Familiar

I was driving home from work yesterday and I noticed that I was noticing things. Do you know what I mean? I was driving down a street that I drive down every single days, twice each day; once in one direction in the morning, and then back again at the end of the day. It’s a nice street; residential, lined with mid-century suburban houses not unlike my own. One side of the street backs up to wooded parkland along the banks of Rock Creek. I think sometimes that it would be nice to have one of the houses whose backyard slopes gently down into the woods. And then I think about waking up to a bear on my patio, and I decide that my current backyard is just fine, thank you very much.

But back to the noticing things. I’ve driven on this street many many times in the 20 years that I’ve lived in Silver Spring and Rockville; and for the last two years, I’ve driven it almost every day. So I’m pretty familiar with it. I know most of the houses, and I see the same people out running or walking their dog; and sometimes, I get to work in the morning or I get home at night and I realize that I don’t actually remember having driven either way. It’s that familiar.

Yesterday, though, I saw things that I never noticed before. An addition going up on one of the houses, and a meadow-like front yard filled with what looks like bulrush or cattails, and a house with a beautiful red front door, with flower boxes on either side. That house is right on a corner, and I can’t imagine why I never noticed it before. Then I started seeing color; pale magenta pink on some of the trees, grass turning slightly but noticeably green, and then yellow.


What is that, I thought. It looked like a forsythia, but they only come out in March. Could it be some freak of nature, some new forsythia strain that flowers all year, or that blooms months early? Because why didn’t I know about this? I love forsythia and I’d surround my house with them if I could get them to stay in bloom longer. And then I noticed the sun, still relatively high in the sky at 5 PM, and I realized that it IS March, and that I was looking at the first forsythia of the year. It’s always, always, always later than I think.

*****
And now it’s really spring because yesterday, I sat through the first cold spring day baseball game. There’s no cold like spring cold. Even the words together sound cold. There’s a research laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor, New York; and I always think that the water there must be so much colder than anywhere else on the east coast. But I was dressed for the weather, and the sun was shining. Governor Thomas Johnson High School crushed Rockville. But it’s only a scrimmage. It’s still pre-season. I drove home from Frederick, from mountains to suburbs in just 30 minutes, the bright sun streaming onto I-270.

Last night, my son was invited to join his friends for a birthday dinner at a local sports bar. I joined two of the other boys’ mothers for dinner and a glass of wine at another table, and we all returned to the birthday boy’s house for another drink and cake for the teenagers. We divided the boys among us, 10 boys in three cars. Two of the ten have new learners’ permits. It won’t be long before they’re all driving themselves around. But for now, they can’t go anywhere far without us.
My son turned the radio to the local Spanish station, which was playing a Saturday night dance mix. “I love this station,” my son said.

“Me too,” said one of his friends. “They played ‘Esa Muchacha’ the other day.” “Esa Muchacha” was Juan Soto’s walk-up song last year. One of the boys in the car, a Yankees fan, scoffed, but quietly. The Nats fans have bragging rights this year.

“This is Silver Spring radio, for sure,” I said. We all nodded. This is where we live.

Later that night, we drove the three miles home, and as I drove up Bel Pre Road from Layhill toward Georgia, I realized that I’d been on autopilot almost the whole way; that I had almost passed my turn-off to continue and pass Georgia and continue down Bel Pre to Arctic, the street that I drive up and down every single day. And just then, I was in love with the familiarity, in love with knowing this place where I’ve raised my children like the back of my hand. It’s spring.