I’m back to Merion Rd, to tell you more about why I love it.
The homes are mostly stone with large leaded glass windows and slate roofs. A slate roof can last up to 100 years, but they cost a lot more than a regular roof. Depending on the shape of the roof and the design of the slate, the cost can be up to $25 a square foot (maybe even more) and then, of course, there’s finding a roofer who knows what he’s doing with slate. There’s a whole association dedicated to the slate roof. Some of the many benefits to slate: fire resistant, beautiful, waterproof, low maintenance as they are pretty much fungus and mold resistant. Some of the downsides: weight - slate is heavy and a home may not be able to hold the weight of the roof, complicated installation, and difficulty matching replacement tiles when needed.
The people who live on Merion Road have the money for slate, but even my house, a row home, originally had slate because that’s what was used when the house was built. The houses on my street that have slate roofs look so much better than those that don’t. I sometimes wish my house still had the slate roof, but the expense is daunting.
I have to give credit to the homeowners who keep the slate. They hire talented craftsmen. They honor the history of their homes. They value a good and beautiful thing, which seems to me a good and beautiful thing to do. Not everything needs to be useful and efficient, some things can be useful, a roof, and beautiful, a slate roof.
When I first moved to Overbrook, I used to walk different routes each day. I’d walk through the parks, up and down various streets. I’d put on my music, to drown out the sounds of the city, and go looking for some new vista, some new adventure, some new. I’m not sure why I did that. Of course, part of me wanted to learn about my neighborhood, all its nooks and crannies, to see how far to this or that shop, to peek in windows and delight in gardens. Still, I can’t quite figure out why it had to be a different route each day. And, I don’t know why, suddenly, it didn’t have to be.
One day I just stopped. Maybe, after discovering Merion Road. Maybe the stopping was incidental. Of course there are plenty of days when I don’t go to Merion Road. When I do, despite having walked this road over and over, what I’ve found is that each ordinary day, each step past the same streets and houses, past the same neighbors and gardens and buildings and churches, each ordinary day is like a new journey, but at the same time a familiar one, so that I feel both comfort and wonder. I find both the same old thing and some new treasure. And, I find, sometimes the old thing and the new thing are one and the same thing, the same new, old, boring, treasure of a thing. Familiarity has bred, not contempt, but affection. And the constancy of this walk has rewarded me with revelation.
Of course, my walking is not all philosophical discovery and wonder. I walk because, when I do, I feel better. I hate running and gyms annoy me. I love the way my body - my limbs and shoulders and back and brain - feels when I move this way, one foot in front of the other over gravel or sand or blacktop or grass. I’ve found that the less I walk, the more miserable I am. Irritable and tired and tense, sore and achey and bogged down, both inside and out. And the more I walk, the better I feel, energetic and free. There’s worship too, in the walking, I think, I hope, for at the chapel I often have a difficult time praying. My mind flits around from thought to thought. I’m one of those people who tends to have a lot of narratives in her head. When I meet someone, I wonder: who are they, who were they, what’s their story? And if they don’t tell me, then I make it up. I think about work and the book I’m reading and the news and my family and on and on and on. It’s not so much distracting as consuming and all over the map. Walking helps slow those thoughts down so that instead of ramming like bumper cars in my brain, the thoughts ease up and shift into some sort of order. When I go to pray after wearing myself out with walking, it’s easier for me to be still. So maybe I walk for the exercise and the exorcise, to exercise my body and exorcise my soul, to get rid of both the muscle aches and the demons of the day. Exercise and exorcise. Those two homophones achieved by the same activity.
I used to play my iPod on these excursions, but when I started taking this same route over and over I found that I didn’t want the isolation. I didn’t want to drown things out. Somehow, treading the same path and removing the earbuds helped me to sense more, literally to see and hear and touch and feel and taste and wonder more.
Anyway, that is enough for now. I’ll leave you with this poem about walking in the Merion Botanical Gardens on New Year’s Day. I thank Brian at Lydwine again for publishing my work. Please sign up for the journal. It’s a good one.
Heart Throb Kousa Dogwood, New Year’s Day, 2019
Today on my walk, I noticed a bruised,
near empty nest wedged into the v-ed nook
of my favorite dogwood, the Kousa, called
the Heart Throb for its bright pink leaves.
Next week I will see a gray heron, his long neck
gliding forward. There will be a cold spell
and a good woman will be buried in the earth,
her children weeping at her graveside.
So much will happen between last week and next.
I will see another hawk. I will sleep late
in the morning and know that you love me,
not knowing if, how, can, I love you back.
Today is New Year’s Day and strangely warm,
the ground still sodden from last year’s storms.
I walk in circles to keep from sinking. It’s quiet,
the world at rest. Then, wind stirs, the dead leaves rise.
I am here looking for my gray heron, hoping to see him
standing on a rock in the middle of the river, his neck
stretched out, flowing forward from memory into time,
but he is not here so I circle back to the beginning:
to the hawk enshadowed sun, to the throbbing heart,
its v-ed nook more spacious than the heavens.
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