Stairway to (Not Quite) Heaven

And so it has come to this:

I now take the stairs… even when I don’t have to.

Every morning I get to work and hike up four flights – 96 stairs in all – and arrive on the fifth floor, wheezing like an asthmatic marathoner.

Looks like...

...Feels like.

With the big "5" placard just outside my reach, my eyesight speckles and my molecules jitter as they rush to pull themselves into a slightly more composed configuration.

I hit the 96th step and take a last deep breath, filling my lungs and sucking my gut... hoping my co-workers overestimate my cardiac health.

I tell myself that flushed cheeks are very attractive and that the small bit of perspiration around my hairline is very healthy and probably (surely!) smells quite lovely.

And, lest you think I’m fooling no one, I offer you this little nugget:

I once actually stopped breathing when I met someone I knew at the top of the stairs.

He watched me swing out of the stairwell and challenged, “Okay, let’s hear it. Let’s hear the breathing.”

My eyes cut quickly away, and I made the split-second decision to just hold my breath.

But while the inhalation stopped, I kept everything else in motion: throwing my shoulders back, smiling, arching an eyebrow, and walking away. Triumphantly.

As I wheeled around the corner, out of sight and almost out of oxygen, I heard, “Wow. That’s impressive.”

Yes, the fact that I didn’t pass out is impressive.

The fact that I held my breath was silly.

And the fact that I’m taking those stairs at all is desperate.

I’m the girl who, after one horrible afternoon moving a friend out of his fifth floor walk-up, vowed to never, ever live any higher than the second floor – unless, of course, there's an elevator.

I’m the girl who sent her interns to check her mailbox one flight up.

And I'm the girl who required the promise of free food to walk up extra steps at the studio.

But I'm also the girl who dashed up and down subway stairs, who walked miles around the city, and who carried much while doing it.

Now I'm the girl who walks nowhere and carries nothing but a paralyzing fear of a pulmonary embolism.

And so I take the stairs.

And park in the back of the grocery store parking lot.

And Zumba while I brush my teeth.

And still I go to bed exhausted from dormancy rather than motion.

To truly match the rigors of New York life, I might have to start taking those stairs once an hour – because something tells me that mouse-clicking is probably not the sort of exercise the doctor recommends.

Yetis and Hipster Dads and the PTA: Oh, My!

So, I’m a little PTA-ed out.

In the past two weeks, I’ve gotten four emails and several fliers sent home asking me for a time commitment. And every single one of those communications seems directed at someone else.

Their target is a woman who can take a 9:30 a.m. meeting – not at corporate but at the elementary school.

A woman who has time to bake cakes for the cakewalk, chair the fundraising committee, or pitch in on party planning.

There’s no after-work meeting for the woman who makes a slapdash effort at mascara at 6:54 a.m. so she can drive her daughter around the corner in time for the 6:56 bus.

That'd be me.

Or the woman who gets to work at 7:12 – her slapdashed mascara now a gray under-eye smudge – and works through lunch so she can, hopefully, get home in time to make a 5 p.m. dinner for the kids. 

Yep. Still me.

And, trust me, I’m not saying that being a working mom is more difficult than being a stay-at-home mom. Let’s be clear: I’m not. They’re both ridiculously hard, and we’ll leave it at that.

What is hard is being one of a very few.

Working moms are like yetis here in the suburbs. You hear of them – maybe you even catch a flash as they duck back into the woods or their white SUVs – but you never truly see them.

Wait! Is that a suburban GA working mom?
Purported Yeti image via paranormal.about.com

Maybe they’re hiding with all the stay-at-home dads.

In Brooklyn, the hipster dads would troll the Slope with their Baby Bjorns or tool around town with their baby rickshaws.

Your kid can get this sweet ride here.

They took their faux-hawked kids to the playground and only bought organic and had no embarrassment about being the only dad at dance class.

They were everywhere with their kids and their skater shirts and wool caps and facial hair.

Hell, they were probably even at PTA meetings*.

*Unless, of course, their invitation to the PTA meeting also said “Room Moms Meeting”… in which case they probably just ordered another Kombucha at the Tea Lounge and hung out with the breastfeeding mommies.

9/11

I stood in Tompkins Square Park, the lush green of the grass covered with blankets and East Village hipsters.

It was an oasis – a bubble of calm in a city of terror.

I’d just run 45 blocks down Fifth Avenue before cutting over to Alphabet City. I’d run against a crushing tide.

Tens of thousands of people shoved their way uptown, scrambling to get away from the fire, the wreckage, the burning heap of two towers that had – until just hours before – symbolized our city and, for some, our country.

I scrambled, too, fighting to hang on to Clay’s hand, to not have him slip away in the crowd.

I fell.

He pulled me to my feet again, dragging me to the sidewalk before anyone could step on me.

Proprietors along Fifth put televisions in their storefront windows. We saw the headlines as we stumbled along.

New York City Under Attack.

State of Emergency.

Thousands Dead.

The sun filled the sky and seemed to bleach faces of color. It was a sea of wild eyes and wide mouths.

People crowded around pay phones, their cell phones dead and useless.

Bars filled. Reformed smokers bought cartons of cigarettes. And everyone wondered what came next.

Were our loved ones safe?

Were we safe?

I felt trapped, like a dome had snapped down over the city.

But in Tompkins Square Park there was escape.

As long as you didn’t look south to the huge plume billowing toward Brooklyn.

As long as you didn’t breathe too deeply, didn’t smell the stench wafting toward Union Square.

As long as you didn’t think, didn’t remember, didn’t fear.

September 11, 2001 changed me.

Death throws life into sharp relief. 

The nonimperatives slipped away, and I held everything else closer.

And when I grasped Clay’s hand as we ran downtown, I decided to hold on forever.

Take Me Out (for Takeout)

I miss the dinnertime safety net of takeout food.

“Kate, what’s for dinner?”

(Distracted.) “Hmm? What? Uh, I don’t know. What’s in the fridge?”

(Annoyed.) “I don’t know.”

(Desperate.) “Well, let’s see, ugh, I guess I could make eggs or, well… huh.”

(Hopeful.) “What?”

(Plotting.) “Well, it just occurred to me that I have to walk right by Little Tonino’s anyway,” – pause, pause, pause to let the groundwork solidify – “So what do you think about a meatball parm?”

Check out Little Tonino's on Facebook.

Bing, bang, boom, dinner is on the table. No muss, no fuss. 

Just delicious, high-sodium, high-fat food warming your belly.

And the very best part is that New York’s proliferation of quality, quick takeout options limits the time you have to second-guess yourself.

There’s no time to talk yourself out of spending extra money when you’re saving yourself all that extra work… and it’s just around the corner.

No cooking. No clean up. All yumminess.

I mean, I love to cook, but sometimes it’s just too much work… Especially near the end of the workweek.

And that’s when I wish Elora could swoop in with a delicious black bean burrito and rescue me from the big, bad box of macaroni and cheese.

Or – OOH! – if Thai Tony's Spicy Chicken Basil Noodle could be my deus ex machina… Well, that’d just be swell.

Via KARMABrooklyn

 Perhaps not for my wallet or my waistline.

But, every now and then, a styrofoam container of noodles – lovingly prepared by a stranger in less than 10 minutes – is good for your heart.

Especially when it comes with a free spring roll.