Summer Is A Feeling

Today was a reasonably bodacious day for early spring in the Heights: sunny and 68°. I walked around the ‘hood and saw a lot of people outside their homes. One man was perched on a ladder, scraping old paint off the awning above his porch steps. A mother and daughter were painting the trim on their porch. The mother smiled and said “Hello,” and went back to painting her door frame. A man was out walking with his young daughter, who was pushing a toy baby stroller with a doll baby. I asked her the name of her doll. “Baby Claudia,” was her reply. I saw that Baby Claudia was totally bald. Don’t babies have some hair? I walked on.

I passed by the Cucumber tree. Though most trees have leaves now and many have flowers, the Cucumber tree (Magnolia acuminata) is still bare. Maybe the tree is tired of standing there sprouting leaves every spring since before the Revolutionary War. Three children who looked to be about 8 to 10 years old played around its enormous truck, scampering among the huge limbs that reached down to the ground before growing skyward again. I thought, “Where will those children be when they are as old as I am? Will they be living in this city with families of their own? Will they be scattered across the country? Will they remember the huge Cucumber tree they played under in their childhood? And what will their world be like?”

A man in a pickup truck drove up and stopped in front of his house. His truck towed a boat. He put the truck into reverse and steered the trailer first into his driveway, then off the driveway and into the front yard between the house and a white picket fence, then around the end of the house into the side yard. He did it in one continuous motion without stopping or having to go forward. I was mildly impressed. Of course, this might have been the hundredth time he’s done that maneuver.

Sometimes when I walk around the ‘hood, I think of Paul Simon’s song My Little Town. Mainly, I remember its refrain:

Nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town
Nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town

Of course, every city and town in the world is someone’s “town". So maybe Mr. Simon wasn’t talking about his little town as much as he was talking about himself. I know that feeling. Sometimes I feel like I’ve seen too, too many summers.