As I Try To Focus On This Life More Than The Storms

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I was sitting at Starbucks the other day at a window seat, looking out onto a beautiful, upscale plaza near my house. It was a day of juxtapositions of frenetic and calm, stalwart and crumbled, hopeful and resigned.

There was the homeless woman in an extra-large tattered gray shirt that hung off her with its various shreds and holes tied and pinned together in spots throughout. She kept walking in and out of Starbucks. She’d come in, stand for a moment, then turn around and walk back out, pushing her shopping cart across the plaza like she’d forgotten something. Then she’d do it again, three or four times. Finally, she sat down at one of the tables in the corner, hunched into herself, and put small bits of something edible repeatedly in her mouth.

She was juxtaposed with the well-dressed professionals who drifted across the giant plaza in focused conversation with colleagues, going to and from offices in the tall, ultra-contemporary buildings surrounding the area, built in fast succession these last 10+ years. Tech giants are here, defense contractors, aerospace, big philanthropy, financial. Serious stuff, big budgets, keeping our country humming. Cash.

I’ve been training for a skyscraper stairwell race, though I’ll be more a finisher than a racer. My training has me traipsing up and down the stairs in the bowels of this plaza. If I have a bit of time post-traipse, my reward is to sip coffee and work on my writing at Starbucks. The other day my reward coincided with a weekly Zoom call I join with other writers to write for a couple of hours. Two of the regulars are in North Carolina and that day they reported on the devastation from Hurricane Helene — towns flattened and flooded, and it gave me pause as it would you.

The sad descriptions from these writer friends flowed through my headset while I watched Helene’s residual breeze ruffle through the profusion of potted flowers and fancy landscaping that decorated the plaza. Orange-pink begonias and trailing annuals cascaded off the planters and moved gently in the breeze. They showed their perky appreciation for the perfect amount of rain we got here. The distinction between these two worlds — the storm-blasted and the storm-ignored — was tough and the way of the world. Here were the haves and the have-nots. The lucky and the luckless.

Then I watched the homeless woman get up to walk across the plaza again.

Life through the window in front of me paid no attention to anything other than its regular groove, as life will do when its routine is stable. People walked their dogs on leashes, chatting on phones or to the person next to them. The ever-present security staff moved slow and deliberate, making tours of the plaza and surrounding area. Nothing much to see or tend to that day — a regular workday, serene, predictable. Beneath all this was the metro train adhering to its schedule as expected. To and from Washington, DC, and the metro region here, it delivered employees, tourists, students, and visitors to numerous spots of interest and purpose, day in and day out.

I was among everything else in this groove, and I watched it all with calm and introspection, which one can do when life is in a flow state.

But life isn’t always like this. Sometimes there are hurricanes or war. Sometimes there is death or loss, upset or stress. This is when my personal plaza — or yours — is upended and life is not what it was, and it's all we can do to try to scramble back to a sense of normalcy.

During those times we have heightened awareness of what’s going on — or at least of some of it. The thing that amazes me most is how little I notice the beautiful plaza in front of me when it’s business as usual and things are okay — when time seems still. Unless disaster is breathing its hot breath into my face, I tend to notice little. I know this is how the brain works, but I also know it’s possible to learn to notice more — to take in the flowers on the plaza of life more regularly instead of just when they’re hurtling through the air when the hurricane hits.

I’ll never forget the moment I realized my grandmother was dying. It happened as her body parts started to turn blue and the hospice worker pointed this out to those of us encircling the hospice bed in my grandparents’ living room. “Now you can see Dorothy’s body turning blue. This means her oxygen is leaving her body and she’s starting to pass.”

I was stunned. I’m still stunned. Wait, I thought, she’s truly dying??

Even though I’d been in a race to repatriate from Turkey so I could see her before she succumbed to her cancer, and then had months to see her and write to her because the cancer took its sweet, cruel time, I wasn’t living in the reality of those moments. I was off in the past or future or who knows where. I wasn’t taking in the facts of the moment.

When the storm hit me head-on, I couldn’t deny it any longer — my grandmother would die within moments.

This is normal, I’m sure, having that shock of finality around a hospice bed, that stun of the passing of time at a graduation ceremony, that surprise of culmination at a wedding, that jolt of reality at the birth of a baby. Even though there is a process leading up to these events, and years of it often, it’s hard to notice it sometimes.

I often poke myself these days as a reminder that my sons might one day have to relocate for work, and it’ll become a rare thing to see them. I shake my shoulder when Monday rolls around and I realize I didn’t call my mom again the past weekend. I nudge myself on the back when I see how beautiful the day is outside and how hunkered down at my computer I’ve been inside. I try to remind myself that time has been too still and that a small or large hurricane can come — will come — and the beautiful days of sun and people are limited.

It had rained earlier that day when I sat at the window at Starbucks. A facilities worker came over and blew off the puddled rain on the outdoor tables with a leaf blower — which I thought was a novel idea. He noticed me through the window, and I waved. He waved right back. It was a small moment, but I logged it into my memory and gratitude bank. I might as well, I thought. A day like today will never come again.

On the way to my car, I grabbed a begonia blossom to take home to dry and press. This will be a reminder that my life is sitting in the day-to-day. I hope I notice well before the next storm. There’s lovely weather here, the people I love, and plenty of flowers. It’s a gift.

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Have a nice week, friends.