A Walker in the Suburbs

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.

For months I’ve kept my eyes on a house at the other end of the neighborhood. While other Folkstone homes sold quickly, this one languished. There was nothing wrong with it. I know this because I toured it, went down the weekend of the first open house and walked through the rooms (of which there were many).

It had four levels, four bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, family room, walk-out basement,  conservatory. It had a long driveway and a fancy patio. It even had a view: You could look east down Fox Mill Road and see green yards, the land rising and falling.

But for far too many weeks, it did not have a buyer.

The realtor was diligent. He held an open house every Sunday, tacking up red balloons to pique interest.  They made me sad.

But yesterday when I drove past, the for-sale sign said “Under Contract.” It wasn’t any of my business, of course, but for some reason this made me very happy.

I’m thinking about today’s to-do list and realizing that personal correspondence ranks high on it. By this I do not mean sending emails.

I mean penning a note to tuck into a birthday card to a friend I made in a church choir when I lived in Chicago. And dashing off a quick thank-you to the hostess for last Friday’s dinner. And this is after yesterday, when I wrote a sympathy card.

This is not exactly 18th century in scope. But it’s three times more cards or letters than I send in a week.  It’s real mail, that which I love receiving and still send … though not nearly often enough.

On Friday, the Equinox, I was so busy writing about the hummingbirds’ departure that I didn’t write about the day itself, its significance as a turning point. From now till March we will have less light than darkness. The only good thing I can say is that the years pass quickly enough now that spring will be here in no time.

After a string of cool mornings and sultry afternoons, it’s easy to believe that life will always be like this: no cold, no clouds. But the balance has tilted, the leaves are turning. Soon we will have chill rain and bare trees.

There are consolations, of course, time to turn inward, clean closets, make soup. The great feasts come soon after, and maybe a bright white snowfall. I look forward to those things. But oh, I hate to see the world tilt, the light go.

Everyone asks where the birds go in a hurricane, the weather man said, then immediately answered his own question. They go to the eye. They leave their home and move with the wind. They seek safety in motion.

As the pace of this trip slows from breakneck to brisk, I try to process all I’m seeing. I stare at the photos:  two women hiding under an umbrella. 

You can’t visit Bangladesh during monsoon season and not talk about the mud.

Today I was up to my ankles in it — until the project people we were traveling with whisked us onto a bicycle rickshaw. This is my view from the back of it, clinging to the bicycle seat with one hand and my dogeared notebook with the other.

But even with the ride I was still caked with mud. I conducted half a dozen interviews with squishy sandals and splattered trousers. No one seemed to mind.

Mud has a way of slowing you down, making you think. I walked through it meditatively, wondering what it would be like to live with it for months of every year, to plant saplings in it, to coax it into bloom. It can be done — I saw the fruits of it today. But having walked a few feet in the shoes of those who do it, I would rather not walk that way very often.

It’s been a day that moved along a little faster than I could keep up with. A day of preparation. Tomorrow I fly to Bangladesh for two weeks to interview (among others) farmers, shop owners and survivors of human trafficking,

I’ve been planning this work trip all summer, but now that it’s here, it feels unreal, as if I’m stepping off the edge of the known world. Terra Incognita.

Before I finish packing, time for a backward glance at the sunny (and sunset-y) world I left behind.

My favorite is the nonchalant heron that hangs around the fisherman. If a heron could whistle that’s what this one would be doing, acting as if he just happened to be strolling down the beach when he came upon this bucket of fresh-caught snapper.

But there are other birds to love here: the brown pelican, the royal tern, least tern, and the endangered black skimmer with its yellowish-orange beak and its cool eye. There’s the gawky willet and the adorable snowy plover. There is the gull with its distinctive cry.

There are the birds I’ve shared the beach with this past week. With them I have gazed at the ocean and walked into the wind. I will miss them … and a whole lot more.