A Walker in the Suburbs

Yesterday’s National Press Club workshop reminds me how much I love the company of writers. Talking shop was a great way to end the week.

After my panel ended a second one convened, this one on social media. I meant to stay. The crowd was buzzing and the speakers seemed fabulous. But it was Friday afternoon, downtown D.C. was beckoning and (this will sound very fifth-grade of me) I really really wanted to be outside.

No matter. Live tweets from the panel, a twitter chat at work, and the fact that I spent an hour mining tweets from last month’s summit in Bangkok so I can write about it have all made the case.

Seems that there’s a little Twitter bird following me these days, tugging at my sleeve, and he won’t let go until I give him what he wants.

I had no sooner lugged the rocking chair out to the deck when the sprinkles began. Not enough to drive me inside except for the delicate piece of machinery on my lap. But there was a delicate piece of machinery on my lap, so in I came, along with laptop and rocking chair.

Now, of course, the rain has stopped, though the air feels heavy and humid. 

It’s looking like an indecisive day. Will I do housework or brain work? My own stuff or work-work? Will I walk or row? Be efficient or lazy?

Maybe I’ll do a little of each, a bit of all.

On an indecisive day, that’s only to be expected.

My dear friend Kay celebrates her birthday on January 2. I always feel for her, since her special day comes when everyone goes back to work after the holidays.

Today I’m in a similar boat. May 31, always the afterthought day when I was a kid, the day after Memorial Day, is in exactly the same spot this year — with the added ballast of being a back-to-work-after-a-long-weekend day, too.

But this is fine. A stealth birthday is what I’m after (though mentioning it in a  blog post can hardly be called “stealth”).  Maybe Father Time will be too busy driving home from Ocean City to slap another year on me.

Even if he does, though, I won’t complain. It is, after all, another year to embrace.

The airport will be busy. I could spend the whole morning on the back side of the office, watching the planes take off and land. Or I could look right behind my building at the train tracks. They’re mostly for freight lines but carry the odd passenger car or two. The rails will be humming today, too.

And don’t even get me started on the roads. The big story on the all-news radio this week was that the worst day to drive out of the second worst traffic city in the United States before a long weekend isn’t Friday but Thursday. I was driving west on a major highway last evening — and I would agree.

So as tempting as it might be to flee, I’m looking forward to staying in my own backyard — which I’m overlooking right now, sipping tea and listening to the crows call.

Today, on what would have been Dad’s 93rd birthday, I’ll attend a Mass that’s being said for him in my parish church. I reserved this date not long after his passing, had to book it about 20 months in advance. Dad would get a kick out of this. “I guess they give priority to the Catholics,” he’d say. (He was not one!)

Thinking of all the funny things Dad said to me growing up, the gentle religious humor. “Just tell ’em it’s your father’s feast day,” he’d suggest, deadpan, when I didn’t want to go to school.  We always got a holiday on the feast day of our pastor and principal, Father O’Neill.

It was the humor of an agnostic. Only Dad pulled a fast one. At the end of his life he reverted to the Methodism of his youth, went to church most Sundays. When I was in town, I would go with him, reveling in his rich baritone as he belted out the hymns he learned as a kid.

Was he hedging his bets by returning to church? Not Dad. It wasn’t out of fear that he returned, I think, but out of love. He was a deeply grateful man. I imagine he was saying a lot of “thank-you’s.” Today I’ll be doing the same.

Late last week I accepted an offer for a new job.  In less than two weeks I will be leaving this office, these colleagues, this way of being.

I started my magazine writing career as a freelancer and always feel like one at heart. So one way to view this job change is as a shift of clients. But to be honest with myself, I know it’s much, more more.

A workplace has its way with you. Its dynamics become your dynamics; its mood your mood.  There is no way to erase the fact that one spends many hours a day in one’s place of employ. So when a little voice started telling me that it was time to move on, and when that little voice got louder and louder, refused to be silenced, I had no choice but to listen.

It wasn’t easy to listen at first. At times it was downright painful.

And when I finally did, what I found was possibility.  An old friend, greatly missed and warmly welcomed.

Our Irish name came from Dad, but our Irish identity came from Mom. She was proud to say she had as much Irish blood in her veins as someone from the old sod. And as a matter of fact, she did — she hailed from three generations of inbred Irish stock.

Long before everyone wore green to celebrate the day, Mom would pin a ittle velour shamrock on my school uniform (which was, conveniently, a green plaid). I was the only one of my friends who wore such a thing. (And this in a school of Bryants and Welches.)

But it got the point across: We were Irish — we were passionate people, impractical people, people with heart. We loved a good tune, though not so much a good pint. We loved the green hills and  fields of Ireland; we liked to think we embodied its soul.

Later on, I would learn that had we some of the less attractive traits of the island nation: a certain clannishness and suspicion. We would live through a punishing family feud.

But still, on St. Patrick’s Day, and especially on this one — the first without Mom — I raise my glass to the spirit of the place we came from. Erin go Bragh!

Union Station is one of those grand front doors, a place that’s meant to be exited. Walk beneath the arched portico and glimpse the Capitol before you.

While your peripheral vision takes in the comings and goings of a bustling depot — the cab queue, the travelers with wheeled bags, the buses and cars heading around the drive — what you see first is the Capitol dome.

I was remembering yesterday the first time I walked out the doors of Union Station. I’d arrived from Kentucky with a bunch of other eighth-graders. Some of us were staying in D.C. and others were taking a bus to New York City.

I was in the latter group — by choice, I might add. Even then, the Big Apple beckoned. But when I walked out of Union Station and saw the Capitol, I had to catch my breath. There was the city’s icon visible within minutes of arrival. There was a place I’d seen pictures of in textbooks but never imagined seeing in real life.

Yesterday I walked by this spot again. I stopped and thought about the twists and turns and decisions that brought me here. What circuitous paths our lives take. Would we have it any other way?

Today the red oak that shaded the sandbox, up which a large tiger-striped cat was once stuck for hours — that tree is coming down. It joins more of its compatriots than I’d care to count. Victims of age and drought; well loved and much mourned.

The old oak won’t be the day’s only casualty. A split tree at the back of the lot is losing its lesser half. A huge branch we call the Sword of Damocles will finally meet its match. And the Venus de Milo of the backyard, our limbless wonder, will also be axed.

All of this is sad to me, of course. I love the deep and deeply shaded back yard. I think of all it’s seen, every baby and toddler it’s entertained. All the cook-outs and birthday parties it’s hosted. I think of the zip wire once strung across it, the swing set and trampoline. 

The backyard was one of the main things that sold us on the house. It’s one of the lot’s most attractive features. But the trees have died, as have many throughout the neighborhood. And though dead trees give owls a home and woodpeckers a job, they don’t exactly enhance the landscape.

And so, down the trees come, down to be cut up and carted away. There’s only one thing left to say: Timber!

There is no reason to associate crows with March, but for some reason I do. There is something in their caws that speaks of the mottled blue skies of this month, of the air that is still cold but smells of just turned earth.

Heard in a chorus, crows sound busily out of sorts, the avian equivalent of a coffee klatch. But heard in single caws, the bird sounds plaintive, his song a bleak and windswept tune.

Which is why, when I hear a crow on a cloudy March morning, I think of Thomas Hardy:

This is the weather the shepherd shuns,
And so do I;
When beeches drip in browns and duns,
And thresh and ply;
And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,
And meadow rivulets overflow,
And drops on gate bars hang in a row,
And rooks in families homeward go,
And so do I.