DEAR MONIR,

I’m in my favorite place, my screened-in porch. I sit out here surrounded by green and protected from bugs. Basking in the green green green of my own yard. It’s like a mini park with a narrow brook, oaks, dogwoods, rhododendron, and azaleas. Robins, blue jays, cardinals, and woodpeckers chirp, twitter, and tap. Yeah, now I know the names of trees, plants, and birds. The wind shakes the leaves on the trees and whirring cicadas sound like maracas. Even the deer visit my yard and eat everything they can. When I pull into my driveway, I feel my blood pressure go down.

Remember the plateau in Fairmount Park? In my memory it’s always warm and sunny there. It’s never cold or rainy in good memories. Dad would drive us. Belmont Plateau smelled like turned dirt and cut grass and some other musty smell I associated with the woods. It felt like we went to another land or dimension when we walked on the dirt paths through the trees. There is a big grassy hill where you can see the skyline of Philly in the background. Sometimes there would be a rainbow. I remember how different the sounds were: our feet crunching on leaves, squirrels making scraping noises, and the quiet of the trees. The city was on mute. No cars, no trolleys, no shouting.

The sun and sky stood above us every day, but in the park we noticed them against the green. Dad always drove through the park, even if it took him out of the way a bit, then parked his car under trees whenever he could. Green spaces pulled him like a magnet.

At home in North Philly, concrete sidewalks with little weeds poking out surrounded our house. Skinny trees peppered the alleyway. Sparrows and pigeons sported dull shades of brown and gray. What does it do to your soul to live without green spaces? Nothing good. Why do some people get grass and others cracked concrete? I think living without natural beauty disconnects you from a communal life force, or God even. And the funny thing is you don’t even know you were lacking some fundamental thing until you find yourself in a natural space.

Remember we used to watch Yogi Bear? “It’s because I’m smarter than the average bear.” I went to Yellowstone, the park he lived in.  I saw bison, wolves, and elk. There were mountains and an endless sky that made me feel like I was sitting on the top of the earth. For the first time, I thought, man, I live in a beautiful country.

For five years I lived a short walk from the ocean. You know where? Ventnor, the town right next to Atlantic City. I could see the casinos from the beach. AC was the place to go and party. Dad never took us to the beach because he didn’t like sand, and that was even before he had his prosthetic foot. Grandmom took us to Atlantic City and Wildwood, but that was to ride the rides on the boardwalk and get saltwater taffy. It never occurred to me that we might sit on the beach like the white people we saw. Grandmom laughed at them for “trying to get black.”

I never thought of Atlantic City being a place of natural beauty either, where ocean waves crashed and foamed. But it is. From my house in the next town over, I could hear the steady, endless roll of waves crashing at night. The sound made me think of infinity or eternity or our souls. I would pack up however many kids I had at the time, and we’d spend days in the sand and water. I never really learned to swim, even though Mom signed us up at the Y. You did—being fearless—but not me after I almost drowned when I got pulled by some kid into the deep end. So I still can’t really swim, but I can get into the water and keep myself alive. What I really liked was standing up to my knees and feeling the ebb and tug of the ocean’s pull. I felt part of this big wide world. I didn’t even worry about turning too black in the sun. I just soaked  its energy into my skin and felt polished after a day at the beach. Nature equalizes everybody. We are all small in the face of it. I felt kinship with the whole world.

But it seemed to me that the oceans and mountains and national parks were mostly for white people. I never imagined going hiking or visiting a national park like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon. I didn’t know any black people who visited those places. It was so far removed from what we knew that I never even dreamed of going, like I did about going to Disney World.

Living close to a park or having a yard like mine costs money. Like anything good does, it seems. Another thing is feeling safe when you venture out into natural spaces that are free. I grew up with the sense that bad things happen to people, especially black people, in the woods. Is there some echo of the legacy of lynching or just something picked up from scary movies like Friday the 13th? Any black character in those movies died first. When I think about hiking or visiting a beach I ask myself, “Are there other black people around? Is someone going to look at me like I don’t belong? Will me and my kids be the only black bodies on the beach? Are people staring?”

Truth is, when I’m with Steve I feel safer. His whiteness shields me and the kids some. Our family has done a few hikes, and the kids laugh because I’m always lagging behind. No, I did not turn into some super-fit nature girl—I’m still a city girl, physical exertion has never been my strong point. I appreciate being out in nature, even if I’m huffing and puffing when we get to the end of the trail. But here on my porch I can feed my spirit the elixir of green without the sweat or worry.

Green spaces take you outside yourself for a little. You live longer if you spend time in green spaces. And if you take your children to the beach and mountains, they live better and longer too.

When our family of four was slowly becoming a family of three, you and I stopped going to the plateau. I forgot the possibility of beauty and started to believe broken glass and trash on the streets was all life held for us. How different could it have been if we could have been fed a little more sky, sun, and grass? Would you have felt like life could have been more than what it was because of how big the trees grew? Now I sit here on this beautiful porch far from North Philly.

Why am I the one and not you?