Pocket Dispatch from Downtown Cincinnati
Leisure for parents can be defined as simply as spending time away from structured time. For a significant wedding anniversary, or even a visit without special occasions, children stay with grandparents and the generation in the middle goes out to remind themselves what it’s like to do nothing in particular on purpose.
On this latest occasion, we booked a night in a hotel in Cincinnati, a city of biographical significance to my in-laws and to my wife in her infancy, but otherwise foreign to me. We explored on foot through a hillside neighborhood called Mount Adams that overlooks the Ohio River and evokes San Francisco via New England. Skinny rowhouses with bold pastel accents reach three or four floors but look just large enough for a family of four, like trippy Easter baskets crowded on a clearance shelf.
After drinking coffee and meandering for an hour or so, we drove downtown, shopped garages for reasonable overnight parking, and walked through an attached complex of office, retail, and another hotel before reaching the street and rounding a couple corners to our own.
The air was damp and unseasonably warm for late December. The ground was wet and gritty from melting snow and ice mixed with dirt from the construction happening everywhere. Cincinnati is an American downtown whose blight rubs shoulders with renewal everywhere. Modern public transit and high concept art spaces wind through blocks of vacant storefronts and the occasional deserted department store. But everywhere there are people turning its wheels, even between two winter holidays.
After check in, we walked up a flight of stairs to our room, a large corner suite with low ceilings, blue-white CFL lighting, and locks on the window shades to keep you from getting too much sunlight. It was bizarre, but large, and most importantly, easy to get to from the entrance without a lot of social interaction at the front desk or on a late night elevator ride.
We changed for an evening out and left as quickly as we could to sit quietly and contemplate cocktails at the first bar, the clock never far from our minds. Precious boredom is not to be wasted.
Pocket Dispatch from the Alley
Throughout the western world on Christmas morning small mountains of trash accumulate as presents are opened, and it is the solemn duty of parents—a father, traditionally, if one is available—to haul it to the bin outside.
At 10:00 AM on this particular Christmas, it was still 10º F from an historic winter storm that had swept across the country. But by now the snow had stopped and the sun had finally returned and, in two jackets, good mittens and thick boots, it wasn’t so bad being outside in the sun and solitude.
As I carried the last load to the alley behind our apartment, I recognized a neighbor walking back from the gas station and smoking a cigarette. He’s an older man, maybe in his early 70’s, with adult children, though I think he lives with only his dog. In the five years I’ve lived here, we’ve had one exchange that was similar to a conversation, plus a few pleasantries. I believe he works as a vocal coach for a living. I’ve always found his quaint smoking charming, and I revel in the irony of someone who teaches people to use their vocal chords treating his own so harshly.
His building is a block north of mine, also on a corner, and features enormous planters shaped like human faces cut off just below the eyes, with large plants sprouting from where foreheads would be.
The timing of my task brought me to the apron of the alley just as he crossed it on the sidewalk.
“Good morning!” I said, surprised by my own cheery tone. The narrow sidewalk in front of my building forced us into an awkward configuration where I had to walk directly behind him, trailing him by just a step or two. A beat passed before he answered me.
“Good morning,” he said, with equally surprising emphasis. It didn’t occur to me then that he may have been mocking me, but the little I know about him is that he is warmer, gentler, and more outgoing than you’d expect from his gruff appearance.
More pleasantries followed, then some comments about the weather, before I reached my gate and we had to part ways. I would have loved to have talked long enough to reach a topic of any substance, but I was happy enough with the interaction we had. The feeling continued to permeate as I climbed the fire escape steps to my landing.
The sun was low and direct over the building across the street, and I noticed in that moment that I had never heard my own street so quiet before. I bent over the railing and turned by head both ways. There were no cars for a block in either direction, and I could barely hear traffic in the distance.
Joy continued to bubble up to a buzzy fizz in my mind: It’s Christmas Day, my neighborhood is sunny and quiet, and even though most of my neighbors are strangers, I enjoy talking with them when I can. The banal aspects of my daily life were emulsifying with the comforts of my charmed existence. I carried this feeling with me for half an hour while I swept snow off the rest of the stairwell and put down de-icer for no reason.
Pocket Dispatch From the Kitchen Floor
My dad groans when he bends down to the kitchen floor with his dust pan to sweep up piles of crumbs he has gathered with the broom. I watch him do this several times each day during our visits. It’s his way of trying to always be useful, which I once derided as a symptom of declining value and influence but now understand to be a selfless expression of humble and generous love.
I watch him groan, his old joints cracking and popping, and the image imprints on my concept of old age.
Then, at home, I too sweep my kitchen floor again and again, both as an expression of love, and as an exasperating symptom of parenthood. I unconsciously hold my breath as I crouch, and as my skeleton folds, density forces the air from my lungs. My right knee makes its usual cracking sound, and as I finally reach the floor, I groan.
Pocket Dispatch from a Playdate
The apartment was remarkably small for an American family: One mother, Amanda, divorced, and her three children. They lived in a narrow hallway that connected two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a combined kitchen and living space. It was packed with objects but not untidy. The mother worked long hours and had some help with from a nanny named Lorene, but otherwise maintained wellbeing of the home herself.
The apartment ended in a living room with a single, large window and glass door letting out onto a private footpath circling the building. A high wall with patches of ivy was all that separated the residential complex from the dense business district surrounding it.
The youngest child, Michael, was in a soccer league with my own son, Silas, and they bonded after several sessions of running and screaming. Lorene and I made shallow, polite conversation while waiting for the boys outside the gymnasium where they played.
Eventually the boys asked for a play date enough times that Lorene collected my contact information and gave it to Amanda, who invited Silas for a play date. When the invitation came, it was back to me and Lorene to coordinate and supervise, as Amanda would be out working.
On the day of the playdate, Lorene invited us to play inside because it was raining. I drove our car to be punctual, even though a bus route connected our apartments and Silas and I preferred to ride it.
Lorene and Michael met us in the lobby and we padded behind them down the carpeted hall to their unit. I said something about the exposed timber beams, then complimented the apartment when we entered even though it was very normal. I was comforted that Amanda appeared to share our values about living in small, urban spaces. Though one can never be sure whether it’s a common value for relating or a temporary condition the other hopes to overcome.
Michael quickly overcame his shyness, an inhibition Silas doesn’t suffer, and both boys set to boisterous play. Lorene and I quickly exhausted all available topics of conversation and settled into the soft living room furniture near the boys. We then stayed like this for an unusual length of time, watching the boys, saying little to each other, the muscles in my face growing stiff and sore from polite smiling.
After an hour or so of this, Amanda arrived home. She seemed flustered but energetic as she greeted me, made small talk, then reviewed some household business with Lorene. She then disappeared into the bedroom, changed, and reappeared for more of the same.
Amanda and I also had little in common. Raising children in small apartments near the center of a major city is a lifestyle full of sacrifice and struggle, and those who choose it without the help of extreme wealth often have lots to talk about. Not so in this case.
She left as unceremoniously as she had arrived, and soon after we left, too.