A Walker in the Suburbs

Not to be sacrilegious, but I realized a few days ago that we would be leaving for Europe, taking our long flight across the Atlantic, on Ascension Thursday. I believe this holiday has been demoted in the Catholic Church from a holy day of obligation to a regular holy day, but years of Catholic schooling have left their imprint. Ascension Thursday it is. The day Christ ascended into heaven, 40 days after Easter, a perfect counterweight to the 40 days of Lent.

Today we rise, too. Not on clouds, and not to the music of angelic choirs. We rise by racing through the airport, taking off our shoes, our jackets, our belts; by handing our passports and boarding passes to various grim-faced officials. It is not easy to fly these days. But there are few feelings like it. It is freedom, of course. That’s the thrill of it. An escape from earth, an escape from time, an escape, even, from the weather. And so, off we go…

I saw it on the street when I was walking the other day: a single feather. Dark, elegant, alone. From a crow, perhaps. At home we have feathers all over the house from our sweet parakeet, Hermes. But his are electric blue, or sometimes darker pinfeathers or fluffy white downy bits that float in the air like dust motes. We humans molt dead skin and fingernail parings. How much more lovely the gifts birds leave behind.

Last week my work computer starting acting strange. Messages popped up telling me I was under attack, that my files had been corrupted. Ben, our helpful computer guy, took a look. “You have a virus,” he said. “You should turn off your computer.”
I frantically tried to save files. I rushed to complete a project. I wondered why and how this happened. Most of all, I thought about how we personify mechanical malaise and call it a virus. As if my computer has a fever and an upset tummy. Or a rash and a headache.
The urge to personify is supremely solipsistic, but it’s understandable. We see the world through human eyes, so a weeping willow is a grandmother with long, stringy hair and a drainage tunnel is a pair of snake eyes. Computer viruses aside, personification makes the world a warmer, friendlier place.

Yesterday I had the first of several procedures to tame the varicose veins that I’ve had for two decades. It wasn’t too bad, and it’s something I’ve been meant to do for years. I bring it up in this blog because, for one thing, the doctor prescribed walking to speed recovery. This is just the kind of prescription a walker in the suburbs wants to hear, of course.
But the procedure brings up the more general topic of aging and how one goes about it. I don’t think I’d ever have a tummy tuck or a face lift. But being able to wear shorts or skirts again in public would be nice. Following the same moderate philosophy, I try to eat right and exercise. But I keep in mind that I’m not in my 20s or 30s anymore and can only expend so much time and effort fighting time and gravity. Is this copping out or aging gracefully? How hard should we fight against the aches and pains, the pull of mortality? How much of our life should this consume?

If I remember to turn my head when I walk from Metro to work, I see a sliver of the Capitol dome. And still, after many years, I can’t believe I’m here.

People from big cities don’t know what it’s like to grow up in a world where things are always happening somewhere else. When I was a child in Lexington, we went to Cincinnati to shop, to Dayton to visit family and, eventually, to Indiana and Illinois and New York for college. For us, the important stuff was happening elsewhere. And seeking it, traveling or moving or going away to find it, gave us something to aspire to — gave us, you might say, a life’s work.

Children raised near the center of world gravity (like my own) live where things are already happening. They don’t arrive in a big city with a sense of astonishment so deep and so grand as to resemble madness.

When you start your life away from the fray, you learn to live with longing. You don’t always get what you want. It is a healthy tension.

There are more beautiful pictures of daffodils, but the reason I like this one is that you can see, on the left hand side of the plant, a speared leaf. This plant is in a hurry. It has grown right up through the leaf, has moved it skyward. And that is how I sometimes feel in spring, lifted up, buoyed by something larger than all of us — the life force stirring again.

Walking in the suburbs takes its toll — there are cars to dodge, creeks to wade, paths to plod. Sometimes, rest is required. And what better way to take it than in a rocking chair, where I can sit and move at the same time.

A sure sign of warm weather in our house is when the rocking chair comes out of the garage and onto the deck. Now it sits in a place of honor; it’s a front row seat on the great outdoors.

Say what you will about the time change: We early risers know it isn’t daylight saving — it’s daylight rearranging. For us, springing forward is a step backward into night. But to be honest, I’m relieved. I welcome the inky starts to my day, the hush of the hours before dawn. Dark mornings are the best cover-up going; no makeup needed. Dark mornings are also easy on the eyes; they’re a gradual salvo to the sun. In a few weeks I’ll see light and color again on my way to work, the birds will be singing, the air will be soft. But for now, for a few more weeks, darkness reigns. Daylight rearranging — bring it on.

On Metro this morning I read from “The Outermost House” by Henry Beston. Beston was a naturalist and this book is a classic. The section I read today cataloged the flocks of birds he studied during the year he lived alone in a small house on a Cape Cod dune. Here he describes a flight of swans: “Glorious white birds in the blue October heights over the solemn unrest of ocean — their passing was more than music, and from their wings descended the old loveliness of earth which both affirms and heals.”

I rode the Metro escalator up into the cold gray dawn of Judiciary Square and walked east toward my office with those words echoing in my head. And suddenly there in front of me were scores of gulls, careening and crying as they wheeled in the urban sky. It was probably garbage that brought them here, but I’d rather imagine their flight as evidence of that “old loveliness.” They’re here to remind us that we share the earth, that, as Beston says of animals, “They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time…”

Washington, D.C. is not kind to street musicians. The most recent and infamous example of this happened a couple years ago when the brilliant violinist Joshua Bell played Bach and Schubert on his 1713 Stradivarius outside the L’Enfant Plaza Metro stop while a crowd of morning commuters rushed by. Almost no one stopped to listen.

But there are exceptions, and one of them happened yesterday at Metro Center when a crowd gathered around three men singing “Under the Boardwalk” and other barbershop favorites. I’ve heard these guys before, and I know they’ve been arrested (Metro doesn’t allow music on its cars and platforms; that might make the trip too pleasant). But the buskers always come back, sometimes three of them, sometimes four, with their doo-wop melodies and their studied gestures and their hat to collect the day’s earnings.

Every time I hear them I think about the first time I heard them. It was late, 7 or 8, and I was blurry-eyed from reading page proofs, trying to get the magazine to the printer. And there they were, singing “What is Your Name?” Every time they reached the refrain, a woman in the crowd would shout, “It’s Donna. I already told you — my name is Donna.” It was a priceless Metro moment. We all laughed; we caught each other’s eyes. In a way, just a small way, we felt as one.