Chicago is one of four cities anxiously awaiting the International Olympic Committee’s decision on who will host the 2016 Summer Games. Along with Tokyo, Madrid, and Rio, Chicago will be biting nails until October 2nd when the IOC announces the host city for 2016. 

Of course, with everything of this magnitude there are debates and arguments over who is really going to pay for it. Mayor Daley assuring the city that it won’t suck all our tax dollars away. Naysayers on the other side calling this a ludicrous idea that we will all indeed end up paying for. People who work downtown already shaking their heads and making alternate commuting plans in case we do get the games.

So this past Sunday when I participated in the Chicago Triathlon (world’s biggest with 9300 participants), I could not help but think of the Olympics. There was a bit of talk and hype about this event going well. Triathlons are an olympic event so this was one more chance to show off how well the City of Big Shoulders can handle her sports.

I was out of shape and miserable for most of the morning. It started off rough with a water temperature of 63 degrees and an air temperature of 48 degrees (in August. in the Midwest). So that will make your heart beat a bit. I was also behind a wave of men racing in a category called “Clydesdale.” Triathletes come in all shapes and sizes, but if you happen to be a portly sort of guy who must weigh in at 200 or above, then there is a special little division for you.

A division that will be followed by a bunch of women in their 30’s who are half their size. Who will get kicked in the face by the foot of a giant man who is swimming the backstroke sideways. Kudos to him for at least trying.

Add to that a headwind on Lake Shore Drive that made you wish you were sailing and the fact that I had Bruce Springsteen’s “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” stuck in my head (don’t even like that song, hello 1976), and it made for a rough morning.

But what I loved were the cowbells. I ran faster when I heard people with their cow bells. Christopher Walken would have been proud. People everywhere along the racecourse ringing the cow bells. I still consider them the phenomena of European winter sports. I largely associate them with German bobsledding or something like that. 

But people were clanking them and cheering them along the racecourse and it felt sort of Olympic-ish (even if I felt sort of middle-age-ish).

And since I had exactly two hours and fifty-eight minutes to think about all this, I started noticing what an enormous heap of trash an event like this generates. Take 9300 people. A water and gatorade stop every mile on the run. Free energy/goo packets for all athletes. A post race party with disposable plates and cutlery. Free bottles of water and gatorade. 9300 plastic bags to hold 9300 t-shirts and 9300 copies of magazines (three magazines to be exact, so 27,000+ magazines and flyers galore). 

And a free towel at the end. Nice as it was, I am fairly certain that everyone in that race had towels at home. unnecessary.

And events like the Triathlon happen every weekend in thousands of cities across the US. Just to run or bike, swim or walk in a race environment places tons of stress on the actual environment. Add the traffic to watch the race and the commute to get athletes to and from the race (like Chicago, I raced near a pile of guys who flew in from Ireland for the event), and a “healthy” endeavor like this becomes and eco-catastrophe.

This I thought of as I slapped my arms and legs through frigid water, as I cursed the wind on Lake Shore Drive, and as I shuffled along the lakefront. This I thought of as people jingled cow bells.

So here’s the question of the day. Can these events, the cities that host them, and the 2016 games (whoever gets them) be promoted and pulled off without killing the planet in the process?

If everyone’s gotta have their gatorade, can we at least recycle the bottles? Can we skip 9300 towels and 27,000 magazines that (let’s be honest), less than half the people even care about or use? And honestly, the Chicago race generated far less trash than many others I’ve raced. But even so. Can we re-think racing and wasting when it comes to marathons, triathlons, walks and bicycle races? Can we do a little bit to preserve the pristine places we run through? Do they have to be mass marketing events as well as actual athletic events?

Cutting out the flyers, magazines, and recycling the plastic bottles is a place to start. Skipping the towels works too!

Just as long as there are still cow bells. Always need more cow bell.

I confess. We drove to school today. We live 5 blocks from school and we drove.

It was our third official day of Kindergarten. It was raining. They air was chewy and gross and when I looked out the door at 7:55 it was drizzling with a bit more spite than I had expected. I have to pull the trigger on walking to school by 7:55. There are shoes to find and bags to grab, strollers to snatch and kids to herd. If, by 7:55, that train is not rolling, we are driving.

I looked outside and sighed. Everyone was tired. They had milk mustaches and messy hair. I had messy hair too. It was raining. there was not a matching set of shoes in sight. I sighed. “Let’s drive today okay?”

Which, is no excuse at all for a green mama. Rain or not, forget those carbon emissions! And my son let me know it too. “Mommy, why aren’t we walking to school?” “What’s wrong?” he said. “Oh, I sighed, it’s raining.” “Big whup” I could almost hear him groan.

But if saving a bit on my CO2 output was not reason enough to walk those five blocks, HOLY COW, dropping your child off at school on a rainy day is reason enough. SUV’s everywhere, umbrellas everywhere, moms running across the field to hand off forgotten backpacks while they leave their doors wide open. 

Nice people willing to let you in and out of the drop off lane. Not so nice people bound and determined to pin you into that lane until your Kindergardener graduates from High School. Seriously. people are mean. Aren’t we all on the same team? Trying to get people our of the car and off to learn?

So for those of you who read along with me only because you like the mom stuff. For those of you who bristle at the climate change facts and shrug them off as inconclusive. Let me be clear.

Forget CO2, walk to school so that you can save your very soul!!!

There is nothing like the tension that claws up your back at the drop off. You whip around the corner and hear the bell. you look ahead and all you see are tail lights and stopped cars. The bell rings again. Kids are running into the building. Yours are still in the car asking when you are going to let them out. 

Ahead you see fifth graders just jumping out and running. As if jumping from the Titanic or something like that. Doors fly open, kids dive out. Moms wave and they are off. But me, I have a newbie with a fresh backpack and his third day of school ever. He has a special door to go into and he won’t be jumping from my ship anytime soon! So I wait in line.

We are late. My heart starts beating. I’ve got two other kids in the car. I see the special Kindergarden door open. The school staff waiting with umbrellas to bring these little kids in. I stop, whip open the door. He jumps out. I run him across the lawn and yell “go, go, go.” I am parked where I am not supposed to be. I have two kids in the car. I am only like 10 feet from the car but it feels like I ran to Iowa and left them all there.

Slow motion, running to Iowa.

I close his umbrella and manage to poke him in the eye. “Go, go, go” I yell. 

I race back to the car. Less than one minute has passed but I feel like I’ve been gone for days.

My heart is racing, my adrenaline is going, we’re now all jacked up with nowhere to go. It is 8:25 in the morning. I am in line of traffic. I broke the rules. all of them. I will play the rookie card.

Needless to say we walked for the pick up. and will walk again tomorrow rain or shine!

So forget the CO2, save your heart and your sanity. WALK TO SCHOOL!

There’s this place near our home called Kiddie Land. It’s sort of this epic little corner nearish to the city that, for 80 some years, has boasted good times for kiddos. It’s like a miniature Six Flags for kindergarteners. Think wooden roller coasters from the 30’s, a wooden carousel, and rides that make you feel somehow like you are on a boardwalk in Atlantic City or someplace like that in the 20’s.

But then add to it like 100 million kids, sticky cotton candy, overflowing toilets, stale popcorn, and a half hour wait to ride the train.

ugh.

Kiddie Land is closing in September. This place, a little Chicago legend, is closing down and all of Chicago has decided to visit during the month of August. I do not recommend a visit there this week. My mom and I stopped in land while it was all giddy fun for most of the day, it was a lot of standing and sticking to things as well.

they also serve unlimited soda.

my kids freaked out. they don’t really drink soda. big stuff this unlimited soda.

So after waiting in line for like seven days we finally hopped onto the Scrambler. My oldest looked down at the floor of the ride where an empty plastic water bottle had been discarded. “Look mama” he said, “Someone left behind their recycling!”

Oh how I loved that. Never mind that someone lazy or careless left their trash on the floor of the Scrambler, for someone else to deal with, recycle, or more likely throw away. My 6 year old looked down and saw recycling. He did not see trash. 

He also keeps cereal boxes so that we can turn them into space ships. Old graham cracker boxes must always be reused, and forget ever even recycling something with a plastic lid. Wash the container and use it in the bathtub he says.

Smart little planet saver.

I told some friends the water bottle story. They said their kids have said similar things. They also noted that, thankfully, this generation of kids will likely grow up considerably more planet savvy than we currently are. Sad that it takes a climate crisis to bring about this reality, but it is coming along anyway.

Most of us adults today are still wasteful, forgetful, and we all leave our trash on the floor of some Scrambler of our own. We drive more than we should, we leave lights on, we neglect leaky faucets, we decide that it is just too much work for corporations or businesses to change, so the average person just sighs and changes the channel.

We dismiss the warning signs, we say “hey, let’s not get all depressed here with this climate talk, let’s move on.” 

We worry more about the bottom line than the fact that our water sources are bottoming out.

We wear “green” t-shirts that were made in an Indonesian sweat shop.

But somehow, in all our adult inconsistencies, our kids are still figuring things out. They are still making wise decisions. They are starting to look at plastic and see it as recyclable. Starting to look at the ocean and see it as needing a little rescue.

Small things like this give me hope. They make me think that indeed, we can change things. And they make me nervous for the day when my son is old enough to demand an excuse as to why my generation lived like sloppy gluttons. The way I demand my parents account for the racism of the 50’s, the way my parents demanded their parents account for two world wars, they way that generation demanded an explanation for slavery.

Each generation has an atrocity they must account for. We actually have lots of them, each generation.

This is one of ours. The fact that we stood around arguing and sucking down oil when all the evidence clearly pointed to our planetary demise. The fact that cases of asthma have pretty much doubled in the past 20 years and that according to the CDC, 5-17 year olds will miss 14.7 million days of school this year because of asthma related issues. Thank you CO2.

The fact that forests and glaciers are disappearing and we are watching them go. That when my kids are my age, the will likely not be able to see any glaciers at Glacier National Park (predicted to be gone by 2030) or the ice filed atop Mt. Kilimanjaro (predicted to be gone by 2020). All because we really like SUV’s, lots of AC and strip malls.

I will have to answer for this. After Kiddie Land closes and that bottle has been (hopefully) turned into a park bench, I will have to answer to his generation about why I did not do enough.

Oh to be part of the solution. To be able to grab his little face and tell him that “Mommy did all she could.” My heart soars at the chance to make this right while I still can. It starts by taking a very different approach to that bottle in the Scrambler. It starts by seriously, very seriously looking at how we live and then actually doing something to change it.

Yesterday we took a walk to our downtown area. Just a half mile from our home and an easy walk, even when the air dripped with midwestern humidity so thick I think I could have chewed it. An excellent endeavor. I pulled my youngest two in our wagon and my just turned six year old zipped along the sidewalks on his bike (now sans training wheels).

You pass a lot of adolescents on a summer day walking to town. Normally I love them. I’ve actually devoted the better part of 15+ years of my professional life working with them. But yesterday I was a little scared. Not by the kids themselves, but by the ever looming reminder that my children will, God willing, will become them someday.

When we walk to town, the deal is that my son can ride his bike to the corner as fast as he wants, then he needs to wait for me to catch up with the others before we cross the road. As he raced down the first block I watched him from behind. He was wearing these enormous red and blue Fila basketball shorts that were flapping in the wind. They were hand-me-downs from an older kid and were too big.

He looked a little like a gangsta, except for the Hot Wheels helmet and elbow pads.

We crossed the street. All was well.

He raced along again and we passed three middle school age boys. They were high as kites. Talking about how the houses looked like they were moving if you looked at the garage lights and then up to the sky really quickly. They were staggering along the sidewalk and the grass. My son zipped right past them. I did too.

“Mommy, is it okay to go now?” my son said as I thought about those kids for a moment.

“Yes baby, go ahead.”

We crossed two more streets and then a girl on a bike came up from behind. She was talking on her phone, trying to keep a beach towel from falling and fumbling to keep her back pack on while pedaling. Needless to say she was swerving and going slow. I began to eavesdrop as she approached.

“Oh My God! Are you kidding me?! There is no way I would tell my mom! She would kill me. My friend told me he would totally take me to get it done.”

I’m not sure what “it” was. Maybe a tattoo, a piercing (not the end of the world), or something a bit more dark and disturbing. 

“Mommy, is it okay to go now?”

“Yes baby, go ahead.”

As we kept on toward town I relished in the fact that this child will not dare to even cross a street without me. He’s my first born so he keeps to the rules. He stops at every corner. He asked me why flowers smell and why bees have stripes at one of the corners. He is completely under my wing.

But someday he won’t ask “is it okay to go now,” someday he will just go. And I hope that he makes wiser choices than the sampling of kids we passed yesterday, but there are no guarantees.

And I worked with teenagers long enough to know that even the dumbest choices often work themselves out in the end. That the bumps and curbs and streets that must be crossed during adolescence many times, somehow lead home.

But not always. Tragedy happens. Lifetimes of therapy happen. 

So as he rode the sidewalk in his baggy Fila shorts I teared up a bit. You see, he starts Kindergarten on Monday so I’m a weepy mama. And if I pause too long, even for a blink, they will be fourteen and walking down the street without me. They will be hanging out in town. And they will be off on their own. And then they will have to decide for themselves if it is indeed, okay to cross the street.

Here’s hoping he’s got the adolescent equivalent of a helmet, elbow pads, and a few good lessons from mom to make those wise decisions.

This weekend my husband was out of town. And while I was very happy for him as he got to go up North and camp and fish and spit and scratch and do whatever it is that men do in the woods, it meant I was home alone with three children all weekend. 

And when he leaves on Friday I am sweet as syrup. “Oh honey, don’t worry about us, we will be fine, now you just go on now and have yourself a good ole’ time” (read that part with a Southern accent. Even though I don’t have one, it just sounds more sincere if you read that line like Scarlet Ohara would have).

Anyway, yeah, so he’s gone and I am happy he’s off hunting and gathering things, but in the course of those three days we had two family parties, one play date, a thunder storm and my car broke down. Add grocery shopping to that list and my stress level is pretty much through the roof. So I have decided that when my husband comes home, if he even leaves the room to go to the bathroom he will take the children with him! I am done, done done!!!!

I think what put me over the edge this weekend (other than bathing, feeding, cleaning up after, grocery shopping with, and disciplining three raving lunatics), was that they got all crazy with the questions again.

We do this all the time. Most kids do. They ask tons of questions, it is how they learn. It is what makes them so endearing. But when you are left alone for three days to answer them and it seems like all of a sudden the sheer volume of the questions has quadrupled, you lose your mind. 

So I started to write them down. I was going nuts. It was either write or yell.

The endless strings . . . . 

“Mommy, why do cars have horns?” “Do tractors have horns?” “What do tractor horns sound like?” (to which I made a sound that could perhaps be a tractor, they laughed. What I wanted to say was “seriously, are you really asking me if tractors have horns, where did you even see a tractor. it is 8:00 in the morning. what is wrong with you?”)

“Are there alligators in that pond?” (to which I said kindly “no honey, maybe turtles” but wanted to say, “what are you, some sort of moron?! we’ve been over this every day since our vacation in June. ALLIGATORS DO NOT LIVE IN ILLINOIS”)

“Mommy, why is the wink so hard?” (to which I winked at my son and he tried to wink back by pressing down one eyelid. This one was too cute to get any sort of mad at).

“Mommy, why is big people church so boring?” (to which I replied, “well honey, I don’t know.” And thought about how secretly, I wanted to run around and eat snacks with all my friends like the kids do on a Sunday morning, instead of sitting in silence next to all my friends like the adults do).

“Mommy, why do volcanos have lava? What is lava? How hot is lava? How deep is lava? What color is lava? Where does lava come from? What happens if we get hit by lava? Can we drive our car through lava? Will lava ever come get us at our house? How do you know it won’t come get us? Is lava scary? (yes, rock, hot, deep, red, volcano . . . my voice rising in tension. I DON’T KNOW!!!!)

Mama, why are you so grumpy?

I don’t know. I don’t know why I lost my mind this weekend. When we sat in a circle before bed tonight. Eating cheese sticks and unpacking the day, I asked them (as I often do), What was the best part of the day and what was the worst part of the day? Seemed only fair to ask them to answer one or two.

Best part was running around at a family party. Worst part, that mommy was grumpy.

sigh.

I am told that someday I will miss these questions. That I will long for a conversation like this. That they will be gone before I know it and I will wave at them as they drive off, putting one hand on my hip and saying, “well where did the time go?!”

This I believe. I get teary just typing about it. How is it that I can know how desperate I will be to return to these days, yet at the same time long to crash through them just as fast as I can? Just to survive and get on to the next day?

And tomorrow is Monday. So really, what’s the hurry anyway? Who is ever in a hurry to get to Monday?