And End of October

Six hours after beginning to write this, I remain stymied by it.  Mike's mom called Saturday morning to ask if we were okay.  Mike was still in bed when she called so had no idea what she meant.  Had we both been up and ready to go out to breakfast an hour sooner, we would have been on the street of the synagogue shooting while it was happening.  This is our Saturday routine.  The synagogue's street is one I regularly do my long walks on so has been pictured in many of my "out on my walks" posts here over the years.  It is where I take almost all of my fall leaves photos.  It intersects with my beloved cobblestone hill, aka The City Street We'd Love to Live on Someday.  Our Dunkin' Donuts is two blocks away from the synagogue.  The theater where we just watched A Star Is Born is also nearby.  (A surreal sight is the movie theater, drugstore, public library, and ice cream place in the background of news coverage of a neighborhood vigil.)  The yard of the little stone ranch house across from it is planted every summer by what seems like a million dollars' worth of rainbow-hued flowers.  (Another surreal sight has been that of a CNN anchor reporting in front of it.)  The survivors of the shooting were taken to the same hospital where Mike's dad died a few years ago.  Some of the victims' funerals were held across the street from our apartment.  Coworkers and neighbors have more direct connections to the synagogue and are suffering more significant losses than these this week, of course.  For us all, this hits home.  I took my little gingham ribbon-wrapped bouquet of orange roses to the synagogue this morning, to honor this neighborhood, its first responders, the lives changed in it, and the lives lost in it. 

One coworker took her kindergartner twins shopping Saturday afternoon and was asked by one if someone would shoot at them while they were out.  Another coworker reported that her own synagogue was protected by officers in two strategically-parked police cars Saturday. . . .How many other cities have been through all this before, of course--the sidewalk memorials, the news coverage, the outrage, the questioning, the seeing-one's-own-town-in-and-on-the-news, the traffic detours, the funeral-after-funeral-after-funeral, the "victims identified" horror, the "victims' stories" sadness, the President's visit, the calls for donations, the announcements of blood drives, the defiant t-shirt slogans and signs, the city-wide vow to come back from it even better. . . .We are far from the first to go through this.  I lived in Baltimore, an hour from D.C., during the September 11th attacks and had lived in New York City the September before, and the heaviness felt here this week brings back the memories of that time.  It is our turn here now.  I don't understand hatred.  And I see this week that I don't understand it any better now than I did seventeen autumns ago. 

Meanwhile, it was a perfect fall morning here, with all the sunshine making the trees glow.  

The leaves are beginning to change color, and the sidewalks are every day taking on more of that scattered-jewels look I love. 

My sweet cobblestone hill is coming into its fall glory-- 

--even though police tape and memorial stars now line one end of it. 

This beauty and these signs of solidarity have to be my focus this week, though.  Forget the police tape, Val.  All the kindnesses will carry us.  A Boston hospital had a huge pastry order delivered to a local hospital this weekend with a note that read "We stand with you. . .Stay strong."  A neighborhood collection was taken up to have a bunch of pizzas delivered to the local police and fire stations located three blocks from the synagogue.  Local museums and attractions have offered free admission for families this past week.  "Need a friend or a shoulder?" our breakfast spot's sidewalk placard read by Saturday afternoon, I later learned.  "Coffee is on us today."  May I collect goodness and do my own part to spread it, all my days. 

God, make me brave for life: oh, braver than this.
Let me straighten after pain, as a tree straightens after the rain,
Shining and lovely again. . .

God, make me brave, life brings such blinding things.
Help me to keep my sight; help me to see aright
That out of doubt comes light.

-Author unknown, from Prayers for Healing, edited by Maggie Oman

♥

Mid-October

'A weekend admiring Lake Erie, some beautiful walks in my favorite season, watching The Blair Witch Project and A Star Is Born at local theaters, pumpkin cupcakes and a pumpkin-cream cheese roll, a visit with Mike's mom, multiple Monarch butterfly sightings, Stuffed curled up beside the radiator, World Series playoffs, catching up on "This Is Us" and "Better Call Saul," more work on my 1980s memoir, a camel-color cardigan with cream cuffs, "Mud Mask" color nail polish, a coworker who just earned a well-deserved new position, a rainbow, reading Lost Moon:  The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, and discovering that pink pumpkins exist. 

♥