A Walker in the Suburbs

Sometimes after dinner I slip out the garage door and walk down the street for a few minutes. Unlike my daytime walks, which require tennis shoes, sunglasses and earphones, these impromptu strolls are completely come-as-you-are. I walk toward the sunset, which is better viewed from the open area at the end of our street. And I walk slowly, meditatively. The point is not to move quickly through the landscape but to let the landscape seep into me. I pass two split-levels, four colonials, three flagpoles, two front porches (one of them brand-new) and our community meadow. Sometimes the stars are peeping out of the darkening sky. Before I know it, I’ve come to a house where the light shines yellow through the front windows, a house with a small grove of oak and holly in the front yard. It’s for this that I’ve walked — for our house, in perspective.

Yesterday I flew home. Claire was at the airport with a bouquet of flowers, Celia was back at the house, just home from school. The best part of being back: seeing their sweet faces. Tom flies in today; he took the slow way back to Stockholm, from Vienna by train.

This morning I woke early–traveling west will do that to you–and for a moment I didn’t know where I was. The funky hotel near Arlanda Airport outside Stockholm? the Simony Guesthouse overlooking the Hallstatt Zee? the thickly walled medieval Pension Adelbart in Czesky Krumlov? the hotel on the Weiner Haupstrasse only a few minutes walk from Suzanne in Vienna? the hostel in Prague (the less said about that, the better–we’re too old for hostels, we’ve learned)? the lovely lakeside home of Dan and Ann-Katrin? None of those, but our own familiar room in our cluttered two-story colonial.

It was early enough that I had time for a walk before staring the day. It was just lightening when I left the house and bats darted across the sky in search of their last snacks before bedtime. The Virginia air hangs heavy. It is summer in the suburbs. I’m home.

I’ve lived in Virginia for 21 years. It’s where we’re raising our children, where we work and have friends. But sometimes I yearn not for the home I live in now, but for the home of my youth. So two days ago, Claire and I headed west on I-66, toward the foothills of the Blue Ridge, past the broad, beautiful Shenandoah Valley and into the great heart of this country. We drove through Mooresville and Elkins and Charleston and Huntington and Winchester and, finally, into Lexington. This is horse country: white fences and rolling hills. It’s a land of big meadows and few trees. But on this visit I’ve found myself looking down at the earth and the first few snowdrops of spring. It’s the Kentucky soil I romped and played on as a child, and I need to touch it every so often. The green grass of home.