Rhena Writes

Tag: writing

  • To rest or not to rest.

    Daily writing prompt
    Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.
    View all responses

    I’ve been thinking about rest a lot this week. Maybe it’s because the kids are on spring break and I feel like this is my opportunity to also take a rest. I’m conflicted between going out and doing and sitting around and not doing. I’m plagued by the idea that I might use my time poorly. And I suspect that this has something to do with the fact that in the society I live in we have little control over our time. When given the “freedom” to decide how to use it, I am paralyzed with indecision.

    And this might be because I don’t really know what rest is for me, yet.

    I find the idea of resting so that I can be more “productive” to be terribly off-putting. I don’t want to live for productivity. And, yet, on the other hand, living in a permanent state of rest is also unappealing. The other day, I read someone’s piece of advice for going through cancer treatment: to stay active during the day so that sleep comes more easily at night. And while I’ve experienced the truth to this, I find myself getting trapped on this mental hamster wheel, going around in a rest and productivity circle. I find myself at times floating out in space wondering: how much is enough activity? How much is enough productivity? How much sleep is enough? Too much?

    For a time, I’ve been relying heavily on my watch and phone to tell me these things. I gave up the sleep monitoring when I realized that wearing my watch (and knowing it was monitoring me) was making me sleep less well. I threw caution (or perhaps the need to have hard and fast sleep numbers) and stopped wearing it at night. I think I’ve been sleeping better.

    I still rely on it heavily to monitor my daily steps and my activity (you know, those primary-colored rings to close in a burst of fire works when you meet your daily goal). I’ve reached a crucial crossroads where I’ve been meeting my goals every day for well over a month now. Do I increase the goals or, again, throw a bit of caution to the wind and decide to just trust how I feel, trust my body to tell me when I’ve had too much or not enough?

    My body happens to be a trifecta of identities that cause me to struggle to listen to it and to trust it: a woman, racially marginalized, and, now, a cancer patient. With all three, the society and culture I live in is often telling me about my body, trying to control it (more successfully than I’d like to admit) or the other extreme of completely ignoring it. And so it is that perhaps I rely on those little rings closing than I need to. And perhaps I spent a little too much time (meaning any time at all) on the internet trying to figure out my own body and how to take care of it.

    So back to spring break. We didn’t make any big plans even though I didn’t know I’d be in radiation treatment until a few weeks before it started. I also didn’t know how exhausting the treatments would be. Still, I’m trying to stay active. One of the funny things about radiation treatment is that you’re just lying on this table for the twenty minutes to forty minutes that it takes to complete it. It looks like rest. But it isn’t restful at all. The machine is whirring and humming and moving around you, the radiation techs are drawing on you, sometimes shifting your body a bit, but mostly they’re in the other room operating the machine. The position is awkward, the table is hard (in spite of the extra thick, cushiony sweatpants I’ve been wearing), and the whole thing is more mentally tiring than I give it credit. I’m trying to stay on top of taking care of my skin and sometimes a sore throat or just some discomfort in the area arises afterwards. Yeah, it’s not the worst of things, but it’s still not restful or fun by any means.

    So I guess that one lesson I’ve learned from going through it is just that rest can look myriad different ways to different people and in different times in our lives.

    The other day, I decided I had enough energy to go with my daughter to a Smithsonian museum one afternoon. It was a lot of walking and my feet were exhausted. But it was also, I don’t know, restful in a way. I got to turn off the part worrying part of my brain and just enjoy my daughter’s company and her excitement about history. I didn’t have to be a cancer patient. I didn’t have to make any real plans or major decisions. I did buy a book (George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy) and some chocolate before we headed home. And I closed all my rings, easily.

    The next day, I got to sit on the couch and read the book, which was stunning. And although I wouldn’t always say that reading has always been restful to me, it was very restful to read Asian American history.

    But I think that ultimately the aspect of these days of spring break that have been most restful have been that I’ve just let go and trusted. I didn’t feel like I had to make anything happen (exercise or trips or even time to rest and recover from radiation). I just let things happen. And the end result has been that I’ve been able to rest and (dare I say it?) be productive too.

  • Choosing myself

    Daily writing prompt
    Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.
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    Every time I decide to choose myself, to prioritize me, to give myself what I need, I grow and learn.

    To be clear, I believe that growth and learning are inherent to human nature. And while there are systems and individuals that attempt to stifle human development, we will always find a way to grow and learn. For me, the primary way that I return to this path is by making the decision to center myself.

    I wrote a while ago about how I disconnected from social media a few months ago. This was not an act of self denial, this was an act of choosing myself over social media. It took profound trust in myself that I would be able to fulfill my needs (to feel connected, to be stimulated, to be entertained) without relying on the scrolling that had taken over much of my time and brain space. I do not view this type of choice as deprivation. It is indulgence.

    In the absence of social media, I learned about myself and I learned how to “entertain” myself. Turns out, I’m pretty good at it. I learned to rely on knowledge that I already have within me. Turns out, I know a fair amount already. And I’ve grown into being able to be present to each moment.

    The decision to prioritize myself is one that I can make over and over and still continue to learn and grow. Sometimes, it’s a really easy decision (when I decide to take a nap when I feel tired) and other times, it’s rather difficult as when I have to choose myself over my kids. A few months ago, I sat down to do some writing. I knew that my daughter was waiting for her dad to give her a ride to her friend’s house. She didn’t even ask me for a ride, but I caved and offered her one anyway. I drove her and in doing so, I abandoned my writing. Not only that, but I deprived her of an opportunity to practice patience and to potentially experience some independence (she could have biked to her friend’s house quite easily). I also deprived my kids of seeing an example of a parent who prioritizes herself. But I let the fear that I’m not a good mother unless I do everything for my children get the better of me.

    More recently, I was practicing guitar and my kids were playing outside. My daughter came inside to tell me that my son had fallen down and was crying and asking for me. Of course, the mother in me wanted to go right downstairs to check on him and make sure he was ok. But another part of me really wanted to keep practicing guitar. I’ve been really tired lately because of radiation and the thought of negotiating the stairs again was a bit daunting. And my daughter was so matter of fact in her reporting of the events that I was pretty confident that her brother wasn’t in any serious danger or pain. So I sat there a moment or two trying to come to some middle ground between these two battling voices. I turned back to my guitar.

    Sure enough, within a moment or two, I heard him open the front door and call for his sister, cheerily asking her to come outside again and play. Apparently, the mortal wound had healed itself. It didn’t even require the presence of a mom. I got to continue with my guitar and my son got to experience some self care and the confidence that comes with being able to get up and dust oneself off and carry on.

    Sometimes, making the decision to choose myself is more subtle than that. As right now. I have the choice between giving you, dear reader, the satisfaction of a neatly tied-in-a-bow ending to this post. Or I have the choice of getting hitting publish and getting myself another cup of tea to enjoy while I write in my journal. I love to say it: I choose myself.

  • Hawai’i

    Daily writing prompt
    What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
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    Here are a few paragraphs from an essay I wrote (and didn’t publish) a few years ago:

    I am not immune to the romance and draw of travel. In fact, I spent a fair portion of my twenties moving from place to place, exploring a few different countries and towns. My husband and I recently calculated that we had one year that we travelled twice internationally (Norway and Japan) and at least three or four domestic trips, all with our two kids, one of whom was preschool-aged. But in recent years, I’ve grown a bit more wary of travel and, perhaps, a little embarrassed at how thoughtlessly I travelled in my earlier years. Of course, I grew and changed as a result of traveling. I’m possibly even a better person because I travelled (there’s no way to know, obviously, as there’s only one of me and no telling how I would have turned out had I not travelled). But the question that I am really considering is this: were the people and places I visited better people and places as a result of my having been there? I’m having my doubts. At the very least, the carbon impact of the flights, cars, and even boats that I used to get places is irreversible. (The trains I travelled on feel not only more charming but less polluting per mile travelled.)

    Let us take a closer look at the example of Hawaii. In July of 2021, a former Hawaii state representative Kaniela Ing tweeted, “Stop coming to Hawaii. They are treating us like second class citizens.” According to an August 13, 2021 article in SF Gate by Libby Leonard, locals on Maui were facing water rationing and shortages due to water supplies being diverted to support tourists who were traveling to the islands in numbers which exceeded those pre-pandemic. I observed out-spoken indigenous Hawaiian activists on twitter asking mainlanders to stop visiting as those who live on the islands were facing both water shortages, which in turn impacts food security, as well as housing shortages. Of course, the response from many is that tourism brings in money and creates jobs. According to the Hawai’i Tourism Authority’s website, visitor spending in Hawaii in 2019 amounted to $17.75 billion and typically accounts for approximately a quarter of the state’s economy. But what is the trade-off between dollars and quality of life for the local people? In the same SF Gate article Napua-onalani Hu-eu, a Hawaiian activist and kalo (also called taro) farmer indicates that before water was being diverted away from farming, “much of Hawaii’s food was grown in east Maui.” Today, 90% of the food on the island is imported. Former Representative Ing also tweeted, “Tourism is a servants’ prison that keeps local people in a permanent underclass, in our own home. It’s a system that literally only works when the people who play here are richer than us who live and work here.” 

    I went to Hawaii about twenty years ago, before I’d taken the time to inform myself about the dynamics of the tourism industry there. It was beautiful and relaxing and I felt at home, in a way. Primarily, this is because being a multiracial-Asian person is not unusual there — or at least it’s not as unusual as in other places. When you’ve spent most of your life feeling like a bit of an odd duck because of the way you look, it’s very comforting to be amongst people who look like you, even if it’s just surface interactions.

    Still, my comfort is not a good enough reason to go back and visit when the indigenous folks there have asked that we not and when the dollars I would spend there wouldn’t necessarily be going to support and help locals.

    This daily writing prompt came at just the right time for me, as I’m currently reading the last few pages of issue #119 of Bamboo Ridge, Journal of Hawai’i Literature and Arts. This issue is titled, Kipuka: Finding Refuge in Times of Change and was published in 2021. From the introduction:

    “When volcanoes erupt, variances in topography create kipuka, islands of turf untouched by the flow of lava. While Pele’s fiery rivers caress its borders, its plants and seeds remain. It watches lava cool, then blacken. It witnesses pahoehoe break down into rich volcanic soil. And when the time comes, it seeds its surroundings, sets free former boundaries as genesis and legacy join. Na kipuka preserve and regenerate. They survive and persist. They anchor and hold life, ensuring in the end that nothing is forgotten.”

    While I was going through chemotherapy last year, I was often exhausted but paradoxically, I also experienced a bit of insomnia. This was possibly due to the steroids I’d been prescribed to help with the nausea. Regardless of the reasons, I often found myself awake late at night. This can sometimes be a lonely time, vulnerably time. I suppose it’s possible that it was in this state that I reached out on line. I don’t remember what I searched for specifically, but I found Bamboo Ridge on the other end of the line I’d cast out. In a flurry, I ordered six of their volumes and promptly fell asleep. Since then, I’ve read two of the six that I’d ordered.

    I’m not going to say that I feel as though I’ve vacationed in Hawai’i each time I’ve read one, because it’s something much deeper than what I could have experienced in a few weeks in a resort. I feel like I’ve come to know and connect to the parts of Hawai’i that the tourism industry ignores or, worse, feeds off of.

    I visited Pearl Harbor when I went to Hawai’i. The way that it’s set up now, for tourists and visitors, it feels as though Pearl Harbor is some sort of historical past. That it actually doesn’t exist in the present. In his three poems, Lee A. Tonouchi, brings the reader into Hawai’i’s militarized present.

    I’m sitting here typing, trying to figure out how to finish this post in a meaningful way. But the truth is that I’m in the midst of radiation treatment which has made me very fatigued. And I just took one of my anti-cancer medications that, if I don’t time it out, causes waves of nausea. Even if I wanted to travel somewhere like Hawaii, even if locals had not requested that tourists not visit, my body is currently demanding that I stay home. So I’ll retire to the couch to finish the last pages of this issue of Bamboo Ridge which I ordered in the lonely dark of the night. And art, words, poems, and stories will distract me and, yes, in a way transport me right when I need it. And for that I am grateful.

    *********************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post about daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Wait. What was the question again?

    Daily writing prompt
    Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
    View all responses

    This question reminds me of the fortune telling game that I used to play as a kid called “M.A.S.H.” It involved listing four options for your future in different categories. They were usually things like: career, first initial of your husband (it was usually girls we were playing with and very heteronormative), number of kids, income, names of cities, etc… The letters of the game stood for: mansion, apartment, shack , and house. And then some sort of little ritual was performed in order to come up with a number. The number dictated which items got crossed off each list under there was one item in each category remaining. Thus, our futures would be revealed to us. “You will be living in an apartment, married to someone whose name starts with a J, working as a nurse, earning $30,000 a year in Boston.”

    In retrospect, it was pretty unimaginative and actually a little depressing. Try as we might to include unexpected variables (types of pets! different countries! color of home!) it was difficult to come up with ideas outside of our experiences, what we could see. But I don’t think that that’s terribly unusual for kids.

    So, now, as an adult, how do I view this question of where I will be in ten years? It makes me feel like I’m sitting in a job interview and being evaluated.

    I checked the question this morning before I left the house and decided that I would think about it while I was out and write the answer on my return home, which at the time would be in a couple of hours.

    Today was a beautiful day. We went to the local Thai Temple to celebrate Thai New Year with family and friends and enjoy the performances and food. It’s not quite the country-wide celebration/ water fight that it is in Thailand, but it’s still fun. My daughters and I ended up spending several hours just sitting on the picnic blanket. We’d originally thought we’d go for an hour or so, just enough time to get some mango sticky rice and maybe a few others dishes. But we were enjoying it so much that several hours slipped by. Oh, and it turns out that Tammy Duckworth was there. So that was pretty incredible just to be near her and to hear her speak.

    On the drive back, I thought for a moment, “What was the writing prompt of the day for the blog?” For the life of me, I couldn’t remember. And it turns out, I’m glad I hadn’t thought about it the whole time we were gone. If I’d been focused on thinking about what’s going to happen in ten years, I would have missed the beautiful moments right in front of me.

  • Consistency, presence, and showing up.

    I was around a lot of shitty, oblivious people in high school. I’ve mentioned before that I went to an “elite” private school in Washington, DC alongside a mostly white student body taught by mostly white teachers and overseen by mostly white administrators in the white, wealthy part of a very, very Black city. To be admitted, I had to take a standardized test (similar to the SAT but for, you know, twelve year olds), write an essay, and do an interview. In the name of fostering a sense of community and equality, the school didn’t have class rankings, homecoming courts, valedictorian or the like. They didn’t need those things. Students had already shown a willingness to sacrifice our individuality, our passions, our very humanity in the name of academic excellence and the privilege of being there.

    It is only in retrospect that I can see what a messed up place that was, especially for young people with newly formed minds. I didn’t ever feel seen or noticed by teachers or adults (except for one male teacher who I thought maybe saw some academic potential in my until he made some lewd comments to me because OF COURSE). For the most part, I felt like I just sort of flew under the radar just kind of trying to make it through each semester, each week, each day.

    Except for on the volleyball team. It’s not that I was particularly good at it. But I enjoyed it. I looked forward to going to the gym each day after school and playing. I looked forward to time with my teammates.

    This is primarily because I had a really good coach. I realize that it may seem like the bar was really low given the, you know, sexual harassment from other adults. But what I’m trying to give you a sense of is that to create a space where a young woman feels comfortable enough in her body to be able to enjoy herself within the larger culture of sexual harassment is no small feat. But Coach showed up everyday and was present for us. She wasn’t one of the showier or flashier teachers around there. She wasn’t loud or brash like some were. She was even and consistent and encouraging. She didn’t make me feel like I had to sacrifice in order to be successful or even good at the sport. She figured out where I excelled and encouraged me in that.

    It might surprise no one that she was also the only Black woman who I had in the role of a teacher or coach. Yes. For my entire four years. In the Blackest city in the country at the time. It’s one thing when an institution lacks diversity. It’s an entirely other thing when that institution is located on an island in a sea of diversity. There’s some pretty willful pushing people off of the island when that’s the case. These places don’t just “happen”. There’s an intention behind it. And that intention is white supremacy.

    It was a hard place for a biracial (not Black) girl to be everyday. But I can’t even begin to imagine the sacrifices my coach made in order to show up in that setting every day. And it’s only now, many years later as a grown adult that I can even begin to appreciate what a difference her doing so made in my life. You never know whose life you’re changing.

  • I am the book.

    Daily writing prompt
    What book could you read over and over again?
    View all responses

    I am a book. My body is a book. My life is a book. My home, my heart, my spirit … all are books. Some of these were tucked away in hidden tomes in the special reserved section or banned altogether. Each day, each moment, I open another volume, a chapter, a paragraph, a sentence, a word, the spaces between the letters and the punctuation. I’m returning to this same book of me over and over but each time, it’s different. The textures, the language, the characters, even the story itself, it’s a slippery something, evolving, endlessly entertaining. A choose your own adventure only better, unbound.

    I am the book that I read over and over again.

    And the novel I am writing is one that I read over and over again.

    And the bound book, Beloved, by Toni Morrison is one I could read over and over again.

    I hope Toni Morrison wouldn’t take offense that her work isn’t first on my list. She did, after all, say, “If there’s a book that you want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

    To read me over and over again is to write me over and over again. Each day. Each hour. Each moment. Each breath. Each word.

    And so I begin. Anew.

  • I don’t know about the animals, but I know what made me the worst pet owner.

    Daily writing prompt
    What animals make the best/worst pets?
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    My sophomore year of college, my three roommates and I went in together on getting a pet. It must have been around thirty or forty bucks each that we each contributed to the tank and the items we thought we needed to keep the chosen animal: a snake.

    I’m not sure what kind it was specifically, just that we named it Oscar and kept it in its tank on a table in the room which was meant to be a dining room.

    In retrospect, I was not well suited to roommate living. Perhaps it’s a by-product of having grown up in a large (my American standards) family of five children or perhaps it’s just who I am, but I later on found that I preferred living by myself. In fact, I enjoy being alone.

    Oscar also would have done better under different circumstances. So much better, that at some point, Oscar took off to be on his own. Was that Oscar 1 or Oscar 2? My memory betrays him. I’m getting ahead of myself.

    At some point, a snake named Oscar grew large enough that he managed to push open the lid of his tank and slither out.

    Where did he go? We had no idea. Even though he was strong enough to push open the lid, he was still quite a small snake. Although, who wants to find a snake, of any size, in their bed? Not me.

    Fortunately, it wasn’t my bed where I found him, some time later. It was under the garbage can when I picked it up to empty it. I screamed. There he was curled up. “Pick him up!” my roommate screamed back at me. Nope. Wasn’t going to be me. This was one of many signs that I was not cracked up to be a keeper of snakes. We learned enough at that point to put a rock on the lid of the cage.

    But now that I’m thinking about it, that must have been Oscar 2 because clearly he had gotten big enough to escape. Oscar 1 (only retroactively named such) didn’t make it to such a size.

    Oscar 1 (and Oscar 2) ate baby mice, called pinkies, which we kept in our freezer. They only at maybe once or twice a week, but part of the appeal (to some of the denizens of our house anyway) of having a snake was watching it unhinge its jaw and then swallow the little pink rodents whole. It was something from a nature program right in our very own living room.

    We kept a heated rock in his tank and it was on this rock where we’d let the frozen mice slowly defrost. The rock was also supposed to provide warmth for this cold blooded animal there in our rental house in frigid Wisconsin. Turns out: one heated surface is not enough for a snake. One day, one of us found in him in his tank, curling himself into an actual knot. We had no idea what to do. It seemed he was sick. Very, very sick. By morning, Oscar was done writhing. He was dead.

    The pet store employee seemed to think that he wasn’t warm enough to properly digest his pinkie, which meant that it rotted inside him.

    So maybe this question, to me, isn’t so much about what makes a good or bad pet, but what makes a good or a bad pet owner.

    I wasn’t a good roommate and this made me a bad snake keeper. I was a go along to get along person, unwilling to say “no” to other people. More importantly, unable to say, “yes” to myself. I would have been much happier living by myself, but I hadn’t yet given myself the self awareness to know that at the time. I was also too worried about being the “weirdo” who lived by herself. And maybe I was also too worried about being the uncool one who said “no” to chipping in to buy a house snake. And then a second. And for that, I’m sorry, Oscar 1.

  • The two jobs I already do for free: parenting and writing

    Daily writing prompt
    What job would you do for free?
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    Would I like to make money from both of these jobs? Sure! Who would say no to money? It’s the strings attached that I haven’t been able to accept.

    I pay to publish my writing here on this blog. Once upon a time, I paid for the privilege of writing in the form of graduate school tuition. (Guess which one costs more?) For brief periods of time I was paid to write. Although I didn’t really get to write what I wanted to. Other times, I’ve tried to get paid to write, but I just never seemed to be able to figure out what, exactly, publishers and editors were looking for in spite of all of the time and energy I put into trying to figure it out. Sometimes I even paid a few dollars for the privilege of having one of these publishers or editors take a look at my writing and decide whether or not it was what they wanted. It never was. My writing suffered for it. And as a result, I suffered for it. Always trying to guess at what these other people wanted meant that I spent very little time considering what I wanted.

    Octavia Butler worked what some would consider “menial” labor (as if there is such a thing) to support her writing. (For more information about Octavia Butler, her work, and her “work”, please read this essay by Dedria Humphries Barker.)

    I try to remember this whenever I taste a little bitterness at the thought that I don’t get paid for my writing, that I pay to publish. The good Lord didn’t bless me with the kind of discipline, the kind of commitment to her work that He bless Octavia Butler. He blessed me with the financial stability that allows me to do both of these jobs for free, few (or at least tolerable) strings attached.

    As for my job as a parent? Sure, it would be nice to be paid for that too. I try to call to mind all the women who weren’t (aren’t) allowed to raise their own kids because they had no choice but to raise other people’s kids.

    A blessing is a blessing no matter the relative size.

  • What Olympic sports do you enjoy watching the most and why is it women’s gymnastics?

    Daily writing prompt
    What Olympic sports do you enjoy watching the most?
    View all responses

    Last summer, I took a much needed week-long holiday to the beach with my family. The trip was right at the end of an eight week stretch of two types of chemotherapy (administered every other week) and right before I was going to start three months of a second type of treatment (administered weekly). The only thing I really had energy for was a few hours on the beach in the morning. I’d then go to the couch for the hottest parts of the day. Fortunately, the couch had a TV in front of it. Fortunately, this was the week of the 2025 Summer Olympics in Paris. Fortunately, the TV could have four different stations playing simultaneously.

    In the thick of chemo/ cancer brain fog, I didn’t have the focus to be able to read much or paint or write or really do many of the things that bring me joy but involve some attention. I was pretty weak and my tastebuds were completely obliterated so that even eating together with my family was not the most enjoyable. The chemotherapy had also made my skin photosensitive so when I was at the beach, I was under the shade when I could be and usually completely covered up when I couldn’t. Oh, and I was also bald so I was sensitive not only to the sun but I felt chilly at the slightest wind or temperature drop.

    But watching the Olympics, indoors? That I could do. The narratives that emerge feel so fundamentally human that I could pick up on them and even enjoy them through my brain fog. When I mentioned women’s gymnastics in my title, I was really just doing that as an attempt at a cheap laugh. The truth is that this past summer, I enjoyed all the sports. I, too, was wondering, “who is this male gymnast in glasses who seems to be meditating but hasn’t competed yet?”. And was stunned when Steve came out to dominate the pommel horse in the last rotation. I was also smiling along with Snoop Dogg as he c-walked holding the Olympic torch. I also occasionally ended up watching hand ball and wondered, “What on earth is this?”

    At the time, I was too foggy to put it all together but now, I can see that part of me, I think, was really grateful to have a week of being constantly reminded over and over of what human beings are capable of and what, specifically, our bodies can do.

    I’m in the radiation portion of my treatment. It’s exhausting. But I’m walking and exercising everyday. I’m sticking to my routines which allows me to have moments of spontaneity and growth. And I can feel myself getting stronger each day. I’m not saying that I’m ever going to be an Olympic athlete. I’m middle aged. Even without cancer, I’m far past my physical prime. But it’s not Olympic gold that I’m working towards here. It’s being able to get back in the ocean, swimming and battling the surf with my kids. It’s being able to walk my son to school. It’s being able to enjoy a few sun salutations. It’s having the energy to be able to say yes when one of the kids wants to dance. Or even when I want to.

    In fact, you know, that one Australian breakdancer’s routine doesn’t seem all that out of reach…

  • How do you improve a community that was someone else’s dream?

    Daily writing prompt
    How would you improve your community?
    View all responses

    I live next a six lane highway.  I am deeply resentful of it. The county I live in is one of the wealthiest in the country. My neighbors are mostly working and middle class and immigrants. The highway is maintained by the state (of Maryland) but the sidewalks on either side are the responsibility of the county. Except for when it snows, when it’s the responsibility of the individual home owners. Except for the bus stops, which might fall under the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. Or maybe the county. It’s unclear. 

    I’m an average homeowner and resident but I know more about those inner workings of the roads because living at the intersection of a county road and a state highway necessitates it. When we first moved in here, there was no sidewalk in front of our house in spite of the fact that it’s right next to a bus stop. I spend a lot of time emailing and on the phone with various people trying to get a sidewalk installed. Representatives of the county tried very hard to dissuade me. I kept sending pictures of elderly people walking in the road to get to the bus stop. One of my neighbors was a wheelchair user at the time and I told anyone who would listen about the time that he called for a ride share because the medical building he needed to go to was inaccessible to him in spite of the fact that he can see said facility from his front porch. 

    A man was killed when he was struck by a driver crossing the highway (at a crosswalk) about a mile up the road. The audit of the intersection resulted in removing a small section of fence that stood between the sidewalk and the crosswalk button. 

    A driver ran her car off the road and hit the fence around my property. My children were playing on the other side at the time. Needless to say, a sidewalk with an appropriate curb would have stopped her. 

    Eventually they installed the sidewalk. It was one of my greatest victories. A few more crosswalks were put in where neighbors and I had requested them, mostly near the parks and schools. But not much was done to actually slow drivers on the highway on our surrounding residential streets. 

    But I was still emailing and calling and tweeting (this was back in the days when I was still using that site), trying to get the speed limit lowered on the highway or at least some speed cameras and enforcement. On many nights, I could lie in my bed and all I would hear was cars (many with modified mufflers) drag racing up and down the highway outside my house. I’d call the non emergency police number many nights. Little changed. 

    The highway we live on connects outer ring suburbs to downtown Washington, DC where the streets are largely laid out on a grid, except for these wider roads, which shoot out from the center of the city likes spokes on a wheel. The highway I live next to is one of these spokes. The next spoke over would potentially be just as inviting to drag racers, but the residents along that spoke are wealthy enough that they have their own private security force replete with speed cameras. So the drag racers converge on spokes like ours where the residents rely on the county and state for safety and security. 

    A little girl died two blocks from my house in a car crash that was a result of this drag racing. 

    Some time after that, the speed limit was lowered. Some time after that, speed cameras were installed. 

    Too late. 

    Once upon a time, this place might have been the American dream of the suburbs. Single family homes, green lawns all the way from the front door to the street. No need for sidewalks when Dad can just hop into the car and drive into the city for work! Hey! The developers even left out the curbs so that homeowners can decide where exactly to place the driveway! No need to think about the messiness of women and children or oh, I don’t know, poor people? (You know the people who build and care and clean to maintain these beautiful homes and offices and the roads that connect them?)

    My six year old loves nothing more than to punt a ball as hard and as high as he can. (Ok, maybe he loves lego slightly more.) The problem is that the ball often ends up over the fence and in the street. We take him to the park a few blocks away from time to time. It’s just a big open field and a large parking lot. There’s no playground (in spite of promises made by the county that one would be coming). Sometimes there are a few neighborhood kids there  but mostly it seems that people use it as a spot to pull off from the highway. I see people eating or sleeping in there cars there. Sometimes people are working on their cars. Once after a recent snow, three pick up truck drivers used the parking lot to film themselves spinning doughnuts. That was nice (/s). 

    I’m always tense walking there. In spite of the crosswalk, I still worry about drivers coming off the highway too fast. We have strict rules about where the kids can and cannot bounce the ball to minimize them ending up in the middle of one of the more dangerous streets. 

    The other evening, as we approached, we could hear music. Soon, a man sitting at one of the benches playing a saxophone came into view. 

    My son turned to me. “How does he play so good?” he asked. I didn’t know. 

    The sky was moody above us. We could see dark clouds gathering next to the field. And the man kept playing. The wind was picking up a bit. And the kept playing. And my son booted the ball to himself and kept chasing after it. And I tried to pause to listen to the music but also my son kept asking me to play with him, to kick the ball or throw it to him. And so sometimes I did. And the man kept playing his saxophone. And the clouds kept clustering. And the wind kept doing its thing. And it was a maybe a jazzy tune but maybe all saxophone sounds like jazz to me. And my son kept playing. And the wind blew the man’s sheet music about and he got up to collect it and we started to leave. And he shouted something at us. And I couldn’t hear him and maybe he said “Rhena!” But he smiled. So I did too. And the traffic didn’t slow. No one came back to life. The drivers didn’t stop and exit their cars and pick up litter or even stop to listen. And he kept playing even as we walked away and even through the first drops of rain.