A Walker in the Suburbs

I usually write here of things I’ve seen. Today I write of something I didn’t see. As the shuttle Discovery made its graceful curtain call on D.C. the day before yesterday, I was sitting in my office, preoccupied with matters I thought were more important. It wasn’t that I couldn’t get away. It was that I didn’t. I hadn’t known how visible the shuttle would be. Some folks even spied it from the roof of the tallest building on campus.

A few minutes before 11 a.m., Suzanne called: “Mom, I see it. It’s flying right over me on 66. Cars are pulling off on the shoulder. It looks like a dolphin on top of a whale.” We didn’t talk long. I kept imagining how she was gazing at the shuttle, driving the car and talking on the phone at the same time.

Yesterday’s paper was full of photographs and quotations. People waited hours to see the spacecraft. It’s the end of an era, they said. They imagined all the miles the Discovery had logged, the places it had been. They felt privileged to witness its last flight.

After I took myself to task for missing this spectacle, I tried to think positively. There’s no way to go back. So how to move forward? Here’s what I came up with: The world is rich and full of possibilities. But it will shrink to a pinhole if I let worries and obligations overwhelm me. The next time I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I’ll take it.

photo courtesy NASA vis Georgetown Law Facebook page

Once a year in March (or, if we’re lucky, in April, too) I watch University of Kentucky basketball. I’m not a very good spectator, perhaps because I’m such a fair-weather one, tuning in only when my home team is in the NCAA finals. Last night I was so nervous that Kansas would pull off one of their trademark last-minute wins that I kept switching back to an American Masters program on To Kill a Mockingbird. This is the way an English major watches a sporting event.

To be a Kentucky fan (of which I am only the very mildest sort) means never to root for the underdog. Since I usually pull for the horse with high odds, the Olympic hopeful just shy of glory, this is an unusual position in which to find myself. Over and over again last night I heard commentators expound on how Kansas could still pull this off. Even in the last minute, they talked about the combination of three-point shots and carefully timed free-throw opportunities that could give them a victory.

Usually I like this talk, the come-from-behind excitement that makes life worth living. But last night I was all for sure and steady, for steeling one’s nerves and sticking to it. Last night, I was rooting for the overdog, the team that was expected to bring home the trophy. It faces the greater pressure. And when it wins, the victory is sweet.

Photo of Kentucky coach John Calipari, College Hoops Video.

The solar flare did not disrupt airplane travel or satellite communication, but it did create enough gravitational pull to allow our broom to stand up on its own. I missed seeing the real thing, had to content myself with this photo that my family took yesterday mid-afternoon.

It brings to mind the movie “Fantasia,” the dancing broom that Mickey used to help him fill the well. His broom becomes manic, demonic, as it spins and dances to the music of Dukas’ “Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” I can hear the melody in my mind now, its accelerando and crescendo, its sense of abandonment, of spinning out of control.

Our broom didn’t dance. But it did stand. That’s “Fantasia” enough for me.

It comes only once every four years, this bonus day, this leap day, this tag-along. What can I do with its extra minutes and hours?

I don’t need to ask myself this question. I know what I’ll do. The same thing I do with all the others. Work, family, reading through the long commute, a walk if I can work one in.

The key is not to make this day special. It’s to make this day make all the others so.

As any parent knows, a child’s second birthday is not quite as big a deal as her first. And so we come to February 7, 2012, the second anniversary of A Walker in the Suburbs. It’s a more low-key event than last year’s celebration, but I can’t let it go unsung.

There are 612 posts here — that ‘s about 600 more than I thought I’d write when I began this blog during “Snowmageddon,” the great blizzard of 2010.

As it begins year three, A Walker in the Suburbs continues to ripple ever so slowly into cyberspace. I know I should gussy up the old template, add some bells and whistles to attract more followers to the site. (And speaking of followers, I accidentally erased that feature last year and haven’t found a way to add it again.) But adding followers (though delightful when it happens) is not my only aim.

I started the blog as an exercise in daily writing, a way to look beneath the surface of the suburban world I live in to the channels and eddies and springs underneath. Sometimes I do this by walking and reflecting upon what I see. Sometimes I do it by writing about what I’ve read or noticed in the course of daily living. Sometimes I get to the place I’m seeking; other times, I miss it by a mile.

It still seems an act of extreme hubris to post my thoughts in a forum for everyone to see. That I do so is either proof that I’m learning to embrace technology — or the opposite, that I can’t imagine my words going beyond the screen of my laptop.

Whatever the case, they do, and you’re here. I’m glad we found each other.

The perihelion is the day that earth is closest to the sun. This year it occurred on January 5.

That we are closest to the sun in the winter throws my nonscientific mind into a tailspin. If we are closest to the sun, then why is it cold? Because earth’s distance from the sun is not what causes the seasons. It’s the tilt of the earth on its axis that does that, and in winter the northern hemisphere tilts away from the sun.

Ahh, I get it. Sort of. Anyway, it’s the metaphorical aspect of this that strikes me most. That all through the cold, dark months we’re closest to the star that gives us life — I like to think about this. It gives me comfort.

The balmy temperatures of the last few weeks mean that cherry trees are blossoming and daffodils are peaking through the soil. Worries about global warming aside, it’s a nice way to greet the new year — with new growth, new life.

As I write, sun pours through the kitchen window making rainbows through a prism. We still have the holiday place mats, candles and poinsettia on the table and the Christmas tree lights up a normally dark corner of the living room. There is, then, a feeling of fullness.

I just came in from a brisk walk through the neighborhood. Resolutions are wafting through my head. I’m surrounded by people I love. So all is well this first morning of 2012.