32 - thursday

spring is beautiful in this city: stubborn at first, it must be coaxed out of hibernation by days upon days of cold, driving rain punctuated with bold, brilliant rays of sunshine just barely warm enough to put tantalizing hope in the hearts of all who call providence home.  eventually, the rain ends and sunlight turns the city aglow, green and swollen with the effort of rebirth; the daffodils and forsythia and dogwood bloom, and spring arrives, casting the misery of another bitter new england winter to the cobwebs of memory.   on one such glorious spring day nearly a decade ago, I found myself standing on the cracked, frost-heaved pavement of an empty parking lot, poking distractedly with a rake at a mixture of broken glass, soggy cigarette butts, and dead leaves.  I was thirteen years old and I stood, watching a young woman shout loud, urgent insults in spanish at her children, all four of whom she was attempting (rather unsuccessfully) to herd inside the apartment building across the street.  she caught my gaze – my stare – and returned it with a raised middle finger before disappearing into the shadows of the building’s interior.  behind her, between where I stood and the noisy din of coming and going on the elevated surface of the eight-lane interstate that slices through the city, an american flag the size of a tennis court snapped and whipped under its own weight in the wind, its chill the only reminder that this was a season of transition, and that summer had yet to settle, heavy and still, on the streets.  

opening paragraph of my anthropology honors thesis, 2009. today was that day as that day was in 2001. a wet, swollen day. a day of reflection about this city. a day of reflection about what's next. I spent the evening at the tenth anniversary celebration of the institute for the study and practice of nonviolence, an organization that has grown from humble beginnings in a south providence church to a robust, multi-million dollar enterprise.  the institute's street workers respond to shootings and stabbings across the city's troubled neighborhoods, helping dispel retaliatory gang violence and to encourage people to choose peace. this organization worked with me in 2006 on a project I was responsible for, performing a needs assessment of gang violence as a community health problem on the city's south side.  they were there for me during my thesis work, helping me gain sensitive access to gang members for long interviews and glimpses into a world that if you blink, you might miss, at least in this city. 

I've returned to providence time and again, as it transformed from a place I went to school to the place I call home. although I am ready, I will be sad to leave providence behind.