12.30.2009

early to tread

In Italy we walked everywhere. It wasn't that we walked from our apartment on Via del Porrione to class two blocks over, or that we walked to the coffee shop down the street. I mean, we literally walked the entire city of Siena daily. We walked outside of Siena too, to the train stop a few kilometers away. And we walked in foreign cities where we visited, like Venice and Rome, the beaches of Viareggio and the coast of the five lands. Without bikes, euros for bus fare or even a skate board, we walked.  It became not only a mode of transport, but our avenue to see the city, experience the shops and meet the people, even if we didn't exchange words. It was charming to walk in Siena where the streets are made of great gray stones and there aren't sidewalks.  The street runs right up to the store fronts and apartment doors and when the trucks drive through delivering meat from the surrounding farms, you press your body against the cold stone walls in order to evade their tires.  

When I look back at my time in Europe, the most impressive memory I have is of traipsing across France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy, and of discovering the exclusive city of Siena on foot.  In Siena the walls, which tower over and close you in, are also the observer's perch, the writer's thinking position.  And beside the picture of the stone streets, I picture the views from the walls looking out over the rolling hills of the Tuscan landscape. 

From my apartment in Ardmore, the grocery store is one mile away, the post office three-quarters of a mile, my office, two miles, and the book store, a little over two. I began walking again, all over town, about two months ago, when the weather turned cold and my seasonally depressed brain began needing as much natural light as possible.  Occasionally my timid self insecurely hopes nobody I know sees me, but I'm getting over it.  It's the strangest thing, though it shouldn't be, but it's wonderful, this walking.  I'm getting to know this city for the first time since I've moved here, really getting to know it.  Its small roads and its strange streets. The houses with red doors and the women who keep great beautiful gardens. I know where the territorial dogs live and which houses have gone on the market, and the ones which have sold.  

It does take longer, I'll admit. Walking. And it's more tiresome. But it's also much more lively and alluring and cleansing.  In this cold winter my cheeks are flushed by the time I make it to the Post Office... but my mama always said rosy cheeks are becoming.

12.15.2009

joy.

I was driving through Baptist Hospital on Cloverdale Avenue this week. It was foggy and dark at 4:30, as has been custom in Winston these past few weeks, and I pulled up to the red light in the left turning lane.  All of a sudden I remembered that Christmas is coming, that I'll be in the living room of my family's home with my big old 6 foot 4 inch brother telling me stupid inappropriate jokes, holding a glass of red wine, while my brother-in-law and dad taunt my husband about the recent (pitiful) demonstrations made by his Pittsburgh Steelers.  My mom will be sticking up for him because she thinks that Mark hung the moon and my sister will inevitably be entranced by some Christmas spectacular on the TV while the little Jonathan hangs on Jake, our old golden retriever. 

And when I sat at the light thinking of that scene in my home with my family, whom I love more than anything or anyone on the face of the earth, I actually started to cry.  (Hannah is shaking her head at this, smiling).

That is joy.

Here's another one: our Christmas tree.  It is the most beautiful, brilliant, vivid, psychedelic tree you have ever seen. Colored lights, ridiculous ornaments, "Baby's first Christmas" sled from 1984 (put that one together...) It's absurd, really, and perfect. Six o'clock in the morning is wonderful this month because I get an hour of darkness in the living room with my beautiful bright tree and a cup of coffee and I love it.  

That is joy.

Jonathan. I didn't think I'd ever like a kid as much as I love my nephew. Mark says it's like a drug for me and he is right. I go over there at least once a week to hang out with the kid. He is the best person in the world. Please see the photo posted in the previous entry on the blog.

Friday morning when I was there he was acting drunk, just laughing uncontrollably and stumbling all over the place. I usually end up in laughing fits just being around him.  Anyway, I'm sitting on the ottoman of the comfy chair in the living room and Jonathan waddles over and kind of wraps his arms around my legs and buries his face in my knees, whining.  I pull him up onto my lap and lay my head back into the seat of the chair and he climbs up onto my stomach, flops his head down beside my head and begins to laugh.  His shaking self, stomach on my face, makes me laugh, and apparently it tickles him, so he laughs harder.  Hannah had to come see what in the world was making us laugh so hard because the one-year-old and the twenty-three-year-old literally cannot stop.  

Now that is joy.

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