#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
Charles River, Happy Halloween
A hotel, a chain, a Residence Inn. Her first morning, waking up. Weak coffee, free breakfast, nothing whole grain offered, nothing appetizing. No matter, she was outdoors, her walk. Office buildings, acres of them, she passed. No idea where she was going in this maze of parking lots and mostly empty offices. One, she passed, through the windows, chairs, tables, like a cafeteria, not inhabited by humans, but a fire, a gas fire blazing in the cavernous room, as if waiting, hoping, a conference of interested people might come, hold an annual meeting, drink cocktails by the hearth. She walked in the bright last day of October morning, Halloween. She was pushing a stroller, a toddler, and a chocolate lab, on a short leash, held in a loop in one of her hands, tramped along. She had an impulse to think in the third person. Yes. This is how she would observe her walk. Objectively. . .
And now it was just herself and the lab, sans stroller, sans toddler, safely, happily, delivered to school. And more walking, in the industrial park. Toward what? She didn’t know. But her husband had mentioned that he had googled the area of the hotel and noticed a park, and the Charles River. Who would have guessed. And here it was, in front of her. She had found the river, her home river, the Charles. And her dog was off leash now, in the river, swimming and swirling up the reflections. All new ones neither of them had ever seen before. Same river, new pictures. Her whole being, surprised, delighted. Not home, her home under construction. But home. On the river, still. By accident or unconscious design. They had chosen the hotel because of its nearness to the toddler’s school. And the river runs through it.
