Places I love

There are places we love because of their familiarity. For me going back to my home town means going back to Manhattan, that ever changing busy island. Its changes don't trouble my heart, Central Park feels the same today as when I roller bladed with my friends in high school. All New York pizza tastes really good, hot, greasy, dripping, the smell of oregano wafting out into the avenues. Some personal monuments disappear: Cafe 112 is no longer there on 112th street. When they closed, I didn't know. A friend called with the announcement months later; we shed one rather pathetic tear to acknowledge all the dates we'd ever had there and moved on. Larger less personal monuments shall be along for a good long time to come - at some time I may yet try to describe my personal experience of watching a piece of my home town fall into dust and rubble, but not today. Today, it shall be the sculpture garden at the Metropolitan Museum: scene of many English classes, many excursions to sit quietly and sulk, write, meet up with people and then run outside to find fun in the park and leave our young cares behind - it smells the same, the light is the same, it holds the same coolness near the marbles and intense warmth as you sit in the sunned windows of the cafe ordering an Orangina and a muffin.

Other places seem to never change, they stand still in time and memory and small changes make an impression, but only fleetingly as so very much is the same. I've not been to Martha's Vineyard in many years, but I can navigate its few roads easily on the strength of 10 years repeated visiting. The vast differences are now in my experience of being in that place. As a child, I had no concept of it except as a place we went to to take a boat to arrive at the beach. As a teenager I began to explore its ins and outs, remaining dependent on adults to figure out anything difficult, annoying or didn't involve ice cream. As an adult & parent I had to find a way to function, feed my family, fill the car with gas, pick up a prescription and figure out which beaches we could safely go to and which had undertow or were private pass only.
There are so many place that I love. I love my mother's house because, though I never lived there, I know my children feel so very at home and loved there. They've never been to Disney World, but they'd probably rate them about the same at this point. I love Rockport Massachusetts, another place of my childhood that I've learned to navigate as an adult. Ice cream places come and go, and so do artist's galleries, but Woodman's Lobster in the Rough is forever. I love New Haven; I'm not sure why, it's just a very fun place to walk around and grab a bite to eat and maybe see some art. Part of me thinks that I will live there one day; and that may be true. These are all places that I return to again and again. They are places that each visit is special and unique, much because it is familiar, reassuring and becomes easier than the last.

But there are other streets I've walked on; other places that I love; places I know I may not make it back to. Monks and civilians are marching in the flooded streets of Yangon. When I walked those streets they were dusty, hot and dry. Protesters were hiding in homes, in store fronts, doing their very best to feed their families and stay alive. Everyone seemed to want to talk to us; we were Americans, they wanted people to know:

I'm not really a driver, I'm a doctor, but the government...
We're trying to get our son out of the military. He's so young. He didn't know what he was doing. It going to cost a lot of money, who knows what will happen...
if only I could go to University in Europe or the United States...

So many whispers in such a short time - and even more stirring than whispers were the secret looks and pleading hearts, the people of Burma willing us all to understand. Pictures hung on the wall at the National League for Democracy - just miles from the Shwedagon where the monks began their marches - whispers of a hope that these are more than just a memorial, that there may be a future for these once elected men and women who have sat in jails or homes or in the back entrance of store fronts for over 20 years. I could think of no help to offer anyone, but my good will, prayers for their strength as they fight the evil that is oppressing them. I had little hope that an external force would intervene, or that in doing so that would be truly helpful. Their help must come from other quarters, but from whom?
Now from within their own strength, momentum has built and protests are coming from a new and powerful source. The Buddhists monks of Yangon have taken to the streets. They've just publicly aligned themselves with Aung San Suu Kyi, presumably in order to force the governments hand to decide what to do about these protests that it has been "allowing" over the past month. Will they now send uniformed police to beat them as they have civilians so often in the intervening years? Even just months after I left, there were marches, beatings, jailings, disappearances. With no way to track people I had met just once or twice, I was left wondering. Now I wonder, will this place I love change?
And, in this case, I am hoping so. My heart will break if acts of violence are committed upon these people, but my heart swells to know they are taking their destiny into their own hands. Their hopes matter, and they hope for change. Amen.