I’ve had several nights of low sugars due to the headaches. Eating regularly is difficult with the nausea and pain.

I’ve been here before. Migraines>Diabetes>Blood Pressure>Exhaustion/Brain Fog> and again….

I like to think I’m pretty tough about it at this point. Somewhere in the back of my mind, while I”m throwing up, I’m thinking ahead about how I’ll clean up and get on with my day; after this part is over.

So that is what I did.

My goal was a 5 pm orientation meeting. I’m starting on my MFA in Creative Writing this year. It feels right. Now is the time. I’m not getting any healthier and this is where my heart is. Writing is always where it has been.

With the days of pain I started to doubt myself heavily. Can I physically and mentally add this to my life?

My husband texted me to see how my day was going. I told him I was struggling with medical stuff and self doubts. He texted back that I was one of the most competent people he has ever met.

My family believes in me and that is the best feeling ever. I want to do great things so they keep believing in me.

By 4:30 I had stabilized. The pain had subsided. I was able to drink a Coke and eat some pretzels. As I left the house my 16 year old ran after me to give me a hug and wish me luck and encouragement. I got a bit teary eyed and walked down the hill towards the meeting smiling happily.

I ran into my old friend Nina at orientation. She was escorting her young adult son as he starts his next degree. We laughed about the odd surprise of seeing each other there. Nina, of course, was super excited for me to be pursuing something I love. Nina is fearless in her pursuit of happiness that way. She is a friend who inspires whimsy.

I felt good, happy, and a little delusional. I met my program cohorts and a few of the amazing instructors. And, Oh my God it feels so good to be in a room of writers again! I missed that more than I knew. It was hard not to be the most exuberant one in the room.

I now have 2 articles to write for other publications this week (one is overdue.) And I’m already getting overly excited about my school assignments. The best part is being part of this community of writers.

Chronic health issues? Self doubt? Damn it all! I’m going to head out on my next adventure in life!

We lived on land in the backwaters of the lake. It was where they had bulldozed all the fallen pine trees when they built the dam on the Chattahoochee south of Atlanta. It wasn’t suitable for vacation houses, because there were no good swimming or boating areas. But it made the land affordable for people like my Mom to get a little place.

Our house was about 2 miles from the Alabama state line, built on the thick red mud that is everywhere in those parts. We had a trail leading down to the water where we could go fishing or walk on old fallen logs when the waterline dipped low.

When I think back, I can still feel the way the pine trees felt on the bottom of my feet as they gripped them for balance. I walked on sticks and rocks and mud until my feet grew numb to the pain and the lower half of my foot stained red from the iron in the soil.

My Mom chose the house when she was still hiding from my Father. The house was not in a subdivision of any sort. We were isolated from most nearby people. There were only a few farms and random homes that far out. But nobody we really knew or associated with lived there.

She worked 2 jobs and came home most nights around midnight. So, it was just me and my brother at home.

She taught us both how to shoot the shotgun she kept at the house-for protection. And once a week if we were lucky she’d let us pick out a bunch of frozen meals at the grocery store to heat up for dinners. A coveted 3-liter bottle of coke would disappear in a few hours like candy. I was 9 or so at the time and didn’t really know how to cook much. So I just got used to being slightly hungry all the time. It was pre-internet era and we didn’t have cable TV, or get any radio stations beyond country or gospel.

The solitude weighed heavy on my soul. I got to know all the sounds of the woods, all the plants that grew in the underbrush, and all the little bugs that flourished in the unkept forestland. Books and woods and cats were my main companions.

I hated it. I dreamed of a clean suburban home with a little backyard pool and nice sidewalks. I detested the red mud that stained everything it touched. More than that, I hated our poverty. I wanted the nice shoes that I always felt guilty asking my Mom for. I waited for a time when I could take control of my own life. Childhood made me vulnerable and powerless to save myself or my Mom and brother.

I dreamed of adulthood the way other people I now know reminisce of their childhood.

I did not, back then, understand how fortunate I was in so many ways. I was allowed to be free and wild in a way that I now try to return to,n a way that I wish my children could experience, minus the poverty of course. I wouldn’t wish the hunger and stigma of being poor on them. But I do wish them time in the woods with bare feet and a book and a cat for companionship.

Photo stolen from Google Images. No photos exist of this time in my life.

When I went off to college I brought a brown cotton blanket, a pillow, my sleeping bag, my clothes in a yellow leather samsonite luggage my mom gave me–it was all she had–and my portable electric brother typewriter that weighed 20 pounds.

The night before, my mom’s car had broken down. So my boyfriend drove me the 2 hours up to college in one of those hybrid car trucks from the 80’s. He dropped me off and we kissed awkwardly. We swore to stay in touch. But we both knew it was goodbye, that I was moving on to a life he was not going to be a part of.

I had $20 in my pocket. My mom gave it to me before I left. It was all she had.

Arrival was a whirlwind. All around me were parents escorting their kids into the dorms. Helping them unpack. Hanging curtains and frilly bedspreads. Then taking them out to dinner.

I sat alone in my room. No family. Hungry, because the dining halls didn’t open until the next day and I didn’t have a car.

The first one in my family to go to college. Nobody had prepared me for any of this. I thought college was about being smart. I didn’t know how much it was about learning to act like a different class of people.

I have a room of my own again. I’m busy imagining how I’d want it to be. Trying to make it fit the person I am at this moment in time.

I have always craved a space of my own. I crave autonomy. I need to breathe without fear. My nervous system needs it for safety.

I gave up my dance studio when I got married to my 3rd husband. I gave up many things. Things I was okay letting go of, and things I have fought to have back again.

I was one person, living with my two sons. It was hard financially and exhausting often.

When I remarried, that became easier. But then I became a person living with five people. My husband and our four kids.

They all needed things. They all took up space, time, and emotion. I gladly gave them that, with love.

Fifteen years have passed and they are almost all adults now. My husband, once passionate and needy, now stays focused mainly on his job and his phone. So I have space.

I can sit and write, or sew, or do yoga. I can dance again. I can read books in relative silence! I can meditate on the trees outside my window. My world is simpler. I’m no longer constantly juggling the needs and schedules of six humans.

It is lonelier, yes. Definitely lonelier. In times before, I invited friends into my dance space. They reveled in the freedom of my woman-led sanctuary. But it’s been decades since that was my life.

And while I miss that life, and I miss my crowded house of kids, and the many other lives I’ve lived – I do find myself eager to dive into this new decade of living, and relishing….space.

The sun came out yesterday and I started planting my carefully grown seedlings in my garden pots out in front of my townhouse. With my butt hanging out to the frequent people passing by, dirt and mud on my stomach, hands and face, I dreamed happy thoughts of future plants. I felt slightly self conscious, but I focused on the task at hand.

I live on a busy street. There is a college dorm across the street, a cafe 6 doors down, and a primary school a block away. Nothing is private. People I will never meet will watch my garden grow. This also makes me happy.

The many people walking their dogs past my garden do not. Don’t get me wrong. I love dogs. I don’t love them peeing on my plants. I get that there is not a lot of green space in the city for them to frolic. But my tiny garden can not survive the daily onslaught of urine from the many many dogs. So, I put up a sign asking people not to let their dogs pee on my plants.

Occasionally dog owners will ignore the sign and let their dogs go on my tree well. They often look around carefully to make sure no one is watching when they see the sign. This also allows me to pop my head out the front door and, smiling, educate them about how their dog urine is killing my vegetable garden.

I am becoming an old lady. A feisty one. Hopefully also a kind one and a soft one. As a once aspiring punk and Genx’er, I’m not sure I ever really gave a shit about what other people thought. But the mantle of middle-to-old age womanhood truly gives me permission to no longer strive to make things comfortable for everyone.

I am a caretaker. I was raised by southern society to be one. I actually enjoy it–within healthy boundaries. That is why I love plants. I love nurturing them and watching them grow. I love the joy they give me and other people. Here in the city so many people have not grown things. I like to plant different vegetables and flowers around my front stoop every year to watch the school kids and college students admire them.

I often see toddlers touching the flowers as they wander past. My favorite thing is watching people “steal” vegetables. I grew beans up the front of my townhouse and used my metal cafe table as a makeshift trellis for the vines last year. Two years ago I grew Okra. Surprisingly most people in the mid-atlantic have never eaten Okra and certainly have never seen it growing.

I grew up surrounded by gardens and gardeners. I have memories of my Mom, Grandmother, and Great grandmother all wandering their gardens. And, so I embrace being the old lady with her butt hanging out on the city sidewalk planting things. I embrace nurturing. This is one of my missions in life. Like my ancestors before me, although I no longer live in the rural south, I grow things for people. I even like to think I grow small moments of joy and educate without words about the earth. So I will continue to hang my butt out on the street as I slowly get more grey hairs. These things all make me happy. I hope they make others happy too.

If you were black you could be black or poor black. But it didn’t matter. All the black people stuck together and I was not allowed to associate with them. My family would never forgive me and the society of LaGrange would shun me if I were to be close friends with a black person. And God forbid I ever dated one. That didn’t mean I was supposed to be rude. We were Christians afterall. Love your neighbor–just don’t hang out with them.

But sports were and are the great equalizer. On my cross country and track teams we were all people with the same mission, the same struggle. We didn’t talk family, or race, or politics. We all rode on the same bus. We worked out in the same gym. Physical prowess was what earned respect.

And I was the fastest and toughest long distance runner in town–for a girl. I was captain of the girl’s cross country team and co-captain of the girls track team.

My co-captain of the girl’s track team was black, beautiful, and popular. I was not. During the school day we didn’t chat. Beyond a brief hello or a nod, maybe a “What’s up, Fricks?” But after school we ran together.

She was fast and ran all the sprints. I ran the long races and did the high jumps. We were friends, of a sort.

But, in a small town people just know things about you, whether you want them to or not. My co-captain knew I was poor white. Not only was I poor white, but I was racist white. Lots of white people were openly at that time. But, If you’d asked me at the time, I’d of told you I wasn’t.

I didn’t hate black people. I didn’t even want to be racist. But looking back, at the time, I hate to admit, I did fall into that category of white people that thought we were somehow better.

Even though I was not as popular, or pretty, and my family damn sure didn’t have any money–at least I wasn’t black.

This was back in the early 80’s. And even now, I’m still dissecting these internal thoughts. Trying to be better, by understanding where I came from. I suppose this is what people mean when they say, “doing the work.”

I’m great at cleaning. You may not know it from the state of my house today. But I can clean a space better than most. I can do it with the efficiency of a speed freak. Piss me off and I’ll start vacuuming and organizing things as if a demon was inside me. The kitchen will get spotless and the bathroom will shine. Is it in my blood? My upbringing? Or, just my 3rd generation OCD?

We used to joke that my granny’s house was so clean you could “eat off the floor.” My granny kept a plastic cover on her couch. Even then, our feet were never allowed to touch the couch. There were also plastic runners along the main walkways through her house. The plastic was meant to keep us from soiling the floors. The floors she worked so hard to get spotless.

You see, my Granny grew up poor. Not the romantic kind of poor. The sleep on the floor near the coal stove kind of poor. The beg for food after you cooked for everyone else kind of poor. The, you don’t have proper clothes to attend school kind of poor.

Her Mom had died young and her father gave her over to relatives to raise. She was passed around to distant cousins and Aunts throughout her childhood, only achieving an elementary school education. Our family whispers allege that she was most likely sexually molested at some point by an Uncle.

Her way out was marrying my grandfather at the age of 14. My grandfather was 16, a musician and the son of a tenant farmer: the white version of a share cropper in the South. Poor, uneducated, but hard working, they both strove for a good life for their daughters. That meant working in factories while holding down side jobs–baking cakes or doing electrical repairs. For my grandmother, it also meant keeping house and taking care of children. As it follows, as the eldest child my Mom was responsible for much of the childcare and cleaning.

Emphasis on the cleaning. You see they were poor, but they would never ever be “white trash.” Education for their daughters was always secondary to keeping up appearances. Were the pastor to drop by, or anyone else, the house must be spotless.

Years later, when my Mom left my Dad for the last time, we had to live with my grandparents for a while.I was around 8 or 9 years old at the time. I learned to be immaculately clean. Each time I took a bath I was required to scrub out the tub with a can of Scrubbing Bubbles–using only the specific sponge allotted for this task. My grandmother would then come behind me and inspect the tub for any stray hairs that my long blonde curls might have left.

And, God forbid your stomach ever got upset. There was only one toilet in the house. Over the carpeted, cushioned throne was a sign that read, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” I’m pretty sure I developed some serious constipation during that time

I always brushed my hair outside, lest I get hairs somewhere on the inside of the house. That is also where I had to use a nail brush to clean under my nails and clip them. My hands were inspected regularly for dirt that a small child might acquire while playing outside.

I still remember the ferocity with which my granny would insist that I look at the very small piles of dirt she swept up every night in the kitchen. She was always appalled. I never cared. At 8 years old I hated her and her rules.

I thought my grandmother as just mean, evil perhaps. But in my mind my situation was temporary. I dreamed of the day I would return to my formerly middle class life. Clearly, I didn’t understand much about life yet. I know now that poverty and homelessness will do weird shit to your psyche.

To be continued:

At 8 am this morning I hastily removed the heavily cluttered contents of my dresser top. The painters arrived unexpectedly—on time. I hastily swept up gobs of costume jewelry collected over a lifetime: small shiny things, hair accessories, glasses, tiny shells and rocks. I cherish my things. I also hate dust and clutter. I dream of clean open spaces in which to breathe.

My desires are clearly at odds with each other.

I’m finally having my bedroom repainted. 5 years ago when we moved in I declared my hatred for the peachy skin-toned walls of blah. It was to be the first thing I updated in this over 100+ year old house. I was, of course, thwarted by a dozen other immediately more necessary repairs. But today is the day.

Chartreuse and Passionate Purple are my colors. I’m going from beige to bold. I plan to use this as a chance to clear the dust, purge my clutter, and start fresh in this small stifling bedroom! It feels like I’m reorganizing my soul. In a way, I am.

Three months ago, my oldest two children both moved out: one to college, the other to a job outside the city. My youngest, at 15, is still here. But alas, he is a room dweller the way that many teens are. He only comes out to eat or grudgingly respond to my attempts to engage him in conversation. My life has changed, shattered, shifted.

I thought I was prepared. I have even longed for this time in my life when my daily responsibilities as a Mother eased significantly.

As part of my attempts to embrace this new life, I’m making my space more my own. I’ve set up a new office area in the basement and I’m finally able to do the room repairs I’ve long wanted to accomplish. I’ve even begun the final work on that memoir I’ve always wanted to complete.

So why does it all feel so painful? This letting go. This shifting and moving forward.

I hope that the new colors will brighten the way

.

Somewhere in my closets is a faded newspaper clipping with a picture of my paternal grandparents’ front yard on Halloween. I heard stories from my father about the epic parties they once threw.

My father, an artist, also reveled in decorating for Halloween. Not a party thrower himself, he took any excuse to get creative. He spent weeks painting, sculpting, and dressing up the yard.

After his death when I was 21, I inherited a box of Halloween decorations. They included 2 plastic skeletons. Clearly older than me, possibly older than my father. They were crafted in that hard molded thick style of rubber that resembles almost a tire. The paint has worn thin on the faces and the hair that was once part of the skulls is long gone.

I began throwing Halloween parties the year after my first son was born. Over 20 years ago now. The parties ebb and flow in their elaborateness. But it has become part of our core family tradition.

Most of my extended relatives are long dead. I am estranged from almost all the rest. My life centers on my friends and immediate family. I believe I’ve long moved on from my troubled childhood life.

Yet, here I am, like my grandparents long-passed, preparing to throw a big Halloween party, decorating up the house. And I try not to remember how my father once told me that after he died, he would come back to haunt me every Halloween. As I stare at the slowly yellowing plastic skeletons on my door, I think how no matter how far away my past, my blood relatives still follow me.

I’m trying to learn to enjoy sitting on a couch.

I didn’t get an actual couch until I was 29 years old. My Mom left our couch in one of our moves when I was 10. We were always moving, getting evicted, not able to pay the rent…something. A couch was a burden to move. When you have to move fast, you only move the essentials: bedroom & kitchen. Eventually we got one of those wicker papasan chairs. It fit one person. We also had an old recliner. There were 3 of us.

I got comfortable sitting on the floor on pillows. The shag carpet was always kinda dirty and old.

I got my first real couch when I was 7 months pregnant with Gabe. I saved up my money and picked it out from a newspaper ad from an outlet store. I used a big plastic storage bin as a coffee table. It was all we needed and it served many years.

I left that much loved couch behind when I left Ocean’s Dad. I replaced it with an inexpensive wooden futon. And I loved that futon for many years. It even made it to Baltimore with us.

We have 3 couches now. It feels so posh to have so many places to sit. And I am ever grateful to have them. I’m even trying to learn to love them. But I still find myself more at home on a floor pillow most days.

We drove to the beach in the dark to catch the sunrise over the ocean. All 5 of us, plus Frankie, Andrew’s friend from childhood. There was a rocket launch, unexpected to us. Afterwards, the kids and I threw ourselves against the waves—while Frankie and Andrew watched.

It was a moment of joy during a somber weekend. We were in Florida for a funeral. Saying goodbye to my father-in-law.

It almost feels wrong to be happy during a time of mourning. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to walk in the sand and swim in the ocean with my family. I’ve learned to welcome joy when and where it finds me.

I fight to live the life I would without the chronic health issues that I have. On some level I think my health issues drive me to live more: more in the moment, more bolder, more open hearted, more forgiving. But as I sit here recovering from Covid again, after ragging my diabetic body out with several weeks of out of control blood sugars on a very demanding adventure trip, I am only full of Gratitude. Gratitude for my family that not only supported, but has cheered me on through so many adventures over the years. Gratitude to Andrew for pushing me to do the things he knows I want to do. Gratitude for my friends that have loved so many versions of me over the years. Gratitude for my coworkers at the fabric studio for being kind. Gratitude for the scholarships I’ve received from Diabetes Training Camp. Those people taught me to live large in spite of my challenges. They gave me a toolbox and pointed the way. Mostly I’m just grateful to be alive and have so many amazing people to share my days with. Thank you for listening to my gratitude dump.

Photo taken at the Roman ruins of Timgad in Tipasa, Algeria.

The idea of Settling Down is a tough one for me. It is part of what drew me to this year long exercise of writing about my Journey in Place.

Everywhere I’ve lived, I have planted a tree, or flowers, or a bush. At first it was an unconscious effort, then it became a kind of tradition. A way of saying that I once lived here. And I have lived and traveled in many places.

For the first half of my life I moved a lot because I was poor, always going from one rental to the next–searching for a home. 

Beyond that I have always been restless, dreaming of the day I could travel the world and explore.

And here I am, doing that. This  past year I’ve traveled to Iceland, Turkey, and, next month, Algeria. I’ve been out of the country 28 times in the last 21 years. As an adult I’ve driven all over the United States, more than once and camped and hiked over many parts of the southeast.

Yet there is no place like home. My flowers, my bedroom, my community of family and friends here in Baltimore. The journey would not be so sweet without this loving home to come back to. 

This is also where I find myself grateful for technology. The ability to stay in touch, to work, to make plans across continents makes it easier to travel–particularly with a family.

What is Settling Down for you?

The Merlin Bird ID app helps me identify them by sound. It’s amazing what the combo of technology and nature can do

I live in the city and often work from home at my kitchen window. It looks out into a mini oasis, a  rare wooded park and garden, behind my row house. 

Most days I hear children playing. There are 2 Elementary schools within a block of my home. The sound of laughter often trickles to my door.

I also hear firetrucks several times a day and the occasional helicopter. 

The city noises are still newish to me. I am a transplant to this town.

The first noise I heard when I moved here was the bells of the gothic cathedral style Catholic church on the corner. Every 15 min on the hour: from dawn until dusk each day.

I still miss the sound of crickets and frogs at night. I play them as white noise in bed at night.

I am acutely aware of what I do and don’t hear in a day. I am slowly going deaf at the age of 50. It is genetic, not unexpected. But it's still not fun to lose the sounds of life.

I treasure the sound of the wind. I haven’t heard trees rustling in a very long time–even with hearing aids.

My family are all musicians. All 5 of us who live here are at times playing an instrument, singing, and dancing. When they are practicing new songs it can be a blessing to not hear very well.

Because I live near the Chesapeake Bay, I am blessed with a huge variety of new birds migrating North to South yearly.

In late October and November I like to take a short trip to the Blackwater National Wildlife refuge to see the flocks and flocks of Canadian and Snow Geese.

Geese are ludicrous and wonderful. They are “the noisiest of waterfowl.” 

The first time I saw them I was hiking on a quiet trail on Oatland Island. I saw them before I heard them, that first time. They emerged over the trees in a beautiful murmuration. A ridiculous flock of ungraceful quacking honking geese.

The fact that I can and could hear these birds makes them extra beloved to me. It is a moment I treasure. I seek them out yearly.

I’d love to hear about any birds that you seek out.

If you want to listen to them, here are some snippets of Snow Goose sounds.

A Baltimore Oriole in my backyard park.

I just paid some old bills. It feels good. It’s taken a lifetime to learn how to take care of my financial life. Moderation has never been my strongest trait. And, when I am sad, or depressed, finances are the first to go. 

3 years ago, I was revisited by some of the worst of my childhood trauma. My PTSD came back in full force. 

This time I sat with it, acknowledged it for what it was. Instead of dealing with it by indulging in self destructive behavior, I looked for help. 

Many of my closest friends don’t know the extent of it. I’m much better at having fun. Give me some ridiculous distraction. A show, A trip. A night out! Sitting still is hard for me.

But here I am paying my bills. A few months ago I started doing the hard hard work of sorting through 5 years of old financial files. Sometimes I would stop and lay on the floor in the middle of them, not crying, just overwhelmed with emotion.

So it doesn’t matter how painful it is to pay this hard earned money. The fact that I can do it, means I’m alive and growing and moving through hard things. That feels good.

Baltimoreans are quick to point out that this too is the South. But it is definitely not the cornbread, collard greens and big biscuit land of most of my life. There are no boiled peanuts to be found. The mud is not red.

I spend many days dreaming wistfully about the home I left. It’s easy to forget the bad when you are no longer in it.

I got to visit my home twice recently. Once for a wedding, the other time for a memorial.

Each time I’m there, I go and visit the old places I love, the old friends. I treasure the short time I have, in a way I didn’t when I actually lived there. I linger to long and I hug my friends too hard

With time and distance I can see how the people and the landscapes shaped me into the person I am now. I know I carry with me all the things I learned from my friends and from that place. I carry with me the smell of the earth and the sound of the birds and the pollen. So much pollen!

I am homesick for other places too, other times, other countries. I am blessed to have lived a lot of life and known some amazing people. Istanbul is a place I love and can never return to enough. My time in Greece and India will always be a part of my heart. I also dream of my mountain town in Northwest Georgia or the lowlands of Savannah. Having traveled most of the U.S. there are place I still hold in my memory–even if they were only home for a night.

Where are you homesick for? 

Spring arrives slowly in Baltimore. Every year I get anxious watching and waiting for my Pink Dogwood to bloom again. It buds later than the other trees around it. Later than my southern born self thinks it should. This tree brings me joy watching it slowly come to life outside my kitchen window.

I care for it as best I can, putting mulch and fertilizer on it each year and making sure it doesn't get strangled by the terrible english ivy that creeps everywhere..

Fun fact: Pink Dogwoods are native to Maryland. At one point they almost went extinct in favor of the non-native asian Cherry Blossom trees that draw tourists to the DC area.

A Pink Dogwood is not as showy as a cherry blossom tree. Pink Dogwoods are more delicate, definitely more classy. They make their entrance each spring with a dignified blush.

Can you tell I am a fan?

Nobody really loves airports. But I do. 

That’s one reason why I am enjoying exploring the “Journey in Place” writing series.

I have always had wanderlust. Travel is a part of my life. I happily collect stamps on my passport.

When I got my first car at 16, one of the first things I did was drive 2 hours north in the dark from my hometown on the border of Georgia and Alabama line–just to wander through the Atlanta airport.

This was before security when you could wander right up to the gates. I would stand there and stare at the gates and dream about going places, any place. Eventually I would drive back home in my crappy old mustang. Watching the pine trees go by in the warm night.

Life’s possibilities are all at the airport. I am invisible sitting there at my gate. I could be anything. Do anything.

I don’t enjoy flying. It is a necessary evil. A thing I do to achieve my dreams. I have suffered through lots of uncomfortable things in life. Flying is not the worst. 

But in an airport, while I wait, I can be present with myself. I can do yoga. I can breathe. Everything is out of my hands. I can not control the plane or the schedule. I am just here watching life. I am excited to go somewhere. I am excited to not be moving and doing.

There is some comfort in being able to be at home in that liminal space.

But what does it mean for me to dig into a journey in my own space? I have always been able to make myself at home in a place, any place. How long can I sit on my own ground? How deep can I go? Can I love the place where I am?

It is the kind of place young adults and people of ill repute go to party. The kind of place you find by accident when taking a long walk. A place you come to sob when life gets too much. Or a place to make out with a lover.

In my case, the kind of place you seek out below the city streets on a sunny day. It’s a perfect place to find solitude and read a book, do some yoga, and meditate by the water.

I could spend all day looking at all the graffiti and wondering, “Why this?” What renegade artist put this here? 

I could listen to the waterfall and pretend I am someplace more pristine, more well kept.

Round Falls or Horseshoe Falls is actually a public park. But, some people live nearby their whole lives and don’t know it exists. The city no longer cares for it. What maintenance happens, is done by those who frequent the area. 

There is even a government sign standing at the entrance–leaning and covered in graffiti. Also a ghost bike to mark the entrance where someone lost their life.

It once was a mill, before it became simply part of the polluted Jones Falls River that runs North to South through the city of Baltimore. Next to the river are the old B&O Railroad tracks. Above that is the cities Light Rail transit system and even further above all that  is the main highway. Point is we are many levels below the streets near the bowels of the city. 

And it is lovely. Nature is taking back over! Creeping in with invasive species of blackberry brambles, ivy, and privet. The trees are fighting to grow back, reaching their roots toward the water. This is a place of respite in the city. How many souls have enjoyed this place? How many years and years of stories have been told by this waterfall?