Stories – The Green Study

The Marrow of Vulnerability

Summer tends to be my season of discontent. More so this year than ever before. The curated insouciance of sun, sand, and vacation photos mean nothing to me. We wait as a relative passes from known to unknowable in the haze of Alzheimer’s, punctuated by endless rounds of teenage school clothes shopping. Insouciance in its current form means a “casual lack of concern”, a version of being “cool”. But I play etymology operator, passing through French and Latin origins, landing on an uneasiness of mind. This seems more apt.

canstockphoto1290841 My last post left on a dark note and I could not make myself come back from that. Exhortations of it’s not that bad or it could be worse (a very Minnesotan way of saying turn that frown upside down) served to irritate and isolate me. I knew I was in a rut, growing ever deeper the more I tried to pull myself out of it. Solitude is curative but nearly unattainable during the summer. The garden provided little solace as the late summer heat and bugs make every moment uncomfortable.

I could not complain. Every whinge would be met with “first world problems”, a phrase that has the desired effect of shutting someone down. I curled inward with books. I started with Brené Brown’s Braving the Wilderness. I moved onto another of her books Rising Strong. And then I read The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. I was slowly reading myself out of the rut. A suggestion by a blogger friend, Donna at A Year of Living Kindly, led me to Wayne Muller’s How, Then, Shall We Live?

canstockphoto6270889 These are gentle books, language unmarred by politically expedient shortcuts to label, categorize, and dismiss a person out of hand. They spoke the language of vulnerability. I have come to a point in my life where the defenses and protection I worked so assiduously to develop, are no longer working. It’s the outcome of shuffling across the middle age line, when thoughtfulness and evaluation about the years ahead are needed. It’s a magical time, when you realize that you must make conscientious decisions with the knowledge you’ve attained – that it’s time to put away the primer, training wheels, and excuses.

I used to think I had the vulnerability thing down. I’ve certainly written enough about my personal history and flaws on this blog. I got comfortable with the feedback that I’m authentic and honest. The funny thing about telling stories is that it is one step removed from owning the stories. I could write about my father’s suicide or the domestic violence I grew up with, no problem. I could write about bad boyfriends and awful jobs. I could talk about mental health issues and depression. I could joke about being a writer who procrastinates and struggles.

But I couldn’t write about the ache I felt when my daughter, in her toddler years, would ride on her father’s shoulders. The times I’d brush away tears and get on with things. I couldn’t write that growing up, never knowing from minute-to-minute how the adults around me would react, made me pathologically empathetic, to the point where I’d recognize how others felt before acknowledging my own feelings. I couldn’t write about the shame I sometimes feel that I am the way I am – that every subject becomes a think piece. These things get put aside, so I can tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

The thing I’ve learned from my reading these last few weeks, is that because I have refused to integrate my stories into who I am, they own me. When you are owned by your stories, it’s hard to see the possibilities. You live your life defined by the limitations of those stories and not in the realm of choice and opportunity. As a response to my lived experiences, I built armor and exploited my stories as narrative, never allowing myself to feel them and grow beyond them.

canstockphoto21174 About the time I began unraveling, a couple of months ago, I stopped working out. I got soft and pudgy. I’d always been determined to be strong. After I left the Army, I spent years afterward running, weight training, doing workout videos, training in the martial arts, going to the Y. There was an urgency to stay physically stronger, as if to protect the tender insides with bands of muscle. It was protection against anyone having power over me, against ever letting anyone hurt me.

I thought about how hard I would push myself, of all the injuries I’d gotten over the years, and how the outcome was the same as if I’d done nothing. I was still a pudgy, middle-aged woman with knees that hurt on rainy days. That I was motivated by what might happen if I didn’t exercise is ass backwards. I had taken something that could be joyful and enjoyable and made it mandatory or else.

This serves as an apt metaphor for the mental protection I’ve learned. I’ve learned to be canstockphoto23183995 suspicious of joy, because something bad will happen in the next minute. I’ve learned to never let myself be too happy for too long, because then I won’t be steeled against the next moment when hell rains down. When opportunity comes along, opportunity that can open doors for me, I tamp down my enthusiasm, in case it all goes wrong. In all cases, the outcome is the same. I kill the follow through and I don’t enjoy the process.

I’ve railed against my own defenses. Just be happy, dammit. Can’t you enjoy something for five seconds, before you think of all the downsides? But this approach has proven fruitless.

There’s only one thing left to do. Because if I’m going to feel shame, fear, anxiety, and hyper self-criticism, I’d at least like it to be because I’m playing offense – because I’m making amazing attempts to do things I’d never imagined I could do. Because I’m laying it on the line, writing books that don’t sell well or running for public office and losing or reaching out and connecting with another human. If I’m going to feel shitty feelings, I’d rather it not be because I’m hunkered down and safe.

canstockphoto25034608 I started working out again, but less from fear and more for self-care – the world did not come crashing down, all pudginess aside. I’ve said yes to some new opportunities, collaborating on a writing project, mentoring, getting politically engaged with other humans. I feel like a walking bruise, literally and metaphorically. But to be vulnerable is not just opening yourself up to pain and failure – it’s allowing all those other, unfamiliar beasts in – joy, happiness, enthusiasm. It’s going to be a weird, awkward ride.

August 8, 2018August 8, 2018

Michelle at The Green Study30 Comments

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

canstockphoto9496832 I was listening to Tom Petty this morning, sad that he has passed away at a relatively young age. His music immediately pulls me back into the past, growing up as a teenager in Iowa. It reminds me of parties out in machine sheds in the middle of nowhere, of awful first dates, and coming of age when getting booze and pot and avoiding pregnancies were all that we worried about.

It wasn’t a great age of innocence. We were still in the Cold War. Someone tried to assassinate the president. Terrorist attacks were happening around the world. In 1983, 299 American and French service members were killed when their barracks in Beirut were bombed by Islamic militants. HIV was finally in the mainstream conversation.

Life at my house was disastrous and tense. And everyone in town knew about it.

canstockphoto5763691 But I could find refuge in the middle of a cornfield, where life didn’t seem so scary. There were some irrigation ponds several miles outside of town. My best friend and I would drive out there, sit on the hood of my car, smoking and watching the orange reflections on the water as the sun went down. We’d have philosophical discussions about anything and everything. She had a mentally ill parent, mine were drunk and/or dysfunctional. Home was never where we wanted to be.

She introduced me to cigarettes and booze and pot. And I listen raptly to her stories about boys. She was one of those girls who attracted them like flies. More so when she started putting out. Her parents thought, as parents often do, that their child was a good kid. They thought I was a bad influence. It wasn’t the first time in my life I took the hit because I was a poor kid from a messed-up family, so it didn’t bother me.

canstockphoto11803482 My friends and I would drive to the closest university town on weekends to hit the frat parties. My car was a jacked-up 1972 turquoise Monte Carlo that I bought for $500. It had shiny wire rims and no car stereo. I had a boom box and a need to tear away at stoplights, as if I were always in a drag race. We’d load up, stocked with cassette tapes, cigarettes, hash brownies, and a mixed gallon jug of Everclear, orange juice and 7-Up.

A gaggle of teenage girls were always welcome at parties. No invitation needed. Over the course of the evening, my friends would gradually disappear with one polo-shirted guy or another. I ended up sitting next to a giant bong talking about the nature of the universe with some kid in a War Games t-shirt. I never did know how to flirt, but I could talk Cold War politics until everyone around me had passed out.

My junior year, while others were diligently working on college applications, I was running and doing push ups and counting down the days. I had decided to join the Army. I made decisions like this very quickly. My instinct about what I needed to do always preceded long thought processes. I knew I needed to leave and I knew I wanted to go to college.

I decided that way about a lot of things, including my virginity. It wasn’t valuable to me – it was just this thing that meant I lacked life experience. I found a boy older than me and got the deed done. It was not as interesting as I had hoped. And there was no point in pretending that it was love.

My true love was a popular, acne-covered boy who I’d loved since 8th grade. I wrote him anonymous love letters, blushed whenever I passed him in the hallway, imagined glances and smiles meant for me. Our sophomore year, his girlfriend was killed in a car wreck. It gave him a tragic air that was like catnip to a teenage girl. I loved him from afar all through high school. Many an excruciating poem was written on the basis of that love.

It was a small school, so his girlfriend had been a friend of mine as well. It was the first time anyone I’d known had died. These days, I can never attend a funeral, without that sickly floral smell of too many sympathy arrangements, and not think of her, lying there, porcelain and pretty in her casket, her manicured hands folded around a rose.

I spent most of high school working at a small cafe in town owned by a married couple. The man was a chainsmoker and coffee addict with glasses that made his eyes look Pokemon enormous. His wife was a tolerant woman and kind. While the police and social services were becoming more frequent visitors to my house, I found sanctuary at the cafe. We’d close up at two on Sundays, after the church rush and the four or five of us working that day would sit down for lunch.

canstockphoto30204079 While his wife would tally the day’s receipts, the boss would challenge me to Ms. Pac-Man, a giant video game in the front corner of the cafe. He’d grab quarters from the till, refill his coffee, light his next cigarette off the last and we’d play for an hour before I went home. If I needed money or a ride or a place to stay, they were always there, offering.

It was these strange, unexpected kindnesses that saved me. And they are sometimes the easiest to forget. So often my intense need to burn bridges, to put the past far behind me, makes me forget the people, the music, the memories that provided solace and refuge and helped me grow to be a better person than my experiences might have allowed.

We learn to see ourselves a certain way, to remember our pasts and define our character in the same way for years. Psychologists talk about re-framing our experience which I always understood as being something different. I was repulsed by the idea of revision, of rewriting the painful chapters.

Remembering only the bad served a need in the story I told myself. For me, it was how I could get away, break a cycle, leave behind a life that would not serve me well. But that was thirty years ago and that story no longer serves my needs.

It is why I am stuck as a writer. I keep telling the same story over and over, in one form or another. But it’s not the whole story. I am not the sum of miserable parts, but of parts equally happy and funny and poignant – those girlfriends from long ago, the kindnesses randomly offered, the gangly boys, the music that reminds of me of long, humid summer nights leaning back against the windshield, watching the sun go down.

October 3, 2017October 3, 2017

Michelle at The Green Study18 Comments

Anatomy of a Depression

It’s hard to write from a place of depression. Whatever anyone thinks they know about depression, they can really only know their own. Mine comes in many shades. This particular one is a verdant green. The gray dullness I feel is made more pallid by the contrast of a lush Minnesota summer, when the rain has come at all the right times.

Already I – have become tired of such a deep-colored summer.

In the grove the masses of royal fern – have grown up to

their full height and

underneath them

I suppose such things as beetles, frogs, and blue-green

dwarves are walking.

This greenness like a sea

must have totally dyed the expression of my eyes.

Sei Itō, Anthology of Modern Japanese Poetry

canstockphoto43309768 It’s like being in the middle of a really great party, but no one can hear or see you. I feel untouched by happiness, retreating further into the recesses of my mind. Life becomes this out-of-body experience and I used to fear that if I didn’t hold on, force myself back out, I’d just drift away. But my energy is low, even while my brain generates worst case scenarios by the second.

I’ve long ago abandoned the idea that I should feel this way or that. This is emotional freedom. My life is now constructed in such a way that my depression isn’t a spectator sport. I can pull weeds without expression, fold laundry mindlessly, make a meal in silence. I can think my dark thoughts and not have to apologize or try to ameliorate the worry of someone else. I can go dark and quiet and unnoticed.

My experience gives me the edge when it comes to the regular dead space that overtakes me. I know it will end. I’ve been through this so many times, that I know I will likely wake up tomorrow in an entirely different place. This keeps my depression from becoming something more dangerous. It makes it less dramatic or interesting, which is something I don’t take for granted.

canstockphoto5410688 Some depressions I slide into, requiring days of numbness to finally force my acknowledgement. Some, like where I’m at now, happen snap-quick when an incident knocks away my self-assurance, uncorking tumble-down thoughts that I was filled with at a young age. I am not good enough and making mistakes just proves that.

In this case, I said something that I thought was funny, but I hurt the person’s feelings. I apologized and maybe in a differently-wired brain that would be the end of it. We moved on from it, but I stayed with the thought that I am mean-spirited and that I can’t trust myself to be around other people. That I can’t trust other people.

It triggered an anxiety attack. I would not be loved unless I made myself more worthy. How do I make myself worthy? Strive for perfection. Strive to be better. I put myself through a punishing workout. I worked harder getting the house in order. I tried not to speak unless necessary. Intellectually I know I’ve gone off my nut, but intellect is only one part of the human operating system. In less than 24 hours after an innocuous exchange, I am in the murky waters of depression.

Sometimes a depression is already brewing, in search of a trigger. I never know if I’m in the beginning or at the end, until the fog lifts.

I have a family history of depressive and personality disorders. Some of us have chosen medication and some, like me, have willingly allowed ourselves to live with it. And in some cases, embrace it. Not being a hugger, I’m willing to give it a pat on the arm and think, get on with it.

canstockphoto20314927 It may be my superstition that if I give up the fog, I may not have the sharp clarity and energy that follows. It’s a common rationale for manic-depressives, unwilling to treat the depression because the treatment dulls the mania. With a milder version of it (cyclothymia), I am less willing to give up those moments when intricate thoughts wend themselves through my brain and words hurl themselves onto the page.

To an outsider, it might seem an untenable life and in the early years, when my life was less stable and circumstances more dire, it was. I would desperately try to medicate myself – booze, smoking, men, food, shopping, gambling. But at some point I made different choices and one of those choices was figuring out how to make room for my brain chemistry. I found people who didn’t press when I wanted to be alone. I sought help when I couldn’t help myself.

I learned to give myself permission to just be and observe. It has become a meditation canstockphoto26470846 unto itself. I unwind the monologues that run through my head, acknowledging with gentleness each twisted perspective, diatribe, miscue, mistake, and loads of dubious self-pity. I’ve learned to tease myself “Yes, yes, you are a horrible person. Yes, that trip to Greece with the drunken boyfriend was a huge mistake. Yes, you really are quite the lumpy hausfrau. Yes, the world is an awful, awful place.” Yes, dear, lay it all out on the table.

And all these things that have been tucked away, the failures and the embarrassments, lay there, inert and powerless. And I see them for what they are – old stories. It reminds me of the Alfred Hitchcock short story collections: Stories to Stay Awake By, Stories to be Read with the Lights On, Stories to be Read with the Door Locked. These are my depression stories and I know them by heart.

And soon, they will shuffle back to their shelves, the fog will evaporate and I will remember the other stories where I do the best I can and that is enough.

canstockphoto38532162

July 9, 2017July 10, 2017

Michelle at The Green Study72 Comments

The Things We Carry (and Must Learn to Leave Behind)

canstockphoto20086498 In 1993, I dropped out of grad school after one miserable year. I was a failure, barely surviving academically, juggling three jobs, in over my head in so many ways. I make jokes about it, but when I pitched a nonfiction proposal to an agent last week, she asked about my education. I was truthful and while she was interested in my proposal, I could tell that I did not have a good “platform”.

For nonfiction proposals, agents and publishers want someone with a platform. A platform is the writer’s expertise, background, and being a known entity and expert in their field. I was a little proud that I could pitch an idea on the fly, except that it really wasn’t that spontaneous. And it was never my first intention.

While in grad school, I came across the published journal of a Russian woman who had disguised herself as a man and fought in the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s. She was the first known female officer in the Russian military. She had a difficult upbringing. Her mother hated her and at one point, had tossed her out of a moving carriage. She survived, but from that point on, her mother had no part in her care.

The story appealed to me not only as a veteran, but also as someone who was engaged in an ongoing battle with her own mother. It found me at the right time and stayed with me. For nearly 25 years, I’ve kept notebooks, collected research materials, and always planned to write a historical novel someday. The agent pitch I did at the conference brought clarity to me. I didn’t have the chops or the credentials for writing nonfiction history.

I went to the library last night to work on a writing plan to follow up with various agents. While I’m still working on a novel, I thought I’d take a look online to see if there were any other research materials available for a fictional work on Nadezhda Durova. I sat back, stunned. An American writer had written and published a historical novel about her just six months ago.

Dreams, delusions, disenchantment. I’m quite adept at spinning my own story. A story I’ve carried with me all these years – of failure and struggle and the possibility of writing my way to redemption – a story of rationalizations and justifications. Of never fully feeling the pain of the moment in which I am told or learn, once again, that I’m not good enough. All these years, I’ve been disappointed in myself, maybe even a little ashamed. But I had a good idea and maybe that would redeem me.

canstockphoto9159128b I am always reminded of that line by The Talking Heads “How did I get here?” The tale of my academic life is one of happenstance. When I joined the Army at 17, being clueless and uninformed, I wanted to be a French linguist. I had four years of high school French and being a linguist sounded more enjoyable than company clerk or truck driver. The demand for French linguists in military intelligence was, of course, not particularly high. They needed Russian linguists. Okay then.

After spending a year in intensive Russian language training at the Defense Language Institute, I moved onto more training, a permanent duty station in Germany and when my four years was up, I gladly left. The shortest way to a degree meant taking Russian, because I was able to transfer a lot of Army credits. So there I was, on track for a degree in Russian studies. As far from parlez-ing as I could be. Even further from writing.

I finished a four year degree in a subject that had never been part of my “when I grow up…” narrative. With no clue as to next steps, I applied to grad school. In the English department. The admissions rate was about 7% at the time. Applying to a program tied to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop was like spitting in the wind. I didn’t get in, but I did get accepted into the Russian Department.

It took me a year to realize that I hated my life, hated school, hated getting up at 3:30am to do a janitor job, go to classes, put in my hours as a research and translation intern, and then head to my job at Target.

The final straw was after I had to do a presentation on Russian morphology. In Russian. canstockphoto8727525 The professor pulled me aside at the end of class and said that he was going to do me a favor by giving me a B-, instead of the C that is considered failure in grad school. I was going through complete misery just to scrape by on someone’s favor. And paying thousands of dollars for the honor. Time to quit academia and start working fulltime.

The years that followed were progressive administrative jobs, still carrying my notebooks and research materials from Iowa to Minnesota, into a home I share now with my daughter and husband. Since focusing on writing the last few years, the possibility of writing that historical novel seemed closer than ever. Until last night and seeing that Linda Lafferty had written The Girl Who Fought Napoleon.

I didn’t feel crushed or disappointed. In some ways, it was liberating. Carrying that novel idea was more than just a writing project. It was justification for all that education in Russian language and history. It was redemption for having failed. It was a reason for having wasted so much time and money doing something for which I had little passion. Even the kernel of complicated mother-daughter relationships has dissolved in the face of relative peace I’ve made with my own mother over the years.

canstockphoto10806366 Last night, I dreamed of getting divorced from someone other than my husband. I woke up feeling sad and disappointed and bemused. The person didn’t have a face that I recognized, but this morning I surmised his name was Failure. 25 years is a long time to carry shame and I think I’m ready to put it down. There are other stories to tell.

April 13, 2017

Michelle at The Green Study30 Comments

Every Truth has a Qualifier

canstockphoto0866421 I’ve been thinking a lot about stories this week – the personal stories that we carry with us and roll out for visitors. We’ve told them so often that they purr out of our pores. My story has always been one of being a survivor – of an unstable childhood and low self-esteem. My story is that I grew up poor. I experienced and witnessed abuse and addiction. These things are true, but I’ve found that the story no longer fits who I am or who I want to be.

Sometimes our stories were given to us by someone else. I got called a pessimist a lot. My army buddies called me Chuckles for my dry, unsmiling humor. My stepfather used to call me a prude, because I always had my nose in books and didn’t think he was funny at all. A friend’s father said that I’m a cold fish. A boss told me once that I could be cruel.I’ve been told encouraging things as well, but those never seem to have the same staying power.

If your self is fully formed, grounded in confidence and you are experienced in being loved and loving as is, these things tend to roll off a bit easier. If you’re still searching and there’s gaps in your armor, these words slither in and sit on your skin until they sink in. You take in pieces and patches until you’re an emotional Frankenstein. Just waiting for villagers to run you out of town.

This was my story. I’ve clung to it. I’ve repeated it over and over. It was, I would declare, my truth, my reality. I’m a wounded bird who learned to fly. Yay me. Except that’s not me at all, anymore. It might not have been me for years. It’s all a big damned falsehood that I sit comfortably in like a bean bag chair. And while I’m sitting there, I can’t move. I can’t write a new story.

Most of us don’t like to be defined by others, but we’re still very adept at assigning labels to ourselves. I see labels as limits, as hard core definitions that you carry like an awkward badge of honor. It’s supposed to help – this knowing what you are and aren’t. But if you take a moment and see all the exceptions you’ve made, all the qualifiers in place, then a label is a lie. Then all personal truths become temporary.

I am sometimes a pessimist. Sometimes I’m a daydreamer. Sometimes I’m a wounded bird and other times, I’m a fierce predatory hawk. Sometimes I’m a fuzzy Buddhist feminist liberal bleeding heart and other times I’m a puritanical and judgmental fascist. We make choices about who we’d like to be most, but we have to be humbled by the moments when we’re complicated humans. And that’s about the only label I can work with – I’m human.

Our stories inform who we have become and this is the point that gives me pause. If that is the case, then what I am I telling myself now and what will that look like in ten years? When I’m procrastinating creative work, I chide myself. Stories don’t write themselves, knucklehead. And they don’t – we have to be willing to sit down and devote time to writing them. Even our own stories.

canstockphoto14925482 We all have them. I’ve found that as I work through my old tales, there is much to archive. Like pictures, it’s time to take down the yellowed photos and frame new ones. It is time to write some new stories.

What’s your story?

Books I’m Perusing This Week:

Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being by Martin E. P. Seligman

The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks

Stuck in the Story No More: Breaking Down the Defenses that Define You and Bind You by Dr. Nicki J. Monti

January 20, 2016January 25, 2016

Michelle at The Green Study100 Comments

Walking through Storyland

The most irritating writing advice for me is write what you know. Once I’ve written that paragraph, I sink into a morass of self-pity and caffeine. I wrote about finding narrative on vacation. Sometimes a change of scenery is the jolt needed to wake a person up from the glazed coma of being in one place for too long. Upon return, things look a little different.

Last night, I took a stroll around my neighborhood. With the latest addition of a grocery store, my neighborhood is like one of those preformed children’s city sets. I had a moment when I realized how lucky I was to live here, about two seconds before writer’s angst kicked in – could I create from such a comfortable and comforting kind of life? But wait! There’s more.

Welcome to the calm seas of a suburban life rendered into the turgid waters of human existence. Let’s take a walk.

I live in a neighborhood built in the 1950s, each little ranch home a duplicate of the one next door. Except that these houses have stories. Our neighbors on one side have home schooled their six children and the driveway is chock full of cars, as each child gains a driver’s license. Years ago, the husband got booted for smacking his wife. He’s back, contrite and polite. I watch for signs that he’s actually learned his lesson.

The children all turned out a bit weird. One walks the dog sullenly, barely making eye contact when I say hello. The youngest has grown his hair as long as my daughter has had hers cut short. The next youngest used to follow me about the yard asking me if I was a Christian and telling me that the raspberries I picked were “God’s juice boxes”. I’m hoping the kid that keeps showing up on the weekend in camouflage is part of a well-regulated militia. And while they sound like a version of creepy Quiverfulls, they’re pretty good neighbors who don’t spray their lawn with chemicals. We share weeds.

The house that sits on the curve was thankfully bought after a brief time as a rental property. It worried us. They had pit bulls that occasionally got loose and the Sheriff showed up once a week to follow up on warrants for the son, an ex-con who was still dealing drugs. Cars would pull up at all hours of the night.

I walk around the high school near us and pass a house where a couple of years ago, a man holed himself up with his shotgun and girlfriend. Eventually he surrendered, but we listened to the choppers all day.

John’s house is on the right. He is a veteran of the Korean war and following a valve replacement, would walk every night down our street. When I saw him coming, I put down my gardening tools and met him halfway. He’d lived here since the beginning and always had a new story. He has Parkinson’s now and I sometimes catch glimpses of him in the evening, slowly walking to his mailbox.

As I walk a few blocks away to the city park, I feel a moment of silliness. I’m in Lego Land. There’s city hall, the police station, the firehouse, the public pool. I think whimsical thoughts about how, if like Lego people, we could all turn our plastic hair backwards, everyone would look like Donald Trump.

There’s a gangly boy using the skateboard park. I always fear that I’ll be witness to a noggin being cracked open every time I pass the park. This kid’s not wearing a helmet and seems light on skills. My pace quickens.

At the outdoor amphitheater, they’re in rehearsal for “Oliver”. A woman is warning them that four days is a long time without practice and that they need to keep at it. My daughter, years ago, took a summer acting class at this theater. They made the kids wear stage-worthy makeup which smeared in the August heat. She was morphed into a melty butterfly whose lack of interest in stage direction was only eclipsed by this summer’s soccer apathy.

Behind the firehouse, the police and firefighters are having a family picnic. The officer I talked to that morning is there. Two police cars and a fire engine had pulled up in front of our house before 7 a.m. I could see up and down the street, people looking out windows, strolling to the end of their driveways. Hovering at the edges with the odd, wary politeness of midwesterners. I watched officers break into the home across the street.

I used to joke that the guy was either a unabomber or that bodies would be found stacked like Jenga blocks in his basement. It seemed like he waited until no one was outside before getting his mail and his windows were always covered. After having a child, I decided that this was too weird. I started waiting for him to get his mail. And then I’d go out to check mine and greet him with a loud “hello” and big, fake smile. Who’s scary now?

It turned out to be a natural gas leak and he’d moved out a while ago and was just renovating his elderly father’s place, in order to put it on the market. Nothing exploded and no bodies were discovered.

I was glad to see the officers and firefighters at a happy event. They deserve it. Earlier this year, after two new officers were sworn in at city hall, a man entered the building and fired on them, hitting the new hires. They survived. The shooter did not. One of the worst first days on the job ever.

Behind the pool there are tennis courts. A young woman is teaching tennis to a group of elementary kids. Only one parent stays. He watches as her tennis skirt sways and flutters upward during a demonstration for the kids. I slow down as I walk past him, making him unconsciously lean left and right to keep his view. Sometimes I can be a jerk.

One and a half miles of the human experience. Subject to a thousand interpretations, waiting for a writer to take hold and grapple with the stories on paper. To say we don’t know what to write has as much veracity in my ears as my kid saying I’m bored during the summer. My response is the same: Go for a walk.