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A Walker Turns Nine

A Walker Turns Nine

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When I started this blog nine years ago today, I saw it as a chance to do my own work without the editor on my shoulder. It still is that — but much, much more.

Because when I started this blog, I was nine years younger, you see. I knew time was passing quickly, but not this quickly! I thought there would be plenty of years to write another book, pen dozens of essays, do all sorts of things. I hope there still is. I see no reason why there shouldn’t be.

But if there’s not … there’s this blog. It has become an oeuvre of sorts, a body of work, a folder into which I stuff random thoughts, ideas from books, the gleanings of a brain that works best when the feet are moving at three miles an hour.

As I said in the beginning and each walk confirms, writing and walking are boon companions. One informs the other.

So this walker plans to keep on walking and keep on writing until … well, until she can’t do either anymore.

“Green Book” and More

“Green Book” and More

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Over the weekend, as Virginia’s governor struggled for his political survival, I went to see a movie about race relations in 1962. It was difficult to watch “Green Book” and not understand the intense reactions to Gov. Northam’s yearbook page, which contains a photograph he’s now denying depicted him, with one person in a KKK hood and another in black face.

Northam has been a good governor so far, a rare Democratic moderate willing to work across the aisle. He’s gotten excellent reviews from people of all races. Which is why we should not drive the man from office for this affront. We should judge him by the totality of his actions and not by one unfortunate offense, something which, if it occurred at all, would not have carried the same weight then that it does today.

What I took from “Green Book” was not just the necessity for change but also the need for forgiveness, for learning to see the world from another’s perspective. Both men — the African-American pianist and the Italian-American driver — came to see the hollowness and futility of their positions. Both men changed.

What’s happened now is that we have hardened into such rigid postures that we can’t change; we can’t see the world from other perspectives. There are certain boxes that, once ticked, result in total elimination.

If we keep this up, it will drive even the last good people from the pursuit of public office. We are reaping what we have sown.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Gratitude on Ice

Gratitude on Ice

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It’s one of the coldest Thanksgivings on record here, with wind chills in the teens and temperatures that won’t make it out of the 30s. A perfect day to stay inside, chop onions, peel potatoes and baste the turkey, all in a steamy kitchen.

Though it’s tempting to put heat at the top of the list of things I’m most grateful for today, I’m going to push it aside for friends and family. We haven’t celebrated Thanksgiving here for a couple of years, Suzanne and Appolinaire having stepped in as the hosts with the most lately, but today the clan (minus Celia, who’s in Seattle) is gathering here, and by late afternoon there will be a full house.

It has lately been made clear to me (as if I didn’t already know it), just how important family and friends are. Not just for celebrations like today’s, but for the dreary mornings and frantic evenings of life. So on a day for giving thanks, my heart is full of love for the people who make life worth living for me. Not just today but every day.

100 Years

100 Years

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The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Today we celebrate 100 years since the end of the Great War, World War 1, which killed an estimated 10 million soldiers.

My grandfather fought in the cavalry, and when I went with Mom to Europe many years ago, she shuddered as our train passed through Verdun and other battle sites.

The past not that long past to her, because it lived on through the memories of her father.

World War II is the war that lived in my memory, and in a way similar to Mom’s — because my father fought in it.

But it is World War I we memorialize today, the War to End All Wars (oh, how I wish that were true).   Here are the last paragraphs of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front:

He fell in October, 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.

He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.


(World War 1 trenches, 1916. Photo: Wikipedia)

Morning After

Morning After

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It dawned clear and bright today, a marked difference from Monday and Tuesday’s rain and drizzle. The skies had already cleared by the time I reached the polling place last evening, and a glorious sunset was underway, clouds purpled by the setting sun.

A tempting omen, but we’re beyond omens, I think. Or at least I am. What I want is harmony, and yesterday’s election will not produce it, at least not in the short term, though at least there will be a much-needed check and balance.

I do know that I’ve started praying for our country every night, along with the people I love. I should have been praying for it all along, I realize. But it didn’t seem to need it like it needs it now.

Halloween Solo

Halloween Solo

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Awaiting the visit of little ghosts and goblins tonight, and for the first time awaiting them solo. I’ll be on both candy duty and Copper duty this Halloween, and am not quite sure how it all will work except that some chaos will be involved.

I usually see the girls (and now guys) for Thanksgivings and Christmases — but Halloweens not so much. I have an invitation from Claire to come hand out candy at her house, but I would miss the neighborhood kids, three of whom I’ve watched grow up and who will be moving out next month.

So I’ll try to carve the pumpkin and try to keep Copper occupied (or sedated) … and hope for the best.

It will be noble experiment.

A Birthday, an Anniversary

A Birthday, an Anniversary

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The birthday of an oldest child is also an anniversary of parenthood. I celebrate a big one today.

I’ve been reliving the days and weeks leading up to Suzanne’s birth — how I’d wanted her to see the autumn leaves, but how the trees were almost bare by the time she was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on October 23. It didn’t dawn on me at the time that (in addition to the fact that she would be a newborn and focusing no further than the faces in front of her!) we wouldn’t always live there. I had no idea that by her first birthday we’d be living in Virginia, where the leaves have barely started changing in late October.

But here we are — and more to the point, here she is. After years in Africa, Suzanne now lives with her husband only 20 miles away. It’s only one of many amazing zigs (zags?) of the marvelously zigzagging road of parenthood. Which began for me (gulp!) 30 years ago today.

Happy Birthday, Suzanne!

Look, Ma!

Look, Ma!

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I feel like the kid in the old Crest toothpaste commercials: “Look, Ma, no cavities!” I just managed to survive a six-month dental checkup without any request for a pre-six-month return.

“You look good,” said Dr. Wang, he of the “difficult extraction.” Since the almost botched wisdom tooth debacle four years ago, I’ve been through three crowns and one root canal with the guy. He’s grown on me.

When he suggested the root canal, a last-minute decision, I said, “Are you sure you can do this? Remember the difficult extraction.”  He smiled. “No, really, I can. I did three just last week.” This is how comfortable I am with him.

It’s like anything else. We went through something together, several somethings. We survived. I’ve watched as his skill has caught up with his confidence level. His compassion, too. Now he will touch my arm in the middle of a procedure. “We’re almost through. Hang in there.”

And somehow, I always do.

Two Thousand Five Hundred

Two Thousand Five Hundred

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We come now to one of those round numbers I like to celebrate. This one is 2, 500.  I’ve written two thousand and five hundred posts since February 7, 2010.

I began A Walker in the Suburbs during a blizzard. Now I sit outside on the deck, stealing a few minutes from my paid writing day, watching hummingbirds dive-bomb the feeder and listening to cicadas as they pulse with crescendoing sound.

Copper lies nearby at the top of the deck stairs, ever alert, gunning for the squirrel who dares to invade his turf. A gentle breeze ripples the bamboo leaves and the new buds on the rambling rose, which has come back to life as quickly as it appeared to die.

I have no idea why the rose dropped its leaves and no idea how it’s growing them back, but it’s a lovely metaphor for persistence and renewal, two principles of Walker in the Suburbs … which I will put to use as I write the next 2,500 posts.

(Photo of the St. Louis Arch, “Gateway to the West,” by Suzanne Abo)

Science and Miracles

Science and Miracles

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“We are not sure if this was a miracle, a science or what,” wrote the Thai Navy seals of the rescue they had just brought about. I would say the recovery of the 12 boys and their coach from a Thai cave  was all of the above, first the miracle, then the science, then a mishmash of both.

That the world’s attention could be riveted on those 13 unfortunate people, that help could flow in from all corners of the globe, is in itself miraculous. We’ve gotten used to these stories, a little girl falls down a well and we will move heaven and earth to retrieve her, that the wonder of it all, that one story so captures our imaginations that it leaps out from every other shred of news, can be overlooked. But it is a wonder.

And then there was the technical cooperation required to mount the rescue, the assembling of people and equipment, the science part, the daring escape. I think about my own limited caving experiences — crawling between two large slabs of rock in the dark, the beam of my headlamp on pocked stone, thinking all the while what it would be like to be pinned between them. No wonder we marshaled every bit of expertise we could to help the youngsters.

And finally, there is the communal joy that is bigger than politics, bigger than soccer, bigger than national pride. That’s miraculous too.

(Photo: Wikipedia)