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Author: Anne Cassidy

Tender Foot

Tender Foot

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I woke early and padded outside for the newspaper, whose slap on the driveway had provided the final whoosh of my awakening this morning (bobbing as I was on the edge of consciousness and waiting for just such a prompt). 

It’s too early for shoes so I walked to the edge of the driveway with bare feet. It’s warm enough for that this morning, though I’ve been known to go barefoot in much cooler temps. 

Today when I made my way gingerly to the street I thought about how tough my feet used to be when I was a kid. It took a few weeks every summer to harden the soles, but after that I was off, free to dash out of the house, banging the screen door behind me: no socks, no shoes, just a shirt and shorts and a tan that deepened as the weeks wore on. (This was long before sunscreen and there were precious few trees in the new neighborhood of two-bedroom bungalows.)

Tough feet were a point of pride. They indicated a certain street-smartness — or was it street-hardness? — and they showed that you were inhabiting the summer as you should, making it a part of yourself.

Now my feet are not only stockinged and shod, they are orthoticized (if that’s a word … and my spell check tells me it is not). They are the soles and toes of an adult who works on her bottom — and not on her feet. But they can still remember the freedom they once felt. And I like to think that, deep in their neurons and tissues, they can feel it still. 

Still Outside

Still Outside

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I write this post as I have written so many others the past few months: sitting on the deck in this lovely outside “room,” where I have a front-row seat on bird flight, leaf fall and squirrel shenanigans. 

It’s quite mild and pleasant now, but Monday morning I took the call to al fresco work to rather ridiculous proportions. Bundled in three layers of cotton, wool and down, I cut the fingertips off a pair of old gloves and donned a hat, too. My colleagues said I looked ready for the ski slopes. Instead, I was ready for a hot bath. It took a while to thaw out! 

The fact is, I don’t want to move inside. Moving inside means winter is coming, means the boundaries are closing in. I have a fantasy that I can work out here at least down to 50 degrees F. And, as long as it’s not windy (which was Monday’s problem), I think I can. 

As for now, I’m looking at the splendor around me: trees just starting to turn, flowering annuals holding bloom, sunlight dappling the lawn. It’s October, it’s mellow, and (yes!) I’m still working outside. 

The Summer Book

The Summer Book

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I picked up Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book because it showed up in a list of books that feature grandparents. There are precious few of these, I’ve noticed. 

Jansson’s Grandmother (she’s given no other name) is crotchety and wise and foolish and loving. She smokes cigarettes and breaks into a neighbor’s house. No cookie-baking for this grandma. She’s a renegade. But she also understands her granddaughter Sophia, pushes her and puts her in situations where she is bound to succeed. 

Grandmother also levels with herself and with others (when she’s not lying, that is). Here she is after the break-in: 

“My dear child,” said Grandmother impatiently [to Sophia], “every human being has to make his own mistakes.” … Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn’t even realize that they had forgotten.”

That’s the kind of gem Jansson strews about for us through the pages of this slim and lovely book, all of it amidst a natural world (an island in the Gulf of Finland) that is as beautiful as it is dangerous. 

Seasonal Migration

Seasonal Migration

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It’s time for the annual migration. I’m not talking about birds flying south for the winter but of the seasonal switch from shorts and t-shirts to tights and sweaters. 

One thing struck me yesterday as I laundered and folded and ran up and down the stairs carrying warm clothes up and cool clothes down. It was that many of these clothes would be better off going not up or down but out of the house entirely.

How many sweaters and shirts and scarves do I hang onto because I love the person who gave them to me? The answer is … many! 

Yesterday I told myself once again that I need to stop hanging onto these duds. It’s one thing to have papers and books and knick-knacks you cannot bear to part with … but to have clothes that are this way, too, is far more inconvenient. What’s required is a certain ruthlessness. I’m awaiting its arrival. 

A Patch of Blue

A Patch of Blue

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It’s easy to be morose when the great trees fall, as indeed they have done, over and over and over again. 

But when they come down, they free up a spot of sky. 

I snapped this shot yesterday, returning from a walk in what I’ve now come to think of as tree-falling weather: rain-saturated ground with a stiff wind from the west. 

This empty sky used to be filled with a tall tree. Not it’s open, free, giving us all a patch of blue.*

(*Writing this reminds me of the lovely film by that name, a 1965 flick staring Sidney Poitier and Shelley Winters. One worth watching.)

Unsettling

Unsettling

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I write this only minutes after learning that the president has tested positive for coronavirus, as a year we thought could not be more unsettling has suddenly become more so. 

I look back to my earliest posts on the new order and think about how much has changed since then: our notions of disease and contagion, the reality of remote work, the way this virus has infiltrated almost every aspect of our lives from how we shop to how often we see our dearest family and friends.

And now this. 

Is there anyone who has not suffered from the disease and the social and economic havoc it has caused? Some, of course, so much more than others. A prayer and a hope today for our country, that it emerge from this stronger, healthier and more civil. 

New Month

New Month

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The witch hazel tree, first to bloom, is also the first to turn. But this year, other trees are following suit. Cold evenings have also tinged the maples and oaks. 

In the garden, the weeds I haven’t pulled are thinning and retreating on their own. Summer is giving up the ghost.

It’s a new month, an autumnal month. And months matter more in this time of few markers. 

Sleepless in America

Sleepless in America

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It was raining last night, hard at times. It pounded the roof and formed a curtain of sound between the house and the world. It seemed to be washing away all that had come before, including the presidential debate we had just watched.

I thought it would be difficult to sleep, but exhaustion and the sound of rain on the roof carried me away for five hours, when I awoke chest pounding, thoughts ricocheting. No need to go into those; let’s just say they weren’t pretty. 

But there was one consolation: Last night, I imagine, I was not alone. I can only assume there were legions of us tossing and turning. Last night, I suspect, it was the exception rather than the rule to be sleepless in America. 

The Raven’s Debut

The Raven’s Debut

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Last night I caught most of “You Can’t Take it With You,” Frank Capra’s 1938 film staring James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Basil Rathbone and … Jimmy the raven. It was first of many appearances for Jimmy in Capra films, most notably (at least for me) in It’s a Wonderful Life. 

I’m not a Capra expert, but I certainly picked up on themes I’ve known from his other films — the little people against the big people, the importance of friendship, the corrupting influence of money, and the dearness of animals. 

In this film Jimmy the raven helps make fireworks (don’t ask) and a small kitten sits charmingly atop a sheaf of papers that one of the characters is typing up for a book. She decided to become a writer when a typewriter was accidentally delivered to their house. Perhaps as good a reason as any to take up the profession.

Whether it was the writing, the raven or the sheer zaniness of the plot, the film left me light-hearted. Not a bad way to end the day.  

A Post at Midday

A Post at Midday

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While I would like to bookend last evening’s “A Post at Sundown” with “A Post at Sunrise,” alas it is far too late for that. Perhaps “A Post at Midday.” 

Which gets to one of my favorite topics, which is time: the numerous time zones in which we live — not just around the world but within individual lives. To the young, days and weeks pass oh so slowly. To those of us who have a few more years under our belts, they fly. 

And nowhere does this reveal itself more clearly than with the arrival of a new generation. To a grandparent, the changes a baby undergoes during those first precious weeks and months, from a completely helpless newborn with wise eyes that seem to carry within them the wisdom of the ages to a smiley six-week-old are doubly amazing. Miraculous in and of themselves — and more so for us, because the transformation occurs at warp speed. 

With change happening this quickly, no wonder A Post at Sunrise becomes … A Post at Midday.