alone in the front seat the whole time.  I drove back myself, but on the way out, my daughter opted for the back seat, so she could comfort her cat.  Most of the time, she kept the pet carrier door open and the kitty, Lola, sat unblinking, drool icicles hanging from her panting jaw, one tiny paw and sometimes two touching my daughter’s knee or hand. I’d steal peeks at them in the rear view mirror, and would catch the both of them napping; my daughter, her head and shoulders leaning on the carrier, long dark hair curtaining much of her face, the kitten subdued for now and half-released, soft front paws and chin on my daughter’s knee,  tummy and back side still trapped within the confines of her puppy-padded temporary plastic home. 

The few times we stopped at rest areas, my daughter and I would take turns running inside to grab coffees and stale snacks.During my daughter’s turn, I’d open the back door and kneel next to Lola. I'd coo that it would all be okay.  Sometimes Lola would blink or mew or move to the back of the carrier. Sometimes she’d attempt to crawl out, head down, ears back, and I’d have to pet her soft chest, scratch behind her ear and ease her back in. I’d apologize and say this wasn’t my idea, bringing her all the way out here. I knew she had issues with traveling. I’d been the driver when we’d taken her from her first home in DC and driven north for eight hours, from one daughter's place to another.  I’d seen and smelled the evidence of her stress, hence the puppy pads. She knew, I hoped, that I didn’t want her to leave and that she was always welcome to come home and that my home would always be her home. 

Mostly Lola sat and stared straight ahead, which is not all that much different from what I did during our twenty-hour drive from the Berkshires through Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, Davenport and then Des Moines. Sometimes I sang, but mostly I sat and listened to music, while I tried to drive fast, a few miles over the speed limit at least, but not so fast that a cop would pull us over. 

On our two overnights on the way west we stopped at pet-friendly hotels. There were few choices in the eastern part of the country, but it seems nearly every place in the Midwest was open to cats and dogs.  We’d release Lola from her carrier as soon as we entered our room.  After being cooped up eight or nine hours, she was eager to escape but tentative too. You could see she was unsure about lots of things.  She’d sniff around at baseboards, would hide whenever we opened the motel room door. Not once took her eyes off us.

She’s not normally a needy cat. At her old home, which was my home when my daughter was away months at a time on law school internships, she’d settle herself at the foot of my bed, curl up like a black and white shrimp, and stay that way until midday or until I shook the treat bag. She spent most of her waking hours watching bunnies from the front window or lolling on sun patches on the living room floor or piano bench, or scratching up the leatherette hassock.  She enjoyed her chin scritchy-scratchies as much as any other cat, but preferred them on her own terms, which meant while she sat on the bathroom vanity watching water stream from the faucet into the sink. She loved ordering me around and would let me know exactly when the litter box was beyond using by head butting my knees or tripping me.

Those nights in the motels, her desire for attention was relentless. In addition to the mandatory petting by the constant stream of sink water, she played ultra runner, climbing us for hours like we were racescapes as we sat on our beds reading or watching television.  She stayed up all night both nights, pawing at our legs, head butting shoulders, licking faces and fingers.  I didn’t sleep well. I knew she was stressed and, being a bit cat co-dependent, I was stressed for her.  

Getting her into the carrier those travel mornings took some careful planning involving one patient human (my daughter), one stressed out mess (yours truly), one frantic, incredibly gymnastic feline, a cramped bathroom with door shut, numerous towels, cat treats, and much readjusting of animal and people body parts.

When we arrived at my daughter’s apartment, Lola’s new home, the kitty took off like a rocket the second we opened her wire door.  We found her several minutes later, flattened and fearful, in a space so tiny it would cramp a mouse, under the leather couch in the living area.  We let her be. She needed the time to decompress. 

Lola settled in to her new home pretty quickly.

I set my backpack and laptop on the floor by the coffee table and took a look around for myself. The walls were pretty bare which is typical when you’re just starting out and you’re in a new place and working all the time. On one wall was a watercolor portrait of Lola, that my daughter had made from a photo I’d sent her months back while she was out here on her second law internship in this city.  Over the fireplace was a poster of the internet meme Grumpy Cat, posed like the Mona Lisa.  My kid definitely has her own unique sense of decorating style. 

There were a couple of homemade mobiles dangling from the ceiling, in the space separating the kitchen breakfast counter from the living room. When I looked closer I had to smile. The last visit home, right after she graduated law school but before she flew back to Iowa, my daughter had spent a day going through a bunch of storage containers loaded with old photos and other memorabilia.  I saw now that she’d taken a bunch of photos from home, taped them back to back, then glued string on and made vertical, twisting memory books. Most of the photos were quite old, taken when she was just a toddler. There were pictures with her sister, her dad, her grandparents, some cousins, but none with me. 

I asked her about that. 

“I know,” she said. “I looked but I couldn’t find any pictures with you in them.”

That night, while Lola explored new window sills and found new box spring holes to call her own, I took my daughter and her friend out for barbecue.  The next day, after a long run on the quiet trails that bound Des Moines, we visited the Iowa State Fair.  We saw a life-sized cow made of butter, mall-sized barns, each one devoted to a particular animal: horses, cows, goats.  We bought lots of fried foods on sticks.  I ate two deep-fried Oreos.  We took tons of photos and I even made sure I was in some of them. It was a wonderful day. Plus, I didn’t have to drive once. 

There's nothing halfway about the Iowa way to greet you. . .

When we returned from the fair the sun was setting and the sky was beginning to cloud up. I started packing my things and mentally getting ready for the next morning, and that long lonely drive home. I stopped to check my email and read that Robin Williams had killed himself.

I looked everywhere for Lola after that, and found her in my daughter’s room, sitting on the window sill, looking out at the traffic speeding by on the access road on the other side of the parking lot. She barely moved when I scratched her chin. She ran under the bed when I started talking to her. I didn’t see her the rest of the night.  

The next morning I finalized my route and packed the car. I hugged my daughter and looked for Lola one more time. My daughter said Lola had slept next to her all night. She seemed really happy in her new home. I found Lola under my daughter’s bed but she wouldn’t come out when I called. I lifted up the bedspread so she could see me while I talked. I told her I didn’t blame her. I figure she thought I was going to try to put her in the carrier and take her on another long ride. I told her I understood what she was going through. I hadn’t enjoyed the trip much either, but the only thing constant is change. I said I wished I was staying.  I promised I’d come back to visit soon. I told her I loved her.

I pretty much said the same things to my daughter before I drove away.  

Des Moines is a beautiful city. As I drove on the highway that took me through town and then to Route 80, over the Mississippi River and into Illinois, I thought about what I’d seen during my short visit: a clean downtown area, pristine streets and sidewalks, shaded running trails that border horse farms and pure, bubbling streams. My daughter has no immediate plans to move back east, which she sees now as dirty and crime-ridden.  She’s made that clear. 

I remembered other separation times similar to this. I remember moving her in to her first apartment, a rodent-infested, ridiculously overpriced studio near the Brigham on Mission Hill. I remember her first college move-in. That had been a horrendous weekend. Both daughters and I packed the car up after I’d taught all day. Then the three of us drove in to Boston that Friday night of Labor Day weekend, in rush hour traffic, alongside all the tens of thousands of other parents and college students.  We stayed long enough to move her in but then had to say good-bye, drive home, repack the car . The next morning, my older daughter and I drove another eight hours in order to get her to school and settled in for her senior year, then I drove back alone. That had been a dreary, lonely drive back but not nearly as bad as that first drop off, when she was a new freshman.  

That had been eleven years ago, that very first freshman move. I was a stressed out mess that whole week before. My mother finally had enough of me and shut me up with some sage advice. I still remember what she said. I thought about her words as I drove home last week, making my way past rolling fields of corn and soy, past Motel Six billboards and advertisements for mega churches, all-you-can-eat buffets, adult video stores. I saw distant silos and sprawling farmhouses, one great lake, then another, meandered through pine forests and over fairy tale hills, then finally finished on the rutted crowded, ill-mannered highways of my own home state.

My mom had reminded me to put things in perspective. I was moaning and groaning, whining, because my oldest, still my baby, just a young recent high school grad, was moving nearly five hundred miles away and I’d hardly see her for the next four years. My mom told me I needed to snap out of it. “She’s not going to Afghanistan, not dealing with chemo, not headed to jail. She’s going to college.  A great college. Don’t you know how lucky you are?” 

I kept thinking of that time and my mom’s words as I headed east. I thought of her and my dad and how I'm so glad to still have them. Sometimes I’d block everything out, and concentrate on listening to music and singing along. Sometimes for variety’s sake, I’d search out the comedy stations. I got to hear one of Robin Williams’s stand-up routines. I laughed so hard I started crying and then I just cried. Then I avoided the comedy channels for awhile. Instead, I spaced. I sang. I pictured butter cows. I admired corn fields. I planned my next visit west.

My first butter cow. 

Patriot's Day Part 2: Oh yeah, here's the running part

Oh crap. I forgot to mention the running. 

I had a bad day. I went out slow but not slow enough. I hit the wall at mile three, aided by a cloudless sky and warmer than usual temps. I walked a bit, ran a lot, walked some more. Stopped and took photos with my high school friend Michele at mile 10, and chatted for several minutes with her sister Marie who I hadn’t seen in almost four decades. It was awesome!

Ran some more. Stopped at mile 13 to hug every volunteer who would let me near them.  Those hardy souls at the mile of smiles are a huge part of my beloved marathon family. I usually co-captain the mile 13 stop. I had to thank them for being there. 

Kept running, jogging, walking, crawling.  Seemed like the thing to do.

Constant joy. Constant love. Yada yada yada. 

Emotional moment at the turn. Every Boston marathoner knows what turn, the one by the fire station in Newton, the one that signals the start of the hills, the one where the crowds sound like you just personally made a touchdown at the Super Bowl. Overload of love. Overload of joy. Walked a bit. Wiped eyes a bit. Smiled a ton. Pressed lots of power flowers.

And so it continued. 

Downhill past Boston College, saw my dear friend Elaine and her hubby. Elaine was with me at my first Boston, 2001, cheering me on at Cleveland Circle, and before then telling me I could do it during long nights at the gym, both of us on ellipticals chatting about online dating, losing weight, how middle-aged such and such and his buddy whatsit over there are such players for hanging with the college girls, how ellipticals are boring. 

Then let gravity carry me to Cleveland Circle and Coolidge Corner and screaming fans and love love love all we need is love and Gatorade and water and more love and this neat kid doing the whole marathon on crutches. I figure he was about twenty. I stopped and walked next to him while he crutched. He qualified for Boston last year, I forget where, finishing in under three hours. Got hurt a few weeks ago. Stress fracture I think he said. Couldn’t put weight on the foot at all. So no running. But he wasn’t going to miss Boston. Oh no. Not this Boston. Hence, the crutches. 

Me: How do you feel?

Him: Pretty good except for my hand. (Briefly holds up hand, which is excruciatingly taped.)Think I broke it doing this for twenty-four miles. "This" meaning running the marathon. Using crutches.

 

Next I swerve around a swarm of red, white, and blue-bedecked Team Hoyt members who are making running legends Rick and Dick, at the center of the frenzy, honored guests at their runner high love-in. 

I meet up with another friend, a fast runner coming back from a month-long bout of pneumonia, somewhere before Hereford, in the tunnel under Mass Ave. She’s limping, obviously in pain, and is all smiles. We agree that yes, it IS a great day.  

I turn right onto Hereford. I climb that tiny hill. I reach the point where Hereford meets Boylston. I stop.

I take a deep breath. I look to the finish line, the bouncing blue and gold balloon arch, the crowds lining both sides of the road. 

I remember.  

I watch the runners climb Hereford. I study their eyes. I see every raw human emotion you could ever hope to see. I think the Navajo prayer, the one about beauty being all around us. 

The beauty reminds me of the thing I was saving until now, the underlying reason for the joy the gratitude the not postponing. My parents have gone to every Boston I’ve run, except for one and they were away on vacation out of the country so that missed one doesn’t count. 

Three days before the marathon they told me they’d be there, standing where they always stand, a bit past the mile 20 marker at Center Street, but before the hill crests at Hammond. 

I wasn’t expecting this. They are doing better. That is true. But I didn’t expect this. They are weaker than they used to be. It's an hour into Newton, plus there's the race day traffic along with the regular stupid Mass. drivers.

I said no, they shouldn’t. It would wear them out. Who knows what kind of security they’d be dealing with. What kinds of long lines they might get stuck in.

My dad interrupts me. He bellows. “HEY! Enough. I told you. We are going.  We always go. There's nothing left to say.“

Yeah. My parents were there, cheering me on in their pastel golf sweaters and their patterned golf pants and their straw golf hats. How awesome is that? Me, way past fifty years on this earth, and my parents are still cheering me on. I am so lucky. 

That day, I saw them before they saw me so I made absolutely sure that I was running, not walking not crawling. I ran up to them and we hugged, then posed for pictures. I waved to them as I ran off up the hill. I kept peeking back as they started walking toward their car. I couldn't get enough of them.  But too, I was tired. As soon as I knew they couldn't see me any more, I started walking. Their eyesight ain't what it used to be, so thankfully I only had to run a few seconds.

So I'm remembering this and smiling while I'm watching the runners pass me by at the corner of Hereford and Boylston.  At some point during this reflective time it hit me that I was running, not stopping at, the Boston Marathon so I should probably get back on track. 

As I started up, Wrecking Ball, my theme song, came on my shuffle.

Bruce is so awesome. He sings that “Hard times come and hard times go just to come again.” Yup. So true Bruce, so true. 

He sings about the importance of taking your best shot and seeing what you've got, and I always think he's implying that maybe deep within us we've got our own sets of wrecking balls. As I run, I think how mine include joy and gratitude and never ever ever giving up. 

I'm imagining myself as one orange-singlet-clad wrecking ball, as I crush that last point two. I'm obliterating sadness, pulverizing despair, and, as my eyes hit the fans near the finish line, desperately wishing I could make everything all better.

It was pretty raw.

If you go by the clock, Boston Marathon 2014 was my worst race ever. If you go by other things, like lessons learned for example, count it as the best.

 

Here at home, I'm powering up the brain cells, getting juiced for more writing, and hopefully for some publishing too. Lucky for me, I've got some pretty big balls. Yes I do. More to come.

Emotion stew: Patriot's Day Part 1

The waiting is the hardest part.

I’d been waiting all year to run Boston. I knew minutes into the devastation and horror of last year’s events that nothing short of catastrophe would keep me from my loved ones come Patriot’s Day. 

Loved ones here means: the Boston Athletic Association and its entire staff, the volunteers, and every single fan, including all police, firefighters and soldiers who’ve cheered me on either in person or in their hearts. 

I needed to see my people. I needed to let them know how much they mattered to me. 

Yup. I ran for love. I suspect most of us did. The love that day was palpable. 

I’m not a Pollyanna trying to fluff things off.  Hate was there too. And anger. Oh boy, there was a ton of anger there that day. But the love. . . I do believe love won that day.  

The hate and anger rumbled beneath the surface, bubbled up in random places. “No one fucks with my city.” Saw that poster quite a bit. “Fuck yeah,” I remember thinking, nodding my head, smiling a tight jaw-clenching smile, still waving thank you to everyone. 

We started the day with stern security guards who checked us over for explosives before letting us on the shuttle buses to the start. Then we saw the sharpshooters on the roof of Hopkinton High School. Not going to lie. That was hard. Seeing that, a piece of my heart broke right off. Then there was security lining all 26.2 miles, sometimes police or National Guard, sometimes protective rope that kept friends, frenemies, enemies, from jumping in and running with us along the course. 

I saw sadness. It was everywhere.  It belonged there. Rare was the runner who wasn’t wearing some ribbon, or marking to honor and remember Martin Richard, Krystal Campbell, Lu Lingzi, Sean Collier, as well as the hundreds of injured. Posters with their pictures lined the course. Some of us ran sometimes with fists clenched, jaws set, crying even.   

So the sadness was there. But then there was the joy. . . I’m not just talking endorphin rushes either.  The love was out there in your face, in every step, every shout of encouragement, every “you’re kicking liver disease’s ass” sign, every “shortcut this way” poster, every thank you, every vodka-spiked orange wedge, every cup of noxiously thirst-quenching, life-giving, stomach churning Gatorade.  And there were tens of thousands of flattened sticky gloriously used-up cups of Gatorade along the entire course, a veritable yellow brick road’s worth.  

I can’t speak for every one of the 33,000 runners out there, or for the hundreds of thousands of fans­­­. I can only say what I saw. I saw joy. I saw smiles. I saw random acts of kindness, like the guide who made an impromptu umbrella from a cardboard box and ran the whole race holding both his arms up in the air to shelter his blind runner from the relentless sun. I saw scores of runners swarming around father-son team Rick and Dick Hoyt, offering encouragement, and thanking them for their inspiration.  I saw multitudes of little girls holding posters with flowers glued to them. The posters said “Press for Power" and when you did – and I did at least a dozen times which was nothing compared to all the runners I saw stopping and pressing at every single poster-- you DID feel powerful.  

Maybe one reason for the feelings of power and joy is because I chose gratitude.  A few days before the race, when I was trying to plan for the day, I decided to make my race a thank you journey. I wrote the names of my parents and my daughters on the back of my shirt. I still had a ton of room. I sent out an email that I wanted to run with the names of loved people on my back. My friends and family responded with a singlet-load. I marked up my race shirt with the names of their important ones, some still on this earth, some living on through their loved ones. 

Two of the loved ones had passed quite recently.  One is the dad of ten beautiful children. I had the pleasure of teaching a few of them and knowing some of the others. That’s how the gratitude started, thinking about how awesome those kids are. The other dear soul is a former student who died suddenly and unexpectedly. His family sent a postcard with a bunch of pictures of him doing what he loved: hiking, camping, staring at sunsets. The script on the postcard says this: Don’t postpone joy.  

I’d always thought the world of this beautiful child. I met David my second year teaching, when I was still easy to dupe, hadn’t learned how to write on the board without turning my back on the class. I was still sorta shy and kinda tentative and even wore heels to school once in a while. 

We had whole school sing-a-longs once a week.  Sometimes the kids performed on stage. Maybe that’s why I didn’t think anything of it when David said he needed to leave our balcony and see the music teacher. Next thing I know, the kid is walking across the stage like a natural maestro, makes himself comfy at the grand piano, and leads the whole school in singing happy birthday to me. 

Joy wasn’t that hard an emotion to summon up whenever I thought of David, especially on Marathon Monday. 

So that’s my Boston Marathon 2014. 

Oh crap. I forgot to write about the running. 

Boston 2014: Here's my starting line

I was about 2,250 miles and three months away from Boston, on a plane making its final descent into Albuquerque, when I realized I couldn’t put off writing about my marathon any more. The realization hit as I was in the process of shutting off my shuffle and unplugging my headphones. 

My fingers brushed against some unplanned wet on my cheek. I’d been crying. Tears of joy? Sadness? I still haven’t figured it out. In those last few minutes of my six-hour voyage, flying through turquoise sky above the glorious pinks, browns and purples of summer dusk New Mexico, I’d been listening to my personal go get ‘em theme song, Wrecking Ball by Bruce Springsteen, and had been remembering the last beautiful time I’d heard it, back in April on Patriot’s Day, during the last .2 of my 2014 Boston Marathon, the view just as heavenly, the feelings equally momentous.  

I’ve been putting off writing about that day, though I’ve written two pieces about events leading up to it, one about the Friday before and one about going in to pick up my race number. 

I kept telling myself I had plenty of time to write about Boston. Kept reminding myself that if I didn’t write about the day soon, I’d forget.One can become quite passive when one allows oneself to be pulled in such opposing directions. 

Now, as I think back, there’s a lot that's been lost to fogginess. But maybe that’s a good thing. Does anyone really need to know how many Gus I ate that day? (Three, I think.) Or how many minutes I spent in the port-a-potty line at Athlete’s Village? (At least two -- no -- four hours I’m sure, mainly because I have a gift for always picking the longest lines no matter where I go – grocery store, bank, Mass Pike, whatever.) 

Or how many times I remembered to be thankful for the Boston Athletic Association and its premier volunteers, my American Liver Foundation friends and donors, my Run for Research teammates, my mother and father and daughters, my friends? (It’s an infinite amount because the gratitude just keeps coming.) 

The gratitude, like the memories, overwhelms me even now, months later. Thank you thank you thank you!

Let’s call this the starting line. Let's keep moving forward. Ready. Set. Write!

No brainer: When someone calls for help, you help

So today I'd just come home from running errands. My front door and back door are wide open, as are all the windows. There's a gorgeous cross breeze and no indication that we just survived four days of 80 percent mugginess.

I'm making a salad, singing to myself while I mix up some spinach, radicchio, red onions, almond slices, dried cranberries. I even go so far as to whip up a quick batch of orange vinegar dressing.  I'm thinking, "I could live like this every day. I have the best life ever." I hear summer noises: the rustling trees, twittering birds, buzzing of a lawnmower, the hammering of the contractor next door. It's pretty idyllic. Even the hammering.

I feel at home. Safe.

Then comes the screeching. At first I think it's a kid, maybe with a water gun. I smile a little, remembering. Back in the day, I had pretty decent aim. The screeching changes pitch. From my kitchen sink I see out the dining room window that the vinyl siding guy perched high on his ladder has turned his head to the screaming. Because it's screaming and crying now and I'm beginning to make out words: "Stop! He's hitting me! Make him stop!

I rush around the corner to the bay window at the front, and see my neighbor bent over, her body making violent front then back jumps. From my angle, I can't quite make out what the man next to her is doing. But he's doing something. He's moving violently too. She's bent over. Screaming for help. For him to stop. For someone to call the police. I see the neighbor who lives next door to her. He is continuing to mow his lawn. He is watching her as he makes neat shaven rows on this already perfect carpet. I hear hammering. The man next door? He's back at work.

I grab my phone and run outside to the curb. I yell, "Do you need help?" which is stupid because I know she does. I dial 911. I scream over and over, "Stop hurting her. I am calling the police!" I think he heard me above the mowing and the hammering because he started yelling at me in this deep, booming voice, and at one point stopped and crossed the street toward me. Then he noticed the woman running back to the front door and turned around to grab her and hold her and hit her again.

I'm telling the dispatcher all of this, and giving her all the information I can as the women screams his first and last name to me and tells me he, the estranged husband dragged her down an entire flight of stairs by her hair, hitting her the entire time too. 

I had a hard time hearing and kept yelling for her to repeat because of the hammering from the burly man on the ladder just one house over and because of the loud buzzing from the lawn mower still leisurely cruising the velvet front yard just second away from where the tall, muscular loser in a gold golf shirt and dark tan khakis continued to hurt the the mother of  his two-year-old son and continued to yell at me too.

For all I know he might have been threatening to kill her or to kill me. I don't speak or understand the language he was using. I'm pretty sure that the Polish-speaking guy next door and the Greek-speaking guy across the street didn't know either.Though by the tone of the wife-beater's voice and his strong, fast stride as he crossed the street toward me for those few seconds, yelling non-stop, they probably knew he wasn't asking me for a cup of sugar.

I ran in the house and locked my doors and my windows and stayed on the phone with the dispatcher as the animal across the street got into his dark blue new Pacifica and drove away while the brainless automatons next door and across the street continued their apparently life and death-saving important home maintenance duties.

The woman had run into the house. I told the dispatcher that and did my best to give her a description of the license plate though the guy took off too fast for me to get all the numbers.

Luckily, within second of driving off, he was back on the street again. He pulled into the driveway and ran into the house. I called 911 again though had to repeat the plate number over and over because my voice was shaking worse than my hands and the incessant nail poundings and grass attacking -- as I've said already -- was pretty loud and terrifyingly misogynistically constant.

He was only in the house a minute or two and I stayed on the phone with the dispatcher during the whole hectic hammering, mowing, and who knows what the hell that piece of fuck was doing to that brave woman who screamed for help closed door time.

I know that name-calling and swearing can be an easy way out and maybe reflects laziness or lack of vocab or whatever on the part of the writer. One of my biggest writing issues is that often I edit too much/ sugar coat and end up with neutral white bread that doesn't reflect who I am or what I want to say. I'm a work in progress and so is my blog. Kind of scares me, how much I let my mouth wander. But today at least, the shit stays.

 

The ball-less wonder dirt scum coward exited the house seconds later and jumped into his top shop maybe compensating for being a real man vehicle and took off, while the equally subhuman hammerer and what-kind-of-a-spouse-and-father-of-a-daughter-would-ignore-that landscaper/ monster continued diligently not making a difference one breath at a time.

I walked over to the house telling myself that I was a coward because seconds might matter and I should be running, phone in hand, and for the first time noticed the curtain rod hanging askew in the front window. I pushed open the door and saw the clothes and shoes and other throwing types of objects everywhere on the floor.

I called her name, the name of the only other human on the street today besides me. There was no response and I stood there trying to gain the courage to walk inside. I called her again and she responded and came down the stairs, crying about her hair being pulled and him hitting her again and again and she thought she locked the door when she ran back in the house but for me not to worry because she'd been safe the past few minutes behind her locked bedroom door.

By now, the noxious bug had skittered to the back yard for more cutting of already perfect and apparently more precious than human life greenery. The hammerer watched me as I crossed back to my house. I still held the phone in my hand just in case the third cowardly piece of crap I'd seen the last few minutes decided to return.

The hammer not-man asked if she was okay. Yes, he'd seen the "man" -- his word for the thing I don't have vocabulary to describe --  dragging the woman -- a mother of four not that that should make a difference but she's a mother of four and has a son about same age as the hammerer -- had seen him dragging her by her hair across the front yard, right in sight of the equally penis-deficient insult to all humanity mower.

The police came. They'd managed to apprehend the opposite-of-everything-a-human-should-be a few blocks away. They promised the woman he'd go to jail that night. Turns out, this was not the first time there'd been a problem.

I told her I would go to court with her for a restraining order. She says she'll think about it. I told the policeman to please explain to her that she needed a restraining order. He did. She said again that she'd think about it. When her twenty-year-old daughter showed up at the house, I told her to remind her mom that I would be more than willing to accompany her mom to court for a restraining order. I told her to make sure her mom called me any time for any thing. Emphasis on ANY.

The wife of the neighbor next door who did nothing -- I don't have the words anymore to describe how much I hate this whatever the thing she's married to is -- pulled into her driveway, just a couple of quick strides from the attacked woman's front door. I ran to the car and started telling her what happened because as far as I'm concerned, when one of us is hurt, we are all hurt. Plus, I wanted her to know in case I wasn't home and the woman needed help. Or in case I need help if the deviant decides to go for a two for one deal. Or maybe I said what I said next because the rage kept coming in waves and I felt justified and still do. I used words like fucking asshole coward piece of shit to describe um. . . the grass for brains that she's married to. 

The spouse of the mower? She's not speaking to me right now.  In fact, I'm pretty sure she won't be speaking to me for quite awhile. I just hope if she ever needs help, she knows to call me. I'll be there. Anytime. Until I move, I guess.  I just don't feel safe here any more.

When I think this in terms of running distances, I chuckle. Today it resonates for different reasons.