Member-only story
Stopping by 72 E. Argyle Street
The effects of a well-timed visit ripple out into the future
I’m in the neighborhood on a late summer’s day and find myself on Cottage Street. I walk past old Mrs. Kennedy’s place and remember that time she brought out two glasses of orange juice for Nancy and me as we played hopscotch in Nancy’s driveway. We’d already tired of the game and ran off before she came out with the refreshments.
Later in the afternoon, we went back to Nancy’s and saw the glasses sitting on the fence railing of Mrs. Kennedy’s back porch. As an eight-year-old, I felt a fleeting constriction in my chest when I saw those untouched glasses, the first layer of meaning taking root in my body for a word I could not yet imagine.
Next door, Nancy’s house seems quiet today. Kenny and Eddy must be riding their bikes around the neighborhood because I don’t see them sitting on the front steps as they usually do on lazy summer days, and I don’t mind.
Teasing is their usual way of connecting, kind of typical for 12-year-old boys, I guess, and neither one understands my penchant for talking to trees. They had a good laugh about that one day when they saw me whispering to a large elm in front of the house. They asked who I was talking to and I told them, thinking it the most natural thing in the world.
