Susan Senator

A good week
A week of peace
Let gladness reign
And joy increase.
–Hebrew prayer at Havdalah (when Sabbath ends)

It is 4 p.m. I feel the slow hot day begin to draw back like the tide. The light outside is quieting down, as if seen through partially lidded eyes, eyes about to nap. These eyes already napped, my usual 2 pm. Soft white bed, brightly lit room, boys’ voices downstairs.

My best friend is back in town from her vacation in Israel, so it was a fun day of pedicures, eating felafel, and gossip. My pedicure is the best ever: A pink that’s almost white, and a tiny red flower in the middle of each big toe. Sparkly gold center. They look like someone else’s feet (someone with nice feet, that is!). A pedicure is sometimes a footgasm. It is always so nice to have your feet pampered and cheaper than therapy and almost as effective. It’s at least “like a witamin.”

I spent the morning going over the Colorado trip and perfecting the details. I went on a big 9 mile bike ride (the only one I can take around here because of my proximity to Boston; there’s too much dangerous traffic otherwise. So I head out to “suburban” Brookline, Chestnut Hill and the Estate area, with hilly, winding roads, and a long vista of a reservoir and the Boston skyline, which is not bad for a toy town.) This morning I had one ear bud in, listening to all kinds of stuff. Then Rocky Mountain High came on, what a surprise! I plunged back in time, to when my parents were way younger than I am now, and Laura was my backseat buddy/sometime enemy. My heart was bursting with memories and with hope for what my little family is going to go through soon, too. How will it feel to once again see those sketchy white outlines in the distance, the snowcapped mountains? And all that space around you! I called for reservations and some people actually sound like Westerners! I loved it!

I could see M and B trying to run up Great Sand Dune (it’s 750 feet high!) and rolling down. I suddenly felt so happy to be alive, imagining it, remembering, and riding so fast in the blessed shade. To be able to whiz down Warren Street, faster than a car (or so I imagine). Warren Street is an uphill that feels like a downhill, because it curves and rolls. I was singing at the top of my lungs, speeding down the uphill. I felt sorry for car people. I exchanged knowing smiles with other bikers. I wished I could just go as fast as I possibly wanted without worrying about being killed. But that kind of joy is for children only who believe they are invincible. But every now and then —

I could remember our white water raft trip, where Laura and I were in the front of the raft and got completely wet! All the slides from the float trip are spotted blue, like algae, from where water got into the camera. Max wants to do a slow one, Ben wants a fast one. We are going for the fast one, of course. The scenic ones are nice but they can bore. My teenager is just being obstinate.

Apparently Nat told his bus driver all about Colorado, because she asked me when she pulled up. “He talks to me all the time,” she bragged. What’s the secret? Not being his mom, I suppose.

L’hitrot.