Browsed by
Author: Anne Cassidy

Driving Home

Driving Home

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday I drove past the house of the woman who watched the girls for a year or two when I was writing a book. Her name was Eva; still is, I imagine. She’s moved back to Hungary and we’ve lost touch.

Eva was reserved and all business when we met, but she proved loving, dependable, creative and quirky. The girls loved her rice pudding and began pronouncing words with a slight Hungarian lilt. “Quintan” (the name of a little boy she also watched) became “Quintone.”

Suzanne was in second grade then so she didn’t got to Eva’s, but most days I would drop Celia off in the morning and Claire mid-day, after picking her up from the kindergarten bus. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it’s what I had.

What I was remembering yesterday, though, was how it felt to be driving the girls home in the afternoon. Suzanne would ride with me to pick up her sisters, and as we chugged home in the ancient blue Volvo wagon, I would have moments of perfect contentment: a good day of writing behind me, the promise of another to come, and most of all, the girls and I together again. Dinner was yet to be cooked, homework yet to be checked, bedtime stories yet to be read. But even then, I knew — told myself — hang on to this moment, it’s as good as it gets.

Floating to the Office

Floating to the Office

Comments 0 Comment

I’m back on the Pentagon bus for a couple weeks, cruising into Crystal City on the early side, hopping off before my stop, hoofing it through south Arlington before 7 a.m. It’s pleasantly cool this morning, and already a hustle-bustle on the streets.

Joggers, yoga-goers with mats slung across their backs, the caffeine-starved piling in to Starbucks and, of course, the dog walkers.

I notice a new restaurant, a crane where there wasn’t one before, an empty lot with an abandoned grocery cart. The smell of croissants or French bread baking. Traffic noise, especially on East-West Highway.

It’s a 15-minute stroll to the office from the first bus stop, and I listen to the same piece all the way, Sleepers Awake, Bach’s cantata, times five. By the time I got here, I was floating.

(Photo from another city walk, in Philadelphia)

Historical Aroma

Historical Aroma

Comments 0 Comment

One of the fringe benefits of working at home is catching little household emergencies before they become big household emergencies.

I’m stretching the term “household emergencies.” Today, while pulling cereal out of the pantry closet, I was met with an aroma that was only slightly less putrid that a decaying animal. It was a rotten potato. This was not a problem last night, but it would have been an even larger problem by 6:30 p.m., which is when I usually roll back in here. Today, though, I could remove the offending vegetable and compost it before too much damage was done.

The point of this post is not to highlight my less-than-stellar housekeeping skills, but to ponder whether there is such a thing as an ancestral aroma sensitivity.

This potato smelled so noxious that I wondered if it had something to do with my Irish ancestry, with the fact that Mom’s relatives mostly came from the west of Ireland and were driven away by the potato famine.

Could I be especially sensitive to this because my great-great-grandparents smelled it all too often?  Putrid potato PTSD?  You never know.

Park Avenue Beat

Park Avenue Beat

Comments 0 Comment

For the last week or so, I’ve been watching old “Perry Mason” shows while exercising. It’s a fun distraction. The show has enough twists and turns that the rowing machine minutes speed by. I find myself comparing legal justice then and now, marveling at the cut of the men’s suits (which they wore at all times) and the women’s skirts (and white gloves), pondering the world that produced this show as much as the show itself.

There’s only one problem: I can’t get the Perry Mason theme song out of my mind. It’s with me when I walk, when I cook dinner or empty the dishwasher.  It’s even with me in the office.

It has a lot of moxie, this theme song. It’s decidedly tabloid, with a detective-magazine feel. Called “Park Avenue Beat,” the song was written to exude sophistication and toughness, Wikipedia informs me. It was composer Fred Steiner’s most well-known work.

All I know is … I wish it would go away.

Smelling the Roses

Smelling the Roses

Comments 0 Comment

In the last few days, summer has caught up with itself. Mornings have been cooler with that steady thrum of insect noise that you don’t notice until it goes away in the fall.

To be able to work outside with the heat building, cicadas crescendoing and every so often a stray idea making its way into my brain … well, it’s very good indeed.

When I need to take a break, I dead-head the roses, lean down and sniff the ones that are still blooming. Then I let my gaze shift to blank and stare out at the green and oh-so-weedy backyard.

Nothing is perfect, it seems to say, but look what less-than-pefect gets you.

Swallowtail!

Swallowtail!

Comments 0 Comment

With the purple coneflowers in bloom, the garden is not just a static creation but a marvelously alive place, with birds and butterflies flitting about to sip nectar from the seeds.

Last weekend I captured this swallowtail, which hovered for more than 20 minutes over the flowerbed, landing and feeding and opening and closing its wings.

Where did it come from? How long will it live? I don’t know much about butterflies, but seeing this one made me want to learn more.

To the Corner and Back

To the Corner and Back

Comments 0 Comment

After weeks of wimpy walking, nursing a case of plantar fasciitis, trying not to go too far or too fast, supplementing the strolls with 20 minutes on the basement rowing machine, I’ve realized something I’ve known all along but recognize more clearly with each passing week.

And that is … I’m not just walking for my health.

Even a slow stroll stimulates thoughts and ideas more than the most energetic rowing session. When I’m rowing, all I think of is, when can I stop. When I’m walking, I never want to stop.

This link between mind and feet is something I’ve written about often, and I’m not the only one. A New Yorker article lists fact after fact about how and why we think more clearly and more creatively when we’re ambling along a city street or woodland trail.

So if I have to raise my heart rate on the erg, I’ll do it. But walking will remain — even if it’s just to the corner and back.

Gaudeamus Igitur

Gaudeamus Igitur

Comments 0 Comment

At last night’s rehearsal we played Brahms’ “Academic Festival Overture.” It’s an expansive piece of music, a war horse, often played, and one of my faves. It ends with the tune known as “Gaudeamus Igitur.”

I looked it up this morning and learned that in addition to an academic processional, Gaudeamus is also a rowdy drinking song with a “carpe diem” flavor. It’s also known as “De Brevitate Vitae,” or “On the Shortness of Life.”


Here’s an English translation of the Latin:

While we’re young, let us rejoice,
Singing out in gleeful tones;
After youth’s delightful frolic,
And old age (so melancholic!),
Earth will cover our bones.

I like to think that while I was sawing away at those eighth notes and dotted quarters, the hair rising on the back of my neck as it does when I play, a chorus of ghosts was hovering around us, chanting these words.

Fear and Trembling

Fear and Trembling

Comments 0 Comment

The rain has stopped and the crickets are singing. A crescent moon winks between the trees. I’ve just lured Copper up from the basement, his sometime home this rainy summer. He spent the night in a thunder shirt, which keeps his trembling at bay.

Watching his fear of rain and storms intensify with age has taught me a thing or two about fear, about the way it takes a body over and will not let it go.

Easy enough to say, “Don’t worry, little guy. Nothing’s going to hurt you.” But harder to prove, and he knows it.

I keep all this in mind for my middle-of-the-night wakings, tell myself what I tell him. I don’t believe it, either.

August Greens

August Greens

Comments 0 Comment

Who would think it possible that in this typically dry and dusty time of year we would have such a bounty of green?

On today’s walk I tried to revel in it, appreciate it. I tried to ignore the light rain that was falling even as I ambled.

It’s not the kind of summer I’m used to, but it’s the kind of summer we’ve got.

And so are the August greens.