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Category: events

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) 

From a Distance

From a Distance

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As the country grows ever more politicized, reading the newspaper becomes an ever more fraught occupation.

I could dive right into op-eds supporting my views, and I often do, but today I didn’t want the echo chamber. I wanted what we don’t have, proof of wise heads.

So instead, I looked deep inside the front section. There was an article on how Congo has controlled Ebola: a sorely needed good-news story. Of all the nations in the world, Congo is the best at tracking the disease. One seldom hears that any African nation is “best at” at anything, so this was doubly good.

Then there was a bizarre piece on strife and lawsuits in the Buzz Aldrin family. His children think he’s losing it, so they have seized assets. He’s suing to have them back.

Buzz Aldrin, the article reminds us, is the second man to walk on the moon. He once described it as having a “magnificent desolation.”

Thanks to this phrase, I’m lifted beyond the Supreme Court decisions and retirements and the upcoming meeting with Putin. I’m looking at the blue marble. In my head, words to the song “From a Distance”:

From a distance the world looks blue and green
And the snow capped mountains white
From a distance the ocean meets the stream
And the eagle takes to flight
From a distance there is harmony
And it echoes through the land
It’s the voice of hope
It’s the voice of peace
It’s the voice of every man…

Lucky Thirteen

Lucky Thirteen

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Just because we had a triple crown winner three years ago doesn’t make Justify’s victory in the Belmont on Saturday any less impressive. He was only the 13th horse to achieve such a feat in the last century. The first was  in 1919, there were three in the 1930s, four in the 1940s, three in the 1970s … then a 37 year drought till American Pharoah won in 2015.

Justify’s jockey, Mike Smith, says the colt has an “old soul.” Not sure about that, but the horse was subtle, sneaking up on us in the midst of other exciting spots news. The Stanley Cup finals, the NBA finals, the French Open, the World Cup. But he didn’t come from behind to win. He led all the way around the mile-and-a-half track, and he made it look easy, which is how all great champions do it.

Celia and I watched the race together in the basement, and we were both whooping and hollering. I like to think I schooled my girls in the important things of life: the thrill of horse racing, especially when a Triple Crown is at stake; the importance of hard work; and the need for enthusiasm.  Especially the latter.

(Photo: This low-res pic made possible by Wikipedia)

Good Night, John Boy

Good Night, John Boy

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I’m remembering Mother’s Days of the past, including my first as a mother, which was also my first day in the Virginia house.  I can remember another a few years later, including a meal at a now-defunct restaurant when the cleaning crew started sweeping around our table mid-meal because the girls had made such a mess — and we swore we wouldn’t eat out again as a family for at least 10 years.

I can remember so many other Mother’s Days with my own dear mother, and how I would sometimes have breakfast with her and dinner with my daughters.

Yesterday I hung out all day with the girls, laughing over old times and new times, buying and planting flowers, sipping Mimosas, sharing laughs and eating way too much yummy food. One of the highlights was when Celia unveiled this Mother’s Day card, riffing on my fave show (from eons ago), the Walton’s — complete with Capehart stand-ins (including dogs and cats). We roared over this one!

Feeling so grateful this morning, so thankful that these smart, funny, beautiful young women are my daughters.

Lesson in Resilience

Lesson in Resilience

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Martin Luther King “ran out of certainty but never faith.” This from an op-ed in today’s Washington Post. In it, Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick remind us that King had become unpopular by 1968. There was a great weariness in him. But there was also resilience. It’s the resilience we need to remember now.

One of the great surprises to me in all the MLK coverage this month is to realize how young he was: only 39 years old when he was assassinated 50 years ago today. Perhaps it was the weight of the weariness that made him look older than his years.

Here’s Kendrick and Kendrick again: “Fifty years later, it would look too familiar to the King of 1968 to see our continued economic inequality, hawkishness, backlash to civil rights gains, and racist violence from Charleston to Charlottesville. His response then was to resist exhaustion from the deluge of issues and to enlarge his work instead, hold firm his insistence.”

King’s insistence, his persistence, his grace under pressure, is a lesson to us all.

Easter Monday

Easter Monday

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Easter has its own rhythm, different from Christmas or Thanksgiving. Church comes first.

Yesterday, through some miracle of timing, Suzanne arrived only minutes after we did, which meant she could park her ambrosia salad, backpack, running tights and jogging shoes in the car and slide into the seat we saved in the big sanctuary.

The sermon was more honest than others I recall. It was as if the priest was trying to convince himself of the significance of the empty tomb. His conclusion: there must be something to it, because of all the good people we know who are gone, and because of the incompleteness of life.

A cynic — heck, even a realist — could easily counter these arguments. Of course, there are good people in the world, but that doesn’t mean there’s a God and an afterlife. As for incompleteness, that’s why we have irony.

But I was touched at the honest homily. The priest is one I’ve seen for years, and he looked noticeably older this year, walked with a cane. Maybe he’s working out some things in his own mind. Whatever the case, I appreciated his candor.

In the end, he said, it all comes down to faith.

And so it does.


(Detail from the Cambodian monastery at Lumbini, birthplace of the Buddha)

A Woman, Writing

A Woman, Writing

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This morning I passed a woman in the lobby. She was sitting in a chair, writing in her journal.

Not tapping on her phone, not scrolling down the tiny screen. But engaged with the paper and the pen.

I noticed this not only because I believe in it and practice it, but because it is so rare.

When you address the page, the page does not talk back to you. It absorbs your words, the wise and the silly. It gives you space, a blank expanse without spell-check or word complete. For that reason, it is serene, even empowering.

Today is International Woman’s Day. I just wrote and posted a story to celebrate it. But when I think of Woman’s Day 2018, what I’ll keep in mind is not a year of marches and #metoo. It’s the quiet communion of writer and page. It’s the image of a woman writing.

(Pensive, a painting by Edmund Blair Leighton)

Many Questions, No Answers

Many Questions, No Answers

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It’s a Monday that doesn’t feel like a Monday, and I’ve been reading about the Parkland shooting, listening to the young voices, learning about the cracks that Nicholas Cruz slipped through.

That we starve social services of the funds they need to help the mentally ill is a given. That our nation is awash in guns is another given. And then there are the deeper causes, the values we no longer hold dear, the center that no longer holds.

How to bind these wounds? How to mend these broken hearts? Especially when solutions are labeled liberal or conservative, and when those labels prevent us from talking honestly about what has happened and what can be done.

How to come together for the common good?

I fear we’ve forgotten how.