I usually do a long swim on Sundays but lately I've had a bad reaction to chlorine, plus we had friends in from out of town who were taking us out for brunch, so it just all worked out to be better for me to go for a run early this morning instead. Since we "sprang forward" I had to wait until my boys woke up (they don't like to break with tradition and having Mom get them in the morning is, fortunately, still important to them at 8 and 5) but I was out the door by a blissfully quiet 8:30 a.m. on a clear cold and glorious day.
I was looking forward to running over The Benjamin Franklin Bridge, partially because once I'm on it there are no shortcuts so it keeps me going, and partially because I get a kick out of the idea of running across state lines (into New Jersey). It's 1.8 miles each way and about a mile to the entrance from my house so just about the right distance for me. Alas, I got to the entrance around 8:40 am only to see locked gates with an "Open 6 am - 8 pm" sign on them. Shunning the skanky-looking underground pedestrian tunnel I turned around and ran in a square around the city. Following the squiggle are some thoughts that bubbled up.
For those who know Center City, my route was 3rd and Catharine (in Queen Village) north through Society Hill and Old City to 5th and Race, west through Chinatown past the Convention Center to 20th and Race, south through the Rittenhouse Square area to 20th and Washington, east past all the tile stores (I don't know if that neighborhood has an official name) and past The Italian Market to Front and Washington, then back up and over to 3rd and Catharine. 6 miles on the nose. I've never done that run before, but thoroughly enjoyed it. What struck me the most was how familiar each neighborhood was.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think a lot of people tend to stick to their own little path, an area around home, an area around work, the commute in between. I work from home and have for all but the first 3 of the nearly 11 years we have lived here (and for those 3 I just drove across the Franklin Bridge into New Jersey). If you'd have asked me in advance I would have told you that I knew the first leg of my run and maybe a bit around my kids' school and that was it. But as I ran, what filled me with delight was how familiar so many spots were, how many personal connections I felt to my adopted home town.
The first leg was predictably familiar. It's my main path from home to pretty much anywhere. I walk it to and from synagogue at least weekly, dash over to South Street for errands all the time, and my last diary here at Daily Kos was about the car that backed, at full speed, into me and my boys last spring as we were walking home, on a corner along that path. Interestingly, although I still get shivers when I pass that corner, on today's run I didn't even notice it. Only when I started thinking about this diary and all the meaningful spots I passed today did I remember that I had run past that corner. It took me a long time to get over that accident (psychologically) and I'm still more nervous driving than I was (even though i was a pedestrian). Maybe it's a good sign that I didn't remember the accident when I ran past that intersection today.
But I expected all that to be familiar. Once I turned on Race away from the bridge, I didn't really expect to feel much connection to any other spots. And yet as I ran, flashes of my life kept popping up. I passed the restaurant in Chinatown where we went out with some acquaintances one Thanksgiving when neither couple had plans. We knew, without their telling us, that they had cancelled their out of town trip because they were going through IVF treatment that weekend, and we were at the beginning stages of our IVF cycle. They didn't want to talk about it or acknowledge it though, so we sipped our bubble tea without ever discussing the biggest issue in both of our lives. (Their daughter was born the next summer and our son nine weeks later. We each subsequently had one more of the same gender as our first. The closest we've ever come to discussing it was once at a wedding, shortly after our first kids were born, when the mom and I were laughing about how hard it was to find appropriate wedding attire that would still be nursing-accessible. As we nursed our kids in the corner I said "can you believe we're both here now?". That's been the only time in 9 years what we both went through has been mentioned).
Then I ran past my boys' school. My little guy is in his first year there, in Kindergarten, and his brother's in his third year, in second grade. We love this school. It's been amazing for both kids, in different ways. Not a day goes by that I don't feel blessed and incredibly lucky to be able to afford the school for them, and to have the school available. The school is in the heart of the museum district - my older son's science class is meeting at the Academy of Natural Sciences for the next 11 weeks, and the school has permission to bring the students to any local museum at any time, no advance notice needed, and they take full advantage of it. We didn't plan to send the kids to a Quaker school, especially given that we're Sabbath-observant Jews, but we didn't in the end want the at any of the local Jewish schools for a variety of reasons, prominent among them that we felt strongly that we didn't want to send them to the suburbs for school if we were living in the city. We made a conscious choice to live here and want the city to be part of their lives. One thing we loved about the school was that it really promotes teaching children how to think. We recognize that we are bringing the boys up with a number of contradictions they'll have to resolve, and hope that we're giving them the tools to do so. (On a side note, my husband went to Quaker schools growing up and we actually incorporate something like a Quaker meeting into our Orthodox wedding. We called it "period of shared reflection" and my mom nervously downplayed it to her authoritarian Rabbi father who was marrying us as "the kids want to have some people stand up and talk". In the middle of the ceremony he boomed out "This is starting to feel like a Quaker meeting!" How he, in yeshiva since he was 13, knew that remains a mystery.)
As I ran through the business district and Rittenhouse I passed a few restaurants I've been to and some other familiar spots. What struck me most though was how often I had to run on the street because the sidewalk was blocked with construction equipment. The city's building boom seems to be picking up again. Properties are selling and at least to me, there seems to be optimism in the air.
As I turned left to run along Washington, I thought "kind of industrial, won't really be familiar" until I ran past the place I take my car for repairs...the Dunkin Donuts where I take my laptop whenever the car is being repaired...the spot I watched the Mummers Parade one of my first New Year's Days here, when I had never heard of Mummers and was enthralled by the costumes, beads, and sheer bizzareness of it all. I passed by several tile stores where my friend and contractor had taken me to pick out tile when we re-did a couple of bathrooms a few years ago. We met him when we first moved to Philadelphia and he has been an amazing resource and friend. One of our strangest encounters was after he finished renovating our kitchen and basement several years ago. He insisted on doing the job at cost, and we insisted on paying him more so he would make some profit for the work. Knowing he wouldn't accept it if we told him in advance, I simply added 25% to his check, sealed it in an envelope, and after he came by to pick it up, started heading out the back door so I wouldn't be home if he wanted to argue. I didn't move fast enough - he started banging on my front door and hollering for me. There on our front steps took place a screaming conversation I suspect has not happened often, where the contractor said "I will rip up the check if you make it this high" and the client said "absolutely not, I will simply write it again for more than you charged". (In the end he won but we made a generous donation in his name to an organization that we knew mattered to him).
I ran through the Italian Market where I buy vegetables for about 1/3 of what I spend at the grocery store, and is one of the only places where I can find affordable Oyster mushrooms, which I adore. ($18 for a case. I stir fry them in olive oil, white wine, garlic and let them sit soaking that mixture for an hour. Takes me 4 frying pans to cook the case, and I can eat the entire lot by myself in a day or two). Heading north, I passed some streets where I canvassed for now-President Obama back in 2008, after I quit my last job a month before the PA primary partially so that I'd have the time to volunteer for him (and partially because my boss was an abusive jerk and I needed to get out. Fortunately I stumbled into my current job just a couple of months later and have never been as happy professionally as I am now.)
Then I headed home. We moved to this city virtually sight unseen in July 2001, bought the house after seeing it for 10 minutes on a recommendation from a friend I knew from the internet, who now lives a block away and remains a great friend. (I worked next to the World Trade Center in NYC until then. We left just in time). 11 years is a long time but it was still amazing to me how connected we've become. Not every block, but certainly every neighborhood, reminded me of something that matters. We have friends, resources, connections. I drive more than I would like to, but today, in addition to getting in a great run, I remembered how powerful it is to actually hit the pavement to really "see" the place you're in. I got a trip down memory lane, and a reminder of just how lucky I am.