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Author: Anne Cassidy

Learning the Significance

Learning the Significance

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I learned from the Writer’s Almanac that today is the birthday of Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes. I remember reading that book the first time and marveling at the pathos and the humor and that marvelous opener: 

“It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and all the terrible things they did to us for 800 long years.”

Angela’s Ashes was on the best seller list for three years, won a Pulitzer and sold four million copies in hardcover. McCourt is the patron saint of late bloomers. He wrote the book in his mid-sixties. 

Re-reading McCourt’s obituary I came across this lovely anecdote. When speaking with high school students in New York in 1997, he said this about his book and the writing of it, something that should gladden the hearts of all those who labor with pen and keyboard, or the hearts of all of us, period. “I learned,” he said, “the significance of my own insignificant life.” 

The Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect

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It’s a beautiful day here, with a light breeze, low humidity and hummingbirds topping up frequently at the nectar bar. The perfect day to take breaks in the yard, picking up sticks and pulling stilt grass.

A few minutes ago the chainsaws revving in the distance finally claimed their victim as Folkstone lost another of its giant oaks. By now I recognize the harbingers, those first crashing-through-brush sounds that are followed by the thud of a massive trunk hitting the earth. I almost felt the ground shake. And I wasn’t the only one. A distant dog began to bark, too. 

It made me think of the butterfly effect, a part of chaos theory which posits that small changes can have large effects, with the oft-used metaphorical example of a tornado’s path being affected by the flapping of a butterfly’s wings far away. 

Although that example is a simplification, small changes do have big consequences. We see it all the time in our lives, in everything from the first tiny crack in a windshield to the first small rupture in a relationship. I think that’s why the concept of the butterfly effect caught the popular imagination. And why I thought of today, as the tree fell and the dog barked and I … wrote my post about it.

In Person

In Person

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Yesterday’s rain has cleared out — an affront to the beautiful bridal shower my sister planned for her oldest daughter, a shower that went on as planned despite almost horizontal rain blowing into and around the gazebo near the Severn River, where it was held. 

The shower had already been moved outside to thwart the coronavirus, so the fact that we ended up with an atypical August monsoon made for the kind of event where everyone just shrugged and went on with it because, really, what else can you do.

But being there with family and friends yesterday reminded me of what life was like before mid-March, reminded me of gathering and chatting and pleasures we formerly took for granted. 

I know we must be careful when we meet in person, but it’s good to be reminded that behind these squares on a screen are real flesh-and-blood people. They’re around now and will be later, when all of this is behind us.

(The Severn River at sunset — in calmer, drier weather. )

Made with Love

Made with Love

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Though I’m not of the Facebook generation — and am barely of Facebook — I know enough about its etiquette to know not to publish a photo of my new grandson before his mother does. But there’s no law against grandmotherly gushing, so gush I will.

In short, the little guy is perfect. His dear little fingers and toes, his full head of dark hair, his skin that is so soft it’s like you were touching nothing at all. I could have held him for hours, just looking, marveling at his dear face, his sudden yawns and stretches. 

A week ago, Claire and I had sat knee-to-knee going through her old baby clothes that I had washed and brought over. There was the little bib that spelled “C-L-A-I-R-E” in counted cross-stitch, the pink shirt that said “Special Delivery: Reston Hospital Maternity Center” — two girly things this boy baby may never wear. But plenty of gender-neutral duds as well, and those he will don, along with all his new clothes that at this point still swallow him up. 

I was struck yesterday, as I will be over and over again, of life’s repeating itself in endless variation, of the love of his parents for him and for each other.  In another universe, with other rules, new life may spring fully formed from soil or wood or metal. I’m glad that in this universe it arrives in an impossibly tiny package, made with love. 

Brahms Second

Brahms Second

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A morning errand, almost there, the radio on a news station. It would be a long segment about something I didn’t want to hear, so I pushed button six on the dial. 

The car filled with Brahms, the Second Symphony, the finale. I hadn’t heard it in a while, had forgotten how sonorous Brahms can be, how you get swept up in the sound so that nothing else seems to matter.

I only heard the last 10 minutes of the work … but it was enough.

On This Day …

On This Day …

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Yesterday, still giddy with the news of our first grandchild, I had no time for the details. Today, I look up, note the day, August 14, which was Claire’s due date, and the famous people who were born on it: comedian Steve Martin; Russell Baker, author of the lovely memoir Growing Up; “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson; and Doc Halliday, who survived the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. 

Those would have been interesting birthday mates, for sure. But it turns out there are some interesting characters born on August 13, too. There is sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and was the most famous woman in the world at one time; William Caxton, the first man to print a book in 1475, using the printing press that had just been invented 25 years earlier; and director Alfred Hitchcock, who made “Psycho, “Vertigo” and “Rear Window.”

So the little guy will have plenty of birthday company as he makes his way through life. For now, he is eating and sleeping and getting to know the world. For now, he is still pure potential. 

(Thanks to the Writer’s Almanac for these facts.)

Happiest Day

Happiest Day

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“The happiest days are the days when babies come,” said Melanie in “Gone with the Wind.” For my family, this is a happiest day, as we welcome our first grandchild and first boy baby in a generation.

It’s an awesome thought, to know there is this new life in the world: the little fingers and little toes, the face that seems old and wise, a visitor from beyond.

We are grateful and excited, though nowhere near as much as his proud and weary parents. And we look forward to tomorrow … when we hope we’ll be able to hold the little guy. 

(Using this photo again, though I used it less than a month ago, because it’s of my sweet Claire, already loving babies, though she was barely more than a baby herself. Now she has a baby of her own!)

Shooting Stars

Shooting Stars

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By 3:30 this morning the sky was filled with thunder and rain. But only a few hours earlier, it was illuminated not by lightning but by the intermittent flashes of the Perseid Meteor Shower.

Viewed from the trampoline, which allows for an upturned gaze without a crick in the neck, the stitches of light were surprising and ethereal, each one a gift I didn’t expect to receive. But the best one of all came when I’d only been at my post a few minutes. 

It looked more like a artist’s rendering of a comet, with an orange-yellow fireball and a streaking tail that flowed into the velvety darkness. It may have been an “earthgazer,” a type of meteor I only learned about today, known for its longer streak of brightness and most commonly appearing before midnight. 

Whatever it was … it — and all the shooting stars I saw last night — took my breath away. They reminded me of the great beyond. They reminded me to look up. 

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Humidity

Humidity

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Humidity and dew points are meteorological variables that I’ve yet to fully understand. But I feel them and I see them and this time of the year that’s all that matters.

On after-dark walks with Copper I see dew glistening in the grass like so many diamond chips. Moisture lingers in the morning, so much so that the doggie comes back from his early constitutionals with tummy hair drenched by it. 

As the day heats up all this moisture becomes a weight I try to move with fans and shifts of posture and anything else I can come up with. Sometimes I give in and move inside. But mostly, I just live with it in the outside office I persist in inhabiting. Because it’s summer, and it’s humid, and before long it won’t be either.  

Endless Summer?

Endless Summer?

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As we head toward the midpoint of August, the summer starts to feel a little frayed around the edges. The heat still shimmers on still afternoons, katydids still serenade us on sultry evenings. But the soul of summer, its freedom and looseness, is tightening up.

In a typical summer, you might see bright yellow school buses  lumbering down the lanes, going on dry runs, striking fear in the hearts of children — and gladness and relief in their parents. 

But this year, summer continues without this ominous marker. School will be virtual here so buses will remain parked in random lots around the region. It’s what we always dreamed of as kids, what we didn’t know enough to dread as parents. 

It won’t be an endless summer. But right about now, it’s starting to feel like it might …