For granted

The front seat was open when I boarded the bus one day last week, so I sat in it. As I settled in to watch the comings and goings of fellow commuters for the 20-minute ride to work, a modest sign affixed to the window caught my eye.

"This seat dedicated to Rosa Parks, 1913-2005," it read. That's all - and for me, that was plenty.

To be honest, I almost moved to another seat. I felt unworthy of sitting there. I'd just plopped down because it was available, with nary a thought about how not that long ago, the seat that welcomed me would not have been open to others.

As other passengers embarked, I wondered how the seating would be apportioned if our travels had been 50 years ago. A man in a business suit who took the seat next to me a few stops later, speaking Spanish into a BlackBerry phone, would surely have been sent elsewhere. The tall blonde could have stayed up front with me, as could an eager red-headed fellow with a backpack. It's clear where the black woman across the aisle would have been relegated, but I'm not sure which block of seats the two young Asian women, or the man I guessed to be from India, would have been assigned. Or who would have monitored and enforced such a pointless seating chart.

We've got our fair share of problems today, of course. The opportunities I'm granted, and take for granted, still aren't necessarily accessible to all, and in their own way these times are as just as troubled as Rosa's.

But today, someone who doesn't look like me has the unchallenged choice to sit in that seat dedicated to the woman who helped make that choice possible. As I try to live more in the moment, I'm sure glad it's this moment, not that one.

Reality bites, the sequel

Last week, my effort to attend to the moment caused me to notice the sign offering gasoline at $4.09 a gallon. This morning, once again waiting for the bus, I put the Blackberry aside, looked up and saw the same sign announcing a $3.84 per gallon price.

"Wow," I thought. "Better get over there after work and top off my tank while the price is so low."

And that brings me to two observations.

First, the one-week price drop of 25 cents is what in my youth bought a whole gallon of gas. Of course, that was back when we all walked barefoot in the snow 20 miles to school. But still, it's pretty stunning to think about.

And second, how quickly I have reset my definition of "acceptable," and even "low," in our new economic reality.

No news

Fair warning. This isn't about being more present, unless paying attention to the day's news counts. But sometimes the news, or more appropriately lack of it, gets ahold of my brain cells and won't let go.

What's triggered my brain cell hijack over the past few days is release of a study from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism about the current state of newspapers. No real surprises in its findings - newspapers report less space for news today, coverage of national and international news has declined at a majority of papers and business news has declined at a third. Features, opinion and coverage of science and the arts is reduced.

Some 85% of large papers have cut staff, with copy editors -- the people who catch and fix inaccuracies -- among the likeliest to be broomed. Photographers are becoming an endangered newspaper species as well. Papers are embracing the online versions of themselves but expecting smaller staffs to pick up the extra workload.

Various media have reported on this study, quoting assorted journalistic heavyweights expressing angst about the future of the newspaper and concern that the speed, depth and interactivity of the web exacts a toll in accuracy and journalistic standards. That with a couple of wars, dependence on foreign oil and a flagging economy, now is not the time to slash space devoted to national and international affairs.

I share that angst - I believe that some some attempt at objective fact-finding and reporting of issues that matter is fundamental for an informed citizenry to make decisions about who will lead our government, how our taxes are spent, what movies are worth seeing, stuff like that.

So with that as backdrop, I opened yesterday's local paper and found, in the precious shrinking news hole valiantly guarded by editors serving the public's right to know about issues affecting their lives, a full column devoted to --- the various women who had dated musician John Mayer.

About those journalistic standards....

Down dog

A couple of years ago, my daughter talked me into joining her in a yoga class at the gym. I'd heard others exclaiming about how relaxing yoga is, and despite misgivings about being able to arrange myself into the requisite poses, I figured it would be good mother-daughter time, and even if I wasn't very good at it, it couldn't hurt.

Well, I was two-thirds right. It was good time spent with my far more flexible offspring. I wasn't at all good at it. But it hurt plenty.

Plus, the language was mystifying. The one-legged "tree pose" made some sense, as did "warrior", in the same general way that the ancients saw huntsmen, queens and dippers big and little in the patterns of stars. But "down dog" was all the more difficult for the struggle I had understanding how being on all fours with my butt in the air represented a dog being down. Seemed pretty much "up" to me, until of course my trembling arms could hold my weight no more and I literally went down.

Eventually my daughter explained that down dog was short for the pose's real name, "downward facing dog." Ahhh. Context is everything.

I never did get to the place where yoga was better than sex, as one of my friends described it, but I did make my peace with it. Pose adaptations suggested for the stiffer students helped, and I felt the thrill of victory the first time I was actually able to hold the down dog pose as long as the the rest of the class without crashing into an agony-of-defeat heap on the yoga mat. On Sundays, my daughter and I followed yoga class with lunch, and that conversation time was worth every bit of muscle ache.

Then this past winter, I slipped on a patch of ice while taking Mr. James for a morning walk and broke two bones in my wrist. Several x-rays, splints and hours of occupational therapy later, the bones are generally healed and my hand movement is mostly back to normal - not what it was, but as good as it's likely to get. Not good enough to do everything I used to do, but good enough to do what I need to do.

I thought about all of this today as I watched the yoga class from another part of the gym, where I pedaled away on the elliptical machine. I'd forgotten to bring a magazine to read, the batteries were dead on my portable radio and I refuse to watch the trivia that is Sunday cable news programming on the gym's tv.

So I had plenty of time (30 minutes plus cool down, to be exact) to watch my former yoga classmates contort themselves into plows and trees and cobras, and think about the compromises we inevitably must make as change and time have their way with us.

One of the things my hand doesn't do like it used to is flex back, which means I can no longer do push-ups (aw, shucks) nor dogs up or down. Plus, I don't want to tempt fate with the balance poses - I've had the broken bone experience, I don't need to fall over and do that again. So yoga is now in my past.

I kind of miss it. It was both a literal and figurative stretch for me. I definitely miss the excuse for scheduled mother-daughter bonding. But I can stretch in other ways, and my firstborn and I can find other occasions to connect.

I'm living that old saying about windows opening when doors close, and I know it's just one of many such examples to come as the years pass.

The thing is, I know that over time, there will be more doors closing than there are windows to open, and someday the consequences will likely be more severe than giving up yoga.

All the more reason to appreciate what I've got as long as I've got it. Up, down or straight ahead.

Best laid plans

Three years ago, my son got a great deal on a good car. Not a sexy car, but a plain little Toyota Corolla sold under the Chevy Prizm nameplate, which made it cheaper. One of those cars that's distinctly un-pimped, but looks pretty smart in the winter when it passes all the cool cars spinning their wheels in the snow, and lately has looked smart at the gas pump, too.

A car you buy when you're thinking about sensible choices for the future.

He'd just put new tires on it, renewed the tags for two years, and with 80,000 miles on it, he figured it was a safe bet for at least a couple more renewals.

That was, until he ran it into a telephone pole this past weekend, and reminded us all why you might as well live in the moment because your carefully thought-through plans can crumble in an instant.

Which was about the length of time he says he turned his attention to a text message on his cell phone while on his way to pick up some Chinese carry-out. He's okay, neither he nor anyone else was hurt, but his sensible, drive-forever, gas-saver car is on its way to becoming spare parts for others.

There are many lessons to be learned, of course, among them that when you're driving, it's really quite imperative to be in the moment, and that seatbelts are worth wearing. I'm pretty sure he's now absorbed those lessons fairly well.

Beyond that, for me it's a reminder that I should always wear clean underwear just like my mother said... never be too busy to spend time with those I care about... and don't invest so much in the future that I fail to appreciate what I have right here, right now.

About that right now... Mr. James is lobbying hard for a walk. So I think I'll postpone the bill-paying I was planning to do, find his leash and share the summer evening with him.

Reality (really) bites

Sitting at the bus stop this morning awaiting my transport to the office, I looked up and noticed the sign at the convenience store down the street proclaiming the price of gas at $4.09 a gallon.

If that isn't reason enough for me to channel Mr. James' penchant for the present - and make adjustments accordingly - I don't know what will be. Otherwise, that future I so enjoy contemplating may be pretty darn bleak.

The bus is looking better every day.

Responsibilities

Living in the same moment at the same time as somebody else doesn't assure that later, you'll both remember it the same way. This is something my son pointed out this weekend, after reading my post about the flag cake.

"You are wrong about the flag cake," he said, with righteous indignation, discounting my claim of having found the recipe in a magazine. "I distinctly remember I saw the flag cake on tv and asked you to make it."

I distinctly remember seeing a recipe in a magazine. But I will admit, I'm more likely to have responded to a specific request from one of the kids, than from anything I found in a magazine. So I'll give him due credit for a tradition that, no matter its origin, lives in our respective memories.

He caught me on something else, too. When I told him that I would give equal time to his point of view on this important subject, I added that blogging is giving me something new to feel guilty about. Despite the fact that I have a regular readership of one (myself) and a very small handful of drop-by visitors (half of whom are my children), I've already made this blog a Responsibility to Worry About. I have added "think about what to post" to my already-overflowing to-do list.

When such a thought process is a prompt to appreciate what's in front of my face, that's great - the blog is accomplishing its purpose. When it assumes the form of another layer of guilt for one more thing I'm not doing as well as I wish, that's just plain silly.

Or as my son put it, "if you're trying to live more in the present and less in the future, why are you spending time worrying about future blog posts?"

Point taken.

I think you're right about the flag cake, too.