Married to Amazement

My phone keeps luring me back to the banal, but I'm courting transcendence one hot date at a time.

You never know what you’ll see if you look all around you.

Between two palm groves at the edge of Tampa Bay there’s a brick path I’ve walked countless times with my dog. For Casey, a hunter of stray chicken bones, the main event is the ground. My attention keeps drifting to my phone. Hey, weather app, what’s up with those clouds? New York Times, do I need a head of fennel for that shrimp recipe? And since the phone’s already open, all aglow, might as well check email. Any new subscribers at Amazement Seeker?

I named this virtual pathway of mine for the impulse that grounds me in the wide world. Every walk is a fresh opportunity to offer up my senses to this moment, this place, this encounter. To hear the song, tune out the noise. Yet I waver. Mary Oliver sings in my head, if I would only pause to listen,

When it's over, I want to say: all my life 
I was a bride married to amazement. 
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

All my life? I’ve settled for an hour here and there. Mary Oliver didn’t reach for her phone while the wild geese flew overhead. Amazement and I are just dating. And yet within minutes, a hot date can burst into being.

I was making my way between the palm groves, Casey sniffing at my side, when I noticed the bricks at my feet, which had never done anything but mark the way from here to there. That day they revealed their other purpose: tributes to loved ones gone too soon. Each inscription held a lifetime of feeling. mostly distilled to names and dates. Of all the bricks where I might have stopped, I had come to the most expressive: “Bruno—One wonderful dog!”

Bruno and his human must have ambled down this very path. Where Casey lifted his hind leg, Bruno had too. I imagined various possible Brunos, from loping Great Dane to scurrying dachshund. Ears that flew when Bruno ran (and occasionally turned themselves inside out), or ears trim as a starched collar, pointing straight up. Someone’s love for Bruno thrummed in me. Someone could have called Bruno the “world’s best dog” but chose more expansive language. “One wonderful dog” can be read two ways: one damn fine, super-wonderful dog, or one of all the wonderful dogs to walk this earth—past, present and future.

Someone missed Bruno and always would. But it’s not the missing that stays with me. It’s the love—trod upon time after time by walker after walker, ready to flare anew for any passerby who looks.

When the world lurched to a halt four years ago this month, deprivation sharpened my senses. Day after day, the same sights: my desk, my kitchen counter, my dining room table. Casey’s walk became my one shot at novelty. Jews ask at the Passover table, “How is this night different from all other nights?” I asked while heading out with Casey, “How is this walk different from all other walks?”

Small marvels caught my attention. In a decommissioned water fountain, three shiny apples waited for a hungry taker—an impromptu still life channeling Cezanne. On the battered doorway of a rowhouse, a sign proclaimed in fridge-magnet letters that channeled Crosby, Stills and Nash: “Our house is a very very very fine house.” I loved the generosity of the apple giver, the pride of one family in the scruffiest home on the street. Every encounter with the wondrous cleared my mind of the worrisome.

I took this shot as my walk began. The apples were gone within the hour.

I took photos to remind me of all I could discover in my own neighborhood—the most restorative use I’ve found for the phone that never leaves my side. Then I shared my photos on Facebook so friends could experience the joy. My captions found their way into the book on my hard drive. Perhaps Mary Oliver would have approved. She urged in her poem “Sometimes,”

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

The pandemic taught me to look for dear life. I know the moves but the urgency is gone. When it comes to mental focus on a walk, I could learn a thing or two from my foraging dog. Not a crumb of stale pizza gets past him.

On Bruno’s brick, Casey waited as I took my shot, aligning my toes with the inscription. Any scraps of lunch dropped on the path had been swept away by groundskeepers, but he tolerates my dallying and didn’t pull for him when we made a return visit. I had to fix the whole path in my mind—the eroded bricks and the freshly chiseled ones, the humans and the pets. This is our last sojourn in St. Petersburg, where we’ve rambled around for eight winters. Now or never.

A burst of laughter rang out from the palms behind me. There sat a few dozen well-wishers, eyes fixed on the couple at the altar. Allie in her sequined gown, hair tumbling over her creamy shoulders. Kyle with his crimson boutonniere, clasping her hand. Of course I listened for their names. I can’t pass an open-air wedding without pausing to eavesdrop and silently wish the couple well.

This pair looked impossibly young, but they all do to me after 53 years of marriage. We took our vows at 21 without a thought for how we would be tested. In sickness and in health, for better for worse: What does any of it mean when you think you’ll be young forever, sheltered by the good fortune that brought you together?

May Kyle and Allie be married to amazement. May they both take the world into their arms and let it nourish their love for each other. Love is one tough weed. Just when you think you’ve pulled it up for good, up it comes like the green shoots encircling Bruno’s name.

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I’d love to know what this post brings to mind—about dog walking, amazement, the lessons of Covid, you tell me—but first a couple of tidbits for the writers in this group (no small number). This piece didn’t snap into place until I found the title after rejecting two clunkers: “All the Love a Brick Can Hold” and “Standing on the Path of Love.” A strong title does more than hook the reader; it pulls the writer forward. I often turn to poems for titles that light my way. When I’m stumped by a piece, I meditate on the title.

Anyone writing a memoir? Listen in on my conversation with author and podcaster Ronit Plank of Let’s Talk Memoir. On the menu: finding your narrative arc, embracing surprise, how deep looking propels writing. Ronit’s podcast is a wellspring of inspiration. If you don’t already know it, take a look around.

And now for the best part: Your comments. I’m listening!