A Walker in the Suburbs

On a day that would have been Mom’s 91st birthday, I wear her earrings and a pair of socks with Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”

Mom loved that painting, and she loved the name Vincent, even gave it to her parakeet.  She was a creative person, Mom was. A lover of words and ideas. A dreamer. She would bet the house on a dream — and  did several times.

In that way she inoculated her children against risky ventures. None of us will ever start a magazine or a museum. And yet … Mom left her mark. Which is why I found a scene from the new musical La La Land so touching. It was an audition scene, when the character Mia is asked to tell the casting director a story.

Mia sings about her aunt, who lived in Paris and once jumped barefoot into the Seine. “She captured a feeling, the sky with no ceiling, sunset inside a frame.”

… So bring on the rebels, the ripples from pebbles
The painters and poets and plays.
And here’s to the ones who dream …

Here’s to you, Mom.

Here I am, back from the 18th century and (despite yesterday’s snarky post) feeling a little bereft, truth be told. It was nice back there. It was quiet. A world without cars and sirens and power tools and amplified music.

It was inspiring, too, with talk about the republic and the founders’ ideas and ideals. In fact, there was so much to see and do (and so much exercise running and walking around the place), that I happily gave up Pilates fusion.

This morning’s organ concert in the Wren Chapel featured an instrument as old as the carols being played. To sit there with the music swirling around, natural light pouring in the high windows, was to feel as far away from my suburban life as I could possibly feel three hours from home.

It was more than space travel; it was time travel, too.

I’ll admit I punted this year. Because our Christmas card features a family wedding, I figured the biggest news needed no explanation. Of course it wasn’t the only news, but I’ve been too busy working a new job to write much about it (or anything else).

But the incoming cards, ah, they’re a different matter. They come with doves and angels and Currier and Ives-like prints of snow-covered barns. They come with messages heartfelt and funny, with invocations of peace and joy. Prayers not just for us but for our country.

And then there are the messages. “Rage against the machine in 2017.” “When they go low we go Facebook.” “We live in interesting times.” “Wishing you a better 2017.” One friend said it had been such a tough year she was just sending cat pictures.

And then there was the story one friend told about his fishing trip off the Florida Panhandle. Once the captain and guide learned that he and his family were supporters of the “Nasty Woman,” he wrote, this news ignited “random guffaws among anglers and guides alike. … We were surely at the bottom of the Gulf Coast food chain. Fish bait. Yet with their friendly advice, counsel and live minnows we reeled in some edibles.”

The cards this year made me laugh and smile. They were comforting and encouraging. They were proof, I think, that we’ll all be better off if can laugh at ourselves and admit that we need each other.

So this year, instead of my usual appreciation, I’m sending this one, full of gratitude for what matters most: friendship and love. I’ll end it with a quotation from the same movie I wrote about before: “Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.”

Every year I’m more touched by our neighborhood’s light displays. The tiny fist they shake at the night — and their individual ways of doing so.

Some are fairy-tale-like — white pin lights dripping from overhangs and eaves. Others are almost garish — bright colors strung from limb to pole, like a carnival or fiesta.

There are spotlit wreaths and a blow-up nativity scene.

The key thing is that today, almost at this very instant, we turn from the darkness to the light.

Still in a post-election whirl and funk, I board the Northeast Regional for two days of interviewing in New York, the first leg of a long trip that will ultimately take me to Asia and back.

It reminds me a little of Suzanne’s departure for the Peace Corps. Though she was embarking on a  three-and-a-half-year sojourn in West Africa, her first stop was Philadelphia, where she’d have a brief orientation before shipping off to Benin.

Claire and I were the only ones in town that day so we escorted Suzanne to Union Station, tried very hard not to cry (and mostly succeeded) and waved as our precious daughter and sister made her way through the low-key boarding gate.

Only later did Suzanne tell us that a fellow passenger had come up to her and said that the size of her suitcase and the reaction of her family made him think she wasn’t just going for a quick jaunt to Philly.

I look at the travelers around me now and wonder at their final destinations. Are they, too, at the beginning of a grand journey? Where will they be this time Saturday?

I’ll be past Qatar, on my way to Jakarta and points East. Still can’t believe it’s happening. A good way for adventures to begin.

(New York City sunrise, October 25, 2016)

A perfect fall day. The trees have flamed up and light streams into the yard.

There were frost warnings, so I brought the two ferns in last night.

I was thinking when I did it about the living they’ve seen, not only this summer — the wedding, the weeding, the frantic painting of the deck furniture — but summers past, too. The smaller plant, in fact, has been around since Suzanne was a baby.

There’s no secret involved, no green thumb. The fern is a survivor; that’s all. And it looks like one, too: leggy and potbound.

After a while a plant becomes part of the family: the rumpled uncle, the delicate aunt, the crazy grandpa. Imperfect and lovable, one of our own.

Yesterday we celebrated Suzanne’s birthday at the newlywed’s house. I’ve only spent two of my oldest daughter’s last five birthdays with her — given the long sojourn in Africa — so this October 23 was cause for special celebration.

It felt like a passing of the torch. We came to her rather than the other way around. She showed us new paths for walking, the way the sun slants in her back windows, some wedding gifts they just received. There was a giant cookie rather than a cake.

But when we finally all gathered (arriving in three separate cars and one bike), there was lots of laughing and talking — while consuming great quantities nan, rice, lamb vindaloo and chicken tikka.

It’s a marvelous ride, parenthood. Not always smooth, of course, but unstinting in the possibilities it provides for  surprise and gratitude and joy.

Sometimes when I can’t sleep I wander into Suzanne’s old room, where there’s a four-poster rope bed that I made up using Mom’s quilt and pillow shams after my last trip to Kentucky. It’s the same room where I’ve stored a lot of her jewelry, papers and photographs. I’ve whiled away many wee hours in there lately, reading and thinking, remembering her last days and hours.

Today marks a year. While it’s been a full one in most senses of that word — personally, socially, politically — it seems little more than an instant since she died. Like the flipping of a switch or the turning of a dial, it’s another world I live in now.

It’s difficult to understand this new world in a few weeks or even in 52. The strangeness of it constantly surprises me. But there is one surety: I know she’s at peace now, and that brings some comfort.

As for the long nights, when I get drowsy again I turn off the light and snuggle into the covers, her covers.  I feel her presence there in the dark, and finally, finally, I can sleep.

Twelve years ago I went to work in an office. I’m still not sure exactly why. I was busy as a freelance writer and had started teaching, too. But the magazine business was changing, and I felt isolated and creatively stuck. So I opted for camaraderie and a steady paycheck.

The work I have now challenges my mind, fills my days and even sends me out into the world every few months. I’m grateful for it. But that doesn’t means the years aren’t passing — and that time, the only currency we have, is dwindling more quickly than I’d like.

I’m resisting the temptation to add “A Slave” to this post title. That would be a cheap shot. But there are times (many times) when I miss the freelance freedom I used to have. And there are days (many days) when the words I write here are the lifeline, what gets me through.