April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.
– T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Barren lawns where we used to play, yards once filled with rambunctious laughter, ever-moving children, now there is no sign of life other than the well-trimmed hedges and the perfect lawns, the rhythmic splitter splatter of sprinklers dancing across the green, a chill hit of water painting across unsuspecting legs. No sign of life in this city of mine other than the odd car, hermetically sealed, a faceless driver clutched onto the wheel breathing air-conditioned contentment, the occasional jogger enveloped in an ipod haze.
Feet slipped into battered pink sneakers, I wander the neighborhood, up and down the streets, around the curves as the sun splashes across hard cement sidewalks step on a crack, break your mother’s back. I crisscross so many streets where I used to walk with girlfriends, gossiping, talking about boys, giggling and chattering nonsense in sing-songy voices of childhood. I wander over time-worn blacktop of the streets that used to know the wheels of my bicycle as I would circle around and around, going nowhere, a gaggle of grade school kids just for fun. I search for life, the noise and vibrancy, the non-stop activity I once knew. And it isn’t there.
Monday, Tuesday, Saturday, Sunday. Silence. The city sleeps. Every afternoon I lace up those sneakers and trudge outside for my brisk walk. Today’s the day I will finally see children playing outside, I promise myself, old folks sitting on front porches, kids biking up and down the streets. I walk to the end of the block, up and around and trot briskly up the main drag, the one named after the Spanish explorer who discovered this part of the world. I follow the drainage ditch dotted with palms, the same wooden footbridges that still cross over the ditch reminding me of so many afternoons, year after year, that I would sit there, legs dangling over the sides, inches above the meager slither of water. Those bridges are now barren; no ponytailed girls huddle atop the wooden slats, talking about boys, pushing and daring each other to go and ring the cute guy’s doorbell, the one who lives just facing the bridge.
I push my way in the heat, just a few more blocks, sun beating down on my bare shoulders, sweat trickling down my back, my eyes squinting against the glare of the white light bouncing off the sidewalks. No respite. Even in April, the weather is hot and muggy and I wish I could have said it’s 90° in the shade but there is no shade to speak of. No screen doors squeak, few garage doors are flung open to reveal a jumble of junk, bikes and mowers and surfboards and garden hoses. On every other street, I pass the occasional guy in sweat stained t-shirt and grubby jeans trimming a lawn with the monotonous brrrrr brrrrr brrrrr of an electric edger, but no one looks up to say hello. No one to acknowledge my existence.
I am ineffably sad.
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
– T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Squirrels race up trees, lizards dart quickly across open spaces, I spy the occasional black garden snake as it disappears into a clump of bushes. A graceful heron or plumed egret moves in slow, even, elegant strides across lawns, pecking in the grass. But no children. No adults. No one. Emptiness has swept through my old neighborhood.
Where have all the children gone? No toys in yards. No bikes leaning up against the sides of houses. No hopscotch grids chalked onto sidewalks like the one that was permanently scratched in front of our house, a gathering place for the neighborhood kids, smooth flat rocks scattered across the cement. When we weren’t playing kickball in the street or tag in the yard or throwing hoops in the driveway.
My last day in Florida and I take a new turning and finally come across a sign of childhood, a sign of life among this cement and palm tree jungle – bright chalk drawings in pink, yellow, white and blue. I smile.
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