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Author: Anne Cassidy

Best Present Ever!

Best Present Ever!

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Today there’s another little person in the world, my newest grandchild, who just gave me the best birthday present ever: arriving yesterday at 6:30 p.m., just hours before the day I came into the world a few (ahem) years ago.

Who knows what triggers labor. I don’t know the latest research. But I like to think there’s something magical about it. At least two of my three children would have different birthdays if they were of this generation. Doctors don’t let women go two weeks beyond their due dates anymore. 

But this little girl came on her own steam, at her own time. She decided she wanted her own special day. I can’t wait to meet her!

Woods Walking Track

Woods Walking Track

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Choosing a walking path for the day is a little like choosing an outfit, which means that a weather report may be involved. When showers are forecast, as they have been recently, it’s good to pick a circular trail, because there will be less distance to sprint if caught in a downpour. 

I had just such a trail in mind the other day. It’s one of my earliest strolling finds, a peach of a path that makes not just one circle but two. I take the larger loop if I have more time, the shorter one if I don’t. When I’m dodging raindrops, I take as many loops as I can before the wind starts to whistle. 

It struck me the other day that it was almost like walking on a track, with its precise quarter-mile distance, so you know automatically, with your revolutions, how far you’ve gone. 

This “track” was not quite as round or as predictable — and I’m not entirely sure about the mileage. But I could find out. 

Another Way of Living

Another Way of Living

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Because of its strict property boundaries, I don’t live in Reston, but I walk on its trails, buy strawberries at its farmers market, and take yoga at its community center.  

For many years, I haven’t known where I live: My mailing address says Herndon, my kids attended high school in Oakton, and I commuted from Vienna.  You could say I live in the suburbs of northern Virginia, but for a person who cares about place, that’s always rankled.

Since the pandemic, though, I’ve been gravitating to the place that suits me best, and that is Reston, a community founded and developed by Robert E. Simon (hence Reston) 60 years ago. Last night I watched a film made to celebrate the town’s 50th anniversary: “Another Way of Living: The Story of Reston, VA.” 

To say it makes me proud is an understatement. It roots me, inspires me, makes me want to move a mile away just to live in Reston officially. I probably won’t do that. But I’ll walk its trails with more awe than usual. 

(The Van Gogh Bridge in Reston’s Lake Anne. More on the film in future posts.)

A Whiff of Honeysuckle

A Whiff of Honeysuckle

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The aroma of honeysuckle is in the air, and every year I want to hold onto it, to have it close at hand so I can inhale it whenever I walk out the door. I dream of rooting a sprig of the vine, planting it, and training it to tumble over my back fence.

This year I came close to doing that, was even scouting out potential plant “donors.” Then I came to my senses. Introduce another invasive species when our yard is full of knotweed, stilt grass and bamboo? I must be crazy.

Honeysuckle is a wild thing, after all, and it’s best left where it is, mostly in the park or common land. A whiff may be all I get. But sometimes, a whiff is enough.

Memorial at Ball’s Bluff

Memorial at Ball’s Bluff

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I couldn’t visit my parents’ graves at a national cemetery in Kentucky, so yesterday I thought I’d do the next best thing: visit a national cemetery in Virginia. Arlington immediately sprang to mind … and just as quickly left it as I thought about the traffic.

Instead, I found a small national cemetery — the third smallest in the U.S., as a matter of fact — located near a Civil War battlefield, Ball’s Bluff. You can hike down to the Potomac, which Union soldiers crossed before the battle on October 21, 1861. 

The skirmish did not go well for them. The Confederates prevailed, just as they had at the Battle of Bull Run a few months earlier, and a U.S. senator,  Edward Baker, was killed. His death is commemorated with a marker, and the small walled cemetery there holds the remains of 54 Union soldiers. 

It was a warm day, but the paths were shady, and at the trail’s end, the Potomac River was calm and peaceful, a contrast to that day … and so many others.

Blooming Where Planted

Blooming Where Planted

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For so long this has been a loaded phrase for me — “blooming where planted.” It carries with it more than a hint of compromise. Or maybe it’s wistfulness, that I didn’t stay where I was planted but moved several times as a young adult before settling where I did. 

And then there’s the fact that I’ve ended up in the suburbs. Heaven knows I carp enough about that.

But today, the angle of the light striking the grass on the lawns I passed, the scent of the air, rich with loam and honeysuckle, made me think that there could not be a much better place to be planted. And that whatever the mixed emotions with which I’ve traditionally viewed the saying, there is a nobility in trying to flourish wherever you are, in contenting yourself with the situation at hand. 

(Pebble people frolic along one of my favorite routes.)

Rose Time

Rose Time

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The climbing rose peaked a few days ago, but the plant is still weighed heavy by blossoms, and when I sit on the deck to write the air is filled with fragrance. 

When I look out at the yard through its flowers, it’s a little like looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses.

But at some point, I must squeegee off the glass-topped table and abandon for a minute my journal or laptop to sweep up petals with the old broom I leave outside. 

What better way to enjoy the rose than by immersing myself in its detritus, still soft and pearly pink?

New Citizen Abo

New Citizen Abo

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Almost five years ago, his father stood with others from around the world and promised to defend this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. My son-in-law Appolinaire recited the oath, shook hands with a customs officer and received a certificate of naturalization. 

Today, Appolinaire and my daughter will watch as their son becomes an American citizen. Prince arrived in the U.S. from Benin, West Africa, at age 11, on the first birthday of his baby sister.  She will be in the audience today, as will all of us, watching with pride as Prince, now 13, receives a gift he may not understand as well as his father did but which he will come to appreciate in time. 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It’s still a remarkable statement, still a wondrous philosophy on which to build a nation. And when you see the fervor with which new citizens embrace it, our country and its founding ideals feel as fresh and extraordinary as they did almost 250 years ago. 


(A snapshot from a 2019 naturalization ceremony)
Connectivity

Connectivity

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On a walk I took Monday and may take again today, I noticed how rich life feels when the path you are walking is not just an afterthought to a road but is a network complete unto itself. 

It leads from place to place, revealing parks and benches and fountains not easily seen otherwise. It has numerous intersections and junctions. You must know which way to turn or you will be lost, though not for long.

Such a trail has segments you recognize and enjoy: a few hundred feet winding among townhouses in the beginning, a wooded stretch, a ball field and little free library. Crossing one street, passing under another, and finally winding up in an urban village, complete with café, bookstore and community center. 

A walk from place to place is about more than exercise. It’s about connectivity. 

Immortality

Immortality

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Today, my dear friend Nancy will be laid to rest in the Indiana earth, less than 150 miles from where we first met. But where is she now, really? 

My faith tells me that she is sleeping and will rise in glory on the Last Day. My skeptical self says, “Hmmm…” 

One thing I know for sure: Nancy lives on in the hearts of those who love her. It’s an immortality in which we all can believe — and to which we all can aspire. 

(The Bernini columns in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, one of many wonders I saw for the first time with Nancy. Photo: Wikipedia)