Mountains Wanted
Authors: Phoebe Alexander
Mountains Wanted
by Phoebe Alexander
Text copyright © 2012 Phoebe
Alexander
All Rights Reserved
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Pete Mecozzi of Pete Mecozzi Photography for allowing me to
use his beautiful images. See Pete’s work at
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pete-Mecozzi-Photography/
Also thank you to Jon, my blog reader and friend, for your help with
military details and for enthusiastically reading and offering suggestions.
Dedications
To
Chris, my oldest friend, who knew me long before I knew myself. I have
always admired your strength and grace in handling everything God has given
you. All my love to you.
To
my Advisory Panel of Kathleen, LeeAnn, Leigh Ann and Sarah. Even if you didn’t
really know what was going on in the story, I asked you for advice about myriad
things and you were always willing to listen, even the millionth time I told
you what my word count was.
To
Michelle, Web Master Extraordinaire and loyal friend. You’re always
enthusiastic and eager to please. I miss having you in the office next to
me more than you will ever know.
And
most of all...to Mike…without whom this book would never have been born. You
have been the driving force behind all of this. You have always believed there
is greatness in me, and I love you for that, among other things. You will
always be my mountain, and I will never stop wanting you.
One
Don’t
Ask, Don’t Tell
“Make it a six inch, please,” directed the young woman standing at the counter.
Sarah stifled a giggle.
Thirty-six years old
and I still have such a dirty mind
, she thought to herself. She studied
the sandwich orderer intently: too young to be a fellow faculty member, too
mature and well-dressed to be a student.
Staff, maybe
, she decided, her
eyes tracing the woman’s shapely posterior and traveling down to sensible
kitten heels of deep crimson patent leather that clicked against the hard tile
floor as she shuffled down the line choosing toppings for her sandwich.
“I love your shoes!” Sarah gushed to the lady who slowly turned
around.
I must know if she has a pretty face.
The answer was
affirmative: soft doe brown eyes framed by auburn curls.
The pretty kitten heel-wearing sandwich orderer murmured, “Thank
you,” and promptly turned back around to concentrate on paying for her order.
Sarah internally shrugged.
Not into women, I guess
. She
reviewed the last time she had been with a woman.
Hmmm. Long time.
That naturally led her to dissect her last experience with a man. Some time
had elapsed there as well.
I’ve been working too hard
, she
concluded. She placed her sandwich order and watched the six-inch craving
woman push her way out of the glass door.
A seven inch would be perfect
for me,
she thought wistfully.
Lunch successfully obtained, Sarah proceeded out the door and into
the hot September sun. She trekked across the quad toward her office in the
Art-Sociology building, contemplating the remaining items on her to-do list
before her afternoon lecture while thoughts about what she might get herself
into over the weekend persistently crept in. The phone buzzing in her pocket
jolted her back to the present.
It was her son Owen’s school calling. He was sitting in the
nurse’s office with a fever.
Shit,
Sarah thought,
how am I going to
accomplish both eating and running to get him before my 2pm class?
Only
slightly daunted, she rerouted to the parking lot where her car blasted its
pent-up heat into her face as if there were a burning inferno inside. Sarah
sighed, turned the key in the ignition, cranked up the A/C, and crammed a bite
of sandwich down her throat before backing out of the parking space.
Sarah Lynde knew a thing or two about multi-tasking. Since her
second child, Owen, was born in 2000, she’d been a full-time mom to him and his
older sister Abby and a full-time graduate student, and now she was full-time
tenure track faculty at a large public university. She’d long given up the
fantasy of being offered any special treatment; she knew that hard work,
dedication, and balance were the keys to getting everything she wanted in life.
She’d done the single parenting thing long enough to know that having to pick
up a sick child in the middle of the workday was par for the course. Owen would
rest in her office while she gave her 2 PM lecture on gender roles. She’d ask
the departmental secretary to check on him after bit.
She battled traffic on the beltway and steered her little
economical car into the school parking lot. She emerged from the school
office ten minutes later, a flushed-faced Owen in tow. They reviewed his day
and headed back to Sarah’s office where he could relax with a smoothie and his
game device, after being administered some acetaminophen, of course.
Nothing
like the healing power of Tylenol and mindless video games
, Sarah mused as
she gathered up her lecture notes and scrambled up the stairs to her classroom.
It was only the second week of classes and Sarah was in full on
name/face memorization mode with her students. Having the students’ ID pictures
automatically load into her roster in the course management system was helpful,
but she found those mug shots didn’t really do the live versions justice. This
particular lecture was sixty students. There was no way she’d be able to get
all these students’ names down pat, but that never stopped her from trying. Having
attended a small undergraduate institution where she was on a first-name basis
with her professors and mentors, her inability to develop deeper, more
meaningful relationships with her students at this much bigger public
university was both frustrating and disappointing. Still, she did appreciate
the few students who had reached out to her during her first year of teaching
and now that she was embarking upon her second year, she wondered what new
mentees might come out of the woodwork. In some ways, she considered it could
possibly be a blessing as only the bright and motivated students tended to seek
her out. She smirked at the fact that the students she got to know seemed to be
polarized: the high achievers at one end and the apathetic slackers at the
other. The two ends of the bell curve.
Sarah rounded the corner of the hallway and caught a male
student’s eyes drawing a line from her chin to her navel and hovering in
between as he passed her by. She glanced down to make sure her shirt was
buttoned. It was. She turned just in time to see that he was also checking out
her backside. As an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, Sarah was used
to being ogled by men. She would even admit to enjoying it if she were
asked.
Hell, I’m not wearing this skirt and heels because they’re
comfortable
, she would likely retort.
She made it into the classroom with five minutes to spare. She
glanced from face to face as she powered up the computer at the instructor
station. Most students were busy texting or talking.
Texting, now there’s a
sociological phenomenon I could give one or two lectures on,
Sarah thought.
Ever the sociologist, she observed how students seated themselves and
interacted in little groups. She caught a couple of friendly interactions
and she sensed one or two with a bit more sexual tension. Interestingly,
one of those was between two males sitting in the middle of the classroom. She
smiled as she thought about how much had changed since she was sitting in their
seats, and as the clock ticked toward the 2 PM start time, she began to pull
her power point up onto the big screen at the front of the classroom.
Sarah loved teaching. There wasn’t a single aspect of it that
didn’t speak to her soul. Even the inattentive students, the disrespectful, the
intellectually closed-off, Sarah truly believed she could reach them; she could
impact them if she was engaging enough. Her primary objective was to make
them think. Teaching did not mean standing up in front of students and
lecturing. No, that was a linear proposition, mere words spewed into the
atmosphere that may or may not find a channel into someone’s mind. Rather,
teaching was a dialogue between her and her students. Even in these big lecture
classes Sarah would find a way to get the students to talk. They would learn
far more by interacting than by just hearing her speak.
She’d always known she wanted to teach. When she was younger,
she’d have a few younger neighbor kids held captive on the screened-in back
porch every summer. She used a small chalkboard and some workbooks so they
could practice reading and simple arithmetic. Sarah learned how to praise
success, how to gently correct mistakes, and most importantly, how to get her
students to take responsibility for their own learning. That was key.
She’d envisioned herself teaching high school English, but the few
education classes she took during her undergraduate career were bitter
disappointments. How could they really teach her to do something that was
innate? She was much more interested in how people behaved, particularly
when they intersected with other people. Understanding the roots of everyday
social interactions is necessary to effect change, to foster learning, she
realized. If there is one thing she learned over the years, rationality and
logic fail to explain human behavior. In the business world, in romantic
relationships, in politics, individuals are constantly reinventing themselves
in order to maneuver others into personally beneficial positions. This
jockeying and manipulation, the roles and personas adopted in different
environments and with different groups of people, truly fascinated Sarah. She ultimately
chose to double major in sociology and communications.
Light bulbs switched on for her during her undergraduate years,
and those lights were so bright that they catapulted Sarah to a little bit of
local fame. She captured the attention of her entire campus with her
newspaper column about investigating social phenomena. Her professors were
impressed, even floored at her insights; they told her there was nothing
standing in her way of becoming the next Durkheim or Weber. Her future was
blazing bright until the summer before her senior year when she found herself
pregnant, but Sarah spent very little time wallowing in self-pity.
The
show must go on
was her mantra, hearkening back to her high school drama
club days. Her graduation present was a healthy, cherubic 7 pound, 7 ounce baby
girl she named Abigail. She spent the next two years waitressing and
raising her young daughter. After getting married and having her son, she
decided to follow in the footsteps of her favorite sociology professor, whom she’d
never lost contact with. Her mentor said that if anyone could successfully
complete a rigorous PhD program while raising young children, it was Sarah
Lynde. She was right.
Sarah finished up her class and lingered a few minutes afterwards
answering questions from students who had registered late or who clearly hadn’t
read the syllabus. Then she headed to her office to pick up Owen, who had
fallen asleep with his video game still running. At age ten, he was much
too big to carry, so she gently prodded him awake and steered him downstairs
and across the quad to the parking lot.
Sarah was relieved when she finally arrived home after her long
day. Her cozy bungalow with its warm golden and amber walls and the
beautiful wood floors felt like an embrace when she crossed the threshold. She
loved having a sanctuary away from the craziness of the beltway traffic and the
noise of campus. She wanted to raise her children in a nurturing
atmosphere so she did everything possible to make her home feel like a nest for
her two baby birds, even though they were hardly babies anymore. She had
also done some research about how a child’s environment impacts their behavior
and ability to learn. She was the crazy mom who stood at the paint counter at Lowe’s
debating whether Cinnamon Apple or Nutmeg Spice would be the homier, more comforting
color for the kitchen walls.
Owen had perked up quite a bit by dinnertime. Sarah presented
her two children with a colorful stir-fry with just the right amount of kick to
it. Owen gulped his portion down while Abby picked at hers. Sarah
shook her head at this phase her teenage daughter was going through: too much
eyeliner, wearing skinny jeans and baggy t-shirts with scraggly uncombed hair,
begging for a nose piercing, and not eating dinner only to gorge on potato
chips at midnight.
Sarah snapped out of her reflections on Abby to hear Owen ask, “What’s
an erection?
Abby looked mortified. “Eww, Mom, there he goes again with the
gross questions! Make him stop!”
“Oh, Abigail, it’s a perfectly reasonable question.” Sarah was
used to her younger child’s inquisitive nature, which she heartily encouraged. By
this point, she was completely unfazed by Owen’s questions and actually prided
herself on the matter-of-fact scientific answers she provided him. She turned
to him, “Owen, an erection happens when blood flow is increased to the penis
and it grows bigger and harder.”
Abby promptly left the table shaking her head. Owen looked
satisfied. It was always difficult to tell if Owen was actually curious or just
wanted to annoy his older sister. Sarah figured it was probably a
combination of the two. “Abby, put your food in the fridge in case you get
hungry later,” Sarah called after her as she started up the stairs in a huff. “I
don’t want you eating junk food late again!” She shook her head wondering if it
would be overkill to padlock the cabinet where the snacks were kept.
Sarah’s cell phone rang and it was Rachel, her best friend.
“Hey, lady,” Sarah cooed.
“How was class today? Is Owen alright?” came her friend’s
concerned voice.
News sure travels fast.
Sarah assumed that Rachel’s son Thomas, who was also in fifth
grade, had told his mother that Owen went home sick. “Yes, he’s fine. It’s
probably another one of those 24 hour viruses that’s going around. He just
scarfed down his dinner as if nothing was wrong. I don’t have a class till 12
tomorrow so I’ll just see if my mom can watch him in the afternoon. What’s new
with you?”
“I want to do something this weekend! I’m insanely bored. And I
need to get laid.”
Sarah laughed. There was only one woman on the planet as blunt and
open about her sexuality as she was, and that was her best friend Rachel Brock.
They were kindred spirits, destined to meet and become lifelong friends. They had
been together since their Lamaze class in 2000, gave birth to boys within days
of each other, and when Sarah moved to Maryland in 2009, Rachel followed. It
was almost like having a spouse except they didn’t live together.
“Girl, you always need to get laid,” Sarah giggled. “I heard
there’s a new club in DC...I’ve kinda been wanting to check it out.”