A Walker in the Suburbs

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.

Dotted at discrete intervals around Siesta Key Beach and its village are signs proclaiming it the “Number One” (#1) Beach in America.”

The research behind this claim may be a bit suspect (it involves someone named Dr. Beach from Florida International University, so perhaps a bit of state favoritism at work). But still, the list includes beaches from Hawaii to Cape Cod, so there is at least an attempt at inclusion. And if consistency matters at all, Siesta Key Beach has been in the top 10 several times in the past.

But I have something better than Dr. Beach. I have personal experience. And I can verify that this is a great beach, broad and balmy, palm-tree-fringed and full of the softest, whitest sand my toes have ever dug into. The natives call it “sugar sand.” And who am I to argue. No wonder this place is so sweet.

A breeze stirs the palm fronds, setting one against another. They make a gentle tapping sound not unlike rain on water. This is not the sighing of pine boughs. This is a southern sound, a rustle of taffeta.

It can put you to sleep — even when you haven’t been awake long. It relaxes and cajoles and leads one outside.

At least that’s where it’s led me. Hard to think of words and ideas when the palm trees are singing.

Palm trees straight (above) and reflected in pool water (top). 

It’s my new mission: On days I work at home, I try to spend as much time as possible outside. If I sit still long enough at the glass-topped deck table, I become part of the furniture. Birds ignore me. I’m part of their world.

Yesterday I worked inside for less than two hours — driven indoors by a suspicious whirring sound from my laptop. The poor baby was overheated, I think. But once it (and I!) cooled down, we were back on the deck, now shaded by the tall oaks.

By then, it was dinner time. Goldfinches landed on the climbing rose boughs, in between turns at the feeder, each branch bending and straightening every so slightly with the feather weight of the birds. A cardinal hopped along the pergola beam, peering down at the hummingbird taking his evening feed. Meanwhile, farther out in the yard, a pair of robins fluffed their feathers in the bath.

Here is a world that coexists with our own, full of drama and fun. I could have watched for hours — entertained, heartened, made whole.

Today’s late post is my little birthday protest: because it cannot possibly be May 31, 2017. It was just May 31, 2016.

But it is that day, I know, and has been 365 days since the last one. So nothing to do but accept it graciously and gratefully. Which I do. Really. Besides, it’s a most luscious May 31. No rain so far (fingers crossed) and full-on summer with air that knows its mind and the roar of motorized lawn implements in the background.

A couple hours ago I heard the Overture to William Tell on the radio. Is this my soundtrack, I wondered: a madcap frolic, a frenetic dash from point A to point B? It probably is. What I need this year is a slower soundtrack. Nothing too slow or mournful, but definitely something a little less rushed and crazy.

That’s my birthday resolution, my new year’s mantra. Find a slower soundtrack … and find it fast.

Claire never thought twice about what she’d major in. It would be psychology. And since high school she’s been sure of what she wanted for a life’s work: She would be a therapist. She would help people.

Which is exactly what’s she’s done: received her bachelor of science in psychology and, today, will receive her master of social work degree from Catholic University.

As I prepare for her commencement, I think of Claire as a baby, toddler, school kid, teenager, college student and, for the last several years, grad student working on the side.

A huge wash of feelings on this day. But one that rises above the rest: You did it, kiddo. Good for you!

It’s been four years now since Dad was alive to celebrate his birthday. I wonder what he would think of the world today. He would laugh about it, I’m sure. Probably shake his head, too.

Cleaning out some files health files last weekend I came across a newspaper clipping from the ’90s, an article from the Louisville Courier Journal on how running affects women’s knees. Written across the top, in Mom’s distinctive hand: “From Dad.”

What a wonderful and unexpected find! Mom’s handwriting and Dad’s idea. He was always after me to stop running. Bad for your knees, he said, all that pounding. Dad, who apart from yard work did no other exercise I can recall.

Dad lacked the earnestness of later, highly buff generations. But he lived to be 90 and he loved life. He took what came — and kept on going, always with a smile and a quip. Can’t think of a much better way to do it.


(Dad posing in front of the house he grew up in on Father’s Day 2011.)

After-work walk on a May evening. The air perfumed with spirea and honeysuckle, a trace of lilac. I pass through waves of warmth and coolness.

I’d been thinking of this amble as I sat in meetings and on Metro. Thought of it at home when I pulled on a t-shirt and tennis shoes and left the house in a hurry, before I found something else I had to do.

The real stroll was even better than the imagined one, as I lost myself in the cadence of the steps and the sounds of day’s end: birds roosting, balls bouncing, radio rap from a passing car.

Self-propulsion is marvelous any time of year. But on a fine May evening it’s utterly divine.