A Walker in the Suburbs

“How do you like to go up in a swing
Up in the air so blue.
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!”

Robert Louis Stevenson

I love the little poem in A Child’s Garden of Verses from which these lines are drawn. I recited it on stage at age six and read it often to our girls when they were young. Lines from it pop into my head whenever I go “up in a swing” myself.

Maybe it’s the residual kid in me but I still like to swing. There’s something about moving through the air, seeing the landscape from such a moveable perch, that is uniquely satisfying. Movement enhances vision, I suppose.

Of course, swinging doesn’t come as easily as it used to. It isn’t that I can’t pump my legs or move my arms. It’s that swinging gives me motion sickness. After a few minutes I have to hop off until the world stops spinning.

But the pleasure is worth the pain. There are few activitiess that provide as direct a link to childhood as this one. So I found a two-swing set in a neighborhood to our south. It’s tucked away in the woods (notice I’m not divulging the exact location), and it does not have a ridiculous sign like this one. There I can swing to my heart’s content and my head’s tolerance. Which means about, oh, five minutes or so.

Oprah Magazine used to contain a double-page spread photograph of a windswept beach or mountain peak or other natural scene. It was called “Breathing Space.” I loved the photos and I loved the concept. The generous bestowal of two pages with no advertising, no text, just a picture. It really was a breathing space.
Maye I’m just missing it, but I don’t see “Breathing Space” in Oprah anymore. So today I offer my own breathing space. Pause here a minute to catch your breath.

We haven’t fed the birds since we brought our dog, Copper, home from the Loudoun County Humane Society three years ago. Copper is part border collie, part basset hound. While he’s never harassed our beloved parakeet Hermes (who’s always in his cage, swinging from a hook in the kitchen), he does love to chase small critters in the backyard. But the snow and ice have been so brutal for wild birds that we’ve thrown some seed on the table and the deck railing. We’ve mostly had junkos, little gray things with a flash of white under their tails, so brave in the face of cold and ice, hopping the snowbanks on their little stick legs. As I watch them from the kitchen window, I think of how winter opens our eyes to what is usually hidden. It is, in that sense, the true season of renewal.

Four days off work can set the mind to spinning, and one of the best ways to let it wander is to watch icicles as they drip and grow. Like the waves of the ocean they offer constant movement, but it is a quiet motion.
Some of the icicles are smooth and others striated. The ribbed ones glitter more brightly in the sun. I soon develop favorites. My eyes are first drawn to the largest icicle, the showoff, but to its right is a more demure pair, whose beauty now is purely positional – they are the best poised to reflect the sun. I’m also partial to the newest ones, the babies, slender and new and full of possibility.
As I stare out the window and ponder the nature of the icicle, Tom worries about our roof. Why do we have more icicles than our neighbors have, he worries. I remind him that we’ve had them before. We talk about ice dams and structural integrity and all that sort of stuff. Then he walks out of the room, and I’m back to musing. The icicle is a vertical feature in a horizontal world. It’s a way to enjoy winter without leaving the house. As I’ve been writing, the sun has climbed higher in the sky. Now all the icicles are glittering.