Sudbury Sprint Triathlon

Halfway through the final leg of my first triathlon yesterday, a guy four years older than me passed me like I was standing still. Not only was he older than me, but he had started about three minutes after I did and here he was passing me. I didn’t know the guy—had never seen him before in my life—but because of the system the triathlon’s organizers used to monitor participants, I knew that he was 47 and that he had started 348th. I quickly got over the fact that he passed me so easily.


Ready access to the ages of the 500 racers made for some interesting opportunities both before and during the race. In the hour before the race began many of us were hanging around in the pool area, just chatting with friends, stretching, and warming up. I started playing several mental games as I stood there. The first one was to take a good, long look at someone—head to toe—and then try to guess his or her age. With most people I was pretty close, but there was one impressive 62 year-old that looked much closer to 40.

The other, related, game was to find other 43 year-olds in the crowd and then compare myself to them to see if I looked worse, as good as, or better than them on several dimensions. Once I found a 43 year-old, I wouldn’t stop the comparison until I found some body part where I outclassed them. With some of my cohort, this didn’t take long. However, many of those triathletes were pretty buff and for some I had to get all the way down to, “well, my left earlobe is FAR shapelier than his,” before I could move on with a shred of self-esteem intact.
Before the race even started, my ego was tired.

During the race, Erica and I stayed together, along with a third friend of ours, Kerry. In fact, we helped each other through the hard parts of the race. For me and Erica, the hard part was the swim. For Kerry, the start of the run was troublesome. I noticed that each time someone passed us, both Erica and I performed the very same head-and-eye movements. First, we would look at the two-digit age identifier on the calf and then we would scroll up their bodies to find out when they had started. The worst cases were like the one above—a person older than us who had started after us was somehow PASSING us.

But the whole system gave me pause to think. I spent the last mile contemplating what specific number would make the ideal identifier, when combined with age. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone walked around the world with their age written in dark, permanent ink on the back of their right calf? And instead of starting position written on both thighs and both biceps, we could all have some other important number there to allow others to quickly size us up. Could be income. Or weight. Or maybe years of education. The numerical possibilities are numberless.

I.Q.? College G.P.A. ? Credit rating? Bank balance? Home equity? What would it be? When I mentioned to my daughter Isabel that I was writing this piece, I asked for advice on what would be a funny/cute way to end it. What number could I propose we all wear on our skin to tell others about us? She thought for a second and said, “We could all have a number from one to five telling everyone else how good a friend we are.” She got it just right. Nothing else to say.

Katherine's Story, Part 4

Katherine and James were married six months later. It was a small wedding, since neither Katherine nor James knew many people. Her parents were there, of course. And Mrs. Brock, the landlady. And James’s best, (and only), friend in New York—a fellow Peabody employee named Eric Cantrell. Eric was a photographer and he took the only picture taken that day of the newlyweds. There was no such thing as a digital camera in the 1930s. Photography required more stillness, more planning, more patience.
On the surface, Eric had none of the qualities that would seem to be required for a photographer at the time. He was always fidgeting, very impulsive, and entirely impatient…until he had a camera in his hands. His camera worked a kind of magic on him that was utterly remarkable.

Aside to the Reader: I know in my short note to you at the beginning of this tale I said that this book contains no magic, so please do not take me literally here. Eric’s camera did not work any REAL magic on Eric. It was really just the ordinary magic that happens when a person is doing the very thing they were meant to be doing. You may have experienced this “magic” yourself.

Anyway, the only picture taken that day is in black-and-white and it has Katherine in the center with a smile that can only be described as “beaming.” Her eyes are direct and they look right into yours through the years. They seem to carry a secret that not even her smile has been let in on. They seem to somehow know of the hurt and the pain and tears looming not too far off into the future. They know, and yet they shine anyway.

Katherine's Story, Part III

Katherine continued to live with her parents in Brooklyn for more than two years after she graduated and started work at Peabody Publishing. She continued to walk across the bridge every morning and catch the train uptown. Only now, as she rode the train she kept her eyes open for people reading books published by Peabody. She could recognize the books by the ornate capital letter “P” on the spine with ivy curling artfully around it. It gave her a little thrill to know that she worked for the company that made those books possible. She loved the idea that in some miniscule way she helped create those books.
Of course she knew in her heart that she didn’t really have any part in the creation of the stories people read on the train. But that thought was something she managed to avoid looking at too squarely for those first two years at Peabody.
Katherine had a goal. It made her keep her head down, her eyes focused, and her heart closed up tight to the world. She was pleasant enough to people on the train and in the office, but she didn’t make any friends or have any conversations that she found even remotely interesting. Her goal was to save enough money to get her own apartment in Manhattan. Friends would only get in the way of saving money. And, if Katherine were to be fully honest with herself, she might admit that she didn’t want anyone seeing where she lived.
As long as she was aloof at work, no one could get close enough to even want to be friends.


But then of course, all of this changed. It was just like in a story. One day Katherine was sitting at her desk, reading one of Peabody’s newest children’s books, when a man cleared his throat to get her attention. It was her lunch hour and Katherine was of two minds. She didn’t want to be rude, but she also did NOT want to tear her eyes away from the collection of fairy tales she was reading during HER free time. She kept reading and he kept standing there in front of her desk. As she read she noticed the smell of the man’s aftershave lotion. Normally, aftershave lotion made Katherine’s nose twitch. But in this case, it was a very pleasant smell filling her head.
She got to the end of a particularly engaging description of a particularly intelligent and handsome prince when she finally decided that whoever he was standing there at her desk, he wasn’t going to go away without speaking with her.
Katherine looked up and saw before her a man, about 5 feet 11 inches tall, with black hair, oiled and slicked back off his forehead. He had hazel eyes that reminded her of a marble she had gotten in her Christmas stocking one year. It had been her favorite gift and she had carried it in her pocket like a talisman for years. In fact, as he stood there, she remembered that the very same marble was in the top drawer of her desk at that very moment.
He smiled, and the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled in a way that made it clear he smiled a lot.
“Excuse me. I know it’s probably your lunch hour,” he began, “but I just wanted to let you know that I think I got paid too much this month.”
The uniqueness of his problem caught her attention right away—that, and the eyes that seemed to warm her soul just a smidge.
“Paid too MUCH?” Katherine said, somewhat astonished.
“That’s what I said.”
“Explain,” ordered Katherine.
“I am one of the Peabody writers and I think my royalty check is bigger than it ought to be.” Katherine liked the way he cut right to the heart of the matter without a lot of wasted words.
“Name?” she said, automatically adopting his way of communicating.
“MacArthur comma James.”
“Okay,” said Katherine, mentally scanning the alphabetical list of Peabody writers in her head. MacArthur comma James was in the children’s books division and he had four titles to his name. None of them sold particularly well, but all of them sold steadily. Katherine had even read two of his books—both variations on traditional Grimm Brothers stories—and found them to be solid works with not quite the right amount of magic.
She dug the master record book out of her desk and began flipping through to the page reserved for James MacArthur. As she ran her finger down the column showing his royalties she saw that he generally received between three and five dollars a week for his sales. However, the most recent check was for thirteen dollars. She let her eyes slide to the left and saw that there had indeed been a spike in the sales of his latest book, called “The Littlest Llama.”
“It seems, Mr. MacArthur, that you are riding the crest of a llama wave.” Katherine recalled reading in the paper and hearing on the radio that the llama in the zoo at Central Park had given birth to a particularly cute little fuzzball, inciting crowds of parents and children to flock to the zoo. Apparently some of those same families had then been migrating to bookstores to buy “The Littlest Llama.” And some of their dollars had been migrating to the paycheck of Mr. MacArthur.
Katherine explained to Mr. MacArthur, (who insisted she call him James), about his check and its fortuitous connection to the baby llama called Cuzco.
“Well. That explains that. I knew it had to be something. I was hoping maybe people were simply discovering how good my books are…” said James, the second part barely audible.
“Your books are good,” said Katherine, a little bit more vehemently than she had planned on putting it. She then shocked herself by blurting, “Listen, will you have lunch with me tomorrow?”
Now this was at a time when women really didn’t ask men out on dates—especially Katherine. In all her twenty three years of living, she had never even been on one date, let alone been so forward as to ask out a man she didn’t even know. James MacArthur was clearly a little surprised, too. But pleasantly so. The crinkles were back at the corners of his eyes and before he really knew what he was doing, he said, “Of course. And I will supply the vittles.”
“Good. Meet me here at twelve-thirty,” Katherine said, suddenly feeling like she was on the roller coaster at Coney Island right before it crested the highest hill and began its mad gravity-inspired dash down toward the ground. She was both giddy and nauseous, but tried to play it cool.

2nd Installment

Katherine and her parents lived in Brooklyn and every day she would walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and then ride the subway uptown to Columbia. Living in a dormitory at Columbia would have been a lot of fun. There were moments, (or, to be more honest, there were entire weeks), when Katherine could think of nothing but how unfair it was that she had to live with her parents in a three room apartment in Brooklyn while her classmates had the time of their lives in the dorms. Knowing that the handsome boy who sat next to her in her Business Law class and the vivacious girl who sat in front of her in her introductory Accounting class were going to a dance at the Student Union seasoned the already bitter taste in her mouth with an extra dose of bile.
She never would have said it out loud---probably never would have even formed the words in the privacy of her own brain---but there were times when she hated her parents. Or, to be more accurate, there were times when she hated the life she and her parents had to live.
She knew it couldn’t be any other way, since her father was a butcher and her mother took in laundry from the neighbors, but she wanted to know what it was like to move through the world the way some of her classmates did. They seemed to drip CLASS. They never tripped over a curb or laughed too loud or wore coats with frayed hems. Katherine loved her parents, but during her long walks over the bridge on the way back to Brooklyn at the end of a long day of classes and a shift working in the library, she would often tell stories to herself.
And her stories often featured a girl who was taken from her family at birth and placed with a peasant family for safekeeping until her TRUE NATURE could be revealed and she could claim her rightful place in the world. But no matter how lost she got in these stories, they always ended at the stoop in front of her family’s third floor walk-up when the landlady, Mrs. Brock, would hack out a hoarse, “Welcome home, Sweetie,” between deep drags on her filterless Camel cigarette.



If Katherine herself had written this book, she would have had her protagonist meet another student working in the library. He would have turned out to be European royalty, pretending to be a commoner in order to escape political intrigue at home. They would fall in love, be separated through a tragic misunderstanding, and then, improbably, reunite at the end of the book.
But, sadly, Katherine did not write this book. I did. And I am not prone to fantasy. I believe in the facts as they are, not in fantasy as we would like it to be.
So, instead of meeting an undercover prince Katherine didn’t meet anyone. She did, however, work very hard and learn a LOT about Accounting. She loaded her schedule as full as the Dean would allow and finished her degree in two and a half years. She passed the CPA exam on her first try and New York State officially declared Katherine a Certified Public Accountant.
She interviewed for several jobs and eventually found work at a large publishing company. To Katherine, it seemed like a good fit. She could spend her days around stories and writers and words and books, even though her job had much more to do with numbers than with words.

Feet to the Fire

A long while ago I told my daughter a story. It took a few weeks and when it was over, we were both taken slightly aback. What took us both by surprise was how good the story was. It was one we collaborated on--stopping sometimes mid-narrative to plot out the next bit of rising action--and as such it is my daughter's story as much as it is mine. We looked at each other and said, "we should write that one down." When we got home we got out of the car and right away jumped on the computer to write down the plot before it faded away.

I then got some of the story written. But not much. And it has languished on my desktop ever since. But I don't want it to languish. I really do believe that it is a good story worth telling. So, I am asking for your help. I want you to hold my feet to the fire.

I am going to post the story, beginning to end, as I write it. I hope you will comment on what you read and let me know when it has been too long between postings. So, here goes:



Note to the Reader:

If you are looking for a story with wizards or faeries or prophesies and other worlds, this is not the book for you. There are many fine books with those ingredients and I am sure the local librarian or bookstore clerk can direct you to some fine choices from these categories. This book would not be in that particular section of the store or library. This story is set firmly in this world and the people in it are flesh and blood and mortal. (far too mortal) They have no spells, no magic charms, no cloaks of invisibility, no magical powers.
Unless, of course, you consider the power of love to be magical. If so, then don’t put this book down quite yet. There just might be something here for you, after all.

MORE
by Chris and Isabel Dawson

Part One

Katherine

Chapter One


Katherine loved stories almost more than life itself. As a child she used to tell people, “stories are like oxygen to me—if I don’t get them, I will die.” People always thought she was kidding, but she wasn’t. She was born at a time when people were out of work, banks were failing, and stories were far more plentiful then jobs or cash, though most of them were sad.
Her family made it through the hard times, realizing that they didn’t really have to be afraid. They could simply decide to make do and get by and hope for the best while preparing for the worst. All through that time Katherine fed herself at the New York Public Library. The more words she took in about magic and princesses and trolls and spells, the less room there was in her stomach for hunger, at least temporarily.
By the time Katherine was old enough to think about finding a job to help her family, the country had won a war and turned a corner and there were more jobs to be had. But her parents had a different idea. What they learned from the hard times was that everything you own can be lost or taken away much more quickly than seems even possible. They decided for Katherine that she would go to college. When they told her this, she asked why. “Because no one can ever take from you what you know.”
That night in bed, when she had time to think about this new door opening where she had previously seen only wall, it made sense to Katherine. People and Depressions might be able to take from you what you own, but they can never take from you what you know. She decided as she fell asleep that she would study English Literature. She dreamt that night of trolls and libraries and golden keys.


At breakfast her father told her that she would be studying Accounting. Now that people were making money again, they would need someone to help them keep track of it all. And Katherine would be the one. She would be a Certified Public Accountant and once she was, no one would be able to take that away from her.
This was a disappointing blow to Katherine. It had been only a day since she had begun to think of herself as an English major, but she had liked the feel of it, the way it sounded in her ears, the way it had rolled out of her mouth as she whispered her side of an imaginary conversation in bed the night before, “My name? Katherine. Yes! I am a student at Columbia. How did you guess? I’m majoring in English Literature—with a concentration on the Romantics.”

“I am an Accounting major” tasted bitter on her tongue.