A Walker in the Suburbs

I almost missed this one, noticed out of the corner of my eye that yesterday’s post was 2,399. Which makes today’s one of those round numbers that I write about from time to time.

It’s the ultimate in solipsism, right? A blog about the things I think about while walking … then a post about how many other posts I’ve written!

Posts on running and dancing and bouncing, about mothering and working and traveling. Posts on grieving and gratitude.

What can I say? We live in a confessional age, and this is about as confessional as I can get.  Which is to say, not as much as some, but more than others — and more than I ever thought I’d be.

When I was 24 and Mom was 51 we took a long trip together. We visited England, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy — “the tour.” And of course,  Ireland.

“Everyone looks familiar here,” Mom said as soon as we stepped off the ferry at Dun Laoghaire. And in fact they did. You could round up the pedestrians in a Dublin block, plop them down in the pews of St. Peters on Barr Street in Lexington, and you’d hardly know the difference. There would be more tweed and piety, worse teeth, but the dark hair would be the same, and the wide smiles.

“All of my people are Irish,” Mom said, proudly. She meant the Longs and the Scotts and the Donnellys and the Concannons. But she came to realize through the years that their union would compound the immigrant’s distrust and fear. Turns out, her family would not quite survive its Irishness. Now there’s only one Concannon girl left, my aunt of 94. She and Mom barely spoke at the end.

Mom would have been 92 this February 1. I don’t have her Irishness, but I miss it — and her — especially today.

Yesterday, before the tree came down, I sat before it with the laptop as I have so many mornings these last few weeks, reading and writing in the quiet hours before dawn. The last holiday movie I saw this year was “Scrooge,” one of my favorites. This is not the dark comedy version of A Christmas Carol  starring Bill Murray. It’s the lovely if corny musical version of A Christmas Carol starring Albert Finney.

What makes the film is the music by Leslie Bricusse:

Sing a song of gladness and cheer
For the time of Christmas is here
Look around about you and see
What a world of wonder
This world can be. 

Like any self-respecting writer who finds herself down the Google rabbit hole when she should be focusing her attention on the page, I spent a few minutes Sunday morning looking up this composer, at first hesitantly because I very much wanted him to still be alive, then eagerly once I found out he was. Not only did he write the music for “Scrooge,” the LP of which I once hunted down for years and finally found in  a moldy basement of a record shop in the West Village, but he also composed the score of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and teamed up with Henry Mancini on “Two for the Road” — two more favorite flicks.

There’s a certain satisfaction in learning that some of your favorite scores are written by the same person. It makes you want to know that person a little better. So I found an interview with Bricusse, now 86. At the end of the interview was what I would call the “nut graph,” the news value of the story — why there was an interview with Bricusse last November. It was because Scrooge, the musical, was just revived at the Curve Theater in London. In fact, its final performance was happening two hours from when I read the article. Not quite enough time to hop the pond and get there in time. But that’s not to say I didn’t think about it.

(Movie posters: Wikipedia)

In honor of the Epiphany/”Little Christmas”/Three Kings’ Day, here are poinsettias in their natural habitat, which, in this case, was Burma! They put my potted version to shame.

These were growing wild on a walk I took last year in the town of Kalaw. I wasn’t expecting them, didn’t know they grew there. Which was even better than if I’d been looking for them.

They were tall, a bit gawky, but their deep crimsons and maroons stood out among the greenery. It was my only afternoon of leisure and I was able to walk into town, mosey around the market and find a path on the way home that led into the hills.

They were the natural part of that country’s beauty. Here’s another part: the Golden Pagoda seen on a balmy night last November.

Gratitude is best when it’s specific. So herewith, a list:

The volunteer red maple tree is the far corner of the yard.

The view out the conference room window at dawn.

Copper with a day-glo orange ball in his mouth.

The sound of Drew’s voice on the phone.

Celia humming as she sautés onions.

The light on the carpet in the living room.

The Air Force band playing their song at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

The stuffing in the oven and the coleslaw in the fridge.

The pumpkin praline pies in the car.

Family gathering from far and wide.

Ah, yes, “fall back” — the extra hour of sleep, the long morning. It was all fine until about 5 p.m. Then the early darkness (especially with yesterday’s clouds and rain) and the news from Texas of the country’s latest mass shooting made it all too clear that we’re heading into the dark days of the year. 

Two years and a day ago I was coming home from work, switching from the Red Line to the Orange in the dark underground of Metro Center station, when my phone rang. It was Ellen. “Mom sounds a little stronger; I’ll put her on.”

For the past six days, Mom had been in the Annapolis hospital with Ellen, my doctor sister, keeping close watch. I’d been there for all or part of most days but had worked in the office all day that Friday and planned to spend the weekend in Annapolis.

My cousin Julie lives in Santa Rosa, California. She lost her home in the California wildfires. She and her husband escaped in their pajamas. Everyone is fine, but everything is gone.

“Our house had a certain smell to it,” said Jennifer Pierre in an article in yesterday’s Washington Post. Pierre’s house was also destroyed in the fire, even though houses another street over were spared. A sudden shift of wind.

“It was our house. When you come home it has that smell. How can I replicate that smell for my kids. Or is it gone forever?”

When I read this I thought of Suzanne’s friend Katie. One day Katie walked in our house — this has been years ago now — took a long whiff and said, “Your house smells like … West Virginia!” Quickly realizing that this might not have been a compliment, she added that it smelled like West Virginia in a good, spending-a-week-in-a-cabin sort of way. I laugh about that still. What it meant to me was that the house smelled musty. But musty or not, it was one of the few times I heard anyone directly address the aroma of our house.

What would I do if it was gone forever? How can we comprehend the enormity of it all?

In another excellent Washington Post article on the fire, the author Michael Carlston wrote:

We’re trying to function, but it’s difficult when you lived in one world, and now it’s totally different. There’s before, and there’s after. My wife and I are two active and directed people, but we find ourselves sitting and staring in confusion. When everything is lost, what do you do? What are the rules?

I heard them in the flower hedge, a bank of New Guinea impatiens aglow at summer’s end. Sparrows, I guessed, or one of the other nondescript birds.

They were chirping and chattering, calling to each other. Maybe they were squabbling over a crust of bread or a late-day worm. Maybe they were planning their winter escape. Or maybe they were just commenting on the perfect air, the weightless wonder of the afternoon.

I stopped. I listened. I didn’t care who was behind me, who might have had to stop short.

I brake for birds. That’s all there is to it.