Hope

 It’s started to feel like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and while there’s always the possibility it’s a train in the distance bearing down brakeless upon us, I’ll take the evidence of several return faces as support for a more widespread impression of positive possibilities.

Or, it could have just been the sunny afternoon, so clear that the Mountain bared its shoulders all the way down to its waist and in every direction you looked, there were snow-capped peaks sending telepathic geological messages southward to their big brother.

On my way to the usual thing at the usual time in the usual place, I meandered through Beacon Hill, with a beer stop at the softball fields, whose infields, recently dragged and graded, looked almost ready for recreational recreations; if, as legendary Washington Post sports reporter, Thomas Boswell, put it, “time begins on opening day,” then it almost feels like we’re minutes—or more like only a couple months—from the clocks finally starting again.

Plus, there was so much traffic on First Avenue coming south that I had to keep checking my phone to make sure that there hadn’t been some natural or unnatural disaster that was causing everyone to hop in their cars and hightail it out of downtown; a solid line automobiles, two lanes thick, from SODO all the way south as far as you could see.  

Consequently, it was especially pleasing to greet a few more than half a dozen familiars, just to verify that the apocalypse hadn’t yet arrived (other than the slo-motion one we’re involved in and have been for the last couple centuries).

I was glad to be reminded of the destination I had in mind all along even though I was all but ready to acquiesce to going right back to where I came.  

And ye of little hope, there really is, as hoped, a waterside “park” at just a little farther up to the left.