CARTOON

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SPORTS FREAK: Some Modest Proposals

"Hockey doesn’t leave enough room behind the goal for cool lacrosse-style passes to charging forwards—it should knock out a few rows of seats at each end of the rink and make room."

By Michael Nelson

Here’s a bad idea: play a game for two hours or more and then, if it’s tied, decide who wins by playing a different game. Imagine the seventh game of the World Series going scoreless for 12 innings, only to be settled by five minutes of home run derby (or running bases, for that matter). Or imagine—well, no need to imagine, because it happened last Sunday—the biggest contest in all of sport, the final game of soccer’s World Cup, being called to a halt after 120 minutes of 1-1 play, only to be decided by something called a penalty-kick shootout. The way to fix soccer is to keep playing until a team wins, not to settle one game by playing another. Other sports cry out for other remedies to their chronic ills.

Soccer, known everywhere on Earth except the United States as football, actually provides a remedy for what plagues American football: the seemingly endless length of its game. What football should do is what soccer does: never stop the clock for anything. If injuries bring play to a halt for a few minutes, just tack a few minutes on to the end of the game. But everything else—incomplete passes, runs out of bounds, first-down measurements, whatever—should happen on the clock.

Football has another problem that shouldn’t be too hard to solve. Athletically speaking, place kickers are a breed apart from all the other players on the field, yet the points they put on the board by kicking PAT’s and field goals usually exceed the points scored by even the best backs and receivers and often decide the outcome of a game. What football needs to do is abolish the kicked extra point (make 'em run or pass for it) and reduce the point value of a field goal from three to two.

Baseball suffers from one of the same problems as football—games have become way too long—but requires a different remedy because it’s played off the clock. Happily, the remedy lies in our past—that is, the past of our own youth. Remember the seven-inning games? Did they seem at the time to lack completeness? No. Were they over soon enough that you didn’t have to miss a meal or phone in sick the next day if you stayed for the whole game? Yes.

As for basketball, what’s worse than the last two minutes of a close game, which between timeouts and intentional fouls invariably last a half hour or longer. Why not reduce the total number of timeouts by one for each team and abolish them altogether during the last five minutes of each half?

Lacrosse and hockey are great games that each could benefit from borrowing a feature from the other. Lacrosse is one period too long—it should go to three periods like hockey. Hockey doesn’t leave enough room behind the goal for cool lacrosse-style passes to charging forwards—it should knock out a few rows of seats at each end of the rink and make room. (While you’re at it, hockey, get some pucks a person can see, maybe even white ones against ice that’s dyed midnight blue.)

Golf needs to learn something about noise from every other sport. At golf tournaments, a rule of silence prevails that even monks abandoned years ago. The result is that the tiniest noise—a camera click, a child whose foot has been stepped on, a modest burp—can turn a 300-yard drive into a shank.

Golf needs to learn that it’s the tininess of the noise, not noise itself, that is the problem. When the slightest snap, crackle, or pop breaks a silence, it breaks an athlete’s concentration as well. But loud and continuous noises, the kind that crowds make at other sporting events, don’t distract athletes at all because the noise is general, a buzz or a roar. Can you imagine Roger Clemens stepping off the mound or Kobe Bryant refusing to take a free throw because it’s too loud?

Whoop it up, golf fans. And when there’s a tie, don’t break it by playing putt-putt.

Michael Nelson is a professor of political science at Rhodes College and a former editor of Washington Monthly.

FICTION: Midnight Sun

By George Chase

The first coherent thought Hank has, upon coming to, is How am I standing? He peeks down, not entirely sure what to expect, but there they are, his stubby legs, stretched out to their fullest and offering their service as supports. His blue chinos show the dark butter stain he hasn’t the ability to vanquish, and the wingtips are scuffed at the toes, proving they are his. There’s no evidence of foul play, so he assumes that he is to blame for his body being upright. He gives this fact some deserved brow-furrowing, since, last he knew, he was sitting and falling asleep. He tries to blink his way back into alertness--it works in the movies--but despite his firing synapses his eyelids feel like oversized wings, a body part that he struggles to control.

When Hank gathers himself enough to peek at his knock-off Rolex, he sees one hand pointing NNW and the other SSE. It takes him a while to work out that his watch is trying to tell him it’s 11:25, and that brings up the question which 11:25 it is and what this number means in relation to the possible times and possible parts of the day--dinner? morning?--but he soon becomes sidetracked by yet another mystery: Where am I?

He turns as swiftly as he can and looks out at the earth below, but the land out to the horizon, to his horror, is a flat expanse the color of rusted metal. It appears that he’s surrounded by miles of red dirt. He wonders if something catastrophic has happened to disintegrate all the grass and soil and layers of fossilized bones and limestone, leaving him in a field of ore unfamiliarly close to the earth’s center. I’ve got it, he thinks, collecting his thoughts--we’ve mistakenly landed on Mars. Then with a shock, with the same sort of gradual realization as resting your hand on a hot radiator for a second before feeling pain, it hits him that it’s daylight. He looks through the maddeningly small windows for the undebatable sun, yearning for more proof than his currently untrustworthy sensory perception that day is here, but he cannot find it. Still, the light tells him that it’s 11:25 in the morning, even though it makes no sense that it’s 11:25 in the morning.

Someone bumps him, suggesting that it’s time to move, so he hoists his carry-on bag onto his shoulder and drags his obstinate feet forward. The effect of whatever has happened has left him somewhere far shy of his best. Bodies trudge along, faceless forms with heads bowed to the ground, and he wonders if they are as scared and disoriented as he is, but with a topic of discussion as difficult to broach as this one--that fact that he can’t imagine where he is or what’s going on--he thinks it wise to keep quiet. The purring of a female voice fills the air and whispers into his ear, her lilting accent placing in his head the image of a Swedish divorcée lying in bed clad only in a frilled, short, powder-blue nightie. But despite his great interest in what this angel has to say, her words don’t make any sense to him. He can see her mouthing the letters, her lips rippling, but instead of words forming in his head he sees only jumbles. Th-ef-vil. He pinches himself in the arm to make sure and winces, opening up the flood gates of anxiety. Sko-ga-foss. With panic he wonders if it’s possible to lose the knowledge of a mother tongue while asleep. Esk-en-thlee. He yawns wide, making his ears pop, grimaces in deep concentration, and then realizes that she is not speaking English.

Bit by bit recollections take shape in his head. He sees himself opening up a foil packet of sleeping pills, and perhaps more than a couple airplane-issue mini-bottles of Scotch, but he can’t be sure if that was last night or some other indistinguishable night in the past. Oh, and he is nearly positive his wife just left him after 18 years. "It’s getting serious with Louie the electrician," she said. "At least he gives a damn." He opts to let that thought pass, realizing that it’s more important to concentrate on placing one foot ahead of the other.

At the end of the corridor a sprawling room opens before him, with banks of 10-foot-high windows that start from the floor, walls and ceilings of honey-colored wood, all held up by stark metal beams. It looks just like a modern ski lodge, but Hank is starting to come around, and he thinks he knows he is not in a ski lodge. Miles of dirt that look more like toxic fallout still stare at him from outside the windows. He stops walking, unsure of the point of continuing, unsure of how moving forward will improve his situation any more than merely standing and watching. Like a bullfighter does. Letting things come to him. A few bags hit him in the back of the legs, but no one says anything and the bags’ owners make their way around him. He spots a digital clock on the far wall that reads 3:32 a.m. in bright red numbers, even though the clock is hung right above one of the huge windows in which, for all to see, is the damn sun. Its resemblance to the real thing is uncanny, a pomegranate that has been thrown high up in the air and at its apex has stopped frozen in the sky. Sunlight pours in through the glass, flooding the room with hazy orange-ish air. As if a gas has been released. His watch says 11:32, and he stares at it until he sees the second hand move five seconds’ worth, to be sure. The saliva around his tongue is viscous, and causes his lips to stick together.

To the left are more windows and a stretch of diligently polished floors, and to the right lies a desk, behind which sit two round-faced blonde women. Their twinkling eyes and exuberant chipperness are palpable from across the room. Above them he sees a sign, which he regards with the anticipation of a penniless drunk looking up at a TV at the OTB. It reads “Information: Reykjavik.” His mind races. Reykjavik. Reykjavik. Reykjavik. Is that Iceland? What the hell am I doing in Iceland? he wonders aloud. Hank’s breathing stops in mid-exhale, a feeble whimper sneaks out unattended, and his sphincter tightens. With trepidation he reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out his ticket, the fibers on the paper thick and teeming, spider-like. He glances down slowly, almost not wanting to know, but it’s as he expected: Rome.

A jumbo jet’s worth of passengers is standing around looking lost and confused, waiting for something to happen. It doesn’t appear as if they really know what to make of being in Iceland either. It’s unsettling to land in an airport but have no smothering moms or condom-packing boyfriends to greet at the gate. Only uninterested airport employees mill about. Passengers cluster together in small tense groups, rub their eyes with their palms, and blink with confusion out the bright windows. Even though the angelic women at the help desk hold the answers, everyone is afraid to approach them, realizing that it's impossible for a disheveled, weary traveler to stand in the glow of these Nordic goddesses, have to face their perfect skin and their nonchalant upbeatness, and look anything but haggard and worn. The light above their desk is soft and seems designed especially for them; it glances off their hair and creates an aura that is usually seen in frescos in Italian churches. Every feature of their faces is the exact right size and shape. Grown adults out and out gawk at their beauty, too dazed from the circumstances to remember anything about proper decorum. Small children grab their mom’s fingers and point.

Finally, sneering at opprobrium, two ample corn-fed moms in '60s print dresses approach the information desk. They walk with wide shoulders that have had to support families through tornados, drunken husbands, and factory layoffs; they should be able to handle the Venuses. They approach the desk with shoulders touching, relying on bulk to defeat beauty.

Just then one of the stewardesses marches past Hank, with her off-to-one-side stewardess-issue hat and slimming royal blue skirt as if she has walked out of 1956. Her rolling bag is wheeling its way behind her as would an obedient pet, and he takes off after her. He grabs her elbow--he heard somewhere that it’s the least threatening and least sexual spot to touch a person--and as she turns he is jolted by her thick mascara and plentiful rouge, and he recalls this very woman handing him mini-bottles of Scotch to wash down the sleeping pills--but he can’t shake the nonsensical feeling that this was only a few hours ago.

"I … I’m sorry to bother you," he stammers. "Can you tell me what’s going on. Where are we?"

"We’re in Iceland, honey," she says. "You nod off?"

"Iceland! Will we be back in the air soon?" he pleads.

"I’d get comfortable. We have to fly in Italian union mechanics, then they have to fix the plane. And they haven’t even gotten up for their espressos yet," she continues with an insouciance that he quickly finds irritating. "I bet we’ll be back in the air tomorrow."

"But why?" he continues, disbelieving.

She scowls. "Where have you been? We just had an emergency landing!"

He finds his way to the head of the information line and there before him are the two stunning blond women. They both have skin the color of Cream of Wheat, with raspberries for lips, and eyes the color of perfectly faded denim. Their hair is pulled back and put up in a bun, as if it’s a treat only to be taken out for special occasions. Or if gentlemen ask very, very nicely. On top of the counter is a brochure showing a woman perched on a recently conquered mountain top, flashing a perfect smile, but what gets him is that this woman is the spitting image of the woman sitting in front of him. He finds it disconcerting.

"May I help you?" he hears, and looks up from the brochure to see both ladies smiling genuinely at him, looking unlike anyone in the service industry he has ever seen. He doesn't know who spoke, and he was looking forward to being irritated at someone, but the fact that these women are chipper at 3:45 in the morning disarms him. They both carry expressions that say "there is nothing at all to worry about," which, understandably, makes him worry.

"Yes, I uh, I think I need a room for the night."

"Of course, sir," she says in an English accent that would impress the Queen. "It has already been taken care of by the airline. You may pick up your van ticket two booths down and it will take you right to your room. Please enjoy your stay here in lovely Iceland." Her wrap-up smile is an example for beauty-queen contestants worldwide.

He staggers off from Miss Iceland’s eyes in a daze. "How great, a room!" he thinks. He walks away overheated and lightheaded, pleased that he lost his paunch in the stress of divorce, trying to recall the last time he had a conversation with a woman that fetching. Still, as he picks up the van ticket, he’s not in the mood to be marooned on a rock in the Arctic Circle. Being back on the plane and knocked out from the liquor and the sleeping pills, tucked underneath a thin airline blanket, heading invisibly toward the baptismal streets of Roma, that’s what he wants. Meanwhile, he's beginning to wake up enough to understand how difficult it is to function under the constraints of this debilitating mix. He has noticed that once words leave his mouth they seem to change shape in midair, possibly affected by the lag between his mouthing the words and the words existing. It’s all somewhat confusing, and it's hard for him to tell if he actually has been speaking very slowly, or if his perception is off and he just thinks that he has been speaking very slowly. No one else seems to be speaking at a sluggish pace. Or are they?

His headache has won more territory, staking its flag on the entire right side of his head. The rays of the sun are becoming stronger; he can feel their warmth on his hands, even though it's only 4:00 in the morning. He plants his weary backside on the ergonomically perfected Scandinavian-designed airport seats, but its wonders are lost on him. He wishes for a companion, not to share the experience with, but to complain to. Neither staying in the airport, exhausted, nor getting into a van to be taken to some strange locale sound appealing to him--he had to have his therapist talk him into this very controlled tour-package trip to Italy to begin with--so he defers to fate to decide things for him. He glances up to see the duty free store and its armies of liquor bottles standing facing him, scotches and vodkas and wines, taunting. His head begins to spin and his stomach threatens action. It is decided: The exit and the great unknown beckon.

The air outside is startlingly fresh and crisp, as if the place was just given an enormous mint. The van he’s supposed to be taking is there on the curb, and Hank is somewhat shocked that it has four wheels and is van-shaped, and that, well, it’s a Ford Aerostar and vans are the same here. Out of nowhere an Icelandic version of Eddie Munster takes Hank’s bags out of his hands and wordlessly tosses them in the back. The man is nothing but right angles, a body of building blocks, squares and rectangles. Hank shrugs mentally and heads to the side door, but the van is teeming with silhouetted heads, so he walks up to the empty front seat. He opens the door to see, sitting in the passenger seat, a midget. He has a substantial head of curly hair, looks to be in his 40s, and his feet dangle off the edge of the seat. He glares up at Hank, scowling as if to guard his territory, but through the front seat Hank sees Eddie wave him into the van before lugging his enormous square shoulders into the driver's seat. The van, as anyone can see, is full. "Thanks, I'll just catch the next one," Hank says, and starts to close the door. "There is no next one," Eddie monotones to the steering wheel, and then slowly nods his brick jaw in the direction of the passenger seat, or at least to the tiny portion not being used. The midget plays possum for a second, staring straight ahead as if there isn’t a person standing next to him, but as Hank grabs the door frame and begins pulling himself in, the fellow grunts and noisily shifts himself over.

Any fledgling urban qualities evaporate as soon as they drive away from the airport. In fact, the only other visible structures are two sheds, both shabby white huts made of corrugated metal that serve to mark the end of paved roads. The van is in a barren wasteland in mere seconds, engulfed by reddish oxidized dirt and an endless sky full of clouds the color of dirty bath water. Hank shudders and grips the door handle.

They settle on a course straight for the sun. Hank’s lids become powerless at the hands of the resurgent efforts of the sleeping pills and the lulling of the van, and he nods off for a bit, but the sun’s intrusive rays pierce his closed eyelids. Defeated, he forces himself awake and stares through bloodshot eyes at the road ahead. He notes that the sun looks bigger here, though maybe it’s because it has only dirt and sky to compete with for attention, and he tries to work out if Iceland is closer to the sun in June, but he doesn't have any round items handy to use as props.

The little man, meanwhile, has been subtly nudging Hank off the seat while he dozed, taking advantage of the bumps to move him and then stay there. The result is that Hank has found himself with not quite one butt cheek on the seat. Hank starts wiggling himself back onto the seat, but the midget capitulates no ground. They both eye the highway looking for potential bumps, and then at the slightest imperfection in the road push themselves into each other trying to gain terrain. Hank is even pushing off from the door. A harmony of guttural noises is issued forth, a series of grunts, huffs, and sighs that, in the end, do nothing to make either of them more comfortable.

Hank can’t even guess how long they’ve been battling when Icelandic Eddie, for reasons unclear to his passengers, slows down and pulls over to the side of the two-lane highway. The little man and Hank halt their skirmish and peer over at the driver to try to gauge what is going on, but Eddie is focusing on the road and not giving away any secrets.

The driver shifts into park. His face is as blank as the sea. He leans forward into the dashboard with his hand reaching out for something, looks to Hank, and says, "You can get out here," before flipping a switch. At once the passenger-side door--on which Hank is leaning--opens, spilling him and his shoulder bag out of the van. He tumbles out of the vehicle and lands on his side, his fall cushioned by his bag. Above him is stifled laughter.

He gets up off the tar listening to the back doors of the van creak wide open, and assumes that Eddie’s fishing for his bags. His heart speeds up when he fails to recall seeing a house or structure of any kind since the airport. He takes a quick view to his left and behind him and realizes that this land they've been driving through, to which he hasn’t been paying any attention, is an enormous lava field. The area is void of flora; no trees, no shrubs, no grass. Green is not on the color wheel. The land looks as if, somehow, it is unfinished. Black rocks the size of bathtubs cover the earth as far as he can see, boulders piled to his thigh and higher all the way up and down the highway. A fierce wind, its speed quickened by its unimpeded path, hits him across the face.

The van doors close and Hank looks back to see the driver staring at him with his snowy eyes, a bag hanging from each balled fist. Eddie turns away, revealing behind him a car parked on the shoulder, a black VW Jetta--born from the lava, for all Hank knows. There’s a poof of white hair on the woman at the wheel. Eddie walks to the trunk of the Jetta and sticks the bags in, and Hank understands that he is supposed to get in the car with the strange woman. Eddie nods to him, bends down to say something to the driver, and walks back to the van. Hank is paralyzed. After Eddie ducks his square head in, the van pulls out into the highway. Hank reaches a hand out for it, involuntarily.


The van shrinks until it is a speck half in the rich blue of the sky and half in the relentless black of the lava, with the sun hung above it like a ripe orange on the branch. The highway is otherwise abandoned, the only thing breaking up the incessant wind being an idling German motor. It seems he’s on a rock that has somehow separated from earth and has been sent hurtling through space. Another frigid gust hits his back, bringing a sensation he wasn’t expecting on his trip to Rome, and prods him into the car. The old lady barely acknowledges him as he settles in, and with the door still in transition she steps on the gas and takes off. His head bounces off the headrest. "Damn," he mutters. The tachometer needle threatens to hit red before she changes gears, and she throws the stick into fourth as if she has spent a season on the Grand Prix circuit, her surprisingly powerful legs working the pedals like pistons.

She reaches 120 kph in no time at all, and he asks her what the rush is all about, but she keeps silent. He gets the feeling that he has been keeping her waiting, and opts not to tell her that her speed is frightening him. He finds himself focusing on the hills that form and recede out his window—they pop up over the crests, then retreat. No tree, shrub, or blade of grass has made itself present yet. Or anything living, for that matter. Off to the left, past his chauffer, lies the ocean, a dark blue of the night sky in the city. Asphalt and lava blend together in the distance, and with the highway sunken in the fields of rocks, he wonders for a minute if someone just came through with a steamroller and flattened out the lava. He becomes convinced that the natural substances that make up Iceland only consist of the colors rust, brown, and black. Straight out the windshield is a squintlingly bright blue sky, to his right are foreboding charcoal clouds, and to the left the sky teems with puffy cotton shapes of irate Vikings and bleating sheep. There is so much horizon here that he can actually see the earth bend at the edges. He absentmindedly grabs the radio dial and clicks it on, but instantly feels a sharp pain in his hand. He looks down to see his driver’s fingers turn the radio back to the off setting and then she gently places her hand--exquisite he realizes, aged and knotty, yet not wrinkled or spotted, like smooth stones at the bottom of a stream--back onto the 2:00 position of the wheel. It wasn’t even on long enough to receive a signal.

The longer they drive through the soulless lava the more his mind closes in on him. He begins to fear that he won’t make it to Rome at all, a trip on which he has placed so much importance for his future well-being that he can barely remember why he wanted to go in the first place: so that he could ask out his café waitress Francesca, a goal he has thought about so many times that if he doesn't go through with it his trip will have been a disaster. It will be back to the alternate self-pitying and self-loathing. Why can’t I take life by the horns, he’ll ask himself, sweating in the sun-drenched courtyard café and watching Francesca's hips sway, with her mountain of black ringlets gilding her face like a frame. She’ll approach the table where the recently divorced, nothing-to-lose, Italian-tutored gentleman sits. She’ll set down the second cappuccino, maybe even hoping that this bright-eyed American traveler who has been shooting her glances all afternoon will ask her what time she gets off work. And even though he’ll have spent an inordinate amount of time looking into his bathroom mirror and repeating the phrase "A che ora smetti di lavorare?" he’ll open his mouth to speak, then spot a woman at a nearby table looking at him and stifling a laugh, then looking back at her companion as if she could see the whole thing coming, had already seen this man ask out the waitress and have her turn him down, had already seen him stammer dejectedly and flounder to cover up his gaffe. But instead of all this happening he will have decided not to tempt fate and will merely look into the froth and mumble for the check.

Suddenly his neck strains as his driver takes an unannounced left turn. Why now suddenly the regret that he couldn't be bothered to join his wife in marriage counseling when they both knew the marriage was on the rocks? If she were here now he might even tell her he was sorry.

They are still surrounded by nothingness and there isn't a single person within miles of him except an old lady who doesn't speak English. He finds himself overcome, a year of anguish bubbling to the surface, and he begins speaking. "Maybe it's not what I do but what I don't do that's the problem. What on earth am I afraid of?"

Without a word or glance from her they take another quick turn. There, he sees farmhouses and silos. Then houses constructed of corrugated metal, surrounded by fields of short, wispy grass blown supine. In the distance he can see what looks like a town, the sun glowing off the white buildings, their rooftops primary colored as if by children with crayons, deep reds and blues and yellows. A farmer on a tractor. Fat-cheeked kids on bikes. He lets out a deep breath.

Before long they pull into the driveway of a two-story stone structure with Guest House Leifer Eriksson carved on a large piece of driftwood and hung on a spike in the wall. "Thank you," he says to the old woman as the car stops, and she smiles at him and nods. She grabs his hand and squeezes gently, startling him a bit, but he squeezes back. He clasps her hand with both of his now, and suddenly it's like two doomed lovers being torn apart.

The scene inside the Leifer Eriksson is celebratory. A spread of assorted cereals and a full set of dairy containers all different shapes and sizes are laid out buffet style, and a dozen people are sitting around a large table drinking coffee and eating shining hardboiled eggs. A ruddy-faced man slaps Hank on the back, hard. "Welcome to Iceland, land of the midnight sun!" he says to him happily, before taking his bags from him and carting them down the hall. His back muscles stretch his shirt. A mid-30's couple in fleece smile at him and raise their cups of coffee in welcome. They look American, and he can only guess that he does too. He returns a wan grin.

He wants to ask what everyone is doing up at this hour, but it's so bright outside that it doesn't seem all that weird. They all seem thrilled that they are about to be kayaking down rapids or climbing up vertical sheets of ice by 6 a.m. He sits on a couch, the leather cushion slowly wheezing under his weight. A coffee table in front of him is covered with brochures of all sorts: SUV trips into the wilderness, afternoons at hot springs, excursions to Viking restaurants. But one in particular catches his attention, a hiking trip across a glacier. He marvels at the idea and its wonderful hideousness. The photo on the front shows the guide, standing on an enormous piece of ice in hiking boots and shorts, with his wispy gray hair aloft. He has wisdom in his eyes.

"Ah sir," the ruddy-faced man calls to him, "will you be here just one night?"

Hank scratches his head, looks up, and smiles. "Longer, I think."

George Chase lives in New York City.

Photos are from stock.xchng, the second image by Brandon Keim (see http://www.earthlab.net/).

PHOTOGRAPHS OF CHIAPAS AND OAXACA, MEXICO: Keith B. Fred

Keith B. Fred lives in Arlington, Virginia. His e-mail is flamingophoto@usa.net.

ASSETS: Retirement Planning for Women

"A longer life expectancy, less time in the workforce, and lower wages make it more difficult for women to save enough money to last."

By Doug Charney

Retirement planning is an important issue for everyone. Unfortunately, most people arent’s as prepared as they should be. According to Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) in Washington, D.C., 45 percent of all American workers over the age of 55 have less than $25,000 in savings. Women, especially, don’t save enough for retirement. But, in reality, they are the ones who should be most concerned.

Women need to be even more concerned about their retirement planning than men for a number of reasons. According to the Bureau of Statistics, women live an average of four years longer than men. Seventy-one percent of women will live past the age of 85. Second, most women over the age of 65 are single, so they have to support themselves.

Because of their longer life expectancy, women should save more for retirement than men. But saving and retirement planning seem to be more difficult for women. They still bring home 76 percent less than men, according to EBRI. In fact, from 1983 to 1998 women, ages 26 to 59, made 38 percent of what men made, according to the Institute for Women’s Research.

Women also generally spend more time out of the work force, taking care of children and elderly parents. The shorter length of time spent in the work force, compounded with the fact that women are more likely to hold jobs that pay lower wages, means fewer retirement benefits. Social Security benefits are based on earnings and total years of employment, and a lower lifetime of earnings translates into lower Social Security benefits. According to the Social Security Administration, the average man received $1,008 a month while the average woman received $774 in 2003.

Pensions, like Social Security, are based on total years of service and earnings while you work at the company. Again, women are probably going to receive a lower pension benefit. According to the Women’s Institute for Secure Retirement, women are half as likely as men to have pensions, and if they do, their accounts are half the size of men’s.

If any of these situations sound familiar, you are probably asking yourself, “Will I have enough money?” “What happens when my savings runs out?” and “Am I prepared for the unexpected?” These questions are common for many women. In fact, the EBRI Retirement Conference Survey found that women are less assured than men that their savings will last through retirement.

The good news is you can take charge of your finances and build confidence in your retirement plans by using the following tips:

1. Don’t be Afraid to Invest

When women invest, they are often afraid they will lose what they have. In general, women tend to be more cautious in many areas of life. For example, women often make excellent pilots because they are less likely to take irresponsible risks. But when it comes to investing, women need to take on some level of risk to get the most out of their efforts

The real risk of retirement is not loss of money, but rather not planning to have enough. Therefore, women need to develop an Asset Allocation Plan that will meet their future needs. An Asset Allocation Plan is designed to suit an individual’s goals and personality. If you are a conservative investor, your financial advisor will develop a plan appropriate for you. Find a trusted financial advisor and a CPA and work with them to develop a plan.

2. Force Yourself to Save More

Most people like to live for today. They don’t like to think about the future and retirement. So people put off saving until they are in their forties and realize they want to retire early, but you can’t retire unless you have money saved. Use your 401(k) or 403 (b) at work to force yourself to save for retirement. Start small and increase the percent you add every year. Your goal should be generally 10 percent of your income every year.

And do not forget your IRA. Even if you work from home, you can still add to IRA's. IRA's grow tax deferred, while Roth IRA's grow tax free. Talk to your financial advisor or CPA to see which works best for you.

3. Plan With Your Spouse

Too often women let their husbands handle all the investments. They either take the backburner on investment issues, or they don’t feel confident handling them. As a result, many women have no clue where their money is. You need to ask your husband what you are saving and where it is being invested.

When your husband retires, make sure you fully understand what he is doing with his pension and 401(k). Often men roll over their accounts with a short-term horizon. During this planning phase you should always be involved in meetings with your financial advisor. When your husband is getting ready to retire, you need to consider your survivor benefit, life insurance, and your life expectancy. Does your husband have the option to choose from a survivor benefit and a single life expectancy on an annuity? If he takes the single life expectancy option and dies a few years later, his pension benefits will cease. You’ll be used to living off his pension with him, and be left with no income from his pension at all.

Many husbands take the single life expectancy option because they get a higher income from their pension, but taking a survivor benefit option gives the wife the full amount or portion of his benefit until her death. While many couples take the single life expectancy pension and supplement it with a life insurance policy, this may not be the most beneficial route. A survivor benefit is usually the better way to go.

Also, if your husband is taking a 401(k) or pension rollover, you need to know where the money is going. Women who are going through a divorce need to work with lawyers who have experience in evaluating pensions and tax consequences.

4. Plan for the Unexpected

Many people dip into their retirement savings when something unexpected happens. This can result in a 10-percent penalty for early withdrawal if you’re under 59 and a half years old, plus state and federal income taxes. So don’t forget to put three to six months’ income aside in case of the unexpected, such as a job loss, divorce, or death of a spouse.

While retirement requires major planning for everyone, women need to be most concerned about their finances. A longer life expectancy, less time in the workforce, and lower wages make it more difficult for women to save enough money to last for a retirement lifetime. However, by following prudent measures to take charge of your finances, you can help secure your future and live your retirement years with confidence.

Doug Charney, a financial advisor with the Harrisburg office of Wachovia Securities, can be reached at 1-888-529-2973.

Photo from stock.xchng.

PARENTING: Crib Climbing

"Those big stuffed animals, pillows, and heavy comforters were dangerous as suffocation hazards when your baby was small. Now that she’s bigger, they’re tickets to freedom."

By Armin Brott
http://www.mrdad.com/


Dear Mr. Dad: My year-old child has begun to climb out of the crib at night. How do I keep her safe?

Answer: Start by thinking about her environment in larger and larger circles, from the crib to the door. First, the crib. There get rid of all those bumpers (those oh-so-cute fabric pads that used to protect your baby from banging her head against the inside of the crib). Bumpers make great stepping stones for climbers. Also, take all those big stuffed animals, pillows, and heavy comforters out of the crib. These items were dangerous as suffocation hazards when your baby was small. Now that she’s bigger, they’re tickets to freedom.

Start by explaining to your child that this is her very own, safe, special bed, and that she can sleep there all night, just like Mommy and Daddy do in their bed. Then, if you haven’t done it already, adjust the crib’s mattress so it’s at the setting closest to the floor. If the lower mattress and lack of climbing materials still don't prevent escape, you have a few options.

You might consider buying one of the commercially available safety nets that fit over the top of the crib like a large dome. These nets always seem a little like you’re imprisoning your child, but they’re a temporary solution (they’re also excellent for keeping roaming pets out of the crib).

If safety nets aren’t your style, consider installing a gate across her doorway or using a doorknob safety cover that your child won’t be able to open. If you go this route, though, be absolutely sure that your child’s room is completely childproofed.

As your child approaches two, she’ll begin associating climbing and jumping with the possibility of falling, and may become more cautious on her own. You can help the process along by reminding her, "Remember how you fell down and bumped your head and cried?"

Whatever you do, don’t just give up and put pillows around the crib, as some people do. Because pillows can shift around and expose the bare floor, this is not a good long-term solution.

The next step is a "big girl bed," which can be a mattress on the floor or a twin bed. The twin bed should be pushed against the wall, with a bed rail on the outside. This all applies until it is time for potty learning, when the world gets even bigger!

Armin Brott has written or co-written six critically acclaimed books on fatherhood. See www.mrdad.com and listen to his podcast at http://mrdad.com/daddycast/.

Photo from stock.xchng.

BODY SENSE: 5 Steps Toward Reducing Your Heart-Scan Score

Reconstructed 3-D images of a normal
heart and coronary arteries from a
64-slice CT scan. (From a University
of Pennsylvania Health System
news release.)

"What about the majority of people who don’t have a sky-high heart-scan score? Too often, they’re prescribed a cholesterol drug and patted on the back with advice to cut the fat in their diet. According to several recent studies, that’s a recipe for failure."

By Dr. William Davis

CT heart scans are booming in popularity. Not a week passes without several new scan centers appearing on the landscape. With over 300 scanners nationwide, over one million Americans have now been scanned since the technology was introduced around 10 years ago and are proud owners of their very own heart scan “score.”

In some cases, lives have been saved. People with high scores (e.g., over 1,000) sometimes end up with lifesaving procedures like bypass surgery or stents.

But what about the majority of people who don’t have a sky-high score? Too often, they’re prescribed a cholesterol drug and patted on the back with advice to cut the fat in their diet. According to several recent studies, that’s a recipe for failure. If you do nothing, you can expect your score to increase 30 percent per year. Take your cholesterol drug and cut your fat, and you can still expect your score to grow 30 percent per year!

Surely there’s a lot more you could do to gain control over your score. After all, an increasing score means that coronary atherosclerotic plaque is growing, inching closer to heart attack.

Here’s our list of five steps you can take to tip the odds in your favor that you will not just stop your score from increasing, but perhaps even reduce it.

1. Take fish oil
Fish oil is among the few breakthrough discoveries of the past 20 years that has altered the course of cardiovascular illness, slashing risk of death, heart attack, and stroke. The misguided advice of the '80s, and '90s that polyunsaturated oils were good for us has left us appallingly overloaded with omega-6 fatty acids, and omega-3 supplementation from fish oil has assumed increasing importance.

The 11,000-participant GISSI-Prevenzione trial brought any remaining naysayers to their knees. Participants taking fish oil experienced 30-percent reduction in cardiovascular death and an astounding 45-percent reduction in sudden death.

Fish oil provides anti-inflammatory benefits, stabilizes plaque, and corrects many genetic and acquired causes for heart attack. In particular, triglycerides and “small LDL” have ballooned in importance as causes for heart disease as more Americans (50 million!) develop the metabolic syndrome, or pre-diabetes. Fish oil helps correct the triglyceride and small LDL abnormalities triggered by the metabolic syndrome.

2. Take vitamin D
Imagine that over half the adults in the U.S. were toothless and had open skin sores covering their bodies from vitamin C deficiency (scurvy). Well, that’s the situation, though less graphic, with vitamin D. Deficiency is rampant in the U.S., particularly in northern climates where sun exposure is in short supply for long periods. It’s not uncommon even in southern climates, given indoor workplaces and lifestyles. Vitamin D deficiency has been implicated in osteoporosis, prostate and colon cancer, hypertension, multiple sclerosis, and heart disease.

The higher your heart scan score, the more likely you are deficient in vitamin D. Consider taking a minimum of vitamin D 1,000 units per day. Even better, have your doctor check a blood level (25-OH-vitamin D3) and the dose can be adjusted accordingly. (In our heart-disease reversal program, most women require 2,000 units per day, most men 3,000 units per day to achieve the desirable blood level of 50 ng/ml in a northern climate.)

3) Get your HDL cholesterol to 60 mg/dl
Raise this simple value to 60 mg/dl or greater, and you will have accomplished a huge improvement in a whole constellation of health effects.

This is because HDL is a gauge of many things: body weight, your body’s ability to respond to insulin, potential for hypertension, and the presence of hidden causes of heart disease, especially the dreaded small LDL. The higher your HDL, the less likely these undesirable phenomena are. HDL is the blood particle that is responsible for regression, or shrinkage, of plaque. The more, the better.

Boost HDL by losing excess weight, reducing processed carbohydrates like breads and breakfast cereals, exercise, 4-to-8 ounces of red wine per day, and fish oil. Raise it even further by considering niacin (vitamin B3), 500–1000 mg. (Discuss niacin use with your doctor.)


4) Have a colorful lifestyle
Deeply colored foods are rich in flavonoids, naturally-occurring substances that pack broad, powerful health effects that include blood pressure-reducing and anti-inflammatory benefits.

Add more deeply colored foods to your day, especially blueberries, plums, black grapes, spinach, green peppers, and red wine. Drink green tea whenever possible. Use cocoa powder (unsweetened) in your protein shakes or add a daily two-inch square of dark chocolate. Add capers, fresh basil and other herbs to your salads and dinner dishes.

5) Substitute raw nuts for unhealthy snacks
Dump the chips, pretzels, and crackers and replace them with raw almonds, walnuts, and pecans. (Not "party mix," “honey-roasted,” mixed nuts, etc., however.) Raw is the key, bought bulk in most supermarkets or health food stores. This simple substitution will reduce LDL cholesterol 20 points, reduce blood sugar, reduce small LDL, raise HDL, and boost your energy level. Don’t sweat the fats--the monounsaturated fat in raw nuts is the source of much of the benefit. One-quarter to one-half cup per day provides maximum benefit.

Will these five steps guarantee that your heart scan score won’t skyrocket? No, unfortunately not. But they are important pieces of an overall program to gain control over your coronary plaque.

Dr. William Davis practices cardiology in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is founder of the Track your Plaque program, a heart disease prevention program that shows how to use CT heart scans to control coronary plaque. He can be contacted through www.TrackYourPlaque.com. Dr. Davis’ blog, Dr. Prevention: Defeat Heart Disease, can be found at http://drprevention.blogspot.com/.

Copyright 2006, Track Your Plaque

PHOTOGRAPHS OF BALI: Frances Borchardt

Frances Borchardt lives in Churchton, Maryland.

POETRY: Lisa Russ Spaar

Camera Obscura
- Royal Observatory, Greenwich


What was I when I entered
if not a trampled, galloping heart,

panic’s velvet hemorrhage,
walls expanding as a pin-hole aperture,

rotunda of lens and mirror, spoke inside me,
voice fluxing in a stairwell – altered –

& honeyed lindens in river-shimmer,
two charry, burnished domes wrought by Wren,

stairs of glassy scrapers, cranes, the slurring plane trees,
hedge froth, & plosions of nests that are born old

panned in dazzling deployments around me,
my love a dockland scape of wind,

houseless and sun-blinded as clouds and gulls?
How to return to any contracted hour

except by this impossible clock,
enchanted chassis of the world within?

London

Regents Park


Evening stalls in the willows
across the Canal, road
of mossy, sunken gates,

fretted carp needling
bluntly the blue shallows,
silver compass-wakes of swans,

this one black with crimson beak,
the air full of noises, mora mora,
or does my heart delay?

Resigned or restless, I know
that leaving is a long way
sutured by streets I must cross

into the bowered allée.
Then the Outer Circle
whose iron palisade

I follow as last light clasps
the gold dome of the mosque.
More birds. And, from a deep recess,

unintelligible voices,
mezzo forte, muffled laughter
from the open air theater;

then a racket that could be
an animal sprung,
spirituel, or the cry of someone

with “charms o’erthrown.”
Now the harp of the high gate,
traffic, its tempestuous applause.





Venice / Venus


Her blue dress is a lagoon so secret
we say golden dogi of submerged, mussel-flocked
palace pilings for gondola of western mountains.
We say fecal sterol and hydro carbon trace
for tide-flushed avenues, inflexion of cistern.
Roof terrace gilt & lit with champagne flutes
translates conical fortress of candled magnolia
scuttling with roosting cardinals,
fondaci rife with odor of Levantine cinnamon.
Her voyage is a hundred islands
stitched by bridges, exemplary infinite streets
whereon in private bridal train only the moon provides,
in chainmail wake, a clue to her consensual deeps.





Acattolica Cemetery, Rome

“Should he die the law will demand him to be opened”
– Severn, of Keats


Split his nightingale, vassal body
in Y-shaped flaps from shoulders to pubic bone,
to see for oneself the lesioned twin rags

phthisic thorax, lungs & half-strung cavity
months past prognosis. But where was he at all
in that “posthumous life” of last days?

Feverish at dawn, two cups of fawn mucous
streaked with clots, Bernini’s frozen
Fontana della Barcaccia in the piazza

rushing his ears with phantom,
bacchanal fleams of bloodletting,
Severn slouched in stolen sleep over a book,

& she appearing again, whose blue ink
in stricken hand called even the chamelion poet
back to pain, back to life –

I come – I see, as thou standest there – .
Why not, then, see this last sentence
as “from myself” – all secrets revealed

but F.’s unopened letters, sealed inside,
then under cover of first light, by Roman law,
as two bells open the day’s mouth,

shoulder him over stairs, through streets,
to this final cot of shadows,
daisies, violets in alien turf,

even as police begin their work,
scraping floors, walls, sills,
and, with consuming flames, burning his bed & door?





Insomnia Binge


No escapes in this Ought, this nadir
pre-dawn zip, nada, glacial theater,
clock face whose elbow-length black glove
minute hands refuse the quick remove
of spangled velvet, the body whole again, re-cast,
what a relief, and the house lights up at last.
Instead the stage crowds with invisible
instants milling dully, stalling the irresistible
move to tomorrow despite eyes restless with witness.
It’s an easy trick, the disappearing woman.
But she’s been at it all night. Despondent? Low?
Bored? Shouldn’t we know,
since it’s our escapade, too, head here,
legs there, toothed blade poised endlessly in air?




Copyright 2006 Lisa Russ Spaar



Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of Blue Venus: Poems (Persea Books, 2004) and Glass Town: Poems (Red Hen Press, 1999), for which she received a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers in 2000. Twelve of her new poems appear in Exquisite History: The Land of Wandering: Poems & Prints (The Printmakers Left, University of Virginia Press, 2005). She is also the author of two chapbooks of poems, Blind Boy on Skates (Trilobite/University of North Texas Press, 1988) and Cellar (Alderman Press/University of Virginia, 1983), and is the editor of Acquainted With the Night: Insomnia Poems (Columbia UP, 1999). She is editing an anthology of London poems, forthcoming from the University of Virginia Press in 2007. Her work has appeared in many literary quarterlies and journals, including Poetry, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, Denver Quarterly, Image, Shenandoah, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. The recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Spaar is the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia, where she is an associate professor of English.

ESSAY: A Runner's Tracks

"I can remember the wind whistling down the hill from St. Monica’s church, hitting me square in the face on the back stretch as I ran Coach Lananna’s 300's."

By Dena Evans

Even the most casual American track fan, flipping through the channels on a weekend afternoon, coming upon the familiar faces from the last Olympiad, and stopping for a few minutes to watch, probably has heard Larry Rawson challenge us to try what we're looking at. I wonder if anyone, in an effort to experience and understand the feats of the world’s greatest athletes, has actually taken him up on his admonition. Has anyone really gotten up, laced up the trainers, and headed down to the local high-school track to attempt to run a four-minute mile, 25 consecutive quarters in 65 seconds apiece, or throw a broom handle the length of a football field?

One early morning, I found myself out running a few months post-partum after my second child. I was overwhelmed, stressed out, in the midst of figuring out whether or not to leave my job as Stanford's women's cross-country coach. Our lifestyle left me with little time for reflection, and I leapt at every chance to run without the stroller. Often, that took me to the track to run laps. I kind of looked at myself from the outside in, laughing at the mess I was and making up commentary as if I were a competitor on a televised meet.

"Folks, now you will want to keep your eye on the woman running reverse direction in lane eight with her iPod. Notice the shuffling stride, the mismatched clothes, the way her leftover baby tummy jiggles as she goes. She is covering each of these laps in an amazing 2-minutes-15 per. Unbelievable. Just try going down to your local track and running even one lap at that amazing pace ..."

I thought of all the time I had spent through the last 30 years at these venues. When I type the keywords “local track” into the search engine of my memory, I come up with a fairly accurate record of myself.

One of my earliest memories takes me to a long-jump pit alongside a dusty dirt track at South Mercer Junior High on Mercer Island, a Seattle suburb. While my dad played Saturday morning pickup soccer with a group of then-young fathers, now grandfathers, I goofed around with some of the other kids or myself. My family has always had a pretty athletic bent, and I can picture my parents going to the other 400-meter facility in my hometown, at the high school, and my mom running steps while my dad ran laps.

The original Mercer Island High School cinder track was replaced in the 70’s with one of the county’s first all-weather tracks in a bowl directly next to it. So, a public school with an abundance of educational opportunities had the additional bonus of having two 400-meter tracks at its students' disposal. My high-school years included playing dozens of highly memorable (at least to me) soccer games on the fairly narrow pitch on the infield. I can still remember having to adjust the strength of corner kicks not to overshoot the goalmouth, my cleats against the hard track, lining up in lane six in order to run up and throw the ball into the center of the field, warming up with the team in our ramrod straight two lines, jogging back to midfield together after someone scored. I can smell the grass.

Outside the sticky chalk lines on this dewy field, I can remember the countless laps I ran around the track in competition--fast laps and slow laps, lazy laps, attentive laps, laps in the lead, laps following behind, my sole appearance in the 4 x 200 meters during the driving rain (no rainouts in Seattle!), my open 800 personal best freshman year when I went from a 2:25 interloper to a 2:16 serious high-school competitor in one race. Further back still, there was my first track-and-field race ever, in the annual elementary school meet where I was dusted year in and year out by a future high-school teammate who did club track and actually trained. Those were all important moments. However, I wonder if that place shaped me more in all the time I spent there outside of actual competition?

Navigating the perils of middle-school socializing, milling in crowds, trying so hard to be cool on that upper track while essentially ignoring the high-school football game being played below. The (now highly embarrassing) slow laps spent walking as a freshman, hand and hand with my super-cool older boyfriend around that upper track after I had finished my events at home meets. The lap in the back of the convertible at homecoming halftime senior year, when the awkwardness of the milling middle-school crowds had strangely and unexpectedly turned to acceptance. The endless sets of sprints--10's, 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, and 120's--I ran on the upper-field grass trying to carve myself into soccer shape each summer while in college, interchanged with a session of two miles hard in preparation for the preseason Cooper fitness test.

To this day, during a hard and sustained effort of any kind, I will picture the panorama visible as one would skirt the contours of the upper track, and that will settle me down. I can remember the wind whistling down the hill from St. Monica’s church, hitting me square in the face on the back stretch as I ran Coach Lananna’s 300's, again trying to mold myself into shape for track while home for winter break.


II.

Each family has its own set of traditions, and ours always has us at the track. Driving almost yearly to my cousins’ ranch outside of Klamath Falls, Oregon, my family would stay in Eugene, where the first item on the agenda would be to head over to Hayward Field. During the years when I did not have much to train for, these trips would be just a couple of laps to say we did, a kick-around of the soccer ball, and off to dinner. Later, as athletics further formalized for my sister and me, this turned into a run through the cemetery behind Mac Court or over to Pre’s trails while my dad ran the steps of the homestretch grandstand and my sister played on the infield, or that week’s sprint workout for soccer on the bark-circled field behind the stadium.

Somehow my husband has fallen into this pattern as well. The historic Stanford Stadium track, complete with velodrome effect on the first curve, six narrow lanes, huge bubble in lane one as you come off the last curve, was the home stage for three years of track for me and five years of football for him. After a road trip to watch his girlfriend run in the Pac-10 meet, he posited that running the 1,500 just looked “so easy--like you were jogging! That cannot be that hard.” A few weeks later, that turned into an attempt to run 8 x 400 meters at 68 seconds on two minutes' rest with the aforementioned girlfriend at the newly renovated Cobb Track & Angell Field, just west of the Stadium. In contrast to the breathtaking and record-breaking performances yet to come at this facility when the lights were on and the stands were filled, a slightly less glamorous event unfolded and a new respect for distance running was born as the clock read (for one of us) 68, 73, skip one, 82, OK that’s it.

A summer or two later, we found ourselves at his old track, at Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Maryland, where he was training for the free-agent football life he was to lead for the next year or so. One of his best friends, David Goldman, had come along for the ride to hang out since they had been so rarely at home at the same time. An erstwhile high-school hurdler who had spent more aggregate time since high school in the stands watching Bobby Knight’s Hoosiers at IU than exercising, Goldman suddenly challenged me, upon arrival back from a short run, to a 400, as I was supposedly “good at track.”

In what will go down as one of the most ridiculous iterations of athletics I have ever witnessed or been party to, I agreed, with Marlon as the starter. With the malaise of having completed a season, with a few weeks before the next begins in earnest, I started out with a gait more appropriate to doing multiple 1,000-meter repeats with short rests. Goldman, however, took off like he was running a 150 and I remembered the power of manly pride. Now under obligation to respond, I picked it up, buoyed by the appearance of the top of his head as it tipped back around the 200-meter mark, the jig already up. Still, he had about a 30-meter lead that not even pride could maintain as I shuffled along, making up most of it in the last 80 meters and crossing the line with him in what will go down in history officially, and for the sake of both our egos, as a dead heat. Goldman, who is now a financial-sector attorney in New York City, still brings this up every time I see him. Rarely in our carefully manicured lives do we strip away the inhibitions and just race like little kids. Nothing keeps it real like the most basic of athletic contests in the most basic of scenery, a deserted high-school track.


III.

I was recounting that episode at the Brooklyn Diner in midtown Manhattan, where my husband and our two kids were staying with the Stanford track team on its trip to the New York Armory Invitational in February of 2005. My older daughter, Adrienne, who had a plus size portion of 3-year-old energy, had also come to see the local track as life’s backdrop. She had spent a huge amount of time at practice, at meets, in airports, in airplanes. As a result, she could not pass the airport on the highway without expecting to be actually going on an airplane. She would assume that all people in our immediate vicinity in public places like airports or hotels are “with us” since she was used to traveling with the team. She retained a spectacular memory of which rental van we had each weekend.

My love of laps and my husband’s preference for sprints over distance running as the way to spend 30 minutes of working out has led us back many times to Cobb Track & Angell Field, and now, in our new neighborhood, to Sequoia High in Redwood City. Adrienne will play in the long-jump pit at Sequoia as any kid would, but she'll also yell “splits” to people running by (glancing at her wrist where a watch would be and yelling "46!!!” or a similarly random number), and she likes to just run as far as she can as fast as she can, sometimes starting with a toe on the line as one would a race, again activating the imaginary wristwatch.

In this first trip to New York’s historic Armory, from which her grandmother, my mother, still claims to have splinters from running (and falling) on the old wooden track surface in the 1960's, Adrienne, thus far cooped up on the upper level during the first day of the meet, was set free on the track as the last participants cooled down. After proceeding to run four straight laps (800 meters), she then headed to the end of the long-jump runway and, extending her hands over her head, demanded that we clap for her, emulating our outstanding triple jumper Erica McLain earlier that day. This practice has transformed our hallway at home into a makeshift runway where almost nightly we are instructed to clap as Adrienne sprints from the front door, and where couch cushions are set up to pad her landing. Although Erica is the favorite field event role model, we have also seen former Stanford NCAA champion and Olympic silver medalist Toby Stevenson’s pole vaulting (wrapping-paper cardboard core as pole) and fellow Stanford alum Jill Camarena’s shot-putting with a nerf ball after a week plus of Olympic Trials the summer prior.

The laps that Adrienne ran in New York, the ones that got us kicked out of the warm-up area at Sacramento (due to potential endangerment to herself and the Olympic hopefuls moving at full speed), and the many she runs around the playground at preschool, are physical exertions. I believe they are also expressions, in a way, of what she has absorbed from family culture--that such exertions can be considered fun. Her footfalls become mine. Mine become hers. Little-kid laps watching parents, followed by workout laps, competition laps, cool-down laps, high-school boyfriend laps, college-boyfriend laps, pregnant laps, stroller laps, laps chasing kids, happy laps, sad laps, laps at sunrise and earlier, laps at sunset and later. In my family, all these footprints on all these tracks, although not always visible, mark the stages of our lives.


IV.

During the years I coached at Stanford, I loved to see the facility filled on a hot competition day, high school athletes teaming in the backstretch stands with their tents sprawled across the grass, or an electric, record-setting night such as the Cardinal Invitational, fans packed on the homestretch and coaches lining the curve by the hammer cage, sipping their Starbucks. I loved even more the day before a meet, when the track virtually hummed with the unlimited potential of the participants shaking out, striding, stretching, and preparing for battle. But I loved most of all the cold, crisp stillness of the track after the meet had concluded, the people at home, hotel, or on their way while we broke down the equipment.

In those moments, I was sometimes elated, sometimes extremely upset, and almost always numbingly tired from the production and the emotional buildup. The razor-sharp edge of anticipation now blunted with the reality of what had just passed, as yet unexaminable, with work still to do. Carting boxes back to the their storage under the bleachers. Hunting through garbage cans with Marko Koers, a Dutch 800-meter specialist who had only hours before hit the Olympic A standard in his event and now was bereft of backpack with wallet and ID, car and hotel keys. Perhaps watching the Stanford guys in the last race padding around the infield in bare feet or picking up hip numbers stuck to the track after being discarded in the heat of the race or maybe in disgust afterward (rarely do you find a hip number discarded in joy).

Hayward Field at sundown. Hornet Stadium when the lights go out and I am waiting for an athlete at doping control, their performance ringing in my ears so loudly it feels as if someone is shouting. Franklin Field in freezing silence, left only with the empty cups and hot-dog wrappers discarded by the rowdies at the water-pit corner. Even in the exhale of an amazing athletic moment, these tracks revert comfortingly to their ordinary selves.

The local track hosts soccer and football games, tailgates and field days, wind sprints by the basketball team, PE classes. It absorbs the sweat of those resting between sets of steps run in surrounding stadiums, hears the gossip of the women power-walking in its outer lanes. It keeps our secrets. It treats us as equals. It never turns us away if we failed in our last efforts, whether those were to reach a personal best or simply to lose a couple pounds.

My laps around the Sequoia High track were slowed by my agonizing decision to leave my coaching job, and by the insufficient sleep of a new mother. Then they picked up a little as I decided to run a marathon. I haven’t tried to do too much training, lest I set up a schedule I can't keep. Beside the obligatory weekend long run, I try to just have one day where I go out to the track and do something pretty hard, just to see if I can. I call this training plan the Larry Rawson.

When I am on a plane descending into Seattle, I like to sit on the left side. On a U-turn over the northern part of the city, the flight plan will often take us under the cloud cover and offer a perfect view. If it's nighttime, the lights of my high school’s track are the most visible detail in the mostly residential area. At that moment, I don't think of sweat, tears, or triumphs. I just see home.

Dena Evans is the former women's cross-country coach at Stanford University, and, as an undergraduate, was on Stanford's track and soccer teams.

Modified photos. Original images from stock.xchng.