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Author: Anne Cassidy

Fluff in Fall

Fluff in Fall

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I turned the corner onto Lawyers Road the other day (yes, there is a road called Lawyers here, one called Courthouse, too), and ran right into a cloud of milkweed fluff, a passel of winged silk flying in the wind. Only the warm air flowing through the car reminded me that I wasn’t driving into snow flurries.

More gardeners are cultivating the milkweed plant now for the monarch butterflies it attracts and protects, which may explain the proliferation of fluff. 

And what a perfect time of year to receive it, perfect for the milkweed most of all, but also perfect for humans, who are more likely this time of year to have crispy leaves or hard acorns falling on our heads, whose imaginations are beginning to take on the more realistic, less whimsical cast of fall and winter.

Fluff seems a springtime thing, as gossamer as our gardens are in April or May, more like cherry tree petals, which also swirl around in a light breeze. Fluff in fall runs counter to our expectations. It helps us dream.

(Photo courtesy Stockvault)

Lake Audubon Trail

Lake Audubon Trail

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One aspect of walking I’ve learned to appreciate more in the last few months is its timing, how a stroll is shaded, colored, made whole by the time of day in which it happens. The fast dash of a morning feels totally different when transported into the slow slide of an afternoon. Or vice-versa.

I’ve walked the Lake Audubon Trail before but never at this time or in this season. Doing it in the morning, starting fresh from the ample parking lot rather than getting to it at the end of the long Glade Trail route — made it a new adventure. 

There were shady stretches, sunny sections and a feeling of expansiveness every time I glimpsed the water. There were fellow fast-walkers, one man tugging his two Jack Russell terriers, and a young mother pointing out butterflies and squirrels to her toddler. 

 I’ve learned the hard way that the trail doesn’t go all the way around the lake. So I just made it an out-and-back. From the traffic I passed on the path, I wasn’t the only one. 

Twenty Years

Twenty Years

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When I visited Lexington last month, Phillip drove me through the University of Kentucky campus. He  wanted to show me that the twin towers were gone. Not those twin towers, though Phillip saw those come down, too. He was working in New York at the time, his office less than two miles north on Hudson. But it was the absence of the Kirwan-Blanding Towers he wanted to show me, two 23-floor dormitories that housed students for almost 50 years and that came down carefully, a floor at a time.

Not so with those other towers, of course, which pancaked to the ground 20 years ago today, taking the lives of almost 2,700 with them. As is so often the case, we hadn’t known what we had until we lost it. We also hadn’t known that terrorists with fake IDs were learning how to fly planes — but not to land them. There was ignorance within our innocence. Perhaps there must always be.

In the days and weeks that followed 9/11, I cooked up a storm. I made bacon-and-egg breakfasts, chopped vegetables for stews and soups. I drug out the crockpot and pressed it into service. I was making food for the bereaved and serving it to my family. It felt like a way to heal.

But that was long ago. Our problems have metastasized. The terrorism is still present but now we also have a pandemic, climate change disasters, and an ignominious end to the war we started to avenge the 9/11 attacks. So many challenges … and so little consensus on how to deal with them.

Ten years ago, I wrote that our children grew up in a different world. Now my children have children. What kind of world will they inherit?

A Different Thursday

A Different Thursday

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For most of the summer, we’ve been watching our grandson, Isaiah, every Thursday. The little tyke and his mom head over here early in the morning, and Isaiah’s daddy picks him up in the afternoon. But starting this week, Isaiah has begun going to a family daycare provider, so it was quiet around here yesterday.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a babysitter-type person. Watching Isaiah (or granddaughter Bernadette) full-time are not jobs I’ve lobbied to have. Much as I adore my grandbabies, I know my strengths and weaknesses — and a daycare provider I’m not.

But I love to be around the babies, and watching them grow and change is a greater joy than I could have imagined. All of which is to say.that yesterday I missed the feel of a little head on my shoulder and of little arms around my neck, the softness of baby skin and the dearness of hands so plump that the wrist line looks like a bracelet.

I missed the devilish smile when Isaiah bangs the cabinet doors or opens up the crisper drawer, finds an apple and bites into it. Watching babies: so much of it is funny, so much of it is tedious, so much of it is tactile. So much of it is all of these at once. 

Before there were grandchildren I thought I remembered what it was like to have a baby in the house, But it turns out, I had forgotten. 

(Isaiah and friend plot their escape.)

Tranquil Contemplation

Tranquil Contemplation

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When 19th-century statesman Henry Clay needed a respite from his life as the “Great Compromiser,” he retreated to the shady groves of Ashland, his Kentucky estate. There, as the sign tells us, he walked the trails of his beloved farm, using them for “tranquil contemplation” of the issues at hand.

For Clay, as for many of us, walking and thinking went hand in hand. Maybe these strolls reinvigorated the legislator after the rigors of rough-and-tumble politics. Maybe they inspired some of his signature moves.

But even if they didn’t, the paths Clay created remain for current-day walkers to explore. When I strolled them two weeks ago, I felt the hush of the giant oaks and sycamores. They stilled my buzzing brain. 

Reading and Weeding

Reading and Weeding

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The reading and weeding I did yesterday seem worthy of a post. The reading was for class, a chapter called Biology and Ideology. It was about Social Darwinism, eugenics, the values with which science can be laden, the ways science can be used. 

I take notes as I read, because it helps me concentrate and remember. Reading a chapter takes a while, then, as I jot down the main points and attempt to digest them. 

Which meant that I was ready for the weeding when it came. I was ready to swing my arms and pull out great fists full of stilt grass, toss it over the chicken wire fence. The motion freed my limbs, loosened my brain.

Wouldn’t it be nice if every day held a perfect combination of mental and physical work? I’m not saying mine did yesterday. But it was close. 

(No picture of weeds handy; here’s a shot snapped on the way to class.)

Up Early

Up Early

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I’m up early enough today that the morning is still getting to know itself. Crickets have yet to turn in; their chirps form the rhythm section for which bird song supplies the melody. 

Copper has not only gone outside but has scampered down the deck stairs, an accomplishment no longer guaranteed and thus appreciated more. And in other pet news, when I uncovered the birds, Toby, the newbie, had found the highest perch and looked quite pleased with himself.

I hear bluejays and crows calling as I rise from the couch to make my tea. The back door is open. The back yard is mowed. Reading and weeding await me.

The details of a day I’m privileged to watch unfold. 

(A photo I took Saturday, a few miles from home.)

Labor Day?

Labor Day?

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It’s my first Labor Day without a paid, full-time job to return to the next day. Does it feel different? Strangely enough, not much. I’ve known for a long time that what drives me is more internal than external. 

So there will be no 8 a.m. start time, no Tuesday 1 p.m. meeting — but there will be a to-do list — reading to finish, a class to attend, an appointment. And then there are the everyday tasks, the ones I don’t have to list: writing, walking, posting here. 

It has me thinking — what is labor, anyway?  And what is leisure? 

“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do,” said Mark Twain. 

But sometimes a body enjoys what it is obliged to do so much that it doesn’t seem like work. And now that my working life has changed, I realize that to make it full and rich I must insert tasks that I’m not obliged— and am maybe even afraid — to do. Is that labor? Is it leisure? 

On this sunny Labor Day, with a light breeze rifling the papers on my outside “desk” (the glass-topped table) … I say, who cares? 

The Company of Walkers

The Company of Walkers

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Sometimes the solo walker craves the solo trail, to beg off from the world and the bustle. But other times, a peopled path is welcome.  

A few Sundays ago I had one of those days — a mid-morning walk on the Glade Trail filled with dog-walkers and baby strollers, with runners and saunterers, with whole families, too.

And no wonder: it was early enough to be comfortable and late enough to accommodate the Sunday sleepers-in. 

The smiles and nods gladdened my walk, made me feel part of a company of walkers, rag-tag and accidental, but a company just the same. 

Short Season

Short Season

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I had long remembered the essay I’m about to excerpt but didn’t have it at my fingertips until I found it in a battered file folder of clippings a few weeks ago. I can’t credit it to any one author; it was an editorial in the New York Times. But I’ve thought about it often this time of year, during these golden days of just enough warmth and just enough light, days of languid loveliness like the one we have right now, temperature not even 80, humidity no more than 40, cloudless sky.

Labor Day is really the beginning of a short season all its own, an in-between time, a month of not-quite-summer, not-yet-fall. That season, whatever you call it, often feels more like the new year than the New Year itself — new books, new exhibitions, new music, new commitments, and never mind that it has all been in the planning for months.  

The city is full again and no longer in dishabille. The leaves are still green. None of the races, pennant or political, have been run to the wire just yet. Night closes in on both ends of day, and still on fair evenings the light seems to linger. The subways seem to exhale. ….

This is the time we should take off from work — only we never do — to watch summer and fall collide, to feel the sharp nights and the warm days, to walk through a garden that is ripening and dying all at once. In the country, a morning will come soon enough when all the gnats have disappeared, a sign that this short season is over.