Tuesdays With Mom

On most weekdays since the pandemic began, I’ve spent an early morning hour having coffee with my mom in her cottage which is attached to the main house, where we catch up on the mundanities of life and the latest shenanigans in Washington. But today, I've suggested that instead of sitting, we should instead pour our coffee into snug travel mugs and walk all the way down to the corner of the main road where we can pick up a copy of the free local newspaper The Daily Post.

When I announced my bid for city council late this past summer, Mom volunteered to be my Daily Post courier, which I loved. On her way to the grocery store, a committee gathering, or a meetup with friends, she'd dutifully fetch this little paper from one of the small slightly dinged-up lightly rusted metal boxes in which it’s kept, which can be found on well-trafficked intersections in our city. Early on, Mom was the first to discover that the term "Daily" was a bit of a misnomer; the paper is not published on Tuesdays, and Saturday and Sunday are combined into one weekend edition. (It took weeks of trial end error for both of us to remember these exceptions.)

To be frank, I’m a bit gun-shy about reading The Daily Post. Once I became a candidate for local office, I was significantly critiqued on its pages, including by some of its readers who piled on with a stinging Letter to the Editor. To be even more frank, prior to running for local office I’d never really paid attention to it, being more of a New York Times kind of person, which I realize sounds out of touch at best and snooty at worst, but there you have it. Yet The Daily Post is the most frequently published hyper-local news available in Palo Alto, and they only put a small portion of their content online. So, to know what’s up in my city, I’ve gotta get my hands on it, and I’ve gotta read it no matter what it might say about me.

One morning in early October, Mom is the first to discover an auspicious editorial. Drinking coffee with me in her cottage, she peers at me over the rim of her mug and whispers, "This isn't good." Then she pushes the small paper in my direction. The headline reads Lythcott-Haims Shouldn't Be Elected to Council.

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Election day comes and goes, and despite what was said about me in the pages of The Daily Post the people of Palo Alto elect me to the council anyway. So, with that behind us, on a mid-November coffee morning, Mom states, "I don't suppose you need me to get you The Daily Post anymore.” I tell her that actually, I do. That keeping up with the daily matters in a city of 69,000 people is now my job, of sorts. But with a keen eye on Mom's health, and my own, I have a better idea about how to get our hands on a copy.

You see, it now occurs to me that instead of mom driving to fetch The Daily Post, and instead of us sitting and drinking coffee for an hour, that maybe during our coffee hour she and I should go for a walk to get the paper. It's 1.6 miles roundtrip from our house to the nearest little metal distribution box, so nabbing this paper on foot will give us some daily exercise, as well as a chance to enjoy the fresh air. Changing things up and walking down and back each morning could be a real win-win, I figure, regardless of what the headlines on any given day might say.

In thinking about how much time this small task will take, I realize that, by choice, I hardly ever travel on foot in my city. For starters, the pandemic kept me safeguarded in my little she-shed in our backyard where I could travel the world by Zoom. And I'm a car person - I do love my stick shift Jeep Wrangler ✌🏽- so I drive everywhere. Even when I need to pop over to Walgreens - which is just at the end of Maybell Avenue - to pick up a prescription, or when I’m out of my go-to snack of microwave popcorn, I drive. It's just quicker. This is not necessarily something to brag about given the climate issues we all face, but it’s the truth of me.

So, it's about 7:40 a.m. on this particular Wednesday in mid-November, and Mom and I are about to head out to get The Daily Post for the first time on foot. The roofs of our neighbors' homes are blanketed in frost. My weather app says it's in the low forties.

My parents raised me mostly in the brutal winters of Wisconsin. But I've been a Californian by choice for more than thirty-five years now, so I get cold pretty easily. Feeling the nip in the air this morning, I don a grey puffy vest over my usual black fleece zip-up and pull on a pair of almost-gloves. I say “almost” to mean they cover all but my fingertips, which remain happily free to tap apps on my iPhone.

Mom, on the other hand, prides herself on her origins in Yorkshire England where people are used to extreme cold and, truth be told, wouldn't complain even if they were desperately uncomfortable. Still, at eighty-three, she now needs a space heater in the winter here in Northern California. And in late October, when the weather began to turn, I watched her constantly rub her hands together in between sips of coffee in her cottage. So for our little jaunt to get the paper on this frosty morn, I've brought Mom a second pair of almost-gloves. I hand them over to her and find myself trying to remember which of my friends or relatives gifted me not one but two pairs of warm knitted love. I mull over how strange and unfortunate it is to have a gift I love and count on, and to not be able to remember who gave it to me.

Mom and I head down our driveway and quickly reach the end of the cul-de-sac that holds our home and thirteen others here on Maybell Way at bay from the much busier Maybell Avenue. Traversing on foot along the street I've lived on for twenty-two years, I feel the slanted pavement of driveway interspersed with a flat sidewalk interspersed with driveway again, and my chronically aching knee registers discomfort as I take each slant. We enter a patch of sidewalk strewn with brown pine needles and I step through them like a show horse to avoid twisting my ankle on a fallen pinecone, while holding my hand out in case mom needs me.

Mom and I turn left onto the sidewalk and head down Maybell Avenue toward the major thoroughfare that runs through Palo Alto, called El Camino Real. We soon pass by Juana Briones Park, which is across from the elementary school that bears the same name. When we first moved here, the park sported a lovely little red train for children to climb on. In those years, Dan and I would shout to Sawyer and Avery, "LET’S GO TO THE RED TRAIN PARK" in the weary enthusiasm of parents of young children. Years ago, the city renovated the park and replaced the red train with a yellow train, which some playground designer or Parks and Rec commissioner clearly thought was better. But it was worse. Too sculpted, too prescribed, and with less room for imagination. Our family still calls it “The Red Train Park” in protest, and honestly, in longing. As we pass it, I note that “progress” sometimes forces us to make memories of things sooner than we’d otherwise want to.

In the main, I know the trip down Maybell Avenue will be boring in the way that familiar things can't help but be. A person will jog past exhaling puffs of air into the chilled morning. A person will walk their dog. A car will drive too quickly. (I take note that I probably drive too quickly.) A driver will try to back out of their driveway and have to wait for one of these other humans to pass. As we pass by on the sidewalk, we become yet another obstacle in someone's morning.

Mom aims to walk briskly, and she occasionally mentions that she is taking longer strides, but if there were others going in our direction, they would likely pass us because I have this chronically sore knee and Mom is shrinking in height and eighty-three and neither of us is the fastest horse in the stable anymore. Yet I know the odds are that this is probably as fast as the two of us will ever again be, right? And as I bring that thought into my mind, a twinge of melancholy rises up in me as well. But then the feeling is displaced by the sense that if things are going to get harder for one or both of us in the future, I’d better be grateful for all that is good right now.

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Next Tuesday, I will say to mom, “Hey I was thinking that since it’s Tuesday, and there isn’t a Daily Post on Tuesdays, how about we go in a different direction and see different things?” And she’ll agree. And this time when we hit the end of Maybell Way, we’ll go right instead of left on Maybell Avenue, take Donald to Georgia to the path behind Gunn High School, and then wind our way back down Los Robles to Orme, through the bustling yard of Juana Briones Elementary School where parents and children in the early morning schoolyard mimic the roles me, Dan, Mom, Sawyer and Avery played so many years ago. We’ll be able to admire our house from the back where the second story pokes up through the pine and redwood trees, a view only available when at this distance, and we’ll have to decide whether to leave the elementary school via the route to the left or to the right to ultimately make our way back home. We’ll choose the right.

Later that day, mom will come over and tell me with a sigh, “I drove to get you The Daily Post but there weren’t any!” With a smile, I will remind her that they don’t publish on Tuesdays.

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Share with us in the comments what came up for you as you read this. Here are some prompts:

What small rituals comprise your day?

Do you have a gift you treasure, yet you can’t remember who gave it to you?

What might you do a bit more slowly in exchange for appreciating, even savoring something you’d miss if you went about it more quickly?

What are you noticing is changing about you as you age?

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