Last night, I heard a clattering in a street, and looked down from my bedroom window. An older gentleman was flailing away at my front stoop with a stick. He moved on to next door and started beating up the wrought iron railing there, so I didn’t call down to him to stop. He was just making the rounds. He was out across the street a couple of weeks ago, and he may be the one who pulled up the storm drain cover. He gets a little excited.

I texted my adult kid to tell them an unidentified woman’s body was pulled out of the lake at FDR Park in South Philadelphia, where my kid volunteers. My kid replied, “Oh jeez. They finally found her. I talked to the friend who was looking for her at volunteering the other day.”

The family was over Thursday night, because I was recovered enough to make our regular spaghetti dinner. My kid was tired and wanted to leave early. The grandchild yelled down from his room in my house that he wanted to leave too. The son-in-law, also exhausted, announced he was going as well. “The bus is coming in 1 minute,” said my kid, and they all made a mad dash. As they were charging up to the stop, the bus driver looked them straight in the eye and rolled past. They had left their umbrellas behind, so the son-in-law rolled by to pick them up, and they all walked home, because they live ten blocks away. My mother used to roll her windows up when she drove through the part of the city where I live and where my kid lives.

My kid was telling me that last time they were in Baltimore with friends, the group decided to go into a restaurant for lunch. “Are you sure you want to come here?” asked the hostess. “It’s awful noisy.” The group said they were fine with it. “Where you from?” asked the hostess. My kid’s friend said, “Philadelphia,” and the hostess said, “Ohh,” as if that explained it, because it did.

Speaking of which, occasionally I am the only person on the bus of my type. Sometimes people give me side-eye because I stand out. They are wondering if I know where I am. Once the bus has nearly hit someone making a U-turn in front of it, or it has gone over one of those spring potholes, and we have all had a chance to comment and bond on the subject, everyone relaxes. My friend Gretchen rides a motorcycle to her job in the city’s prisons, but she’s scared of taking public transportation.

The common thread of all these observations, of course, is race.

I live in a city that was one of the targets of the Great Migration; our current mayor, state representative, and Congressman are all Black, and I live in a neighborhood that is half and half. I am plenty scared of people in Philly. Most of the ones that scare me are White, though, usually from parts of South Philly. Those are nervous and angry, and you have to be careful not to startle them, especially when they’re drunk.