Browsed by
Author: Anne Cassidy

What Goes Up …

What Goes Up …

Comments 0 Comment

From my upstairs office window I can see our neighbor’s sad deflated holiday display. The extravaganza is typical of many these days: inflatable snowmen, Santas and reindeer, even inflatable creches, decking the yards this year. 

Tall, imposing, lit from within, these blow-up holiday decorations seem to be everywhere. It’s not brand-new technology, but it seems to have reached a price point or a tipping point that makes it the decoration of choice.

When glimpsed at night among spotlit tree trunks or fairy-lit boughs, these inflatable holiday sculptures are one thing. But when spotted in daytime, without their electrical assist, they are quite pitiful: a bunch of unblown-up balloons littering the half-dead grass of early winter.

Inflatable Santas: what goes up, must come down. 

The Wee Hours

The Wee Hours

Comments 0 Comment

It’s too early to speculate on the gifts of the pandemic, but I already have a candidate in mind. It’s sleep! Glorious shut-eye. Hours of deep slumber. With no need to commute, there has been no reason to wake up at 5:30. And for the last seven months, there has been even less incentive to burn the pre-dawn oil.

Or has there been? I love these early hours, and I’ve missed them lately. 

So today when I woke at 4 a.m., I tried for a while to drift back, as I usually do, but when that didn’t happen, I took it as a sign and rose for the day. 

It’s not even 6:30 and I’ve had great gobs of time to read, write and otherwise fritter away the day.

In the wee hours, the world is my oyster. 

The Concert

The Concert

Comments 0 Comment

It had been a while since I sat in a concert hall. There was Wolftrap last summer, always fun, but open-air, even when you have seats. 

Last night was the whole experience: the Kennedy Center itself, the approach and the entry, picking up the tickets, walking down the long hall, and then, in the hall, the chandeliers above and instruments tuning below. There were the black ties and tails, a hush when the lights went down. 

And then, there was this young man with a clarinet, swaying with it, bending with it, reminding me of James Galway on the flute, that same elfin charm.

The clarinetist, Lin Ma, played the Mozart Clarinet Concerto as if he was born to do it, so softly in parts of the Adagio that I felt myself lean toward the stage in order to hear it better. When he finished, the audience leapt to their feet.

Last night’s concert was not only all Mozart; it was all late-vintage Mozart, every piece written in 1791, the last year of the composer’s short life. And it ended with this: bliss. 

The Message

The Message

Comments 0 Comment

Say what you will about the cluttered house (and I’ve said plenty), but every so often it can surprise and delight you. 

The other night, while looking for something in the closet, I jostled a tube of silver wrapping paper, which dislodged a spool of curling ribbon, which brought down an old envelope filled with photos and a note from my father-in-law, who’s been gone for almost 29 years. 

What a gift this was, to hear again from this man who, even in the midst of his own illness was writing to share holiday photos and wisdom. The note was filled with appreciation for his home, his family, for the snow that had recently blanketed the woods around his house. 

The delivery system may have been a bit unorthodox, but the message was simple: love life while you have it. 

(A different snowfall, a different woods.)

Face Time

Face Time

Comments 0 Comment

Only one other time did I attend class on Zoom. Every other Tuesday evening I’ve been driving down to Georgetown, parking in the visitors’ garage, walking along Prospect to the Car Barn Building, feeling a part of the campus, if only fleetingly. But last night, the professor called it. The last class on November 30 would be held only on Zoom.

It was a strange way to end the semester, though in truth it doesn’t completely end until I turn in the final paper in a couple weeks. But it was the last time the class would be together, this particular assemblage of individuals, only one of whom I got to know at all, since she also traveled to campus every Tuesday evening. 

But the class itself was far more lively when it was held on Zoom only. The fact that we were all little squares, rather than some of us being squares and some of us actually being there, put us on a similar digital footing. And this prompted more chatter. 

Still, I liked the in-person version of class. It’s more of a hassle, true. It takes more time. But I like to see people in three dimensions if possible. I prefer the real and original face time.

(A scene from my walk to class.)

Coming Home

Coming Home

Comments 0 Comment

When you live somewhere a long time, as we have, you become settled. Even in a place that I originally feared was placeless, you find the firm ground, the sticking places. You join a book group that people leave only when they move out of town — and even then, some of these people return and rejoin.

Yesterday, I became a “re-joiner” too, meeting once again with a writer’s group that welcomed me eight years ago but which full-time job, family responsibilities and logistics (this is a Maryland group and I live in Virginia) made impossible.

Now the full-time job has fallen away and the family responsibilities have lessened, and there I was yesterday entering yet another funky old Italian restaurant a few blocks away from the one where we met years ago. 

Once again, there was the company of writers. It felt like coming home. 

Already Advent

Already Advent

Comments 0 Comment

We come now to one of my favorite times in the liturgical year. It’s a short season, one ever more likely to be buried in tinsel and outdoor lighting. It’s the season of Advent, of preparation, of prayers and devotionals.

It is almost lost in this world, buried by frantic list-making and shopping.By nonstop carol radio and the Hallmark Christmas movie channel. Every year I hope the prayer and devotional part wins out. Every year it does not. But Advent is early this year, so maybe it has a chance.

Advent reminds me of medieval stone abbeys, of kneeling on hard surfaces, of chanting the divine office in the wee hours. No doubt informed by once reading The Cloister Walk, a fine book by Kathleen Norris, during early December, but also, I think, by the hymns and carols of my youth. 

Now these are mostly memory, but still captured in a few plaintive melodies — O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, for one. I played it on the piano last night, trying to capture the hope and longing of this fleeting season. 

Shopping Online

Shopping Online

Comments 0 Comment

I did my best to pretend that yesterday wasn’t Black Friday, but by the end of the day I caved and went online. And yes, there was the hysteria I remember from years gone by, or at least a virtual version of it made possible by pop-ups, reminders that there are “only five left … order soon!” and countdown clocks.

It’s the clocks that affected me most, their hours, minutes and seconds all winding down to midnight. Perhaps because I’m time-sensitive, accustomed to packing as much as I can into whatever time I have. Why should shopping be any different?

Well … because it should, that’s why. It should be a deliberative process — not the digital equivalent of pawing through lingerie in Macy’s basement. 

But darned if the online marketers didn’t figure out a way to make us care … and rush. 

Black Friday — it runs through Sunday, from what I hear.

(A real shopping experience, complete with masks.)

Looking at Clouds

Looking at Clouds

Comments 0 Comment

This morning I awoke to the house at rest, a house that somehow held 22 people for a sit-down Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. 

An outside table was pulled in, borrowed chairs were tucked under it, and the best china was pulled from its sleeves, dusted off and actually used.

Today, I could do some Black Friday shopping, I could catch up with classwork …. or, I could do what I most want to do, which is to look out my office window at clouds scudding across the sky. 

Together

Together

Comments 0 Comment

It’s 9 on a Thanksgiving morning and for once I remembered to turn on the TV in time to catch the parade from the beginning. It will be on in the background as the dust flies, the turkey roasts and the potatoes boil.

But the big story for most of us this year will not be on a screen. It will be in living rooms and family rooms and kitchens across the nation.

It will be when we rub shoulders, click glasses and — dare I say it? — hug each person who enters our home. For the big story this Thanksgiving is that we’re celebrating it together.