two.

I wasn’t planning to write here today (although I was planning to write in the way that I always do, the planning and failing way). But so far this year, I’ve only pulled off one blog post a month. I want more. Today is the last day of April and by god I’ll put up more than one post this month.

I’ve been listening to hard rain all day. Leaves have collected at our front door, which is at the bottom of some steps, so the drain is blocked and the rain is flooding the steps. There’s a bird out back that I can’t see, but he’s been chirping away. I don’t know many birdsongs, but Jacob said this morning that it was a chickadee because it’s saying “dee-dee-dee.”

I was listening to some spring pop, then some Beethoven, and now good old Langhorne.

Most blogs that I read these days are full of beautiful pictures. It’s such a thing. It’s a thing that makes me think this will never be a blog blog (athough I’m not sure I care) because a) I don’t take beautiful pictures, although I try sometimes and b) most of the time I forget to take pictures anyway.

Jacob and I had a blitz day in Philly last weekend. I finished a work meeting at noon, and we hopped in the car with sandwiches and made the two and a half hour drive north. There was traffic and it was sunny and beautiful outside. By the time we got to Philly, the sky grayed and it rained. We parked in the scariest parking garage I’ve ever seen, but not because there was a shortage of parking garages. We joked the entire afternoon about how we managed to find the scariest parking garage in the city. There were two elevators, one was broken. A sign was taped to the wall that said 4 person max. It was because the elevator was the size of a roomy coffin. But these are the things you remember.

stories of people.

Meet me where I am. I spent the evening wandering, walking further than my tired feet wanted to go. I came home and put on a long, flowy skirt, because the wind was blowing and it was warm and blooming and spring. And I walked some more.

I had chip-dinner, which is a real and valid thing. It involves walking to the corner store and buying a bag of chips, fully knowing that I will eat most or all of it for dinner tonight. I walked in the door and felt guilty that my splurge-y, single lady dinner wasn’t vegetables! or fruit! or whole grains! I eat all those things all the time and sometimes, sometimes I need chip-dinner.

All of the stories in my head tonight are stories of guilt. I’m not sure why. They are stories of people I saw on the street today, but they are cut through with my own emotion. Those people have stories that exist in the world, but I only know them through the lens of me.

The man this morning, clearly mentally ill, who kept wandering off the sidewalk and into traffic. The man with the small grocery cart, sitting on a bench, a weathered white beard down to his belt, smoking a stub of a cigarette. The other man who dropped his cigarette and picked it up, put it right back in his mouth. The man in the wheelchair, still and stark, head hanging low. The woman on the bicycle and the car that honked at her even though she had the right of way. That other woman who left the doctor’s office after me, and I held the door for her. She put her sunglasses on as she walked through. I see these people in the context of suffering, brokenness, loss. Why?