I read the news today, oh boy… – The Beatles
My granddaughter’s big jogging pram resisted my attempts to bring it into strolling form, but I prevailed against my daughter’s folding and nestling away of the pram’s parts. Wednesday, March 25th was going to be a bright and sunny day, and Myah was going to roll out into the sunshine with Cool Papa.
For those of you who are new to “The World According to Woods” (sorry, John Irving), I am the weekday caretaker of my (now) 23-month-old granddaughter, and since she was 5 months old, I have been pramming her about Irvington, first, with a stroller her mother received from her father, then with a black-belt, name-brand, “B.O.B.” jogging pram that a kind neighbor put out on Julian Street for us to claim as we passed on our way to (R.I.P.) 10 Johnson, for coffee. My daughter disassembled the pram and boiled all the parts in bleach, then reassembled it for me to use, which saved space in her car when she brought Myah to me in the mornings, before work. But the turning of the widening gyre (sorry, Mr. Yeats) has brought the three of us into the same household, and on days that are not inclement, (sorry Clement Jon Woods, III) we hit the streets. And after the Indiana governor’s “Stay Home” edict, we two non-working people need to have good days with the birds and the beasts, since we cannot commune with the peeps. And on a bright March day, we set out to “let the sunshine in.” (Sorry, Hair.)
My daughter had put air in the inner-tube tires of the B.O.B. and I easily rumbled my granddaughter over the cracked and crooked pavements that line my street. We waved to our neighbors who were working in their front yards, and I tried to find and identify the birds I heard. We passed a house with a sign that read, “You got this”; the sign had a yellow flower on it. On the Pennsy Trail, a group of young children galloped past us, closely followed by a woman in running gear. She checked a device on her wrist and broke into a brisk stride. Myah waved to them all, and the man who followed the group looked at her, and turned his eyes away.
Across from us as we passed The Mug restaurant, a child’s cry broke from the black stroller a woman was pushing; behind her, a dog was leading the man to whom it was leashed. My granddaughter saw the dog and said “Hi!” to the family, and the man smiled through his close-cropped beard, and waved to her. We prammed West down Bonna Street past the closed Coal Yard Coffee, then, turned back East at Ritter. Ahead of us, I saw someone slowly ambling down the trail, and as we got closer, I cried out to Myah, “It’s Ken! His heart is better!” On that Monday, Myah and I had placed a “get well” card in one of the planters that frame Gaynell and Ken’s front porch steps. We stopped to speak to Ken — “Hi,” Myah said, waving at him — and while maintaining the appropriate social distancing, we exchanged pleasantries.
Home, again we waved at our neighbors.
Myah does not know that a dangerous virus is infecting people all over the world, including some in the part of the world she occupies. I make an effort to insure that the days of her life are ones of loving, learning, and laughter, because when her Cool Papa sits down to read the news — oh, boy . . .
cjon3acd@att.net