A springtime saunter through the neighborhood is always a revealing venture. The mere presence of the sun seems to call forth the most sluggish of cavemen, luring them into front yards, garages and gardens, where even the prospect of a mindless project manages to quicken the pulse.
And so, yesterday, as Hobbes and I explored ever more places to snoop and sniff, I reconnected with neighbors, pets, perennials, each just now peeking out, seemingly convinced that the last icy grip of winter had become nothing but a vague memory.
Hey, it never hurts to dream.
A half block down from my house, I also discovered that most revered of urban archeological digs--a recently-purged pile of household items hugging the curb. Back when I lived in the Near South, these piles often proved to be the sources of both refurbished living rooms and revamped closets.
More than once, Mark and I would anxiously haul a beefy discard to the curb, betting on how long it would remain there, knowing that the garbage man most likely would never even get his hands on the item. We seldom were disappointed by the local scavengers, most of whom seemed to require nothing more than the irresistible absence of a price tag.
Still, there are other, darker tales to tell from a discarded pile of goods. Yesterday, that fact became painfully obvious to me as I wandered past the duplex three houses down from my place. Like a scar laid out for all to see, sometimes discards speak of grief or shame, laid bare for the world. That the door of a newly emptied and unusually tidy garage was wide open just iced that bitter cake for me.
Someone had abandoned the place they'd called "home" for the past three or four years, with nary a neighborhood barbecue or handshake to mark their new absence. They simply disappeared, and that pile by the curb took on a heartbreaking role in this chapter of their lives.
For the past three or four years, this quiet Muslim family had made Woods Avenue theirs. The father, a lanky, quiet black man, was cordial if not overly talkative. The same could be said of his foreign-born wife, a Middle Eastern woman swathed in her hijab, a warm, shy smile often breaking the plane of her somber face. Ah, but their son Hudson, with the energy and focus that only a 10-year-old can possess, treated the extra-long stretch of unbroken sidewalks as a kind of frenetic runway, the starting point of more than a few adventures.
He was the fireball of the family, always chattering with himself, holding wildly fantastic conversations with whatever character he'd created for the moment. He could jump like a jack rabbit and run like a cheetah, tapping some unseen source of endless energy.
And then, one day, he was gone. Just like that. Taken away by a birth mother who, after 8 or 9 years (most of his life, certainly), had returned to the scene, now certain of her need for a son she'd previously neither known nor tended to.
How is it possible that a child can simply disappear? How is it possible that, one morning which seems so much like all the rest, can bring with it such devastating change? How can it be that a string of unfamiliar cars filled with unfamiliar faces can pull in your drive, knock on your door and take away that which is so essential to your being?
These are the questions that haunted me yesterday as I made my way by the pile next to the curb. And I could not bear to scan the evidence of lives forever altered, the physical signs of resignation and grief.
I could only wonder if, indeed, it is possible to make a new life in a new place without the patter of 10-year-old energy, without the soundtrack of a voice you'd come to love and listen for.
For now, I have lost my taste for the things by the curb. They simply are too painful for me to consider.
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