D-Day To-Dos

D-Day To-Dos

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For those of us who think we have a lot on our plates, here’s some perspective: a D-Day to-do list from one of Winston Churchill’s secretaries.

As we celebrate the anniversary of D-Day I’m thinking of my visit to the Churchill War Rooms in London last month, when I toured the warren of secret underground chambers that were the nerve center of the British command in World War II.

I saw the room believed by almost everyone to be Churchill’s private toilet but which in fact contained a secure line to Washington. Churchill spoke to Roosevelt from this room as together they hatched plans to save the free world.

I saw the map room, where information poured in from around he world and pins marked the spots where convoys and troops were stationed. When the map room was prepared for display back in the 1980s, archivists found an envelope with three sugar cubes, the weekly ration of Wing Commander John Heagerty, tucked away in a desk drawer.

I saw the special typewriters Churchill requested for the typing pool, silent typewriters. I tried to imagine typing without the clatter. In fact, I spent a lot of time trying to imagine the rooms the way they were 84 years earlier, when Dad, who had just turned 21, prepared to climb into the tail-gunner’s seat of a B-17 bomber and fly air support for the boys on the beaches.

Heat Management

Heat Management

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As the heat starts to build, I want to keep the house in its pristine, un-air-conditioned state. I’ve already closed the windows, trapping the cool morning air. I know the place will heat up as the day moves along. I hope that it’s bearable. If it isn’t, I’ll flip the switch — and be glad I have a switch to flip.

In the old days, when we first moved here, we prided ourselves on not using the AC. I’m afraid we were obnoxious about it, entertaining guests in a sweltering living room that we could have cooled if only we’d hadn’t been on our high horse.

My current approach to heat management is less draconian. But it is an acknowledgment that summer is warm and heat can be handled as many handle it around the world. Being more active in the morning, more sedentary in the afternoon. Being attuned to hourly fluctuations. Not super-chilling a house which then becomes a trap, because when a house is 72, 92 seems unbearable.

Being caught in a British heat wave reminds me how fortunate we are to have central air-conditioning, and when the heat and humidity reach intolerable levels, I won’t hesitate to use it. But I’m going to try and keep things natural as long as I can.

ISO Momentum

ISO Momentum

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I’m wondering how to keep moving through a day that began with a 3:40 a.m. run to Dulles International Airport. I was okay after returning home to sleep three more hours, energetic enough to tackle a yoga class and a warm walk around Lake Anne. But now lunch is over and my head feels stuffed with cotton.

I’m in search of momentum. By all rights I should be cleaning closets or pulling weeds, tasks that would keep me awake, but here I sit, laptop in lap, ready to do some online research.

Let’s see if it’s scintillating enough to keep me vertical.

(The scintillating stairway at the Tate Gallery in London.)

Summer Shade

Summer Shade

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I’m a sun-lover for sure, but when summer arrives I become a shade connoisseur. There is the deep shade of an old oak, generous and all-encompassing. There is the dappled shade of a new-growth forest, light patches like beacons in the darkness.

When walking in the city, I seek the shady side of the street, only slightly cooler than its opposite, but when temperatures soar, every degree counts.

In our backyard, the shade that was once a given is no longer. The black gum tree has failed to leaf. Though its trunk still stands sentinel, its shade is gone — and soon it will be, too.

Which underlines the fact that shade is a gift, nature’s balm for summer heat.

(In London’s Greenwich Park, some seek the sunlight, others the shade.)

Green Screen

Green Screen

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Yesterday, as I walked on one of my favorite Reston trails, I was struck by the shades and the depth of the green. The foliage was shockingly, gloriously green. The forest was a green screen onto which I could project all my sylvan dreams.

What is it about green that soothes and enchants? Is it something in the mechanisms of our eyes and skin that harken to this color? Did it represent the safety of the enclosure to our ancient kin? Is that why it seems so safe a hue?

Or does green work its magic because it’s the perfect contrast to the blueness of the sky?

No matter the reason, whether it’s biochemical or poetical. In early June, at least this early June, all the world seems a green screen.

Sleeping Weather

Sleeping Weather

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We’ve been treated to a series of perfect-weather days lately: bright sun, low humidity. No air-conditioning needed, no fans either. The temperature rises slowly during the day, then just as gently falls, a long exhale.

Good sleeping weather, we say, when we’ve had a string of these 75-degree days followed by 50-degree nights. A light blanket suffices.

June is starting off well so far. We’ve only had nine hours of it, but all of them have been perfect for sleeping.

(From a 2024 trip to Arches National Park, Moab, Utah, a climate that often features good sleeping weather.)

Backward Glance

Backward Glance

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One more backward glance before I move forward. This was one of the last sights I saw in London, a view of Picadilly Circus just as the lights were coming on.

It doesn’t get dark till almost 10 there, and we were trying to make our way back to the Victoria Station neighborhood before dark. It was not to be. Too many twists and turns. We jumped in a cab instead. I’m finally solvent enough that I can do that. For most of my traveling life, I’ve had to walk or take public transport (impractical in this case) no matter what the situation.

I love the energy in this photo: the people strolling, the puddles evaporating, the marquee twinkling. The evening was just coming alive. I hated to leave. I always do.

New World

New World

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We flew back in time yesterday, shedding the hours we took three weeks earlier and landing back where we started — in the New World.

We left the Roman walls and the castle keep built by William the Conqueror. We left the narrow alleys of York and its magnificent minster. We left the locks on the River Wey — and thank God we left them intact.

We left the trains and the Tube and the half-timbered wall, the tea and the Thames and the Marks and Spencer Food Halls. If someone offered me a ticket back tonight, I would take it. But I don’t want to be greedy. I live in the New World with all its space and energy and eye-popping green. (Virginia must have had as much rain as Britain has these last few weeks.)

We’re back in the New World, yes, but today I’m wishing I was back in the old one.

Time to Leave

Time to Leave

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There’s never a perfect time to leave England, but the day after a trip to the Greenwich Observatory may be as good a time as any.

Visiting this place taught me about the struggle to calculate longitude, made me think about time and time-keeping, about journeys great and small.

At one point yesterday, I had one foot in the eastern hemisphere and one foot in the western. Traveling allows for such straddling, for slipping out of one life and inhabiting another.

Today we’ll be in one hemisphere only. And today, all being well, we will be home.

Under the Clock

Under the Clock

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We’re back in London before our Wednesday flight home, staying in the Victoria Station neighborhood. It was where I arrived as a wide-eyed 20-year-old, fresh off the channel ferry, and where I met Mom on another trip a few years later.

Mom and I had flown different airlines to London and had decided to meet at the tourist office, where Mom, arriving first, would try to book us bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Dad had suggested that we meet under the clock, which is where he rendezvoused with his dates when he visited the city from his air base in East Anglia. No, we countered, we would be practical. We would meet at the tourist office.

I’ll never forget my first glimpse of Mom in Victoria Station. It was one of the first times I remember seeing her not as a mother but as a person in her own right. She looked young, almost girlish. She looked as in awe of the place as I must have looked.

But what really shocked me was where she stood. The tourist office was located directly under the clock, you see. So we met there after all.

Now the timepiece is perfectly positioned above the ladies’ loo. Not the most dignified spot for it. But time marches on, something I’m acutely aware of visiting this bustling city, which has grown tremendously since I last visited in 2003.

The old places have a gravitational pull, though. Which is why I feel at home in the shadow of Victoria Station. Not exactly under the clock — but close to it.