A WONDERFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

I love my neighborhood… can I say that?

For the past few weeks, I’ve been getting up every day between five and seven in the morning to have some “me” time. The Little One stays in bed with my partner and gets some quality Daddy Time sleeping on his chest while I sneak off to do my thing.

It strikes me as ironic that for the past few years, when I had very few demands upon my schedule, I struggled to keep some kind of daily ritual first thing in the morning. Now that I’m a mom and have tons of things to do every day, maintaining this daily practice is a piece of cake.

I’m not exactly sure why this is – it seems counter-intuitive. However, I have made the observation that one of the best changes that has occurred as the result of being a parent is that there is no room at all in my life for Bored or Lazy – two things I tried for years to be rid of and which I do not miss at all.

Now, every day with no effort whatsoever I wake up, usually before daylight, and happily and willingly get out of bed – this is still a shock to me.

My daughter tends to wake me up between four and six for breakfast which often, first thing in the morning, takes about an hour. (She eats like her father – slowly, methodically and in great volume.) When she is finished, I tuck her in next to my partner, leaving a bottle of “fresh squeezed” on the nightstand in case she gets hungry, and off I go.

I’ve been doing yoga first thing, followed by meditation for as long as I feel like sitting there. If it’s still dark, which it often is, I’ll sit until it’s relatively light outside. Then I go out for a walk (unless the weather is REALLY bad – then I ride a bike in the basement) for twenty to thirty minutes at a pretty quick pace.

I can’t believe how much I enjoy doing this. First of all, being a city dweller for the past (gasp!) eighteen years, I have gotten in the habit of staying indoors a whole lot more than I was accustomed to growing up. I love the outdoors, but it has taken a while for me to get past my dislike of things like concrete, asphalt and exhaust fumes which are so prevalent in the city. But, outside is outside and man-made distractions notwithstanding, nature is still there if you look for it.

Just being out in the air feels good, even if it’s not the purest in the world. When my daughter was born, I swore that I was not going to keep her inside all of the time. Even if outside wasn’t optimal, we were going to visit it every day, weather permitting. For now, that has meant bundling her up and taking short walks around the back yard when the weather is nice, and periodically popping her in the sling for longer walks at The Nature Center with my partner.

I really like my neighborhood, especially in the morning. For a place in the city, there are a whole lot of really big trees. The trees themselves are great and they also house a huge variety of birds, especially during seasons of migration.

This corner of the neighborhood banks right up next to a couple of really steep hills – so steep that nothing can be built on them. This means that they are covered in trees, so although we are certainly in an urban area, there is a small forest surrounding us on two sides.

Since I’ve been walking, I’ve found all kinds of neat places that I never knew existed. Just two blocks from my house is a street with no sidewalk where all of the houses are up in the woods. Even closer is a huge fenced-in meadow, the purpose of which I have yet to discover. Three blocks in another direction is a really nice play ground at the end of a no outlet street surrounded by trees. Up until a few weeks ago, I had no idea that these places were there, right under my nose.

I really enjoy the look and atmosphere of my neighborhood. No two houses are the same, and many of them have been here for quite a long time. If you look closely, you can tell which ones were here first and which were added in between later.

It is an area of small alleys, winding this way and that behind and between yards. None of these through ways have names, but they make getting from one place to another even more convenient. They also allow people to have access to their backyards from the rear of their property.

And the yards… One of the things that I really like about where we live, and most other places around here, is that the yards are exceptionally large for city dwellers, especially considering the low cost of most of the real estate here. Just in our yard alone there are three trees over forty feet tall, and that is true of most of the other homes as well. Sitting in our backyard in the summer and looking across at the other yards almost gives a sense of sitting in thinned out forest, trees cut back just enough to allow room for the houses.

I appreciate the non-homogeneity of everyone’s abode as well. This is not a neighborhood where one has to get the written approval of everyone on the block in order to erect a birdbath in his own backyard or feels inferior if the perfectly uniform green lawn isn’t cut on the diagonal. Nope – not here.

Here one can feel free to put up any and all forms of lawn statuary and decorate the premises however one sees fit. Garden gnomes, bright purple trim on the window frames and gutters, decorative edgings around flower beds or inviting and mismatched arrays of front porch furniture are all Ok. The use of silk flowers interspersed with the ones growing is also quite acceptable as well.

The people are the most friendly I have encountered in all of my years living in this city. They say hello, they wave, they ask you how you’re doing. Being out early at roughly the same time, I have started to become accustomed to the morning rituals of the neighborhood… The woman two blocks over who always warms up her car before leaving for work on cold days… the man who feeds his cats every morning… the woman who waits at the bus stop with her daughter… the man who walks his dog before work… the older woman who walks to work at the church behind our house… Since I have become a regular fixture at this time of day, they have gotten used to seeing me and I look forward to greeting each one of them.

I’m also familiar now with the animals around town… The woodpecker who lives in the big elm tree two streets over, the nest that the cardinals are starting to build in the oak up the block or the squirrels who are beginning to leave their misshapen nests in the tops of the trees to run around like mad whenever the weather is warm enough. Most of the dogs around here barely give me a second glance anymore as I walk past – they have become used to seeing me too.

It is amazing to me how something as simple as a daily morning walk has caused me to feel more connected to the place where I live. The little everyday routines of the people who live near me and saying hello to them as I carry out my own routine gives me a truly unique sense of joy.

I am glad that I have gotten over my expectations of what “outside” is supposed to be, what it ought to look like, and have been able to enjoy the outside that is here where I am now. Having grown up in a place where I was certain to know everyone I would run into while walking around outdoors, it has taken me a while (a long while) to get used to the idea that strangers only stay strangers if one is too afraid to interact with them. Out in the country, if I had run into someone I didn’t know out in our woods, it would have been very wise to run like mad, though in the city that is implausible.

I think that some of that instinct carried over, despite the fact that it is largely inappropriate. Though I still love nature unadulterated by human beings, that is not what I am presented with right outside my door at present. For now, this is what I have and I am happy that I have finally learned to make the best of it.

And that’s not too bad, now that I’ve let go of my expectations and given it a chance. In fact, I enjoy it so much that I’d rather go out and interact with my surroundings than stay in bed and sleep, even at six in the morning when it is snowing outside. Nope – rather than laying in bed wishing I had the motivation to get out of it and go do the “good for me things,” I bounce right up and am happy to greet the day. Early in the morning. Outside. Where there are people.

How strange… how strange and wonderful.

I’ll take Happy and Energetic over Bored and Lazy any day. Who knew I’d have so much room in my life once the Apathy Twins hit the road? I don’t miss them one bit – nope, not one little bit.