A Walker in the Suburbs

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.

I’ve seen this little guy (or someone like him, I should say, because this is not my photograph!) here before, drawn by the coleus flowers on our deck. An iridescent-necked hummingbird so improbably tiny that each time I see him I think at first that I’m looking at an insect.

The hummingbird makes me think of one of my favorite essays, “Joyas Voladoras” by Brian Doyle, which begins: “Consider the hummingbird for a long moment. A hummingbird’s heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird’s heart is the size of a pencil eraser. A hummingbird’s heart is a lot of the hummingbird. Joyas voladoras, flying jewels, the first white explorers in the Americas called them, and the white men had never seen such creatures, for hummingbirds came into the world only in the Americas, nowhere else in the universe…”

And because this tiny bird brings an essay to mind I think of him as a muse, flying inspiration, bound to lead to a productive writing day. I hope.

For the last few days, flight has been on my mind. Because it is September, because I saw in an almost-dark sky an unmistakable “V” of geese, because soon animals in our part of the northern hemisphere will search for a place to stay warm for the winter. Perhaps for all these reasons and more, I’ve been thinking lately about where to live when the children are on their own, when our nest is empty. Realizing, of course, that this is not a single decision but a joint one, that I love our house because we’ve raised (are raising) three daughters in it, still, still I’m restless on this subject.

What is it that binds you to a place? Family, friends, work, of course. But to what degree is it the land itself, the way it feels under your feet and as you drive through it on a late summer evening, aware suddenly that this once alien place, like it or not, is home.

The nest may not be empty but the house certainly is. Claire moved into George Mason housing yesterday, Suzanne is well settled at Wooster and Celia spent the night at a friend’s. Am I only imagining it or does the place just feel emptier, the air thinner?

Being a parent means letting go — that’s something you learn from the very beginning. But that doesn’t make it any easier. Twice this weekend while walking I stopped to talk with friends about their children going off to college or grad school. Raising kids is what the suburbs are about. Which raises the question: What happens when the children grow up and move away?