Here in Oakland, warm days are already here – in April. Last week, we had a couple of days of rain, but now we are back to clear skies and warm days. I always appreciate these days of early spring, when the trees and grass and shrubs in the neighborhood are already turning a rich, dark green. Our own yard – which Jeff has carefully planted and tended to all these years – is green, too. At dusk, the calla lilies shine as if they have an inner light. Maybe we sometimes shine with our inner light, too.
But the mornings are cool, before the sun rises in the sky over the city. As I was walking this morning, grateful for the hills in our neighborhood, which adds to my rising breath as I walk, I was reminded that walking is good for me. The hills remind me, every day.
For some reason, as I walked in the gray morning which will give way to sun shortly, I was thinking about summers in the city when I was still living in Milwaukee. Summers were short there – precious – and often languid, with deep, humid days that would give way to thundershowers at some point. We never wasted a day of enjoyment.
After I started University at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, my parents were often generous with my use of my dad’s ’67 Bel Air hard-top. After Mom had driven dad to work and set about whatever she did to keep house all day in our rented flat on the North Side, I was able to take the car to my classes on the East Side of Milwaukee, a few blocks from Lake Michigan. And so I found new, longer ways to arrive at classes, where I had to park several blocks away from campus to find a parking spot. I’d usually find a place on Newberry Avenue, a street filled with mansion-like houses, a center strip covered in grass, and fewer cars than the streets on the North Side of Locust Street, which I’d taken through the city to get to school. I’d walk the blocks to school from there.
After class is when the fun began for me. I have always loved the East Side of Milwaukee, and I took advantage of it then. I’d walk back to the car and drive East on Kenwood Boulevard, which took me right onto Lake Drive, the beautiful winding street along the shore of Lake Michigan. I’d open all the windows and sing along to the Motown music I loved on WAWA radio in Milwaukee. From time to time, I’d catch a look at the Lake, and I’d always check to see whether Bradford Beach was crowded that day, or not.
“My cherie amour, lovely as a summer day
My cherie amour, distant as the Milky Way
My cherie amour, pretty little one that I adore
You’re the only girl my heart beats for
How I wish that you were mine – ” (words and lyrics by Stevie Wonder, Sylvia Boy, Henry Cosby, 1969).
I’d join Stevie Wonder, getting the lyrics perfectly every time. If a song was new to me, I listened carefully so that I could sing along the next time.
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When I have time and a car on my visits to Milwaukee now, I like to drive up Lake Drive again. I like to be alone. Lake Drive looks the same to me – although the vintage of the cars has changed – but I always feel a little sad, remembering the summer days, those “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer,” so long ago, now. I still know each turn in the road. I can see changes that have been made, an old brick building across Lake Drive from the Lake that had been empty for as long as I can remember, now morphed into a coffee shop. I drive as far south as North Avenue, and there I take the windy road up the hill onto Prospect Avenue. I drive north to UWM, to take a look at the campus one last time.
The calli lilies are always beautiful, lit from within with a sacred light.
Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 4/2025
