Sun

Spring weather has arrived.  I sat in the sun in the front yard of Jay’s house at 2057 Hoover Avenue in Pleasant Hill.  Jay’s Dad, Jack Bosley, bought the snug two bedroom one bath house in 1967 and lived here until he died and Jay inherited it.  Jay lived here on and off, but for most of the time he owned it it was a rental.  The front yard is unadorned.  There is still a bit of grass, but most of the greenery is weeds of various lovely kinds – bur clover with tiny yellow flowers, scarlet pimpernel with tiny orange flowers and cutleaf geranium with tiny purple flowers, a perfect bouquet for a small fairy.  I have never understood the devotion to lawn monoculture when weeds are so much more interesting.  Jack planted four white rose bushes between the yard and Hoover, and they are still thriving.  Calling Hoover an Avenue is quite misleading – road or lane would be better designations for this narrow street that runs only a few blocks and, except for the newer section west of us, has no sidewalks.

Sitting in the warm sun has been the perfect meditation for me for as long as I can remember.  I can step through the years of all the lawns and decks and one rooftop where I’ve sat in the sun, 18 different places from the time I left college.  There are only a few places I lived, especially the ground floor apartment of the lovely duplex on Chenery Street in San Francisco, where there was no sunny place to sit outside.  It had other pleasures, but nowhere to sit outside, sunny or otherwise.  Sitting in the sun was always reason enough for being.  I didn’t have to do anything else if I was doing that.  Especially in the densely busy years of being a young working mother, sitting in the sun was my way to rest, to center myself, to ignore demands, to be at peace.  Even in the relative cold of California winters, it was always warm enough to sit in the sun, to let it warm my face, to let it soothe me.  I have the clearest memories of sitting in the sun when I needed it most, when I felt more like a human doing than a human being.

On a sunny spring day Hoover Avenue isn’t quiet. There are the birds, looking for mates, declaring their territories, or just rejoicing.  I can hear my neighbors’ music, their conversations about lawn care, their power tools, their laughter as they walk by.  Cars pass, not real traffic, but enough to break the peace.  There are planes overhead regularly, still climbing as they head east across the country from San Francisco or Oakland airports. There is the river of traffic in the distance on Highway 680. And every half hour or so a BART train shushes by near enough to be heard. It’s a smooth modern sound, not the clanking rattle of the elevated I grew up with in The Bronx. At first I think about each sound, but then the sun seeps into me and the sounds fade deep into the background.

Lying in the warm grass in Amenia as a girl I was in an odd acoustical bowl.  I could hear the trucks shifting gears as they climbed Route 44 up out of the Harlem Valley.  During the Firemen’s Carnival in July I could hear town children shrieking on the ferris wheel even though it was a mile away.  I could hear the man with the microphone calling out the numbers for Bingo. In my Amenia childhood as now on Hoover Avenue with work and child rearing well behind me, lying in the sun is a pleasure, but I don’t come to it exhausted or desperate for renewal. 

We are wrapping up our two year stay on Hoover Avenue – just about 10 weeks left. I have missed Otsego County, the sun and peace on Sunnyhill, the quiet bustle of Cooperstown with its one traffic light.  But I’m glad I’ve had the chance to live here.  I’ve gotten to know a little more about Jack Bosley from the house he chose and lived in, from his neighborhood, from the stories they remind Jay of.  I’ve had breakfast in the Sunshine Cafe where Jack was a regular at the counter.  And I’ve lived in the house that mattered to Jay, where important parts of his adulthood, and especially his early years of sobriety took place.  Aging, we sift back through the layers of our lives, through the rough patches and the smooth ones, through times of stress and times of ease. I’m grateful for the chance I’ve had to inhabit this space, to imagine some of those times as Jay remembers them.  I’m glad to sit in the sun with the rose bushes Jack Bosley planted between me and Hoover Avenue.