It's Storytime Everyone! Today's Tale: The Pot Farmer's New Basketball Sneakers

Gather ‘round kids. Today’s story is how grandpa getting dumped in the mid sixties led to Baby Dean perfecting his downward dog… at 18 months.
Yes, my father got dumped. Your father got dumped. You got dumped. Everyone gets dumped.
When Barbara ditch dad and moved to “Frisco”…wait I ‘m getting ahead of myself. Barbara gave dad the dreaded ultimatum…marry me or I am moving to Frisco. Dad of course never thought she would go through with it. Off she went.
So, when Barbara ditched dad and moved to “Frisco” he was distraught. With good reason. The krodacrome of his mind captured her as the hippest Jew broad Brooklyn had ever birthed. She seemed to have popped right out a of a Kerouac novel (and not “On the Road.” One of the cooler obscure works that all those hot misunderstood art punks in high school toted around under their arms in attempts to legitimize their general distain.) Barbara was surely the muse of one of the better beats. She had six feet of moxy stuffed into a kickin five foot frame and an unspellable last name. To top it off she lived in a cramped Greenwich Village apartment with 100 other young hipsters each paying like 3.50 a month to live a block from Washington Square Park. She was by all accounts a college kid from the borough’s dream girl.
But she left (men, take a note-sometimes it is not just an ultimatum)
I was lucky enough to meet Barbara once. I sat between her and my mother at dinner one night years later. She regaled me with tails of the pot farm in Northern California where her and her husband lived off the land. I understand the allure. For the next six months I was convinced she was my real mother (sorry mom).
As is the fate of all men stupid enough not to accept a woman’s marriage ultimatum, Dad fell into a deep depression. He discovered that going to work every day and watching your bank account slowly grow because no woman is there to spend it was not as fun as it sounded in the brochure. It was depressing. As he puts it “it was a very dark time.” In the sixties there were not the psychotropic quick fixes that there are today. You couldn’t just pop a Prozac until you were better able to cope. There was really just the ever popular stewing. And so, Dad stewed for a few years. During the ski season he lifted his head up out of the SAD STEW to go skiing and nail a few young snow bunnies (my family is very detail oriented when we have storytime) but during the off season he was back to Chez Stew.
Cue the inspirational music…
Until one day in the spring when for no apparent reason, after sulking all morning, he put on a pair of basketball sneakers he had laying around (in Brooklyn pickup basketball is a religion). Well, rather than playing basketball he jogged around a park. A very small park- they recently had the whole thing carpeted (sorry quick Arthur joke). It took him all of five minutes to run it. But he felt OK. The next day he jogged around it twice.
Flash-forward to 1982. His wife (not Barbara) and three charming offspring perched near the finish line of the New York City Marathon. And here comes Dad in his big 1970’s Art Garfunkel afro (yes it was the 80’s…we tried to tell him the look was over)waddling down the lower loop of Central Park, leaning exhaustedly toward the left. How did I know it was the lower loop? We waited at the same spot every year for him to finish the marathon for over a decade. In fact, all our weekends were spent waiting at various finish lines throughout the Northeast to see that left leaning waddle.
Dad discovered that as long as he ran the depression (Which he just called “dark times”) never came back. So, he ran and we all watched…and cheered…and eventually ran too.
All our family plans revolved around “well, first daddy is going to go running, and then…”. He never looked at a day and said “can I run today?” he looked at it and said “when can I run today?”
Flash Forward even further to this morning. It was 22 degrees here in New York. I put on a pair of pantyhose, faux acid wash leggings left over from Jr. high, Hard Tail foldovers in a color I am sure I must have been temporarily color blind to have even entertained buying and fleece pajamas. On top I had a truly unnecessary sports bra, a long sleeve t-shirt and thermal long sleeve t-shirt, a Ralph Lauren cashmere sweater that Doug must have been temporarily color blind to have even entertained buying for me and Doug’s grey Champion sweatshirt circa 1988, worn inside out (how else would you wear it?). I waved bye-bye to Baby Dean and Grandma “A” who watch me jog off at the front window every morning and I ran. I have no reason why. I just do. I have a treadmill but when asked why I don’t use it I give the same response that my father used to give. I shrug and say I like the road.
You would think that the kids are too young to exercise (I did not formally start until I was six and my mother gave me access to her Jane Fonda cassette and corresponding booklet). But alas the kids say “Mommy let’s do yogurt” and we go through the fifteen yoga positions they know. Baby Dean tries, but so far he has only mastered the pencil, the eraser and the downward dog ...typical male.