Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 22, 1994 TAG: 9409240011
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Edna's sitting there, waiting.
``Where's my baby?'' she says.
We walk the dozen paces or so to her house - across our dry grass, past her fading impatiens, up her recently swept walk and onto her porch. Every night, she moves to her rocking chair, then holds her arms out wide.
``Now then, you come see Granny No. 2.'' Our son, Max, sits on her lap.
Every night she offers us her two folding chairs. Every night we opt to sit on her wide porch railing, our feet dangling inches above the ground. We talk.
``I hate to see it coming, the fall,'' she says. ``I hate to see it getting dark so early. ... You know, he's gonna be crawling any day now, you know that?''
She sings patty-cake to the tune of the ABC song, marveling when he claps by himself. We sit him on her shiny clean porch floor, give him a toy to slobber on. The three of us take turns making him laugh.
The other neighbors come up. Edna holds court in her rocking chair while the bigger kids chase each other around her front yard, rolling down the bank by the side of her house, bowling with plastic pins and balls on her front lawn, riding training-wheeled bikes on her sidewalk.
The adults trim hedges, wash the van, drink a beer, prepare for a yard sale, mulch the trees. Sometimes even Miss Woody strolls up from down the street.
In her raspy voice, she tells us about the dream she had when I was four months pregnant: She could hear me screaming six houses away as I delivered the baby - in our backyard under the moonlight.
``Miss Woody, you're too funny,'' we tell her.
``It's Katie, call me Katie.''
``Yes ma'am, Miss Woody.''
She laughs.
Jeanne next door jangles her car keys in front of Max, buys our dog, Scooter, Christmas and birthday presents, and watches the house for us when we go away, topping the dog's dry Alpo with canned gravy from her house. Her welcome mat says, ``GO AWAY,'' but she fools no one with her curmudgeonly front - especially Scooter.
The hairdresser, Cookie, cuts my hair on her day off. We talk about the neighborhood on her front porch as she snips, her dog sniffing the clumps of my wet, graying hair.
They are snapshots of the block where we live, where we kill time every evening before settling into the routine of bathing the baby, reading him a story and then putting him to bed.
They could be taken on any block where people are lucky enough to live among people they like. They could be pictures from any street in the world where people come together and, for a few moments each day, connect.
For an hour or so every evening, they give us what we miss by living 400-some miles from our families - another lap for Max to sit on, a bag full of hand-me-down baby clothes, a borrowed tool from Andy's basement and an extra set of hands to work it.
For the past three weeks we have sat on Edna's porch, bemoaning the premature fall of every russet maple leaf that hits her grass.
``I hate to see it getting dark so early,'' she says every night. ``I hate to see it start to turn cold.''
Without saying a word about our summer-evening ritual, she has said it all.
``Look at this baby, he's getting so strong. He's gonna be crawling any day now, you know that?''
by CNB