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Author: Anne Cassidy

Walker Meets Ice

Walker Meets Ice

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These days, walks are timed for optimal warmth and light. They must also flow around work projects and meetings, which is how I found myself looking for strips of pavement amid the icy patches on our street yesterday about 3 p.m. 

The snow had finally stopped, which wasn’t altogether welcome — it was fun living inside a snow globe for a few days — and a stiff breeze was drying off the wet parts of the road. The problem was that it was freezing the slush almost as quickly. 

I’m a fearless walker … until ice enters the picture. I have a healthy respect for it and will be glad when it melts away. Until then, I will make my way through the landscape very slowly … if at all! 

(Above: where ice should stay, in my humble opinion!) 

Snowscape

Snowscape

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The snowy Sunday quietly and steadily remained a snowy Monday, and has now — wonder of wonders! — become a snowy Tuesday. 

As I write, the flurries that made it difficult to keep a path clean for Copper down the deck stairs (he’s old and slips a lot) have continued flying. The railing I scraped off yesterday has at least another inch or two of white coating. 

Best of all, the winter wonderland brought to us by 28 degrees and enough cold aloft to produce these flakes still falling remains a vision, a snowscape, a sight for sore eyes. 

Snowy Sunday

Snowy Sunday

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It’s not just that the snow fell, finally, the first significant accumulation in two years, but that it fell on Sunday, when many of us could enjoy it. Into the snow went dogs and babies (two of the latter for the first time!). Out of it (and the time if provided) came photos; chicken and wild rice soup; and chocolate chip muffin bread.

Mostly what came of it was total relaxation. There wasn’t much I could do outside. And although there was much I could have done inside, the snow gave me permission to ignore it. 

I read in the morning, watched television while eating lunch, and as the soup simmered and the bread baked, I sat in the darkening living room looking at the white world outside. 

The Shot

The Shot

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In the end it’s no more than a pinprick, but into it has gone the world’s hope and desperation — the former more than the latter, I believe, but you never know. 

The second will come four weeks from now, and then … what? A sort of freedom, to be sure. But still no old life as we know it. 

Maybe in time, when enough of us have had what I was lucky enough to get yesterday, and that due not just to science and ingenuity but also to the kindness of a friend, who alerted me to the arrival of vaccines in a hospital where I had not checked for them. 

It was a longer drive than I would have liked … but it was worth it. 

Timbers Sighing

Timbers Sighing

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The wind came barreling in from the west last night, and as usual in this house, it’s quite a noisy experience. It’s not just the wind itself, howling and yawping (that latter word courtesy of a book I’m reading about the poet Walt Whitman); it’s the way these four walls respond to it.

The bamboo (rid of Monday’s ice) scratches the siding, and the sound this leaves in its wake makes me think of an old-fashioned sailing ship. There is that same sense of being at the mercy of the elements, of the very timbers sighing. 

To counteract these harsh noises, though, there is also the purring of the furnace. The colder the night, the more often it’s on, of course, and in it, there is the promise of warmth and safety and civilization.

Pilot Light

Pilot Light

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Yesterday would be the best day of the week, the weather folks said. Work and freezing rain had kept me inside the last day two days, so I wasn’t taking any chances. Into the outside I went, all parka-ed and gloved. 

The wind that has been picking up steam for the last 12 hours was only getting started then, so I could make my way along the usual loop, up and down the neighborhood’s main street.  Still, it felt colder than it should have felt.

We’ve come to that point in the winter when my blood feels thinned out by shivering. So much of it is a mental game. Not the cold itself — I know there are actual numbers involved there — but how I approach it. 

Looseness is key, not tensing the muscles, not resisting the chill as much as moving through it like the human stove that I, that all of us, can be. But sometimes, yesterday for example, it feels as if my pilot light has gone out. 

By Armchair to Cambodia

By Armchair to Cambodia

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We’re closing in on the end of the longest month. Outside, the pandemic rages and borders are closing. Time for some armchair travel.

Two years ago I was preparing for a trip to Cambodia. I had yet to see moonlight on the Mekong or sip coconut milk from a straw. I had yet to visit Angkor Wat or Ta Prohm or Bayon. I had yet to meet Bunthan and Dilen and Johnny, the people I traveled with in country. 

But soon I would ride the roads with them. I would learn that Johnny was about to leave his job as driver and go into real estate (in fact, ours was his last trip). I would learn to count on Bunthan’s excellent translation and Dilen’s knack for noticing what others missed. 

I would also meet the people my organization serves: brave women and men who had known far more of life’s difficulties than triumphs. But still, they were building better lives, and we were there to celebrate them.

Armchair travel is comfortable, yes, but ah, I miss the real thing!

Stop Time

Stop Time

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The rain fell and froze last night, and now the bamboo is bowing under the weight of it. Poor bamboo! It’s a nuisance in so many ways, but it forms a lovely screen for the deck, so I hope the day warms fast enough to free the gangly plant before it snaps.

Ice storms lack the beauty of snowfalls. They hold within themselves the hard edges of winter and none of its softness. 

Still, there is beauty in the glinting and there is wonder in the way droplets are trapped in poses they had hours ago. Ice stops time in its tracks. 

Brush Strokes

Brush Strokes

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A bit of painting over the weekend has me thinking about brush strokes, about the rhythm and the touch of them, the way you angle the brush to feather the strokes. 

I paint as little as possible, so the arm is rusty, but, like riding a bicycle, it comes back quickly. 

In painting, as in life, you must be both tough and gentle. You must know how much pressure to apply and when. Push too hard and the paint splatters, too lightly and there’s no coverage.

Painting is also comparable to life in this fact — that by the time you get the hang of it, it’s time to stop. 

Benediction

Benediction

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Who can say why it happens? The wind howls but seems dignified in its cry. A bank of clouds in the west pushes morning light into unexpected corners of the sky. Dawn purples the east and the rest of the firmament follows suit. It is strange but wonderful.

There is more, of course: the content of my dreams, already faded. The tang of the air. The promise of sweet, milky tea. Knowing that if I look out the back window at 10 I may see a fat red fox trotting across the yard. 

Whatever the elements I enjoy the result: the morning as benediction.