It really isn't about what you find so much as what you bump in to.
Winter has been long. I am wary of the future. The economy is bad, the news is bad, the environment is bad. What do I offer to my children in this?
The lack of a viable vehicle has meant walking to a bus stop for work. It has opened my eyes wider to the smallness of my ever growing city. It has made me realize that as a society, as a city we are oblivious to each other as humans. The sidewalks are few and neglected. Cars as steel weapons careen about oblivious to flesh and bone, blood and innocence; all that can be scrambled in a moment's impulse. I will undoubtedly be a lot more aware of people walking, of the impossible to pass sidewalks, the speed at which I travel, when I drive again.
Walking to the bus I have witnessed the sun rise and the sweep of pinks and blues over the rooftops. I have heard the silence but for the crunching of my boots in snow, the creaking of branches under the weight of an ice storm, the shrill clear sounds of winter birds and realized more closely my own mortality should a laden bough break over me.
I have waited patiently and with reward for the return of the seasonal birds. I have giggled gleefully like a child at the realization of the day grown longer.
The air is not so crisp and clean anymore. The smell of my hair or my clothes is not that of my youth. The pollution is palpable in the weave. There is the fuel smell, and rot smell and despair. It is not the smell of renewal and this, at this I falter. What do I tell my boys? How can they understand? How do I instill in them the smell of my mother's sheets dried on the line in the spring, and the crisp smell of them, of the dreams they invoked after a long day of school or play?
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