Night and Day

Night and Day

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Last night, after the kiddos were rounded up and their weary parents pulled away from the house, heading home, I noted the miracle that’s so easy to ignore this time of year, the great gift of evening daylight. 

Family activities postponed my morning walk, but there was still (barely) enough light to take a late stroll. It had been awhile since I took this walk on the downwind side of the day, and I couldn’t help but notice how different it was. 

Yellow lamplight glowed through windows. Late birds rustled in the trees. Sprinklers made that tst, tst, tst sound. I was the only walker on the road. Houses and lawns that look ordinary at 8:30 a.m. look positively fetching 12 hours later. 

With walking, as with so much else, timing is key.

Dads and Babies

Dads and Babies

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On this day of dads, I’m thinking about babies, too, especially one particular baby who is napping upstairs. In fact, it’s only because she’s napping that I’m able to write this post.

On this day of all days, fathers and babies naturally belong together.  Dads (and grandpas) have a way of jostling, tossing, blowing on tummies and just generally making an infant’s day. 

I’m sure this infant would agree. 

Singing Chicken

Singing Chicken

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For years I stored my oldest journals in metal boxes tucked away on the highest shelf of my closet. I had to stand on a step ladder and move so much stuff out of the way to reach them that it was as if they didn’t exist. But now they’re placed spine-side-up in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet next to my desk, so they are ripe for exploration.

Before my discovery of Moleskine notebooks I gathered my thoughts in a hodgepodge of blank books bound in everything from leather to corduroy. The journals are a motley crew, but they served the purpose, which was connecting the dots, remembering, as Joan Didion wrote, “how it felt to be me.” 

Sometimes I dip into them for a fact: When exactly did I leave for that trip to Yugoslavia? How long did I work for the lovable but crazy family on West 94th Street? But I always read more than I intended. 

The other day, I discovered an encounter I had with a singing chicken. The “chicken” had been hired to serenade a friend and colleague on her birthday. My job was to meet the chicken and escort him to my friend’s desk. In his other life, the actor who took on this second job was playing Theseus in a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Or at least that’s what he told us.

You can’t make this stuff up. But, if you’re lucky, sometimes you write it down. 

Stepping Up

Stepping Up

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I’ve never been a step counter, so the headline in yesterday’s newspaper, “New Walking Tips Drop the 10,000 Steps Goal,” wasn’t a disappointment. But given that the article was about walking, well, I had to read it. 

I learned some interesting facts: While experts have lowered the 10,000 steps goal— the number of steps doctors recommend we get each day for healthy living — they haven’t lowered it by all that much. For adults under 60 it’s 8,000 to 10,000 and for those over 60 it’s 6,000 to 8,000.

What I found especially useful were the equivalencies: 1,000 steps is approximately half a mile, and 3,000 steps represents about a half hour of walking. Helpful — to a point. I usually measure a walk by the number of ideas it inspires … and I’ve yet to see a scale for that. 

Fellow Travelers

Fellow Travelers

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Some emerge just past dawn for their morning stroll, eyes blinking, still taking in the light. They leave early for the office or they can’t sleep or they feel dutiful getting in their steps early. 

Others require a cup of tea or other sustenance, so you might find them in the 8 or 9 o’clock hours.

Still others just squeak by calling their daily perambulation a morning walk. They start at 11 a.m. and return just in time for lunch. 

What all of these people have in common, though, is that they are regulars. I see them most every day, depending on when I hit “the track” (also known as the main street of my neighborhood). Some of them I know well, others only by sight. But they are my companions, my fellow travelers, and I honor them all.

The Convert

The Convert

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The skin is an organ. But it’s an organ that blushes. No wonder, then, that we treat it differently than we do, say, our liver or spleen. Specifically — and especially at this time of year — we protect it from the sun. Or we don’t. 

For many years, I actively sought a tan. I was a member of the baby-oil-and-baking-on-a-beach crowd. I sunbathed on my towel in various parks in Chicago and New York City. I’d spend entire days outdoors daubing on only a little SPF 8. I even laid out on the hot tar roof of my Greenwich Village apartment. 

Tans made me look better, I thought. They evened out my skin tone, gave me a rosy glow. They also, through the years, damaged my skin. 

I converted to sunscreen years ago, 45 SPF or higher. But this summer, I’m redoubling my efforts. I reapply often. Sometimes, I even carry sunscreen around in my purse. I’ve become, if not fanatical, at least responsible.  And so, I enter the summer pasty and white — or make that pale and healthy.

Dry Zone

Dry Zone

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In the woods, the little bridges are still there, but the streams they cross are running dry.

In the meadows, the earth is bare, cracked, hard-packed. My shoes scuff up dust. Even the grass has stopped growing as quickly as it usually does in June.

From the looks of the sky today, though, I think we’re in for some relief. I’m imagining great sheets of rain, the ground soaking it up, the small runs flowing again. And later, how easily the weeds will give way. I’ll pull them up by the fistful.
Wandering Home

Wandering Home

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As much as I extoll the practice, walking in the suburbs is largely for exercise and mental refreshment, for perspective. It’s difficult to run errands or visit folks without jumping in the car.

But yesterday I had time to amble through the woods to meet a friend, who lives on the other side of a county forest.

On the way there I had my eye on the clock, picking up the pace to reach her house more or less when I said I would. But on the way home I savored the green splendor of the stroll, birds ruffling the underbrush, stream water pouring over and around a flat rock.

It felt like rain, clammy and portentous. I took my time, reveled in the mood and the moment. I wandered home.

As the Smoke Clears

As the Smoke Clears

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As the smoke clears, there are shadows once again, and colors, not just a haze of gray. 

As the smoke clears, the outdoors comes into its own, a place to walk and talk and read, not scenery on the other side of glass. 

As the smoke clears, children walk to the school bus. Later they’ll gather by the basketball goal and rope swing to play.

There will be dinners al fresco, dogs barking, the neighbor yelling at his sports team through an open window— small wonders made possible by a shift in the wind, a passing shower. 

Cars in Clothes

Cars in Clothes

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The Jeep caught my eye, not because of its sleek lines or elegant design, but because of the perky bow on its spare tire. 

Why do people dress their cars, give them antlers in December and bunny ears in spring? Is it because they spend so much time in their vehicles that the autos are an extension of themselves? An attempt to humanize the vehicle so we act civilly around it? Or is it pure whimsy that drives this practice? 

I’m going with that last explanation because it makes me smile.  To celebrate this Jeep’s “attire,” I snapped a shot while stopped at a light. 

There’s a twist to this story, an amazing one too, given the number of cars I pass in this auto-dependent suburb. Four hours later, I spotted the same car, miles away from where I saw it the first time. 

Car clothes aren’t just fun then, they’re a powerful identifier. The moral of this story: Dress your car if you must, but be sure it behaves itself.