I don’t want to get out of bed. I don't want to do anything for that matter. But then I shut my front door and walk. I meet Denise with her shih tzu that waits at the screen door everyday. And then my roommate, Kara and I say Denise and out she pops. And then there’s Faye and Derrick who say they are roommates but their connection is so close and he looked at her with such warmth at her fiftieth birthday party that I wonder what they really are. They give me herbs and lead me through their paths in the garden they built. They tell me to rub thyme on my skin to rid the mosquitoes — act as some kind of barrier. And then there’s the fifteen-year-old cat next door named Ebony. She looks at me for a second with her green eyes and then she comes. Multiple times throughout the week my roommate Kara and I spend fifteen minutes on the asphalt with her. She’s always perched on three stone steps below the door.
But it was one day when Kara came home yelling my name in distress, when I was on my way to school, I saw the cat and I wanted to say hi so I pulled over, and the cat has allergies, so snot was coming out her nose and I had her in her my arms and went to my car for tissues and the owner yelled EXCUSE ME! Ava it was so bad he thought I was stealing his cat! So yeah, that’s Ebony with the two pugs fighting for attention in the Victorian window. And if you go behind that street there’s the cat Toskar and you never know when he’s gonna swat at you but it’s playful and the next second my fingers are met with kisses. A few houses down there’s Robinson who really does look like his name would be Robinson. I muttered something about the song Mrs. Robinson by Simon & Garfunkel. On the corner of that back street, there’s Mark and Debbie who are growing their dandelions. “These dandelions are to really get goin in early May.” The moral of the story is none of this would have happened if I didn’t step outside my door. Talk to people. Who? To anyone you see. People want to be spoken to even if they don’t think they do — and yes some people are hesitant to talk but I always find they open up within a moment or too. There’s something about the other person realizing I'm there just to be — to share a human moment, that makes everything easier within the interaction. Their guard in real time starts to dissipate. So please walk, especially when you have no destination. Those somehow always end up being the best times.
Your friend,
Ava