A Suburban Diorama

Photo by Greg Stimac, Oak Lawn, Illinois, 2006

I’ve begun walking again.

I’ve written in this space previously about my walks last year. I needed to lose a little weight, and I wanted to get a little more exercise into my life. I walked most days, about an hour and a half a day, all summer long and into the fall, until it got too cold.

The result? I lost nearly all the weight I’d promised myself to lose (16 pounds as of today). I felt my body respond with greater stamina and strength. I wrote three stories based on those walks, and I’m very fond of two of those stories (both submitted to magazines over four months ago, no rejection emails yet). But the health gains and the stories are not my main takeaway from that time.

Primarily what that time gave me was memories so intense they feel like I was walking in a diorama, a wraparound landscape like the ones I’ve seen in museums, where a background of ancient ferns and erupting volcanoes and giant insects curves around the main characters of dinosaurs and mammoths and cavemen. In my modern suburban diorama, long shadows are thrown from a sun as it slowly freefalls down toward the mountains. American flags and Trump flags are flying from homes and often in clusters of two and three contiguous homes, as if marking the entrance of a compound (oddly, I saw no Biden flags or even lawn signs). People walked babies and dogs on the sidewalk, a thin majority of them dutifully wearing masks. Those not choosing to quarantine drove cars home from work and school, then disappeared into garages as their remote control garage doors came trundling down behind them, hiding their lives from further inspection.

The nation was mired knee-deep in a pandemic. Election Day was around the corner, with no certain winner. I was nearing retirement, and wondering what would happen in the next phase of my life. My Dad had died at the beginning of the year, leaving me without my primary role model, unexpectedly adrift in late adulthood.

The whole world seemed on the brink of some enormous upheaval.

In retrospect, there certainly were some upheavals, both personal and public. The election came and went. The pandemic got worse, then got a little better. I gave the eulogy at my father’s memorial. I retired. My daughter had a baby and I became a grandfather. I got vaccinated.

The world I walk in now, however, is not appreciably different than the one I walked in last year. People still walk their babies and their dogs, though fewer of them are wearing masks. The American flags are still there, and most of the Trump flags too, though some of them have been taken down. I still miss my Dad, and think of him often during these walks. I’m enjoying retirement far more than I suspected. Grandparenthood as well.

The suburban diorama surrounding me now has the same leaning shadows, the same houses, the same neighborhoods, the same mountains, the same sun and moon, the same stars. The main difference between my walks now and my walks last year is this: the sense of some fateful impending reckoning is nearly gone. It just feels like life now. I step out into the spring afternoon, and feel the warmth of the sun on my face. Trees are greening up, flowers are blooming, birds are readying to sing.

The dinosaurs in that decades old museum diorama are extinct. I am now the main character of this particular diorama. I feel very much alive, and curious about what happens next.

Peace.

The links:

• April’s story: Prince Albert in a Can

• March’s story: Fuck, Marry, Kill

• February’s story: Veronica Scissors

• My first novel, Life Under Water

• My website: jeffmwood.com.

• My Amazon page.

• My erotic flash fiction series, Serious Moonlight (as J G Cain)