A Walker in the Suburbs

Yesterday I met a 98-year-old man who is still practicing law, the fifth generation of his family to do so in his North Carolina hometown. He and his (slightly) younger wife had driven five hours to attend a reunion, and after a luncheon for 50-year (and 50-year-plus!) graduates, the man took the microphone and sang the Georgetown fight song in a strong, clear baritone.

As it turns out, the man is the great grandson of Stephen A. Douglas, of Lincoln-Douglas debate fame. My recall on this being a bit shaky, I just read the Wikipedia entry on these debates. There were seven of them, held in various towns in Illinois, as Lincoln challenged the incumbent Douglas for the U.S. senate seat. The debates covered big topics, especially slavery, of course, and they were so important that newspapers sent stenographers to take down every word the men said. But the newspapers that were for Douglas edited his words and left Lincoln’s in rough form — and vice versa for the newspapers that supported Lincoln. After he lost the election, Lincoln cleaned up all the text of the debates and published it in a book. The book’s popularity helped lead to Lincoln’s nomination as Republican candidate for president of the United States.

And just to think, I learned all this because of a little old man at a luncheon.

Six years ago today I went to work in an office again after a 17-year freelance career. It was 2004, the girls were all in school (grades, 4, 8 and 10) and I needed a change. Some people can spin stories out of their imaginations and never need the rough and tumble of the world to push them along. I do. Plus, the steady income was a definite lure with college tuition looming on the horizon. So when I heard about a writing job for a university alumni publication, I signed on.

Some days I know I did the right thing; other days I’m not so sure. It would take more than a single blog post to explain how much I’ve analyzed this decision and its impact on our family and my career. In moments when I’m ruminating about this a little too much, I call to mind the last lines of that famous poem by Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Dr. James Ferguson of Hanover College, my favorite professor of all time, said it is the dash that makes the poem great. The dash, which stands for the hesitation, for all the decisions of life when we do not know, cannot know, if we did the right thing.

Today I celebrate the dash.

Yesterday we went to an Oktoberfest celebration at Reston Town Center, where I tried (with very little success) to photograph the bubbles that were flowing out of a bubble machine at one of the booths. In the process a security guard stopped me. “You’re not allowed to photograph the buildings,” he said. I told him I wasn’t shooting the buildings but the bubbles. He didn’t care. The bubbles were in front of the buildings. That’s all that mattered to him.

Bubbles are difficult to capture for other reasons, too. They flow and float and, worst of all, they pop! They are winsome and ephemeral and fickle. Photographing them is perhaps best left to the experts. But I had fun trying.

I’ve been thinking lately about falls. Not falls as in autumn or as in water (despite the photo). But falls as in tumbles, collapses, sudden drops from vertical to horizontal. A sign at the hospital yesterday: “Let’s be fall free on 3B.” Something I seldom think about at all, strolling down a corridor or stepping off a curb, is quite an achievement for others.

It is a gift, this upright posture, these legs that can stride and arms that can swing. The simplest motions of the day are the product of countless neural firings, of muscles expanding and contracting — a complicated calculus of movement and balance. Of defying gravity.

I grew up hearing the term — they live at the old “homeplace,” meaning a country home that had housed several generations of the same family. It might have been ramshackle and heavily mortgaged, but it had a history.

Split up that compound, though, into home and place. That’s what I’ve been wondering lately. Are certain places more likely to be “home” than others. Such a complicated question. It requires definitions and qualifications of all terms. All I know is that in some deep and improbable way, Kentucky is a place that still feels like home to me.

Sure, we’ve had it all summer, but today’s sunlight is different. It’s slanting in from a different angle and hasn’t yet reached the deck. There’s a chill to it. It is both bright and thin. It is the beginning of autumn, of a new relationship to our closest star. No longer our enemy, now our friend.

The more blogs I read the more I realize that mine is a blog in name only. Underneath its electronic shell it is paper, paper, paper. Ink on paper. Not that there’s anything wrong with this, of course. Some of my best friends read only ink on paper. But because this blog can be anything I want it to be, sometimes I think it should be more casual, less earnest. In other words, it needs attitude. So I am looking for a random photo to illustrate this random post. And I am typing with lips pursed and brow scowled. And in the future you may see more posts with bravura. But then again, you may not.

By the time autumn arrived yesterday the temperature was above 90 degrees. Our string of crisp, cool mornings and azure afternoons had come to an end. We were back to swelter.

Meanwhile, indoors, I was learning that two of the articles in the magazine I was ready to send to the printer would require substantive changes. New sources. New photos. And all the attendant re-design, re-proofing and re-angsting those require.

I once wrote a parenting article called “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back” about how children, after learning a new skill (walking, using the toilet) will occasionally regress back to their old habits (crawling, having accidents) as part of the process. Like all my articles in those days, it was meant to be instructive and encouraging. Don’t get frustrated if your child wets the bed after staying dry all night for weeks. It’s all part of the process!

Yesterday was like that. I remind myself that progress is not always linear, that we often reach our destinations crabwise, with much moving from side to side.

I haven’t been a high school student or teacher for many, many years. But the day after Labor Day I forget that fact. For me this day will always be the first day of school and the last day of summer, and therefore worthy of a quick sigh, a backward glance. Even though in steamy July I might long for the clean page, the crisp new start, even though this season will, eventually, energize me — for now it’s bittersweet. The crickets chirp more slowly, the morning air is brisk. Last night I wrote names and numbers on emergency contact and other school forms. Seems like everyone has homework before school begins — even parents. My lesson is brief but painful: Summer passes more quickly every year.

Yesterday we rode our bikes farther than we thought we would. It was cool and the air had a tang to it so we pedaled past Vienna, across the Capital Beltway (such a feeling to cross that monster road on a pedestrian bridge), almost to Falls Church.

For the first part of the route the wind was at our backs and the path was mostly downhill. We were flying. I found myself dreading the uphill climb back home. A moment of insight, then: To try and take the road as it came, not to worry in advance about the hard parts, but just to suck in my gut, push harder and tackle them as they came.

It worked, sort of. The ride was pleasant all the way. Only when it was over (and today) have my muscles talked back.