Items

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  2020-04-18

  Green Spaces

  I live in a city. I have lived in this city for about seven years, but I did not grow up here. I grew up in a place with space and trees and green, green grass. Birds and deer and foxes in the backyard. Sometimes I would forget how much I missed that room to breathe. When things started shutting down, when I got sent home, removed from my day-to-day of work and grad school and working out, I started taking walks again. I got a bike and began roaming around the threads of city park sewn together from patterns of a previous century. The trees there are so tall, and the lawns so wide, the paths are empty and the remains of stone foundations and concrete ponds are hidden under the grip of viney tendrils. Things feel slower now, they feel more like when I was a kid on long days outside, sitting on the grass with the four o'clock sun and no responsibilities. It feels strange, it feels a little guilty, to admit that right now I am more relaxed that I have been in years, but the streets are empty and silent at night and I can hear the crickets. For the first time in my life here, I walk down the street without catcalls, without fear of strangers. I am more confident in this new world where we are all afraid of each other. There is reason to keep away from me and from me to keep away from you. And this is privilege too. I still work, I still have school, I have a car and I have good health. I wear my mask and wash my hands after going to the store, I volunteer, I leave groceries on my neighbor's porches. I donated my $1,200. But in some ways these actions feel like penance for my guilt at being okay. Being calm and centered. It hasn't hit me yet. Maybe this is shock, maybe when it comes and I get it or my partner gets it or my parents get it everything will change. The world has changed so much already, I see both good things and bad at work. I have no ability to think about when it will end, I don't think it ever will. We are fundamentally different now and deep wounds will remain in us forever, but if men no longer yelled at me on the street, if I felt safe in my own city, if I knew the green spaces to retreat to in the worst moments, at least one small good thing would happen.