Saturday, February 27th, 2021

Fresh flowers are blooming in the park on the way to the House of a Hundred Grandmothers. The city redoes the display occasionally. The plot was barren last I looked, but it isn’t now. I don’t know what kind of flowers they are. They’re all the same, but in different colors. People and dogs sit or roam around the park. A religious family comes in when I do. The father is wearing black and white. The mother wears more colors, all muted. Neither wears a mask. Three small children run circles around them. The father pulls an even smaller boy in a contraption somewhere between a classic little red wagon and a portable crib. One girl abruptly runs backward into my path. I stop. We don’t collide. An older boy darts out of the bushes, chasing a soccer ball. He catches up with it, kicks it, and chases it back to where he emerged. I guess that only the bushes, or perhaps a broken fence, separate the park from the yard of the house just west of it. Up a few steps, a circle surrounded by benches is strewn with dirt and drying leaves. No one has swept there in a while. Up more steps, I see more pods in the giraffe trees. It isn’t time yet for them to fall. I check the trash area at the exit for anything worth salvaging. Nothing catches my eye. I continue on.