A Walker in the Suburbs

Yesterday: a walk at lunchtime. A still morning with just enough warmth in the air that I only wear a sweatshirt — but just enough chill in the air that I wish I had worn more. In my ears, Vivaldi, “The Four Seasons.” In my head: thoughts of the tragedy in Japan, “thoughts that lie too deep for words.” The multiple catastrophes, the layered ironies — they are almost too much to comprehend.

Some offers of help have come with a statement saying that this is not Japan’s disaster alone; that it belongs to the world community, that we will all help however we can. With the worsening news of nuclear explosions and meltdowns the disaster may yet belong to all of us. But it belongs first of all to the Japanese people, and what I find most heartbreaking is their stoicism and dignity. To say that we pray for them is a given. Would it help to say we can’t stop thinking about them, that those of us on safe, dry ground (if there is such a thing) are crying for them?

A long walk this weekend made me catch my breath. Everywhere I looked were green shoots, tremulous buds. High up in the woods, a pinkish haze of near-budding boughs. Every year I notice this: that for trees, spring starts at the top. Reckoned by calendar and temperature it is still winter, but the lengthening days, the bold plants reasserting themselves, the warmth in the air — all these speak to a shoulder season of green promise and yellow possibility. A season in its own right, a season of potential — almost-spring.

A Walker in the Suburbs was about a month old when a well meaning friend asked,”So how many people visit each day?” It was a good question and I didn’t have the slightest idea how to answer it.

But I would soon find out.

This was before Google provided its own viewer statistics right on the blog, so I signed up with something called StatCounter, a very humane outfit out of Ireland that displays stats on page loads and “uniques” (as we cognoscenti call them!) and will break down results into days, weeks or “fortnights” (that and the fact that it’s an Irish company instantly endeared them to me).

So I would check StatCounter in the evening to see how each post was doing. And then I started glancing at StatCounter once or twice during the day, too. It reminded me of the months after my book came out, when I visited Amazon.com daily (hourly?) to see where Parents Who Think Too Much was ranked. That became an obsession too, for a while.

As you might imagine, all this checking and re-checking did little for my creative fervor. In fact, it was completely counterproductive. I began Walker to shake loose the shackles of editorial judgment — and here I was imposing something even worse on myself, a minute-by-minute tally of the ether.

I don’t check StatCounter or Google Analytics anymore. I write, submit and forget (or try to!). I hope someone is reading my posts, I hope many people are, but with billions of blogs in the world, I have no illusions.

Yesterday at lunchtime I took a 20 minute walk to clear my head. The rain had stopped, the sun had come out, birds were singing. I felt a bit guilty, thinking about friends and family shivering in the ice and snow elsewhere, but those feelings didn’t last long. It felt good to be walking, not sliding. And the air had a freshness to it that was born of quick thawing and the faint scent of soil. The warmth drew people from their office buildings.

It reminded me of our trip to Vienna last spring when cold rainy mornings would give way to warm afternoons. The minute the sun appeared the Viennese would be eating ice cream cones. The two events were so simultaneous that advance planning seemed to be involved. How else could the ice-cream eaters have stood in line, bought their cones and already been enjoying them the minute the weather changed?

I never figured this out. But on my sun-splashed walk yesterday I decided it was further proof of human adaptability and the powerful influence of our nearest star.

Some of these cold mornings the sun seems reluctant to rise. It is faraway and wan. But other days it reddens the horizon. It is the only color in a monochromatic winter landscape. Those are the days when I’m glad to have a camera.

Ice, snow, freezing rain, bone-chilling cold — any one or several of these have kept Mom from celebrating birthdays with her family. “Can you imagine a worse day for a birthday?” she has always said. Maybe not, but neither can I imagine her with any other. The day and the person have become one. Which means that February 1 is a day of wisdom for me, a day of buoyant conversation. An incomparable and splendid day.

As the first day of the month, February 1 is a natural leader — and this is another way the day and the woman mirror each other, since Mom has founded two magazines and now, at an age when many people dwell only on what they cannot do, she is starting a museum.

One year when I was a high school English teacher with summers off, Mom and I traveled through Europe and the British Isles together. We took separate flights and Mom arrived ahead of me. She found her way into London, booked us into a quirky B&B and by the time I walked into Victoria Station was standing right where we said we’d meet, under the clock. I’ll never forget that glimpse of Mom; she was younger than I am now and looked so eager and hopeful, so completely herself. It was as if I had seen her as a young woman, before marriage and motherhood and grown-up cares. Though I’m a middle-aged woman with grown-up cares of my own now, I have never outgrown our closeness. I never will. Happy Birthday, Mom.

My brother Phillip and I were talking about the mood-altering power of a good laugh when something I said reminded him of a scene in the movie “This is Spinal Tap.” He popped the movie into his DVD player. We watched, chuckling so hard we almost doubled over. I think of the medicinal power of “Seinfeld” episodes (we all have our favorites, the Soup Nazi, the marble rye) and of the long-ago experiment of Norman Cousins, who kept cancer at bay by making himself laugh long and loud.

This photo makes me laugh whenever I look at it. There’s a street in Lexington, Kentucky, called “The Lane.” It’s a very exclusive enclave, the sort of place that sniffs at actually needing a street name. Until recently the city went along with it; the street sign simply said “The Lane.” But the new signs require some sort of designation to be printed in small type beneath the name. And that means that The Lane, that once la-de-da thoroughfare, is now a street called “The.”

Every time I see this picture I have to laugh. Comic relief on a cold, gray morning.

Some religions have household gods, mostly beneficent (occasionally mischievous) beings who look over the house and bless it with their presence. For nine years we have had such a creature in our house — our parakeet, Hermes, who died Saturday. He had never known a day of sickness and lived a most happy life. And because of him, we were happier, too.

When we bought Hermes for $17 from the local pet store, Suzanne was in seventh grade and had hours to spend with the baby bird. She coaxed him gently onto her finger, moving her hand ever so slowly up to her face so she could look at him eye to eye. His little striped head bobbed up and down as he sidestepped back and forth on her finger. Suzanne liked to mother Hermes and every night would read him the story “Goodnight Moon.” Before he was a year old, Hermes began saying the words “goodnight” and “moon.” Later, more confident, he strung together “goodnight” with “Hermes.” Soon he added new words to his repertoire, “I love you” and “good morning.”

Our house was livelier in those days. The phone was forever ringing, the radio was blaring, children were bouncing balls and skating through the kitchen. All was chaos and Hermes was in his heaven, bobbing above it all in a wire cage suspended from the ceiling.

The children grew up and entered their own lives, but Hermes remained, talking, singing and sneezing (he learned to mimic a human sneeze — apparently we sneeze so much that he thought it was our call). Hermes chirped when he heard the garage or front door open, or when the water was running in the sink. All these noises he knew intimately, because they brought people to his side — his flock, his family.

Maybe it’s because he could talk, but there was just something about Hermes, the way he cooed when we were close together, his intellect and his emotions, that made us love him all the more. And he was such a plucky little guy. Even his last day with us he was still chirping and sneezing and ringing his bell. Hermes weighed only a few ounces but he filled the house with his love. It is quiet without him.

Because of Hermes, I have a higher opinion of all animals, especially parakeets. Because of him, I listen carefully to the sounds of our house. Because of him, I have developed the habit of looking up. Hermes lived longer than I ever dreamed he would. But he didn’t live long enough. 

Many remember to feed the birds; Tom remembers to water them. He rigged up a bowl of water on top of a covered light bulb, which provides just enough heat to keep the water from freezing.

The birds vote with their feet, er, wings. They fly here from all over the neighborhood, mostly junkos and jays this morning, but other types on other days. Our backyard is an avian watering hole, with all the chirps and flappings and quiet busyness that entails. So much for suet and thistle. In this frozen season birds need liquid sustenance, too. They cannot survive on seed alone.

On the subject of holiday cheer: It is hard to summon sometimes. This year we are missing Tom’s Aunt Mary Ann and dealing with other sadness. Our tree isn’t up yet because we’re waiting for the girls to come home from college. Bad weather and postponed finals may delay their arrival. It’s easy to find the shopping, cards, baking and wrapping more demanding than other chores because they require false gaiety. How to lighten the heavy heart?

Here is today’s plan: I exercised early; it helps clears the cobwebs. I scoured the counter and threw out three days worth of old newspapers. I’ll work; intellectual effort takes me out of myself. I’ll make our favorite cookies today, the ones that melt in your mouth. I’ll pray; that goes without saying. Most of all I will be grateful for all we have, which is much, so much.