Waiting for the Right Time Mission #17

This is a welcome home walk.

I’ve spent the last few weeks on a journey from Champaign, Illinois to Miami and the beach to Tampa and St. Petersburg back to Miami to New York City and all the way back home. I’ve taken planes, trains, cars. I’ve got lots to catch you up on. But for now, I want to take a walk. To a place I haven’t been in a while.

Mission: Go for a long walk

When I ask G if we can go for a walk it is what I call High Afternoon. The sun is scorching and the sky is so blue I could swim in it. The world is untouchable from behind my couch and screen that’s probably (who knows) tracking how many minutes I spend typing. It’s this specific time of day: pre-lunch, lots of harsh sunshine, an unshakeable feeling of being caged accompanying me, that I begin to dream up and scheme what the rest of the day might have in store once 5 p.m. ticks along. I am ambitious at High Afternoon. I can do anything—in fact, the sun doesn’t set until 7:24 p.m. today, I would know, I checked. And I will squeeze out every last drop from it. I’m thinking all of this while I sit directly adjacent to the world I want to be living in. The wide French doors leading to my shared yard let in a good sliver of that world. But I’m still seeing it happening—out there. I’m hearing the kids from the nearby school’s playground screeching bloody murder and erupting into fits of infectious giggles. I am watching a livestream of life. While I am living some version of it here inside. (Yes, a computer can feel that oppressive on a nice day.)

So it’s at this very precise moment when I text G:

Let’s go for a walk later.

Sure!

Actually let’s go for a walk on campus—I haven’t been in a while.

I’m not sure what compels me to suggest the university’s campus. Maybe I want to bottle up that school is almost out feeling—the true sign that summer is fast approaching. But it’s settled. Campus.

At 5 p.m., the day is turned. Present me is no longer drunk off of High Afternoon but instead is feeling like a nap and some loafing around the house will make her feel better instead. This is a tempting lie. It’s Monday—and I’ve spent the weekend glued to my bed out of necessity while I nursed a brutal cold. Since getting back to Champaign, I hadn’t made it out of the house again. I hadn’t yet seen that the trees that were all hairless and dead a week or two ago are now fluffy and green. I hadn’t had a chance to notice that the 60 degree days we’re getting are balmy and a little sweaty. The feeling that snow could fall down at any moment has burned off. So, after some coaxing, I’m outside. The very pale sun is warming up my sweater. I’m slow blinking like I’ve just emerged from a cave after weeks of hibernation. My body isn’t used to being out of bed yet.

Once we’ve made it to campus and parked our car, we begin our walk. I’m reminded almost immediately why I wanted to do this. And why I chose this spot in particular. It is a walk to remind me that I am a person who exists. Who sees other people existing. Who sees leaves and trees and dogs and birds moving the way they move in the world. They don’t always see me but to watch on as a spectator is enough. We take the sidewalks from G’s lab, down streets framed with blossoming purple flowered trees, that look like distant relatives of the more famous cherry blossoms. We end up at the quad—or what you might call the spitting image of quintessential American college life. There are a couple of bros playing spikeball on the perfectly manicured lawn. Groups of three or four artsy types gather on picnic blankets nearby. Staff is setting up the first movie on the quad of the season—the towering black screen is being inflated at the end of this very long stretch of grass. We walk along the perimeter—down to the bell tower in the distance and back. G points out buildings he recognizes along the way and also buildings he doesn’t. “I have no idea what’s in there,” he proclaims while pointing to another short, two-story brick facade. I shrug and we move along. I’ve been here before. I once, a few years ago, rented a bike on a summer Friday I had off from work just because. I rode that electric hybrid creation around the then mostly emptied campus in the middle of the day. Past G’s lab, past the bell tower, to parts of town I cannot recall or recognize now. Still, I remember this part of the ride, the narrow road by the bells. I wonder when they ring, who does it, how easy it looks to climb it, the pranks and tricks that must have gone down up there over the years. Then we are back to walking.

I like to walk around places that are familiar, but that I haven’t visited in a while. There’s still some rediscovery to be made. It is also why I like to walk the same route by my house in the mornings. I can note all the million, tiny ways it’s changed: There are new book titles in the tiny library, in the fall there are new trees coming undone and new colors on display, we might smile at new neighbors, their houses may have new wreaths on their doors, I might see a wild bunny or feral cat I haven’t crossed paths with before.

That is slightly different in a place like campus. I cannot always discern what was and wasn’t there before. I can’t tell if these bros are the same bros who play spikeball at 6 p.m. every Monday or if they’re a new group with spontaneous plans they made at High Afternoon to enjoy the rest of their evenings like me. I can’t tell if the brick red hue of the bell tower is fading. All I really remember is what I felt on that afternoon biking: free, out in the middle of the week during the best part of the day—what a gift. Rediscovering my interests and the things that delighted me after four years of schooling had managed the impossible task of flattening all of that and brushing away the wreckage. I was feeling delighted to know I liked riding a bike and writing again and reading romance novels. Now, I am on campus again because maybe I need a little more of that spirit. I’ve returned from travels, I’ve sweat out a fever, I’m coming home to a world that feels smaller and muted in comparison to the places I’ve traversed. There is this walk though, and these legs that got me from the car up to the quad and back down to the tower, by the library, past the teens who have no idea how they’ll make sense of the years they spent here, past the graduates in gowns taking their photos who are probably scared to death (and they should be), down to Green Street where there is boba and the Chipotles of the world and everyone in university sweaters is striding down the sidewalk. There are walks meant for noticing the details and reentering the world and seeing people and places in motion. Home is her most beautiful in motion. On my feet. This is a welcome home walk.

On a scale of waiting for the right time to facing my dread, I would say this week I’m simmering.

P.