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Author: Anne Cassidy

Smell of Burning Leaves

Smell of Burning Leaves

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Yesterday’s walk through the fading light of a late fall afternoon reminded me of what has been missing from the season. I caught a whiff of it when I rounded the corner. It was that autumn elixir — the smell of burning leaves.

Its source was unknown — and even if it wasn’t, I would protect its identity, since the practice must surely be illegal. In fact, I hesitate to mention it at all with California burning.

But neither illegality nor political incorrectness can erase the fact that I love this scent, that it fills me with both poignance and peace, an unlikely pairing that takes me right back to childhood.

I would have been playing all day in that scent, would have been jumping in those leaves, in big crisp piles of them before they were set to smolder. And soon I would be walking back into my mother’s kitchen, not my own. And it was the promise of that warmth and closeness that contrasted so perfectly with the lonely fragrance of ash and oak.

This, along with the scent of tobacco wafting from the big auction houses on the west end of town,  were the “smell-scapes” of my Kentucky childhood.  I don’t smell either of them anymore.  But they’re there. All it takes is the whiff of burning leaves to bring them back.

On Veteran’s Day

On Veteran’s Day

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It’s impossible not to think of my favorite veteran on Veteran’s Day, so Dad will be much on my mind today. And, because it is a federal holiday, I’ll be able to drive into the office and back, creating a more “flow” commute than usual. Beyond these realities, what’s on my mind this Veteran’s Day is that this dear country, which so many have fought and died for, needs us in ways it never has before.

When my son-in-law took the oath of citizenship last August, he pledged to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Those of us lucky enough to be born here never take such an oath, unless we serve in the military or other public service. But I think many of us would go to great lengths to make this nation a less divisive place.

So what can we do? Maybe something that’s not very complicated. Something that doesn’t require signing up or shipping out. Something like this: that we try every day to understand those on the other side of the political divide.

Mirror Image

Mirror Image

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My neighborhood does not immediately scream “cookie cutter houses.” Homes nestle among trees on lots of varying shapes and sizes. Exterior sidings and trims sport an array of colors and styles.

But, truth be told, there are only a few “models” here, and stepping into a neighbor’s house often feels like being on the wrong side of the looking glass. I mean this quite literally since there’s a 50-percent chance, at least on my street, that you’ll be in house that’s the mirror-image of your own.

This was the case yesterday, when we went to look at our neighbor’s bathroom, searching for ideas of how to improve our own. And there, like a twin raised by another family,  was the same house with a very different treatment. The bathroom was about two feet larger, reconfigured and reshaped. And indeed it was instructive in its use of space.

But that’s not what I’ll remember most. Instead, it’s the living room wall that wasn’t removed and the paneled family room that exists because of it; it’s the wallpaper in the hallway and the portrait above the couch. It’s all the unique details that make their house their home.

Cold Air

Cold Air

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It feels acrid in the nostrils and chilling to the bone. It’s the frigid air that has moved in and seemingly settled here.

Shivering on a short walk with Copper yesterday, I pondered how long it is till next summer, telling myself I have to do better. And, very shortly afterward, I did. I went for my own walk and, because it was brisker, the ole bod heated up, the everyday miracle of pumping blood.

And it was while on that walk that I thought about how cold air differs from warm, the way it smells — or doesn’t.  The way it tingles in the fingers and takes away the breath.

Soon I’ll grow used to it, but these first few days it’s an alien creature, something I welcome only cautiously back into my life.

Warming the Pot

Warming the Pot

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It’s something I do without thinking, idly swirling hot water around my ceramic pot before brewing  my morning tea. I learned it long ago, when I first visited England and took on some Anglophile habits, such as drinking tea with milk.

Warming the pot, I was told, produces a better cup of tea. It prepares the cold surface for the rush of boiling water. The tea will be more fragrant and potent for this effort.

So all these years I’ve boiled the water, swished it around, poured it out — not unlike rinse and spit — and only then have I made the pot of tea. All of this even though I only use teabags — and an Irish brand, to boot.

This morning, for some reason, I wondered what would happen if I took the same time warming myself as I do warming this Brown Betty? What if I woke up gradually, reading in bed, then did some gentle stretches, some devotionals, some writing in my journal … and only then began the mad dash to wash up, make lunch, walk Copper and drive to Metro?

It’s a lovely fantasy — but only a fantasy, one I can dream about … while warming the pot.

“OK, Boomer “

“OK, Boomer “

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Sometimes a phrase hits the zeitgeist so squarely that it becomes the mantra of a generation. For mine, it was “don’t trust anyone over 30.” For the Millennials, it seems to be “OK, Boomer.”

Twice within the last two days I’ve heard or read about “OK, boomer,” the dismissive reply young people make to “olds” who don’t get (fill in the blank) climate change, student debt or how to rotate a PDF.  The phrase lit up the Twitterverse, the editorial pages and will be featured on a radio show I occasionally listen to. There are retorts and retorts of retorts.

Here’s how millennial Morgan Sung ends a Mashable essay on the topic: “Saying ‘OK, Boomer’ now is even funnier because of how pressed the Boomers get. And you know what we say to that? OK, Boomer.”

If I’m aware of something like this, I figure it’s probably on the way out. But just in case it isn’t, I will refrain from generational preaching. Because that would just be playing into their hands, you know.

Knowledge Workers

Knowledge Workers

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Like most “knowledge workers,” I spend a lot of time sitting. This is made painfully clear at the end of work days when I move stiff muscles up and out of the building, onto the streets and sidewalks of Crystal City.

A standing desk and an office to stand in has improved this a little. But I still get into my rut, which is too much time on my behind and too little time on my feet.

Of course, those of us who wax rhapsodic about standing desks might sing a new song if we were street cleaners, baristas, or letter-carriers. Too much sitting is a problem of affluence, and that’s something we knowledge workers shouldn’t forget.

Still, I regularly remind myself of the power of movement. Even a quick stroll down the hall for a glass of water can rejigger brain cells. This is also a good time to be thankful for … a job that lets me sit down.

Our Only World

Our Only World

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In his essay collection Our Only World, Wendell Berry writes of the “deserted country” that results from farmers displaced by progress, whether it be Big Coal or industrial machinery and chemicals.

The result is an emptiness most modern people think normal because they’ve never known it any other way. But Berry, who is 85, remembers a richer, fuller, more peopled countryside. A countryside that included farmers who “walk don’t run,” Berry writes.

“The gait most congenial to agrarian thought and sensibility is walking. It is the gait best suited to paying attention, most conservative of land and equipment, and most permissive of stopping to look or think. Machines, companies, and politicians ‘run.’ Farmers studying their fields travel at a walk.”

It’s one of the reasons I walk, too, because it is the gait “best suited to paying attention.” And though the remnants of a once-rich countryside lie ruined all around me, suburban neighborhoods named for the farms they’ve displaced, there is a point to walking even here.

Because when we walk, we feel just a little more like we belong. And when we feel just a little more like we belong … we care a lot more about the place we live.

A Poor Trade?

A Poor Trade?

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By about 4 p.m. yesterday that extra hour of sleep Saturday night was beginning to seem like a pretty poor trade for the early darkness. The angle of light and the gathering shadows were disorienting, coming as they were a full hour earlier than I was braced to expect them.

In short, it’s “fall back” all over again, half of the crazy exercise in discombobulation we undergo twice a year. In this one we gain sleep and lose light — and in the springtime just the opposite, of course.

As an early riser, I technically shouldn’t mind this shift, because the light we lose in the evening we gain in the morning. But arriving home in darkness truncates the part of the day that belongs to us.  I always feel a bit robbed these first dark evenings.

I’ll get used to it eventually; I always do. And then it will become so much the norm that the bright evenings of early spring will seem an assault on the senses, leaving me blinking, as if someone flipped on the lights in the middle of the night.

Candy is Dandy

Candy is Dandy

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Some wild and wacky weather managed to put a dent in the crowd of tricker-or-treaters coming to the house, which meant — oh, too bad! — we are left with a goodly amount of candy.

This is not something that bothers me. In fact, it’s a perfect excuse to eat something I know is unhealthy. How unhealthy? Probably not very, when taken in moderation. 
Here’s the thing: I don’t drink much anymore because wine and beer give me headaches. I don’t even eat much red meat these days. It’s mostly veggies and fruit and grains — positively Puritanical! 
Which means I try not to feel guilty when I settle into an old episode of “Call the Midwife” with a bag of peanut M&Ms.

(I’ve been waiting two months to use this photo. I snapped it in a restaurant restroom in White Stone, Virginia.)