A Walker in the Suburbs

What a day —  family gathering, bright skies, air that feels like no air so lightly does it lie upon the skin, and,  this morning, the picture-perfect docking of the SpaceX Dragon capsule with the International Space Station.

As I conclude another trip around the sun, I think about what lessons, if any, the past year has held. One big one is this — that we choose what to focus on, what to believe. So today I concentrate on the miracle happening above us rather than mess down here below.

As I write these words a breeze stirs the wind chimes. It’s the happy key of D Major. A melody of one year ending and another just begun.

On this Memorial Day, I’ll find time to be grateful for all who gave their lives so we might be free. I’ll listen to a patriotic song or two, and hang my little American flag out by the mailbox.

I’ll think, too, about the almost 100,000 Americans who’ve lost their lives to Covid-19, the 245,000 who’ve succumbed to the disease in other countries, and all those who grieve for them.

But mostly my thoughts will flow to the hillside in Kentucky where my parents lie. It’s a sunny peaceful spot.

Rest in peace, Mom and Dad.

Yesterday my brother Drew surprised us by stopping by the house on his way home from an appointment. We chatted, nibbled on cookies and caught up. It turned an otherwise ordinary evening into a delight.

First, there is the wonderful reality that he now lives close enough to do such a thing. But more than that, I realized how much I relish a custom that has vanished to the extent that even its replacement (calling someone on the phone without texting them first) is on the way out.

In the old days, dropping in was how you stayed in touch, the original face time. As someone on the shy/introverted end of the sociability scale, this sometimes gave me fits. I once lived in a mountaintop community where people not only dropped by but walked right into your house unannounced. While that was taking things a bit too far, I’d rather have that than no dropping in at all.

(One home I dropped in on a few years ago.)

This is A Walker’s second guest post. As with the February 1, 2019 entry, it’s by my mother — this year on the occasion of her 94th birthday. Mom was a natural, as these words will show. Happy Birthday, Mom! This one’s for (and by) you. 

She woke to the early morning sun and stretched her arms and legs as usual, happy she could still do this. Maybe this meant she wasn’t really old. Maybe 80 was just some mystical number she had to use to mark the passing of the years. If she could still move her arms and legs as before, maybe she was just the same as she had always been, just a little wiser.

She smiled as she reached back in her memory to other mornings, other stretches. Winter mornings when she was five years old, living in one of the three houses her family had lived in on Woodland Avenue, waking to the sun as she had done today. She remembered stretching her limbs in much the same way as now.

But then she remembered how she finished that stretch with a hard, childish motion before she put her tiny feet on the cold floor and ran to the gas stove that would warm not only her feet but her whole body. Soon Aunt Mayme and Aunt Beedie would know that she was awake and one of them would come to put their arms around her and warm her in a way no gas stove ever could.

A few weeks ago, the recently widowed Alfie got a new cage mate. His name is Bart, and he, like the late Dominique, is a rescue bird.

Strange to learn how many birds our local Humane Society offers, some from owners who can no longer care for them, but others because they are strays. (This more of a summer thing, I guess.)

Bart is friendly, well-loved and used to being held, but he is also an escape artist. Luckily, he ended up not in the jaws of a hawk but on someone’s balcony — and from there to the shelter and, eventually, our home.

He and Alfie spent more than a week in separate cages, getting used to each other’s proximity, then … they moved in together.

They’re both males, so Alfie sings less (there’s only so much he’ll do to impress another guy), but they frolic together, preen each other, share food and sit contentedly in each other’s presence.

I worry when I see them squabble (a pet owner who thinks too much?), but I’ve decided there’s no way to read parakeet relationship signals thoroughly enough to truly worry. Instead, I’m just sitting back and enjoying the show.

Dominique the parakeet, who came to us from the Fairfax County Humane Society shelter seven years ago, died yesterday. We never knew her age, but she could have been 10 or more by the time she passed away.

She was a small but valiant creature, and she proved herself loyal and strong on numerous occasions. Plagued for years by fatty tumors, she never let them slow her down. Even as late as yesterday afternoon she seemed strong enough to chatter and nuzzle with her cage-mate, the ever-so-chirpy Alfie.

In 2016, when her original partner, Sid, was ailing, the canary-yellow Dominique literally propped up the  sick bird with her own body.  And she bravely bore the antics of the young whippersnapper (Alfie) we brought in to take his place. Because Dominique really seemed to mourn Sid when he was gone. I was afraid she would pine away without another parakeet by her side.

The thing about a bird is that its death is preceded or accompanied by a fall. Not unlike humans, if you want to get biblical. But unlike humans, birds are creatures of the air, and to find one lying still on the bottom of the cage is sad indeed.

Rest in peace, Dominique.

(Above: Dominique and Sid in 2012)

Yesterday I ran up to the closest grocery store, which is located in shopping center I sometimes call “the corner.” I like the way it sounds, saying “I’m going up to the corner,” as if I lived in an old-fashioned neighborhood where people yell out their windows and hang their laundry on the line out back.

I don’t live in such a place, of course, and I don’t go to the corner much anymore, either. I’ve switched to a discount grocery chain that saves me money but lands me in anonymous strip malls off busy suburban highways.

At one time, when the children were young, I seemed to run into friends all the time at the local supermarket. But that’s been ebbing away for years, so I’d might as well drive a few more miles and save some cash.

Being back at the corner today reminds me of what I’ve missed, though, which is, in short, familiarity. I’ve been going to that grocery store as long as we’ve lived here. It feels homey, even though the produce is overpriced and the seafood is iffy.

For better or worse, that store — and the “corner” around it — are my town square, the closest thing I have to a meeting spot, where I rub shoulders with the people in my ‘hood.

(Vale School House, which is near another corner where I live.)

A few weeks before Dad died, his friend Jerry bought him a new watch battery. Five years later, the watch is still ticking.

Apart from wondering where Jerry purchased the battery, I have often reflected on Dad’s watch and its longevity, how it has kept going so long after his passing. It’s a vivid reminder of his enthusiasm for life. Even when Dad was dying, he wanted to know what time it was.

A watch is an intimate thing. It’s worn on the pulse, a shortcut to the heart. It becomes a part of its owner in a way few other items do. I’ve come to count on Dad’s watch being close to mine every evening, as if through our timepieces Dad and I are somehow still communicating.

The battery won’t last forever, I know, nor will the watch. But sometimes I like to pretend that they will.

Mom would have been 93 today. In honor of her birthday, I’m letting her write the blog. This is A Walker in the Suburb’s first guest post, and it’s a posthumous one. Read it and know why I wanted to be a writer when I grew up — and why I miss her so. 

I was the third daughter born to parents who seemed desperately to want a son. All three of us girls were supposed to be Edward, named for each of my parent’s oldest brothers. The son arrived three years after me, but wasn’t named Edward after all. It seemed that my dad decided there might never be another boy and he thought tradition should be upheld. So my little brother was named Martin Joseph III.

Dad was right, of course. Our family of four was complete. Tradition had been upheld. Tradition had been upheld, too, when my older sisters were named. The first was named for my mother’s mother, Margaret Donnelly, and the second for my father’s mother, Mary Scott. When I arrived, another girl, there seemed to be quite a dilemma about what to call me. They had run out of grandmothers.

Dad suggested they call me Anne after my mother. But that didn’t suit her. I have wondered why they didn’t use Edwina, the feminine version of Edward. I’m certainly glad they didn’t!

In the end, and in spite of Daddy’s objections, Mother named me Suzanne for a nice lady who lived down the street, Suzanne Burk. I have often wished they had given me her full name, but they didn’t. So I had no middle name until I could choose one when I was confirmed. I chose Rose and used it proudly whenever I could. I guess I thought it made me more complete.

Walking yesterday into the wind, fists stuffed into my sleeves, Emily Dickinson came to mind: “The sky is low, the clouds are mean.” They popped into my head as snowflakes and sleet pellets flew through the air.

The precipitation was the perfect accompaniment to the howling wind and the rumbling jet engines (which is what happens on windy days in my neighborhood).

I felt like I was walking into a wall of winter, into a maelstrom of it. Nothing to do but push through—and remind myself that a warm house was waiting on the other side.