Changes and Dandelions

I wonder how many people in this world have spent most of their lives with one constant space they consider home. In some places, far from where I call home -- or at least far different from where I call home -- there’s probably a lot of people that don’t leave the home they were born in for a long time. Maybe never. I've spent nearly 21 years in the same wooden blue house with a white porch -- and concrete steps that always look wet paving the way to a sandy colored, grainy sidewalk. Nearly 252 months, nearly 84 seasons, calling that house home. I’ve seen people come and go, issues arise and resolve in the neighborhood, yards go from unruly to neat and back again. Time sits heavier as the years bear on and we age. Experiencing so much change in the same space-- it sags.

Things aren’t like they used to be for a multitude of reasons. Looking out the window in recent times, and especially today, it's hard for me to see what's just physically there. I feel. Phantom images and sensations of what used to be. Sometimes, I see and feel what is no longer there more than what is right in front of my face. To look out the window is a constant conversation between the past and the present, the product of which is a brooding sense of emotion, a sucker punch that beats into my mind and heart what I didn’t have time for before, what wasn’t soaked up, appreciated, lived. A meandering trail of thought is cleared out in the thick brush of my mind. It leads to no direct conclusion save for inward catharsis, a shift within. I can only paint a picture of what I see out of my window in the shifting of voices and faces, the movement of living things as they live in my mind. I can only reap fruits borne from all of the sensations and perceptions of my present reality met in embrace with what once was for you to eat. To speak of it, to write of it all gives new life, many of them. Each typed sentence roots seeds of these memories, that will sprout lives that will grow inside of each of you.

My mind recalls a tiny white ancient dog, walking an even more ancient man, that used to parade around the street every evening. He would limp along and sniff his way from yard to yard stopping to pee at every other house, seemingly. The crouched elderly man would gingerly pick his way around the corner, careful to avoid stepping on cracks, sometimes venturing to take on a descent down the hill. The man, Jim, had only a couple wisps of white hair, while his counterpart, Cooper, exhibited a lengthy mane, always secured out of his face in a high ponytail with a colorful bow, always different. Often when I would spot them from my window I would run down, with a warm greeting for Jim, to scratch Cooper behind his ears. I would inwardly marvel at the age and perseverance of them both. Despite his appearance, Jim’s voice and mind were exuberant. He always had candy and a lot of things to say, always about the present.

As time wore on, I noticed that when I spotted the pair from my window Jim was looking more and more stooped, gaunt. I caught them less and less on their walks and soon just Cooper could be seen, hobbling at a faster pace, struggling, guided by a kindly, but rushed family member of Jim’s. One day, I realized Jim hadn’t been around. I stopped looking after a while.

I've had a few different windows to look out of in this house -- the space I’ve called “my room” has changed with many moves, bouncing back and forth between all 3 rooms on our creaky second floor as purposes for the rooms have changed, family moved in and out, organically. Adjacent to pictures of birthday parties and intimate family moments, the house’s interior is unrecognizable in many spaces. But witnessing that change, that I’ve lived in doesn’t hit as hard as the change I now recognize when looking out beyond these walls. I wonder what I’ve missed, what I would’ve seen If I’d really looked out the window all those times my eyes gazed, but didn’t see, mindless.

This is a strange summer. Usually in summer, when I’ve looked out my window, I’d see school-age boys walking down the street, sweat gleaming on their skin, wearing basketball shorts, their t-shirts and tank tops like hoods on their heads to protect them from the glaring sun beating down on their heads. To watch them clamour down the street, hear their busy chatter, their sing-songy voices mocking and laughing and taunting, jeering lightheartedly-- talking just for their voices to be heard, it meant much more than just what was seen. It meant heat waves glimmering on the nearly sizzling asphalt road, the prickly, itchy smell of fresh cut grass. It meant my bare feet patting down the sidewalk, body braced for the cool shocking feeling when a tirade of droplets descended from sprinklers too big for their lawns, sweeping as far as that little patch of treelawn and sometimes hitting the street itself.

Where did they go? When did they stop coming this way? Is this a product of recent events, or is this absence a change that occured years ago, unnoticed as I flit in and out of the house, long distance things on my mind, distracted, uncentered, unmindful? The school is still there just around the corner, but recently closed, of course. I'm sure that if the kids have recently tried to convene on the playground of the elementary school, they were disbanded and told to go home immediately, tails between their legs, dejected, probably sulking. Are they all going crazy in the confines of their backyards, their houses? Do they have basketballs, hoops on their garages, a stretch of grass to play on, a safe space to be fun and silly and loud? I can only wonder and wish and pray, and remember them swaggering down the middle of the street, fearless, undaunted, eager.

My house sits at the top of a steep hill facing down down down to an old, rough, busy, pot-hole marked street below-- with no crosswalks-- cars often rocketing to the street light at the end of one side, so steep that pedestrians have wondered if they had a hard time building a somewhat even sidewalk down the length of it. So steep, that my dad would push my pregnant mother, his hand at the small of her back, guiding her up to our patiently awaiting house, with her sweating and winded and thinking of me and cherry pies. I recall in all early falls and springs, and summers in my remembered life, hearing daily the nails-on-a-chalkboard sound of wheels descending that hill, from daring young kids and teens on sticker-covered tricycles and boldly patterned skateboards and bikes of all colors, speeding towards what I thought-- and still would think today if I were to witness it now, was a certain death. I never had the guts to achieve such a feat. Never have I heard or seen a kid get hit, or heard any commotion other than the wails from the stinging pain of a skinned knee. Now only masked ladies or couples with dogs walk up that hill, appreciative of the vigorous exercise, suspicious of others, eyes swiveling. There is no space for daring anymore, for risk that big or degrees smaller.

In one way, the recent change that the world is experiencing is disturbing-- maybe because it’s sudden? Maybe because it feels like it affects us all collectively and simultaneously. This change forces many things to come to a stop, and growing, living things to wither away. Ancient things. Mom and Pop businesses that have been open in neighborhoods for generations, are forced to close shop for good. New projects, ideas, plans, startups, aren’t able to even get off the ground, let alone manifest into their true potential. Families who were moving up in the world have had parents and children and aunts and cousins lose their jobs, and must watch while their savings dwindle. People are physically separated. People, everywhere, of every age, are dying. In another way, this change is familiar, and places us all in proximity to each other. Everywhere, constantly, people everywhere of every age are dying. Circumstances separate friends and family indefinitely for a multitude of reasons, globally. Ideas and plans and endeavors die off or face obstacles that they can’t overcome. Neighborhood staples, family-owned restaurants close and don’t come back.

And yet still so much life goes on as it only can, grass sprouts and trees lose their leaves and grow them again. Even We breathe air, life-sustaining oxygen, without having to think about it. Cells die and reproduce and die again, within us and everywhere. Bees, less than I remember from earlier times, still whispering sweet nothings and dancing a secret language in the the day, drunk on the pollen of bright, neatly planted flowers tastefully arranged on the lawns of restless homeowners that-- suddenly faced with an expansive stretch of time, and patchy, overgrown, or barren stretches of lawn that seemed to be unattended and waiting just for a moment like this, have resorted to socializing with rich damp soil and little seeds, forging a concerted effort on the frontlines in battle against weeds, pests, vermin, deer, and those damn raccoons. Birds make a racket every morning at sun up. Nosey Ms. Shirley across the street still peers through the blinds when I hoist out the window and onto the roof, frowning disapprovingly. She can’t help but to look.

To say this is not to make what is happening right now seem small, but to show the resilience of our existence, of life itself. Look to history. This has all happened before, in its way. We gaze out of our windows, intently, absentmindedly, in fear, in a haze of nostalgia. Some sit at the window and listen, some sense the vibration of cars rumbling down the street, bicycle wheels gripping the rough sidewalk. However we do it, we feel and breathe and experience, we live on.

Whatever happened to Jim and Cooper? Eventually a neighbor told us. Jim couldn’t walk Cooper anymore, and his son took over the duty. They both passed, one after the other. Cooper died first. This tiny dog was nearly 17, older than me, then. Jim was 94, and they think he died of heartbreak. Jim had lived on our street for 49 years, died when I was 15 and had seen and felt changes on our street for more than double the time that I’ve been here, made changes too. At that age, many in his life had passed. But many children had been born, and those children had children. I hope he enjoyed his life, and his walks. I wish I’d gotten to know them both better. That’s one way I take things for granted. One way I’ve looked but not seen. People and relationships sometimes seem so transient, 2-Dimensional. When living in constancy, things can easily feel as significant as a stray dandelion we might pull out in the yard, bright living vessels of color and feeling and sound, unrecognized, fade to background noise playing accompaniment in the soundtrack to our individual lives. But even that bright, yellow dandelion, gives off a vibration, beauty and texture and sways gracefully in the throes of the wind, shivers under the touch of our fingers. Even the dandelion lives. Especially the dandelion. Jim, I feel you. I felt you then and I feel you now. Thank you. In me, in everyone who you’ve met or who reads this or has heard about you, seen you walking Cooper or alone or anything, you live.