Delayed Gratification

Delayed Gratification

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Reading essayist Joseph Epstein’s autobiography recently, this sentence made me smile:

As to what phrase my children might have heard most frequently from me when they were growing up, my guess is that it might be, “I’ll be there as soon as I finish this paragraph.”

I had the good fortune of being Epstein’s student. It was in his class that I first produced an assemblage of paragraphs that deserved to be called an essay. Now I know that when he was teaching me, he was also raising four sons as a single parent … and penning beautiful essays at the same time.

Like Epstein, I had the opportunity to freelance while raising our children. I didn’t become an editor in an office again until the youngest was in third grade. As a result the girls grew up with a mother who was available for the big things (cuts and bruises of body or spirit) but who made them wait for the little ones (a snack, a story, a trip to the pool on a hot summer day).

Most mothers and fathers now don’t have this opportunity. For me it was made possible by a burgeoning magazine market and a willing and good-natured partner.

I’m forever grateful that I had the opportunity to conduct interviews while nursing an infant, to wrestle words on the page while listening to giggles and shrieks from the next room, and the opportunity to say, over and over again: “I’ll be there as soon as I finish this paragraph.”

TKTS

TKTS

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The other day an old airline ticket showed up in the basement. This is not entirely remarkable; many things show up in the basement. But the ticket sparked thoughts and memories.

I noted, first of all, that this was one of those old-fashioned billets, thin, partially carbonized sheets of paper — so official. There was no QR code, no digital file in a digital wallet. This was a ticket stamped on September 30, 198_, printed on someone else’s paper. On the left side you can see those little cut-out circles that indicate it was brought to life on a tractor-feed mechanism. The top and bottom are perforated. Did I buy this at a travel agency? By calling the airline? I don’t remember.

A closer look revealed that a round-trip from Newark to Cincinnati cost only $121.00 in 1982. I had to do some sleuthing to determine that this was a ticket from 1982 because although both day and month are noted, the year was only stamped faintly along the side and the second digit was hidden.

To determine the year, I flipped through my journals until I found one that solved the mystery. I visited my hometown of Lexington, Kentucky (flying through Cincy) from October 8 – 12, 1982. On October 9, I explained why in my journal:

This morning I woke up to the sound of birds’ wings flapping. Not to bird song but to the soft fluttering of bird feathers. You can hear an occasional chirp if you live in New York City, if you’re in Central Park and can find a place far enough away from the screeching brakes or the low rumble of the A train. But you can never find a place silent enough to hear the delicate flutter of birds’ wings. I came home, among other reasons, to hear the flap of birds’ wings, to pause long enough to listen to the soft sounds of nature, to the faint cries of my imagination. It can’t always sing out over the distractions of the big city. It needs silence and open sky.

All of this from finding a few old pieces of paper in the basement.

Brotherly Love

Brotherly Love

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My first clear memory is of holding a nickel. The coin was a bribe, no doubt about it. In fact, it may have been the first bribe I was offered, coinciding neatly with my first memory.

I was three years old and had just acquired a baby brother. I wasn’t allowed into the hospital, but the nurse held him up to window so I could see his little bald head. He looked vaguely interesting — but nowhere near as fascinating as the nickel. Suddenly I had come into a fortune. I could buy a whole candy bar, or five pieces of penny candy.

As it turned out, the candy was only a fleeting pleasure. But my brother Phillip, who I tried to smother with baby powder, who I implored my parents to remove immediately — “take that baby back to St. Joseph’s [Hospital],” I said — he stuck around much longer.

Today, he celebrates a birthday. I hope he celebrates many, many more.

The Wood Thrush

The Wood Thrush

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In yesterday’s post I mention hearing a wood thrush. I mentioned it as if it were part of an ordinary day. But in truth, it wasn’t ordinary at all.

I’ve heard this song a few times before, but only deep in the woods. I’ve never known what bird was singing, but figured it was a shy creature that didn’t like to show itself. Its trilling song has a touch of the fairy tale about it. It makes me imagine I’ll soon happen upon a cottage made of gingerbread.

When I heard the song again on Sunday I tried to find its source. A rustling in the leaf litter drew my eyes to a brown bird with a white breast darting along the length of a decaying tree trunk.

I have no idea why I thought then that it was a wood thrush. I couldn’t get close enough to see the spots on its breast, and I have no app on my phone that identifies its call. Maybe I’d read somewhere of its sweet song and reticent ways.

Whatever the case, when I had time Sunday evening I searched “wood thrush song” on my computer and heard this. It was the same melody that had caught my attention hours earlier. It sounded like the very soul of the forest. And now, through a lucky guess, I could identify it.

(Photo courtesy of the National Zoo)

Trail Work

Trail Work

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The song of a wood thrush deep in the forest. Soft air with gently building humidity. A path moist enough to hold footsteps but not sloppy enough to leave me with muddy shoes. It was a peach of a walk … until I noticed the detour signs.

Roadways aren’t the only thoroughfares to be closed for repairs in the summer. One of my most trusty circular trails is down for the count.

Most of the paths I walk are out-and-backs, which makes this loop all the more attractive. But yesterday, it became an out-and-back too.

A walker in the suburbs must have some obstacles to surmount. Yesterday, this was mine.

Two Hundred and Fifty

Two Hundred and Fifty

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I thought I had written my Fourth of July post yesterday. Then I started listening to a program of American music on the radio and thought about all the ways to measure national pride, national spirit.

Think of the vastness of our country. It takes four days to drive across it, and that’s if you push it.

I traversed it as a kid, riding in the backseat of a “woody” station wagon. I’ve done it again several times since then, as a young adult and with my own family, and never lost the wonder of seeing the trees grow scrubby and the plains grow vast, of seeing the first smudge of blue on the horizon: the Rocky Mountains!

I refuse to believe that we will always be this divided. Two hundred and fifty years is not a long run, when measured against some other nations, but it’s respectable. On this special day, I pray for 250 more.

My Country

My Country

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I used to fly our small flag from the Washington Post box that hung beneath our old mailbox. But our old mailbox bit the dust last month, and there’s no easy way to hang a flag from its new post. So the best way to show our colors is to stick a flag in the large flower pot in the front yard. It’s not perfect, but it will have to do.

Which is, perhaps, a good way to look at this 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding.

It’s easy to be discouraged these days, especially living so close to Washington, D.C., which has been turned into an armed camp to celebrate a day marking independence and freedom.

I turn to a book I recently read, The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780, the second of Rick Atkinson’s trilogy about our nation’s founding.

“My country. That concept had taken root in the American seedbed, nurtured by a shared faith that this struggle, ostensibly about taxes, autonomy, and other parochial complaints, was ultimately about the chance to build both a new nation and a better world.”

For all of its faults, America at 250 still seems like the world’s best hope. And, more to the point, it is my country.

(Old Glory flies in front of the Maryland State House, which once served as the nation’s capitol.)

Bye-bye, Black Gum

Bye-bye, Black Gum

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The stalwart black gum tree has been looking bad for years, its bark peeling. Even though we’ve lost so many trees recently, I thought this one would pull through.

“That can happen,” said the tree guy of the black gum’s sad condition. We’d finally booked him after losing several giants in one season. It’s his job to keep tabs on our trees, and he warned us that this one might not recover. But he also gave us hope, and I took it. The black gum always bounced back, so I thought it would again this year.

But it was not to be. No leaves, no greenery. Just a bare trunk, brittle and forlorn. Yes, birds still land on a branch from time to time. They use the black gum as a staging area for swooping down to the feeder. But the tree no longer harbors nests or nestlings.

Until today, though, at least its trunk stood sentinel. It remained upright to catch the morning light. But the executioner comes this afternoon to take it down, to turn it into lumber. I will try to be away from home when that happens.

It Bloomed!

It Bloomed!

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I’ve been watching the plant for weeks as a shoot thickened. I’d been hopeful before, so many times, but the shoots never progressed beyond sprouting a slight bulge. But a few weeks ago, I was hopeful again.

I’ve come a long way as an orchid owner. I threw out the first plant I was given after its first bloom. I thought it was dying because its stem had withered.

Then I received an orchid for Mother’s Day two years ago. This one seemed worth keeping, so I learned how to water it — from the bottom and briefly, parked it in the light and hoped for the best.

Orchids are a good test of one’s patience, of a belief in the unseen. For more than two years I’ve kept the plant in fighting trim. Its leaves stay shiny and healthy and well-misted, but no serious bud emerged.

Until a few weeks ago when, almost overnight, two filmy white pockets sprouted from one of those bulging stems. I waffled about moving the plant to a more prominent location. It was happy where it had been the last many months — in a basement window, of all places — but I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it much down there.

So I brought it upstairs and put it on the kitchen table. And when I came downstairs this morning there was a papery white orchid flower. It’s a horticultural miracle for someone like me.

(I wish this was my plant — but it’s an orchid that graced my former office.)

Sans Sidewalks

Sans Sidewalks

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I had been flipping through a book I read long ago called Suburban Nation when I heard of a new book called Sidewalk Nation. I love the symmetry in this. The irony, too.

In my suburb, there are no sidewalks. One walks along the side of the road, which is mostly no problem — until it is, in wintertime or during what passes as rush hour in these parts.

New arrivals to our neighborhood complain about the lack of sidewalks — I certainly did — only to be put off when they hear from old-timers about the difficulty of installing them, the property rights battles that might ensure, and the supposed allure of the more “rural” look our bare roads seem to provide.

Sidewalk Nation is on my to-be-read pile, so I imagine I’ll post on it at some point. I’ll be interested to learn what it has to teach me. Until then, I’ll stroll on the sidewalk-less road that is part of our landscape now — and probably always will be.