The Ohio suburbs are not beautiful. They are not beautiful in the sense that the streets are strewn with garbage, dotted with cookie-cutter houses, and covered with a depressing, gray smog. They are not beautiful in the sense that roadkill often is not cleaned up for a few days. They are not beautiful in the sense that someone looking at the objective qualities of a town such as this may wonder why it has not been updated and renovated in order to fix its many flaws. If this person, however, were to have been born in the hospital down the road, taken their first step in one of the cookie-cutter post-war houses, and gone to the little elementary school around the corner, they may not wonder at all. The Ohio suburbs are not beautiful. To me, though, I could savor every moment of a walk through this place.
As I take a step down the hall, towards the cafeteria, my eyes drift to the doorways of the other classrooms. Distant, muted words slip through them. I listen for a moment and hear students' disinterested voices prattle on about gerunds and rhetoric and grammar- they do not look at their textbooks with any passion. Their eyes are cold as they stare out windows and scribble down notes. Despite whatever monotony they must endure here, I have always seen them playing. I have seen them walking down my street, laughing with their friends, messing around with each other. I have seen them as kids, not students.
Going down the stairs to the cafeteria, the warm staleness of the air pushes my mouth into a tight line. Cold glass making up the office door near the bottom of the stairs bites at my fingers as I push it open. The same old tired eyes drift up from scattered papers and clacking keys, the secretary they belong to giving me a nod of passive recognition. I drop my pass in a trash bin as I walk further towards the door. The frigid air which moves across the outside of our U-shaped school curls around my face and pushes into my lungs as I open the final door, somehow making my breathing come more easily. Tiny cracks from my joints stiffen my walk, slowing me down a bit. Swooping shadows flying from corner to corner above me chirp to each other. Staring at these feathered blobs as I walk, I see the trees ahead of me still losing their leaves. Their branches are scarred and poorly pruned, but there is a certain charm in the way their mutant limbs arc around the sky. They feel like home.
The asphalt coating our school's parking lot is new compared to others, yet still flakes and crumbles as I walk over it. Cars lay still around me, like sleeping beasts in the dead of night. School will let out in a few hours, awakening them from their slumber. For now, though, I am safe to wander. I waltz between the cars in the lot, feeling the cool-yet-smoky air cycling through my lungs. Deep breaths of this heavy atmosphere reveal its true nature. The wind is blowing smoke from engines, backyards, and forest fires, but it feels as fresh as I have ever known it to be. Reaching the curb, I step into the greenish sludge that winter makes from grass. My boots are old and almost fully worn through. The soles of my feet slowly freeze on the bed of water that has formed under them, but I continue my walk. Just up ahead, small children are observing a frog with all the wonderment one could muster up at such a young age.
As I tromp through the field, past puddles of sludge and branches downed from the last storm, the slow progression of cars through the intersection lazily tugs at my gaze. The lack of a pattern in the stoplights and crosswalks here bother me to no end. So I take the ever-thinning sidewalk, constantly cluttered with grass scraps and construction debris. I can cross later on. Until then, I am marching alongside the banged up cars which migrate through town during school hours. Some of them are filling up the pool's crackling parking lot, which reminds me of the summer days I spent there as a child. I would laugh and play, make friends that would last for the next few hours, and dry off in the sun with a popsicle in my little hands. The sorry state of it makes me wonder why no one has started a health risk investigation. Maybe one day the kids around town will like going there again, and maybe one day they will make enough money to patch every dent in every corner. As I pass by the lot, I think about when that day may come.
My tired legs move automatically at this point, but not without protest. The creaking and shifting of my joints causes twinges of pain with every step. After eight years, I am used to it, but the feeling is still there. I am distracted from the sensation at hand by a dull red car pulling out of the school's back entrance. With my eyes fully on it, I realize that the driver is someone I have known before. We do not talk anymore. It is hard to see someone you used to spend nights with, sharing your deepest secrets, telling stories of all the time you had spent apart- all grown up without you. I look at them with the eyes that have seen every moment of our time together, every joke, every stupid silly fight, every birthday party and elementary school class graduation. Their car is damaged, as if it had been scraped and smashed a million times before they had gotten it. Their eyes are tired, much more than they were when I had known them. It makes me happy that they have made it this far, in a bittersweet way. I am glad that they are still here, in this little run-down town, living with the loud trains and empty storefronts. I hope that they get to enjoy a walk like this every once in a while.
Past the intersection, and the pool, and the school's back entrance, is the way to my house. I need to get there before one, so I pick up my pace. I rush through the uneven, broken sidewalk in front of the house with the cats outside, hop over the puddles with bloated worms sunken to the bottom, and almost fall into the thorned bushes surrounding the retirement homes. I take a sudden stop at the final busy road. Looking left and right, I see no sign of any cars other than a faint backfiring in the distance. Before crossing, I pause. Flies buzz faintly over the corpse of a soft rabbit, whose once brown and white fur is now washed with red. Its quiet, unmoving body was still fresh. I hope it knew some peace in its time here. As a car rolls to a stop and waves me across, I depart from the grief I had felt. This tiny creature will be gone in a few days.
Passing the light post with the remnants of what looked like thousands of posters, I come across the entrance to my favorite park. My friends and I do not often go there anymore. It is run down, vandalized, and its basketball hoops were removed years ago. Children rarely use the place for its intended purpose, opting to smoke and fight instead. A stray cat slips through the wide chain link fencing, hissing lowly at my presence. The memory of my destination drifts back to me, snapping my legs into motion. I begin jogging towards my street, turning left at the abandoned yellow house. I know people live there, but no one ever comes in or out. I have never met them, and neither has anyone else. Almost slipping on my boots, I slow down. My driveway is cracked and spotted with moss. The tiny stone path beckons to me every time, even though it is out of my way. The solid sounds of my footsteps feel gratifying, like time spent wisely. It really is good to be home.
My house is old and water damaged, but feels like home inside. Opening the door, my cat greets me. She does not know how to meow. Her mother never taught her. She squeaks in her own little language, a beautiful sound to hear. I scoop her up, sit in the dining room that has been converted to my bedroom, and open the link on my Telehealth app. As I sit there, waiting, I realize that I do not enjoy the little town I live in. I do not enjoy it, that is, because there is nothing to enjoy. All of the things I have seen are worthless, damaged, or dangerous. I realize that my Ohio suburbs are not beautiful. They almost certainly never will be, either. I realize, in this ugly little town, that the knowledge of who I was, and how I was, gives me more hope for my future than any beautified city could.
