A Walker in the Suburbs

The usual ones are out for me this year (exercise! don’t worry so much! get organized!). In their place a more subtle yearning: to be centered.

Is this a resolution or a mantra? Can those be one and the same?

A new year, a blank slate we can write on with our actions and our choices. Probing this new year tenderly still, getting a feel for it.  The cartilage still soft and bendable. Intentions still pliable.

Here we are in the cold, hard winter — with the new year all soft and malleable around us.

This year none of us will be together as the clock strikes midnight. We are scattered from California to Arizona to Virginia to Africa. And the two of us still at home will be at different places tonight (as is only to be expected when one of us is a teenager).

Another stage. Another adventure. A backward look, surely one won’t matter. A photo that captures the spirit of this year, a spirit of departure and of what many parents see of their children as they leave home. Their backs, their luggage — their faces toward a future we can scarcely imagine.

But a new year dawns for all of us, the young, the old, the somewhere in between. And surely this is good. Just the fact that it’s happening for us, for all of us, is good.

Photo by Claire Capehart

What day is it, anyway?

Feels like a Wednesday,  third day after the “Sunday” that was Christmas.

Or a Saturday, with the same open spaces and relaxed demeanor of that end-of-week day.

It’s certainly not Monday or Tuesday. No back-to-workness about his day. None at all.

Ah yes, it’s Friday. With Saturday and Sunday still to look forward to.

There’s nothing automatic about this realization. Which means we’re living through a week without days.

It couldn’t have come at a better time.

The luminaries were our neighbor’s idea, and I’m afraid we weren’t very happy about them at first. Saving plastic milk jugs, sawing their tops off, adding a layer of kitty litter and a candle — just more items on an endless to-do list. 

But we saved a few containers, our neighbor filled in with paper bags, and on Christmas Eve our suburban street was transformed.

It wasn’t just the way the lighted path shone in the dark. Or how the candles stayed lit through the drizzle and fog. It was how neighbors poured out of their houses, strolled along with hot toddies, chatted as if in a long June twilight. Someone played carols through outside speakers. Kids ran  around.

It was unexpected. It was magical.

Distance, illness and weather kept us from gathering this holiday as we usually do. But eventually, the east coast contingent of my family came together for presents, food, conversation and controlled chaos. We solved a few world problems — though gun violence and climate change continue to elude us — and had some laughs, too.

Now we’re back home watching the snow fall. No walking in the suburbs today.

It’s time to stay inside, read and make soup.