On the Street Where I Live

I found a pink plastic bag, a can of Fix-a-Flat and a new, stark white pair of Fruit of the Loom boxer briefs in my truck bed yesterday. I hesitate to even contemplate how these items came to be nestled in among the crackly brown leaves and day-old rainwater floating in the grooves. Once again, I am living on a rather interesting street on Capitol Hill where the neighbors are out on their porch all day (and sometimes all night), there's a blue taxi cab from Maryland constantly parked within five feet of my front door and there's a tiny corner market with bars on the window and a female Asian proprietor taking money behind about a foot of plexi-glass. In addition to cold Cokes, juices, and various assortments of chips, she also serves egg sandwiches and a host of other grilled items that may or may not relate to Chinese food. I couldn't say what her hours are as I've only found the door open once in my many attempts to satisfy my craving for dark, carbonated goodness, but as the place still exists and the sign remains painted above the windowless wall, I assume she's making enough to survive.

Our house does nothing but add to the block's character. The paint is peeling on every side, the green stuff growing haphazardly in the front 'yard' can only be called grass on a good day, and our front walk looks like it's seen more earthquakes than San Francisco. I suppose the cracks would also explain why our front door only occasionally seems to fit the door frame. My roommate has since dubbed the entire establishment "Sealander" and we're running out of room on the current list of necessary repairs. We discovered a water stain on the ceiling in the kitchen this morning and are now anticipating the day when someone using the upstairs bathroom finds themselves continuing their shower in the kitchen sink.

With all of its faults, I still love its character and am even thankful for the watchful neighbors who could probably tell you in a heartbeat how many times I've left the house in any given week. "Looks like she went grocery shoppin' again;" "Must be headed off to work;" "Ooh, better not stay parked there, baby. They gonna ticket you fo' sho." It's our own little version of Mayberry. Just with a little more flavah.

Trees and SUNSHINE

Sunshine is good for my soul. Turns out, Washington is home to the US National Arboretum which is essentially a zoo for trees. An entire property fenced in with walking paths for the visitors, all different species of trees and plants to peruse, and even handy signs sporadically stuck into the dirt explaining native habitats and growth patterns. And on clear days, bookoos of sunshine bouncing off the leaves and turning the pavement a silvery gray, I can't say with enough enthusiasm how much I love times like that. I have a new German friend who laughs at me (well, apparently all Germans laugh at Americans for this) for saying I 'love' things. They're amused that we use such strong language to express a lot of like for one thing or another.

"You're always saying 'I love this' or 'I love that.' We just say 'Oh, it's ok.' Even if we like it a lot."

So do they say the same of their spouses? "Oh, he's ok." Perhaps that's the point, that the word love should be reserved for relationships. I go off on this tangent to properly express my relationship for the outdoors and that big ball of glowy awesomeness that anchors the universe. I LOVE it. It's more than just ok. Except for those times that it burns me so badly that my skin turns reddish purple, and then I have to sit down and tell it that it's not working out and we need a break. But in the spring and fall, when the weather is eight different kinds of perfect and the sun just the right amount of warm, we work things out in record speed and I'm in love again.

Live

I went to kindergarden with a pretty little brown-haired girl named Jeri. I can't remember how often we played together, but I do remember that she had warts on one of her thumbs and the skin was always light pink, shriveled and cracked looking. Someone told me it was because she sucked her thumb too much. After that, my thumb never found its way into my mouth again.

Growing up, we went to the same schools until graduation. I'd see her occasionally in the halls; we shared a few of the same classes in high school. We were friends in the lightest sense of the word, but I always liked her -  a feeling linked with some indeterminate memories from kindergarden. After college I ran into her somewhere and discovered she was studying forensic and criminal science at a graduate school near where I was living in DC. Last year, at our high school reunion, she told me that she was doing forensics for the CIA in Virginia. I admired her. A decade after graduation she was still smart, beautiful, confident, and doing what she loved - something at which I imagined she was very talented. I was impressed and happy for her and a little bit envious that she had it all together, that her life made seemingly perfect sense. I got a text from a mutual friend this past weekend. Jeri died in a car accident on Friday.

We struggle so much in this particular decade of life to find ourselves, to figure out our purpose and who we are. Sometimes it feels like a waste if we can't reach some kind of conclusion at the same speed as everyone else. But regardless of how well you're doing, how successful you are, or how long you've had 'it' figured out, life can end in a second. I've been running around feeling sorry for myself for not having a concrete plan or direction, but even if I did, it wouldn't matter. Having it together wouldn't lengthen my life any more or make me any more invincible to the physical frailty of being human.

Hearing about Jeri made me feel odd on the inside. Like it wasn't real or was some kind of misinformation. Then someone else from home verified it, and in that moment, the surreal feeling didn't disappear, but I stopped feeling sorry for myself. Life has been good, has been great for large chunks of it. And I can start today, right now, living it more. What I'm doing, where I'm working, how I'm managing to pay the bills isn't that important. What is important is that I woke up and took a breath this morning and my friends can still see my face and my mom can still hug me. While I'm not necessarily a fan of the phrase "Live each day like it's your last," because let's face it, a lot of times it isn't and there are consequences, I would say live each day like everything is possible. Because it is. And you just don't know how many chances to "live" that you'll get.