A Walker in the Suburbs

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.

I can remember a time when sleep lasted eight hours, when nighttime was a clear barrier between one day and the next. But for many years now I can count on patchwork sleep at least a couple nights a week.

Sometimes I pop up, ready for the day — only the day is still night. I take full responsibility for this restiveness and have all sorts of strategies (occasionally successful) to counteract it.

But other times I wake up due to — ahem — environmental factors — the primary of which is having a teenager in the house. This teenager may not go to bed until 2 a.m. if she has a lot of homework. And sometimes she gets hungry after midnight so she cooks. During the summer, when we have two or three daughters at home the shower is as likely to be running at midnight as it is at noon.

In other words, for the last few years our house has come to resemble a 24-hour hotel, a full-service establishment with round-the-clock service. I love our house, I love our kids. But I’m exhausted.

I don’t remember exactly when I first heard this day described as Black Friday, but it couldn’t have been more than 10 years ago. Since then the commercial has steadily encroached on the celebratory to the point where sales start only a couple of hours after the dishes are dried and the leftovers put away.

Don’t get me wrong: I like bargains. And this day has always been the traditional start of the Christmas season. But the marketplace rules us so much anyway that I resent its claiming any more turf.

So when others were out scoring bargains I was sleeping. And now that the day is more than half over I’m just writing a post.

It’s a freaky Friday.

Just as we gravitate to candidates or causes because we already know and like what they have to offer us, so too do we choose books because we expect them to reflect a world view — or a hunch — we already have.

And so it is with The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. I remember reading a review of this book when it came out a few months ago and wanting to buy it immediately. But I forgot the title and the author. This is a telling fact. Because the subtitle of the book is What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.

I was hoping to find in this book an explanation for why it seems more difficult for me to concentrate, why I interrupt my reading or writing constantly throughout the day to check e-mail or Google a word. And I’m finding that and so much more.

“Our use of the Internet involves many paradoxes, but the one that promises to have the greatest long-term influence over how we think is this one: the Net seizes our attention only to scatter it.” Carr cites brain studies and other research to support his claims. He provides an intellectual history of the reading brain. And he reaches this conclusion: “The mind of the experienced book reader is a calm mind, not a buzzing one.”

So it may be that I chose this book because I knew it would support a theory about the world I already have. But even so, this once-calm but now-buzzing brain thinks Carr is onto something.

Last night I watched the film “Young at Heart.” It’s about a chorus of senior citizens who find in communal singing a joyous antidote to growing old. The singers started out crooning vaudeville tunes, but their director keeps pushing them artistically until they can belt out rock and punk and Motown – everything from “Schizophrenia” to “I Feel Good.”

As the movie progresses its tone becomes more serious; mortality bears down hard. Two of the singers die a week before a big concert. They leave a huge hole in the chorus. But the others decide to go on. Their absent friends would want it that way. The last scene is the group on stage, singing their hearts out. Because of the music, they are “forever young.”

Watching this movie brought to mind a hymn, one that Pete Seeger made famous:

My life flows on in endless song:
Above earth’s lamentation,
I catch the sweet, tho’ far-off hymn
That hails a new creation.
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul–
How can I keep from singing?

You know you are removed from a war when literature is what it brings to mind. But such is the case with World War I, which ended 92 years ago today.

I think first of All Quiet on the Western Front, a book I read so long ago but which saddens me still: “He fell in October, 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.

He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.”

And I think of the poets, their modern disillusionment stuffed to overflowing into the restrained stanzas of formal rhymed verse:

“If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.”

This poem is by Wilfred Owen. He died in France — a week before the Armistice was signed.