I.

The grass has grown tall enough for its first mowing.  I know this because, as I pull to the curb in front of our house, I see Matthew lingering in our driveway with a soft smile on his face.  He lives a few streets over and cuts the grass for us and other families.  We’ll see him walking around the neighborhood, never looking left or right, hard steps, hands balled in the pockets of his sweatshirt.  He’s had problems with drugs in the past, and it seems like you might not be speaking the same language when you try to have a conversation.  Non sequiturs fall out of his mouth.  But he is gentle-mannered, polite, and a fast worker.  I always wish the grass would hurry up and grow when he stops by a few days too soon.  We know he needs the money.  He once came to the house as the day was starting to turn to evening, knocked on the kitchen door, and asked if my husband could loan him five dollars to go out with his friends.  He’d only charge us twenty next time, he said.

II.

It’s a cold early spring day, the kind of day I relish as a fair-skinned runner who suffers in even mildly hot temperatures.  There is a light rain that may turn to a downpour or fine mist, depending on how the New England weather gods feel at this hour.  I imagine them sitting in their cloudy seats, heavy white robes gathered, gazing down at the lot of us.  I don’t mind the rain at all.  I can remember only one time in my many years of running that I wished myself home because of weather – it was in winter, at school in Waterville, and I’d bundled up against a zero degree day to set out on my six mile loop.  When everything ached and my face had become immobile in the bitter cold, I broke down and entered the Dexter shoe store located about two miles from campus.  I carried no purse and was clearly stopping in to warm up.  There was no one else in the store, and the salesperson eyed me a little suspiciously and asked if I needed help.  I walked up and down the chest-high aisles, pretending to look at leather boat shoes, until I felt defrosted.  Then I sprinted back to my dorm, berating myself for being underdressed.  My roommate looked at me as if I had two heads.  You are sick.  Sick! she crowed, a huge smile on her face.

As I start a slow jog on the pedestrian path going out to the East End beach, I am pleased that the cloudy-seated gods have decided to soften the rain and settle the wind.  The arcing branches of a circle of shrubs shelter small gatherings of impossibly bright yellow daffodils.  Green and crimson buds are leafing out before my very eyes.  A single seagull hangs in the air over the beach, reaching its wings to tip from side to side and suspend a second longer against the gray sky.  Three dogs and their owners form a play group on the narrow strip of sand, the dogs all flexing spines and curvy tails and swift feet.  They fly over the rocks to retrieve tennis balls and barge into the ocean, too alive to mind the burning shock of the cold water.

Most people are fair-weather runners, so I see only a few other hardy souls on my route.  As I start to pass under the bridge to get from the East End trail over to Baxter Boulevard, I see an overdressed and rough-looking man sorting through items from a shopping cart about thirty yards away from me.  As an often lone female runner, I’m well-practiced in how to be aware of my surroundings even with headphones on, and especially whenever I run under this bridge.  Because a high chain-link fence and steep riprap descending down to the water are on one side of the path, I’ve occasionally decided that should I see someone or something that makes me nervous under here, I will immediately turn around and run back – fast – the way I came.  I keep up my pace as I approach the man, and by the time I pass him, realize that he is too engrossed in his examination of a CD in a plastic sleeve to notice me skimming by.  A dear friend once confided to me that someone we both loved was as close to homeless as the friend had ever known this person to be.  I think of this remark as I run up the short hill to cross over to the boulevard.  Always I’m reminded that I have so much, that it takes nothing to smile at a stranger, that none of us have any idea what someone else has been through.  Or where we’re going.  That too.

III.

Candy-hued tulips congregating stiffly everywhere

Huge koinobori carp streamers by Yosaku restaurant, furling up and down the breeze

Green traffic lights vibrant against a lowering sky

Kind crossing guards holding up their STOP signs and coffee mugs for hurrying children

The edges of my windshield adorned for days with translucent pink cherry flower petals

IV.

Heading home in my car from the studio after a late afternoon class, I see three men dressed in worn jeans clustered on front steps in a crowded neighborhood.  Two are sitting on the same step, and one is standing.  There is a hint of chill to the air, and as I pass by, the man standing leans slowly down and puts his arms tenderly around one of the sitting men.  The sitting man keeps his chin tucked, arms across his chest, and leans his head into the embrace.  I watch them in my rearview mirror, expecting the hug to end.  But it doesn’t.  The hug continues for as long as I can still see them in the mirror of my quiet car, the standing man’s bulky coat and the sitting man’s bent legs gradually blending into one form as I drive away, block by block.