Improbable Home

It's a day of hauntings, of swirled fog and footsteps in the night. But here on the tip of the Olympic peninsula (actually, a map tells me that it's called the Quimper Peninsula), it's bright and clear. 

I arrived here yesterday when the sun was streaming in the windows of the house that will be my home for the next two weeks. There were just two hours left of daylight. I had to explore.

There was a road down to the beach and a lighthouse at the end of it. There was a single sailboat moored in the waves. There was Mount Baker and the North Cascades on the horizon. 

I walked until I was hungry, then came back here, to this most improbable home. 

Seattle Sunday

Today I head up to the residency at Port Townsend, but yesterday was a break between prep and travel. A Seattle Sunday. 

And not just any Sunday, but a crisp, sparkling one, temp in the mid 30s to start. I hoofed it east toward Lake Washington and strolled first down, then up. The water was so clear you could see the rocks at the bottom.  

People were running and strolling and walking their dogs. The sunshine was intoxicating. I don't expect to see much of it while I'm out here ... so I reveled in it, too. 

A Mountain, A Miracle

Day One of my getaway began with an early wakening and a miraculous flight across the country. 

Do I gush when I say miraculous? Actually, I do not. Because when you grow up on car travel, as I did, on seemingly interminable slogs from Lexington, Kentucky, to Los Angeles, San Francisco or other points west, boarding a jet at 7 and being on the opposite coast before lunch will never cease to amaze me. 

What awaited me on the other side were family and friends, blue skies and fir trees. Here's Mount Baker from a Columbia City, Seattle, rooftop. It's the same mountain that illustrates Friday's post, which I captured from an earlier plane trip. 

It's become a beacon now on these cross-country flights. When I see it, I know I'm almost there. It always appears sooner than I think. 

Heading West

Tomorrow I'll board a plane for Washington state, bound for adventure: my first artist's residency.

It's a place and a time set apart for creative activity, designed for artists of all types — musicians, dancers, painters, print-makers, photographers, and, oh yes, writers. 

I've been keeping a packing list for weeks, mostly mulling over how many books I can take and still lift my suitcase. The answer: not as many as I would like. 

In less than 24 hours, though, I will have made my final choices and be on my way, heading west to a quiet cabin beside the sea. 

(Flying into Washington last May.)

Super Scary!

Ghosty has been with us for years, a piece of fabric with a stuffed-newspaper head and inexpertly-drawn eyes. He's been haunting our lamp post for the better part of two decades, and when I at first couldn't find him in the basement a week ago, I felt bereft.

Compare him with the current crop of Halloween decorations. The 12-foot-tall Skelly, for instance, a plastic skeleton so popular that Home Depot can't keep it in stock. Or the gruesome, leering werewolf that rears his ugly head from a woods near me. I wouldn't want to run into him on a dark night.

It's all fun and games — unless you're a child with an overactive imagination. Since I was one of those, I feel for the kiddos who see a masked face so scary that a full year later they can't forget about it.

It's super-sized Halloween terror, coming soon (already!) to a suburban lawn near you.

(Top photo: courtesy Home Depot)

Blanker Canvas

I've removed the standing desk from my office, a large black metal contraption that sat atop the scarred apple-green desktop. The standing desk was helpful when I spent more hours sitting. Now I'm free to jump up and down scores of times a day — and I do so, probably more often that I should.

But that's another matter.

What I wanted to mention today is the geography of my workspace, how the terrain has changed. A vast, flat expanse has emerged now that I've removed the two-tiered standing desk. And with it gone, I realized I could shift the desk lamp from the far corner to the exact midpoint of the surface, between the windows, so as not to block the view of trees and sky. 

It's a blanker canvas. A more open vista. It suits me now. 

(The prism that hangs between the windows makes rainbows on the walls.)

Endless Summer

There was a freeze warning last night, and the furnace is humming as I type these words. Time to remember warmer weather. 

I'm thinking of a beach: salt air, gentle surf, an inquisitive egret strolling through the waves, eyeing the bait bucket as he passes a fisherman on the shore.

I'm remembering the way my body feels in the sun, loose and warm and grateful to be alive.

I'm reliving walks under palm trees, fronds clicking in the breeze and the air heavy and full.

As the season turns, the mind can mutiny, can claim for itself an endless summer. 

Parental Equinox

Today is the birthday of our oldest daughter. I realized, as I counted the years, that today also marks a parental equinox of sorts for me: I've been a parent as long as I have not. 

What do I see from this perch, from this fine balance? Strangely enough, I see continuity. For me, becoming a mother didn't mark a revolution of caring but an expansion of it. Parenthood has been a way to give back the love that was given so freely to me by my own parents. It is the completion of a circle. 

I can't imagine a life without motherhood. I'm grateful beyond measure to have become a parent. But I've tried always to live as not-just-a-mother, to honor dear friends who live full lives without children, who are wonderful aunts and uncles (honorary and by blood). I hope this message got through to my daughters; I think it has. 

Most of all today, I'm thinking of the baby with a V-shaped mouth who seldom slept, who sang before she talked, who took us to places we never thought we'd go. She has grown and flourished. She has studied and learned. She has traveled to the other side of the world — the dusty red-dirt roads of the Sahel — and back. She has given us three other wonderful people to love: her husband and children. Because of her and her sisters, our hearts are full. A parental equinox, yes. But if I had to pick one side of the divide to live in always, I know which one I'd choose.

(Three-year-old Suzanne holds her baby sister, Claire.)

Aloft

Wind whips the leaves off the witch hazel tree, sets them spinning down into a pile of gold. 

Wind bends the tulip poplar and the bamboo, which is taking bows outside my office window.

Wind sets the jets on an alternate course, sends them scudding, like the clouds, over this house. 

Trees, planes, clouds — may all that belongs aloft ... stay that way. 

Accumulation of Misery

There is something to be said for writing these posts early in the morning, before I've fully inhabited the day or, especially these last two weeks, read the newspaper. 

This morning's news was no more disheartening or sad than any other day of the last two weeks. 

It's just the accumulation of misery that's making it hard to concentrate on the golden leaves of the witch hazel tree, the last few blooms of the climbing rose. 

Autumn Afternoon

A late walk through the woods, along the lake, over the bridge, and back to where I started from.

No question what time of year it is. If the leaves didn't clue me in ...

the peg-legged skeleton pirate did. 

But there are still patches of green, remnants of summer left behind. 

Bottom Lines

For many years my professional goals were closely tied to the wages I needed to earn. I made a living from writing articles, editing a magazine, telling the stories of an organization. 

Now I'm glimpsing a different way of being, one where pen and keyboard are no longer expected to bring home the bacon. 

Both ways are worthy. Both ways work. They're just very, very different, that's all. 

(To be continued...)

The Zucchini

The world is in turmoil. Winter is right around the corner. Time for some positivity, which comes today in the form of a vegetable.

I've mourned the trees as they've fallen. Now to celebrate the sunniness that has come in their wake.

There's no better proof of this than the plump zucchini that managed to thrive in the back garden. In fact, it became so large that the only palatable way to eat it will be grated in bread or pancakes.

Still, this is a milestone. I'm not yet rushing out to plant a vegetable garden, but I'll begin to think of the backyard not as a shady place ... but as a sunny one.

Toddler Time

To see the world through the eyes of a toddler — what riches that would bring! A kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, smells and textures. A riot of color. What a boon for a writer, to experience such raw sensation. 

The next best thing? Perhaps to follow a toddler around. A lively experience, of course, but difficult to document.

To capture a toddler in motion is like photographing a hummingbird. Too much movement to contain. Only when there's deep engagement can you move in and snap a shot. Luckily, that happened yesterday.

 

Every Verse

"Second verse, same as the first," goes a line from an old Herman's Hermits song. 

Two verses used to be the limit for the processional and recessional hymns at my church. But there's a new music director in town, an organist no less, and he plays all four verses of every entering and leaving song.

Is it my imagination, or is there a certain restlessness as we plunge into verse four of the entrance hymn, a narrowly avoided temptation to glance at the watch? 

As for the recessional, people are voting with their feet. This morning, about half the congregation left before the last notes of "The Church's One Foundation" sounded and the postlude began, organ chords thundering down from on high. 

This is how we're supposed to leave the sanctuary, I thought, as I made my way to the holy water font and out the door — caught up in a marvelous swell of sound. 

(This organ is from San Bartolome Church, Seville, Spain, not my church. I wish!)

Walking Bass

When I need ballast and rhythm, when I require that steady beat, there is usually one composer I turn to — J.S. Bach. I cue up the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 because it has the peppy piccolo trumpet I once heard can pop the blood vessels of its players, so high are its notes, so forcefully must one blow to make them sound. 

But also because, like its confreres, No. 2 has a steady walking bass line, the solid quarter notes perfect for pacing one's self, for staying in line, for moving along. 

Although now associated with rock or jazz, the walking bass line has long-ago origins. Some theorists consider Bach its early master. And while this is important for musicians to know, it's equally essential for walkers. We need a beat that will pulse all the way down into our metatarsal bones. 

Although the trumpet notes of Bach's Brandenburg No. 2 dance around on high, underneath them is the dependable meter of the walking bass. It's a winning combination: the flourishes of the former, the steadiness of the latter. Together, they keep me going.

(Can't imagine walking very far with this bass!)

Shoulder Seasons

What is it about shoulder seasons? Are spring and fall truly more poetic or do they just seem that way? 

"Margaret are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving?" wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins in his poem "Spring and Fall to a Young Child."

Autumn and spring are times of great beauty, times when it's easier to notice the underpinnings of things: the uncoiling of a fern, the thinning of leaves. 

I wonder, too, if spring and fall aren't times of greater yearning, when we see outside our small worlds to what lies beyond. 

Author Susan Cain would call these seasons bittersweet, "a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world." 

Good Words

Today is the birthday of Eleanor Roosevelt, mother, teacher, writer, wife, first lady and activist, whose 2020 biography was unputdownable. 

One of Eleanor's many noteworthy traits was her capacity for growth. She was not afraid to plunge in, assess, take action, and, when necessary, reverse course. She was ahead of her time. 

Perhaps this quotation helps explain some of her courage: "You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you," she said, "if you realized how seldom they do."

Good words to take into the day. 

(Writing about Eleanor gives me an excuse to feature a Washington, D.C. photo.)

Deer Management

"Shoo! Get out! What are you doing back here?"

At first the deer looked at me blankly, as if they had no idea what the fuss was about, why I might be waving my arms at them as they strolled casually through the backyard. 

Eventually they got the idea, though, and I counted them as they raced along the fence line and leapt into the common land. 

One, two, three, four, five. Their white tails waved as they vaulted themselves into the air. 

A small herd, but a herd just the same. 

(This sign is not in my backyard, but it did come to mind this morning.)

A Reckoning

The furnace came on this morning. I smelled the heat before I felt it, slightly acrid but warm and comforting, too. The aroma of thick bathrobes and steaming kettles and stepping inside from a cold rain. 

We could have held out longer, but why? It's inevitable. The cold is coming. Toughing it out won't keep it away. 

As befits a day of forced air heat, clouds dominate, and the stillness they bring is welcome. They promise seclusion and concentration and a long writing session. They promise cold, too. 

Vintage

It just dawned on me that my blog is like my kitchen: both are vintage. Although I cook on a gas stove  manufactured in this century, the cabinetry, Formica and wallpaper hail from the 1970s. 

The template I use for A Walker in the Suburbs isn't that old (it couldn't be!), but in tech terms it's a woolly mammoth, held together by random HTML code and the good will of Google (ahem). 

In both cases, I'm playing for time, hoping that if I hang on long enough, what's old will become classic.

(Apparently, I take no pictures of my own kitchen. This is from a house we rented at the lake. It's dated, but not as old as mine.)

The Unmentioned

I'm thinking about travel blogging, which I've done a bit of these last few months. Writing and traveling are natural partners because they're both about exploring and discovering. But there's at least one major difference — when you write about a trip, you edit out the embarrassing, extraneous or just plain boring.

A week ago, for instance, I was packing up to leave a motel room where I worried I might have picked up bed bugs. I know these critters can lurk in swanky establishments as well as lesser ones, but this place was most definitely the latter. 

I'd chosen it because it was cheap, and fresh from three weeks in Scotland I was all about saving money. But from the first glimpse of the dingy hallway I remembered an important lesson I often ignore: you get what you pay for.

It's always good to be reminded of that reality. It's even better to leave it behind in the detritus of trip details I generally leave unmentioned. 

(I have no photos of the offensive motel, which did not have bedbugs, by the way.)

For the Birds

It's a fact of life that if your dear old doggie has passed away, some of the attention he used to enjoy will be passed along to the pets who remain. And so, during our recent Savannah getaway, the parakeets had timed radio music to brighten their day and accompany their chirps. 

Here are these tiny creatures, the two of them together weighing less than a first-class letter, with Beethoven, Vivaldi, Rimsky-Korsakov, Chopin, Rachmaninoff and scores of other composers blaring from the stereo. The house was filled with sound, whether they wanted it or not. 

Luckily for them, the radio shut down a little before 7 p.m. each evening, which means they were spared the news of the day. 

(Toby during a contemplative moment)

Sideways

It's part of the Charleston allure, the way so many single family homes in the historic district sit sideways on their lots, presenting to passerby not their ample fronts but their narrower sides.  

It wasn't for tax purposes, but for privacy and tranquility that the airy old manses on Tradd or Legare turned their shoulders to the world.

I didn't enter one of these homes, but I can imagine the cool breezes that would flow from the portico ceiling fans. There would be rocking chairs, of course, and tall glasses of iced tea, beaded with moisture. 

To enter you'd step through a portal that led from street to porch. A false door? Perhaps, but it provided an extra layer of protection between inside and out. 

The Power of Preservation

A walking tour of Charleston yesterday revealed many interesting facts, two of which are related, I think. This southern city had the nation's earliest and most successful preservation laws -- and it has now surpassed Las Vegas in the number of weddings per year.

That last one is a dubious distinction, but it indicates that people want to be here, that there's a charm and scale about the place that boosts tourism and the bottom line. 

Old buildings, narrow alleyways, hidden courtyards — these create a sense of place that's often lacking in this country. If only more of our cities had preserved their pasts, instead of bulldozing them. 

(The Powder Magazine is South Carolina's oldest government building, completed in 1713. The Colonial Dames of America saved it from demolition in 1902.)

Bridge at Sunset

The Port of Savannah is the third largest in the U.S., plied day and night by colossal container ships. But when I snapped this shot it seemed to be holding its breath, and the Talmadge Bridge seemed delicate as lace.

Today we leave this city for its cousin across the river — Charleston, South Carolina, with its French Quarter, waterfront and Rainbow Row.

We may take another span to get there, but a bridge will be involved, just the same. 

(As it turns out, we took this one.)

Savannahhh!

In 2015 it was Big Sky, Montana. In 2016, Chicago, followed by Huston in 2017 and St. Louis the year after that. And then we ran out of young'uns getting married, or at least ones having big weddings. 

This weekend, we made up for lost time. Savannah obliged by rolling out a pair of warm days and sultry evenings, perfect for strolling the brick-paved walks of this gracious southern city. 

I'm here to see people not scenery, but the place has wowed me just the same.