How to Live? Walk.

How to Live? Walk.

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I’ve been reading about the 16th-century writer Montaigne, who invented the essay, from the French essayer, to try. The idea of “writing about oneself to create a mirror in which other people recognize their own humanity has not existed forever,” says Sarah Bakewell in her book How to Live or A Life of Montaigne: In One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. “It had to be invented. And, unlike many cultural inventions, it can be traced to a single person: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne.”

“Unlike most memoirists of his day,” Bakewell writes, “he did not write to record his own great deeds and achievements. Nor did he lay down a straight eyewitness account of historical events.” Instead, he used ordinary topics — friendship, names, smells, thumbs, wearing clothes — as a way to explore the question “How to live?”

Here are some of his answers, according to Bakewell: Pay attention; read a lot; wake from the sleep of habit; see the world; reflect on everything and regret nothing and, finally, let life be its own answer.

I’ve been taking notes, as I often do, and there are many passages I’ve recorded to reflect on later. Here’s one of my favorites:

Montaigne did not brood in his tower, Bakewell writes. “He liked to be out walking. ‘My thoughts fall asleep if I make them sit down. My mind will not budge unless my legs move it.'”

Every hike, saunter, amble, walk and run I take tells me he’s onto something there.

Trail Thoughts

Trail Thoughts

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Yesterday’s trail hike took me from Lake Accotink to Byron Avenue Park, almost to Old Keene Mill Road. This is true terra incognita. I could as easily be in Maryland or Delaware or Pennsylvania as Fairfax County.

The trail has its own rites and its own rhythms. It mesmerizes. There is the creek gurgling in the distance, the sound of a distant mower, a faint cricket chirp. My feet rustle through the leaves. I pass a few people, not many on a Monday. A gaggle of school children, a couple of lone mountain bikers, exercisers sprinting up the stairs near the dam.

But for the most part, I’m alone, notebook in hand, writing down the thoughts when they surface. Because out on the trail, they always do.

Decoration Inflation

Decoration Inflation

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It used to be a pumpkin beside the door. But the ante has been raised and now more houses than not feature dangling skeletons, inflatable jack-o-lanterns or witches that have flown — splat! — into trees. Some neighbors string orange lights or garland their mail boxes with autumn swag.

I enjoy these tokens of the season — because they’re fun and they add variety and texture to life — but I bristle at decoration inflation, at a decorating season that stretches from October 1 through mid January.

So I’ve established a modest compromise. A few fall tokens (all of them souvenirs of when the girls were young), an autumn wreath and, come mid-December, colored lights around the door and on the front bushes. It’s decoration without inflation.


(Claire made these tombstones from paper and croquet wickets when she was in fourth grade. )

Outside In

Outside In

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It’s cold enough that the heat came on, and hot air ruffles the leaves of the peace plant. I had to look up the name of this plant. I’ve had a smaller one for years, but never knew what it was. Now that I have a large one (given to us at Dad’s funeral), I feel a greater responsibility to it, am working harder to keep it healthy, to coax its airy white flower — which shoots up, seemingly out of nowhere — in bloom.

In from outside is the cactus, the large fern and — new this year — a hardy, happy thyme plant. (We’ll see how long it’s happy inside.) They join a profusion of cut flowers — bouquets from Suzanne’s arrival — all making the house cheerful.

As flowers fade outdoors they bloom indoors. I’d rather have the profusion of summer, but when that’s not possible this is the next best thing.

Seasons of Hope

Seasons of Hope

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I spotted these trees on a walk two years ago and have never forgotten them. The way the living tree flames out behind the dead ones. The promise of new life hidden in each glowing leaf.

As leaves fall it is easy to be melancholy, but I remind myself that until they do, the new ones cannot grow.

What this tells me is that each end is also a beginning. That there is no season without hope.

Familiarity

Familiarity

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Suzanne was born 26 years ago today. It’s the first birthday I’ve spent with her in three years. Not that one expects to be with an adult child on every birthday, but after having her so far away from home these last three years having her here feels pretty darn good.

I think today as I always do about the moment I first saw her — and the feeling is as clear today as it was then. It was a supercharged familiarity. “I know you,” I said to myself the instant I glimpsed her face. “Of course. It’s you.”

And even though she lives in Africa now, and has been independent for years, I still have that feeling about her — and about Claire and Celia, too. There they are, I think, as I watch them grow up and enter their own lives, the children I was meant to have. As unmistakable as blood or water.

True Colors

True Colors

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The hedge is returning to its roots. The pink hues of bud and stem — the colors I notice every spring — are present now in the roses and russets of autumn. In the months between, of course, there’s a lot of green. But the green is fading now and those first colors are reappearing.

Which makes me wonder: What are the hedge’s true colors? The green it wears most of the summer or the pink it dons in spring and fall?

I’m no botanist, but I’m fond of the hedge. I notice its growth and cycles. And if I had to name its true color I would say the one it was born with. Apples, hedges — and people, too — none of us fall too far from the tree.

Back Home and Walking

Back Home and Walking

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Suzanne was out the door yesterday morning before sunrise, running down a paved road first and then, with first light, ducking into the woods and the old trails she knows so well. At midday she  took Copper for a walk, and, in the late afternoon, she, Claire and I drove to a southern stretch of the Cross-County trail and strolled it together.

I didn’t think of this in the countdown days before Suzanne arrived, but now that she’s here it seems perfectly natural. When you return home after a long absence your feet seek firm ground. Walking becomes a way to reacquaint yourself, to re-enter the landscape.

Walking does this for me, of course; it’s a way to ground myself and put life in perspective. But it’s nice to see my children walking, too. All three girls run or walk —they move through the world to help the world make sense. I hope they always do.


(Suzanne and Claire on the Cross-County Trail.)

International Arrival

International Arrival

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You would need a heart of stone not to be affected by the
international arrivals hall at Dulles Airport. Everywhere you look are reunions of one sort or
another: husbands and wives, children and parents, brothers and sisters, friends. There was a man next to us who
said he was waiting for his sweetheart to return from Denmark. His cap was pulled
down low so it was difficult to see his eyes — maybe because he was expecting
them to fill.
Claire and Celia were holding Claire’s two homemade signs.
One of them said “Welcome Home” in “pennant” letters. The other was a map of
Benin in green magic marker.

After what seemed like an eternity, we saw Suzanne. She was wearing a short-sleeved “Virginia is for Runners” t-shirt and
her arms and face were tan. She was wheeling three large suitcases and a carry-on. (I later learned that only
one of those large bags was hers; the others were for Peace Corps friends.) 

The first impression — that ever amazing,
important first impression — was that she’s a world traveler now. There was a
nonchalance in the way she wheeled the bags, a certain jauntiness about her. 


My second impression — or perhaps I should say thought once I was capable of having thoughts — was that I don’t ever want her to leave again.

 

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow!

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It’s not only possible now but entirely sensible to count down to Suzanne’s arrival in hours not days. No more than 32, if all goes well! Her plane is scheduled to touch down at Dulles tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. She’s well into her departure preparations, I imagine, and will leave for the airport in five or six hours for an overnight flight to Brussels, where she transfers to the plane that will bring her home.

The last time I saw her was June 24, 2012. A lot has happened since then.

This is one of the last images I have of Suzanne, walking with two heavy suitcases through a crowded Union Station. She would begin her long journey aboard a train for Philadelphia, meeting up with other Peace Corps volunteers there for the flight across the ocean to in-country training.

She’s not returning for good tomorrow — I wish! — but she does have a six-week leave, and I’ve warned her that she may find herself tied to a chair come December 1. Besides, we’re not thinking of departures now, only arrivals.

For now there’s a new day dawning, grocery shopping and last-minute tidying still to do — and only hours till she arrives.

It seemed like this day would never come. And now it’s tomorrow.