B, B- and parkside dining

Okay, so I'd say I get a B, B- on my first assignment. I may have started off too boldly, taking a lunch break being soooo radical, you know. I did follow the rules- no eating lunch at my desk, looking through barred windows at drug deals, pimps, neglected dogs, or other shockingly depressing or drab urban sadness. I didn't forget, eat lunch as I drive to a home visit, or otherwise ignore the potential of these magical (unpaid) thirty minutes of my day. And though I didn't blow them off, neither did I quite know what to do with my lunch break. I also ended up eating at 3:30. But, a work in progress it is.



I stumbled into this week's assignment by virtue of a blessed one hour between the courthouse and a work meeting. I ended up sitting on some wizened tree roots, eating my couscous and beets, shaded by a glorious green umbrella. I grew up calling this southeast park "Funner Park", thinking that was its name. Till this day my oldest friends are still calling it that too. My Mom called it Funner Park after the humble labrador I grew up with, who she called Funner when she got her as a baby, and thought, "My life is sure going to be a lot funner"- an entirely lovable and intentional grammatical fumble for my librarian Mom. It is the park where I learned to climb trees; the deal used to be that my scared of heights mom (one of two things she's afraid of) let me climb as high as I wanted to, knowing I'd have to get myself back down, because no way was she coming up after me. It is also a park where I had my 11th birthday party, a park I fell in love in, a park I said goodbye in, a park loaded with nuances and my own humble history, and a far more nurturing place to dine than my desk.

The belt of my dress tapped me in the breeze, and it startled me. The quiet and peace was in total contrast to the restraining order room in the courthouse that I'd just left, with its overload of crisis instead of green grass. It seems endlessly strange that both can exist at once; that in one tall building, in one small city, people can be detailing incidents of abuse to total strangers, while in this green place, there are only happy people are under a wide blue sky, and a breeze that flirts with your clothing.

Who are these people walking their dogs in the middle of a workday, or playing basketball, or taking their kids to the park? Another woman diplomatically finds a different shady tree patch and takes her time spreading a blanket; she's obviously more practiced at this mid-day relaxation. A slight young man as wide across as my left thigh steadily loops by me. In thirty minutes, he laps me five times, I eat my lunch, I imagine the woman reads twenty five pages, three families come and go- and I feel a bit more like myself. I am literally grounded, and the roots hold me. I feel startled by the normalcy, and although I still can't understand the contrast I've witnessed, and witness everyday, I am able to recognize that it is so. As I walk back to my car past the community garden, I let myself notice the happily drooping tomatoes, the orange flamingos someone has added alongside their veggies, and the sunflowers. Its good to notice these things. And instead of multitasking, I'm thinking that when I have a yard, the only fence I want to have will be of sunflowers just like these. They will grow to be taller than me, and birds will eat their seeds, and I'll plant the rest, and the next year, I'll plant those sunflowers' sunflower-babies, and so on...