First law of thermodynamics

My friend Nigel called the other day. He was in the San Francisco airport en route home to New Zealand after having climbed Mt. Rainier outside Seattle. “I crested the rim of the summit crater,” he recounted, “and I felt I couldn’t go on.”

A 15-year-old memory that had been buried deep in my cortex — beneath memories of child birth, mothering panic, and hellacious airplane trips with an active toddler — came back in pieces, as if I were an amnesiac. I suddenly remembered that view from the crater rim over to the actual summit — the highest part of the crater rim — of Rainier, a 14,410-foot dormant volcano. I remember it seemed infinitely far away across the snow-filled crater floor beneath a deep blue sky.

Nigel made it, he said, just as I had, slogging behind my then-boyfriend. As Nigel talked, I sat on our screen porch, phone in hand, and was transported back briefly to that summit with the glorious view of Seattle, Puget Sound, the Olympic Range, Mt. Baker, the stump of Mt. St. Helens. I had been there just a decade earlier.

“So do you have any adventures planned?” asked Nigel, a globe-trotting political science professor whom I met in 1994 while climbing 18,510-foot Mt. Elbrus, also a dormant volcano, in southern Russia.

I looked down at the small roll of fat bulging over the waistband of my shorts and suddenly felt like a drop-out. Where once I would have replied, “Yes! I’m entered in the Leadville 100 mountain bike race in a month,” or “We’re trying to climb all of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks this summer,” I replied: “Uh, we’re going to Maine next week; I might play a little tennis.”

There was a detectable pause on the other end of the phone. Nigel once told me that I was one of the fittest people he knew. I didn’t just enter the Leadville 100. I won it. I once climbed five of Colorado’s 14-ners in a weekend. And when Nigel and I climbed Elbrus, I didn’t just summit it. I was the first one in our group of five — all men — to make it. Then, with time to spare that afternoon, I skipped up its 18,442-foot sub-peak.

Now here I sat 13 years later with a goal of playing a little tennis, maybe walking on the beach or doing a 20-mile bike ride. And I felt like two people: the Previous Peg who knew what blood tasted like in her lungs, and the current version — also known as Samantha’s mom — who would like nothing more than eight solid hours of sleep and an afternoon reading a good book without hearing the word, “MOM!” shouted every five minutes.

As Nigel talked about his climb up the snowfields and glaciers of Rainier, I started wondering if Previous Peg would ever return, even for just a brief visit. Will I ever find the motivation — or desire — to push physical limits again? Or am I destined to watch my tummy roll grow larger, like tree rings building out each year?

I’d like to think that version one will return, once Samantha is older. If for no other reason than to still fit into my clothes. For now, I have slid into the role of Samantha’s mom, and I don’t have the energy to be both people. It seems as if the first law of thermodynamics applies to parenting—that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just changes form. While some days it feels as if all our energy has been utterly destroyed, I realize it has simply been used to create a stubborn, strong-willed, six-year-old whose current life goal is to become a horse rider.

Although I always thought I would pine for adventure, I don’t. At least most of the time. Friends no longer call inviting us on bike rides or backpacking trips. I still enjoy riding for a couple of hours or going for a short hike with only adults.

But to go out for too long feels selfish, as if I’m disrupting the family equilibrium — sucking up all the energy for my own personal good, when it’s Samantha who needs it so she won’t wither.

In truth, Andy and I have both withered. But I like to think of it as lying dormant.