Sights and Sounds

(This is a progress shot of the front porch we built for ourselves a few years ago.)

Today I got to know the neighborhood again.

I have finally finished this huge book project and I'm feeling free and easy. I took a walk at 8 a.m. this morning, knowing it would make me late for work.

Because of some construction at the MSP airport, planes coming in for landing are now using runways that take them right over Highland Park. Whew. They make my bones rattle. We've been lucky in these parts not to have too much air traffic over the years, unlike our South Minneapolis neighbors. I remember one time taking my daughter, who was three at the time, to Lake Harriet. We played on the grassy knoll and then a big Northwest Airlines 747 came over us loud and low, its belly practically skimming the lake, and suddenly she just started running away from me, terrified, like those set extras they hired for the bombing-of-Pearl-Harbor scenes in "Tora! Tora! Tora!"

I remember hearing--or at least first recognizing--my first sonic boom. I was in my bedroom on an Air Force base in Altus, Oklahoma. I didn't know what it was but it felt like thunder inside my heart.

My dad worked on flight lines for twenty years. He shouts at people, even when you're just sitting in the dining room sipping on some tea. He really shouts when he's having a good time in a crowd. And for the longest time I used to get piping mad at him for always answering "WHY?" whenever I asked him a question. "Dad, I think I'm going to study English literature." "WHY?" he would boom. But then I finally realized that what he really should have said was "WHAT?" because that's what he meant inside, but he was too proud to admit he's practically deaf.

So I walked up Randolph Ave. right about school time and all the elementary school crossing guards in their orange vests came out in the street to flag my way through the intersection. I thanked them and most of them turned to smile back at me. The planes were going over and the big orange schoolbuses were barreling by and all the traffic coming off Snelling was loud, too.

I saw that same guy who always sits at J&S Coffee smoking a cigarette on the back patio and I saw the private school kids run laps around the softball fields. I felt the bruises on the bottoms of my feet from all the rocks on one of our long BWCA portages and then I remembered to look up at the morning sky, which, despite the planes, was lovely.

Then I came up on our little cottage and the neighbor's black cat was asleep on our porch rocker and the pink geraniums still stood out in the greenery despite the summer's end. I was happy but my hearing (which is not great to begin with) was muffled from all the neighborhood noise. When a woman walking by stopped to say something like "Nice morning to walk, isn't it" I missed most of what she said and was almost tempted to shout "WHY?" but I stopped--because I already knew the reasons.