A Walker in the Suburbs

I look out the window at a maple tree. Some of its red leaves are falling gently to earth; others are landing on the greenhouse roof. The maple shares the backyard with a number of overgrown bushes, fruit of my father’s retirement.

Dad relished his final years. He built a small gazebo in the backyard, a lean-to shed with lattice-work on the sides. He crowned it with a homemade Cassidy coat of arms that I rescued later and is now safely stored with other family treasures under my bed.

He surrounded the gazebo with shrubs I don’t recognize. Are they spirea? viburnum? laurel?

Years later, it’s obvious that Dad didn’t understand (or care to learn?) how tall and wide these shrubs would grow. They’ve now subsumed a quarter of the ample yard — a rookie gardening error he didn’t have time to correct.

Places shape people, and people shape places. Years after his passing, I see Dad in these overgrown bushes: his enthusiasm, his lack of planning, his bounteous love for us all.

You’ll have to imagine these jack o’lanterns all lit up, because the best time for me to see them was midafternoon, not night. But I did see them — and I was impressed.

Pumpkin Mania, sponsored by Transylvania University, is now in its 15th year. Anyone can carve one of the free pumpkin provided, as long as they reserve it ahead of time. (The event has become so popular that it appeared on national television.)

Carvers who return after dark will see their jack o’lantern glowing with its mates on the steps of Old Morrison Hall, a National Historic Landmark.

It’s a vision in orange, set in one of Lexington’s most historic neighborhoods, Gratz Park. It’s the kind of event that didn’t exist when I lived here, though there were plenty of events that did.

As I walked around the neighborhood, I remembered immersing myself in books in the old public library, and meeting with other Lexington Children’s Theater “veterans” in a small building on the park.

The outskirts of Lexington have stretched and grown, but its urban core (minus Main Street redevelopment) has remained as I remember it. I’m glad I had the time to amble through it yesterday.

Today I’m thinking how lucky I am that my brother bought the house that was once my parents’. Now when I visit Lexington, I stay where they lived their last years.

It doesn’t look the same. Phillip is slowly turning it into a midcentury-modern showcase. But there are enough traces — I’m looking right now at the old set of World Book encyclopedias, for instance — that it resonates, touches me deeply every time I’m here.

Places matter, houses especially. They become our second skin.

(The room where I’m sitting as I write this post, though it’s been remodeled since this photo was taken.)

There are layers here, layers of time and memory. Everywhere I look there are layers. I wonder if I’ve been homesick all along, if my interest in place is actually homesickness.

I’m thinking about all of this because I’m in my hometown — Lexington, Kentucky. I drove here yesterday, taking the mountain route.

This morning, out early, I gravitate to the old neighborhood. I walk around the block that holds my grammar school, where I spent eight years. I pass the house where my friend Diane lived. We went there after school to make chocolate pudding on the stovetop. In my house we only made instant pudding. I was fascinated by the skin that formed on top of the concoction as it cooled.

Back in the car, I search for a café and find one. This place was most certainly not here the last time I visited. It’s one more layer in a place that is full of them.