Mighty Midway Love

Last night was full of bad dreams--I dreamed that the yard suddenly filled with fierce tigers, baboons, and other dangerous escaped zoo animals while Bridger was playing outside by himself. I dreamed of being unpleasantly surprised by a killer whale while paddling in a skimpy little kayak. I dreamed of walking with the kids on an unfamiliar, seedy street at nightfall and being threatened by scary teenagers with long knives. Terrifying stuff, all in one night.

But the dream that really had me in a cold sweat was the one in which we'd moved to a new house, and I suddenly realized that WE NO LONGER LIVED IN THE MIDWAY. Shudder! Gasp! The horror!

It has taken me nearly fourteen years, almost the whole time I've lived in this neighborhood, to come to this deep and tender love for my 'hood, this sense of fierce rootedness.

Some people I know here have had family in the community for generations. For others of us, though, this neighborhood was not a first-choice neighborhood. It was the compromise we came to when we realized that our first choice was out of reach. It struck me today that this may be part of why so many people who live here work so hard to make this place a good one to live, and why they feel such deep loyalty to the community once they've stayed a while--they want to make this second choice feel like it was really their first choice all along. They want to make the compromise neighborhood more like the neighborhood of their dreams. And of course, they get used to seeing the same smiles on their walks around the neighborhood, the same folks reading the paper at the library, the same families at the kids' concerts at Ginkgo and on the local playgrounds. They begin to mark the seasons by when the apple tree on the corner starts dropping its apples, when the goldenrod in their favorite native wildflower garden starts to bloom, when they can make out the strains of some Eighties hair band playing at the State Fair Grandstand on a balmy September night.

Bordered by Interstate 94 and University Avenue, with Snelling Avenue roaring right through the middle, the Midway is what many Twin Citians consider a drive-through neighborhood. I wonder if that is a part of why the people who live here fight so ferociously for the walkable amenities--like our little library--that we have. Maybe that is why they were practically rioting in the streets when a beloved neighborhood coffee shop changed hands and the new owners didn't have the same community spirit and warmth.

I'd lived in six different states by the time I was twelve, pulled from place to place by my father's rise up the corporate ladder. It wasn't until now, at age forty-one, that I finally began to feel the tug of staying put, even if the neighbors sometimes wake me at 2 AM singing on their front stoops--maybe even because they do.

Here Comes the Sun

Six years ago I took this photo of Bridger exulting in his first real glimpse of crocuses. This week, the crocuses came up again, and we marveled at how they closed their petals up tight when it got cold, then opened again when the temperature warmed.

These days we're on kind of an Anglophile kick around here. We started with Peter Pan, a very interesting read with a fascinating narrator who seems on the surface to detest his child characters for their beastly cockiness and inconsiderate behavior, but whom you can tell is actually reveling in their ability to be "gay and innocent and heartless" enough to fly.

After reading Peter Pan three times in a row, we read The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, another big hit, and now we're several chapters into The Secret Garden, a wonderful book to read in spring, and interesting because it features a protagonist who starts out unsympathetic and who blossoms through the course of the book into a truly compassionate, vibrantly alive young girl. I'm absolutely loving it, and the kids seem to be enjoying it, too. (It's also reminding me of the grand literary tradition of British orphans fending their way through a cruel world to find their true place, from Dickens and Charlotte Bronte right on up through James and the Giant Peach and Harry Potter.)

It's a time of growth, and not just for the crocuses and daffodils. Cassidy has been overcoming her longtime, near-paralyzing fear of dogs. If she sees cute dogs in public that are small and appear unlikely to bark, lick, or jump on her, she wants to go pet them. We've taken to scoping out prospective dog friends--does that one move fast, or slow? Is it straining at the leash, or just barely chugging along? It's been amazing to see her start to kick this phobia of hers, and we're learning a lot about the varieties of dog behavior and temperament, too.

Bridger is reading with more and more ease, volunteering to help out around the house, and showing a lot of generosity and kindness toward his sister lately, as well.

Brian is enjoying taking a martial arts class at the wonderful martial arts school that Bridger used to attend, Kuk Sool Won of St. Paul, and he's planning to compete in the Midwest Kuk Sool Won tournament in St. Louis in April.

As for me, I'm coming out of a depression that's been dogging me off and on since late January. The sunshine and warmer weather helped a lot. So did talking with friends, making the effort to meditate regularly, and getting out and taking more walks. I also decided to work with an unschooling-friendly life coach to clarify some questions that have been dogging me: How do I take better care of myself while being more present for my family? How do I fit my own creative dreams and goals into my life with my children? And how can I become, as the life coach put it, more rooted in my homeschooling choices--flexible enough to bend when needed, but stable at the same time?

In Dr. Dolittle, I actually found an unlikely hero to inspire me at this juncture in our lives. At one point on their sea voyage, an experienced but annoying stowaway sailor is warning that Dr. Dolittle is doing everything wrong and they're surely all going to die if they follow Dr. Dolittle's lead. Dr. Dolittle is steering toward land to put the stowaway off the boat at the next port.

The book's narrator, a young boy who's been taken on as Dr. Dolittle's assistant, has a conversation with the parrot Polynesia about all the hubbub:

"Do you really think," I interrupted, "that it is safe for the Doctor to cross the Atlantic without any regular seaman on his ship?"

You see, it had upset me quite a good deal to find out all the things we had been doing were wrong, and I was beginning to wonder what might happen if we ran into a storm. . . But Polynesia merely tossed her head scornfully.

"Oh, bless you, my boy," said she, "you're always safe with John Dolittle. Remember that. . . Of course it is perfectly true that the Doctor does do everything wrong. But with him it doesn't matter. Mark my words, if you travel with John Dolittle, you always get there, as you heard him say. . . Sometimes the ship is upside down when you get there, and sometimes it's right way up. But you get there just the same."

So here we go, bobbing along in our upside-down boat, heading for an unseen shore we can't even really imagine.