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Author: Anne Cassidy

Vehicle

Vehicle

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I’m a sucker for round numbers, so I’m writing today about the round number this blog just reached. Just a tad self-involved, wouldn’t you say? Meta, at the very least. But I can’t resist, now that I’ve gotten more adept with the screen shot tool.

In fact, I’ve gotten more adept with more technology than I ever thought I would. Not by choice but by necessity. And still I lag behind. I fumble for the headphones to take a Skype for Business call. I need help submitting my time sheet if my time sheet is the least bit complicated. I post stories all the time — as long as long as someone else can size the photos.

Yet somehow I keep muddling along. Because technology is a vehicle, not an end in itself. It’s a means to an end. And if you keep at it (as I keep at this blog), it will reward you in ways you couldn’t have imagined when you began.

Civilized Pace

Civilized Pace

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Pre-dawn walks are becoming a habit. Made possible by early light, they remind me of early-morning runs when I lived in Manhattan. If I woke by 6:50 I could dash around the reservoir and be in the shower by 7:30 and on my way out the door at 8:00. By 9:00 or a little after I would be in my office sipping tea, nibbling a bagel and reading the Times.

No one arrived at McCall’s before 9:00 or 9:15 and no one bothered you while you read the newspaper — we were “looking for trends,” after all, so it was considered part of the workday. Ah, what a reasonable hour and civilized pace.

No one forces me to get in early now. It’s just the way I roll. But I like to remember a time when commuting meant hoofing it through Central Park, down Fifth, across 47th and over to Park.  Now that’s a walk!

(What I saw on the way to the office.)

High Latitude

High Latitude

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Woke up with the day this morning, knowing from the start it was the longest, vowing to spend as much of it as I can outside. I thought, as I was walking, of the gift of light, the extra hours of it, six hours more than the winter solstice by my rough count. Six hours more sunning and walking; six hours more to see and do and be.

“Solstice” derives from two Latin words “sol” and “sistere,” which roughly translate to “sun standing still.” And that is my wish today. That the sun stand still. That time stand still until I catch up with it.

I just read a passage from my favorite Annie Dillard, and my heart caught again on these lines: “I am here now … up here are this high latitude, out here at the farthest exploratory tip of this my present bewildering age.”

Life bewilders, age bewilders, time bewilders. But some days give us time to absorb that which bewilders. May today be one of those days.

(Sunrise on Chincoteague, April 21, 2016)

Summer Serenade

Summer Serenade

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Thunderstorms cleared the air late yesterday and made way for … a frog chorus.  The little guys chirped and sang and puffed their throats out in that way they do. They’re looking for love, of course. Aren’t we all?

But instead of hitting the clubs and trying some corny lines, these guys were serenading their ladies in style. Bright sounds in the big night. A crooning, haunting symphony of sound — the voice of summer, perfect accompaniment to the glimmer of fireflies. They were singing to their own, but their cries soothed the soul of this suburbanite.

Because when I heard them call from creeks and puddles and the undersides of leaves, I felt part of a much larger, elemental world. That these creatures — just tadpoles a few weeks ago, little more than eggs with legs — could now be filling the night with their song seemed more than a little miraculous. It was a perfect way to end the day — with a summer serenade.

(Wikipedia)

Young Inside

Young Inside

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I remember a conversation I had with Dad in the hospital when he was recovering from one of his surgeries. He was getting better every day, so it was not a bad hospitalization that time, and we were having a good visit.

We talked, as we often did, about his time in England during World War II. He was 21 years old then, seeing the world for the first time. “You know something?” he said. “I still feel that age inside.” Dad was lying in a hospital room with wires that measured his respiration and heart rate. He had an IV and catheter.  It was difficult to imagine how he felt young inside.

More than a decade later, I understand what he meant. In part it’s the mind’s way of dealing with dizzying change. In part, it’s because we often keep the image we form of ourselves in young adulthood.

Last night, as the older girls left our Father’s Day celebration in a car stuffed with a bike and a puppy and a boyfriend, I was reminded of Dad’s comment. My kids are not only young inside; they’re young outside, too. Their lives are ahead of them. But someday they will be telling their children how the young selves they wear so lightly now are still there inside of them.

Inside the Music

Inside the Music

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Brahms showed up in my classical queue this morning,. Not just any Brahms but the Symphony No. 1 — which happens to be the first orchestral piece I played as last-chair string bass in the Central Kentucky Youth Symphony Orchestra. I had only started learning string bass a few months earlier and didn’t have the hands for it, but I did my best to keep up with the runs and shifts.

My stand partner, Greg, helpfully penciled in “a la fakando” on a few of the more difficult sections, and fake it is exactly what I did. Every so often, Mr. Ceo, our fiery conductor, would scream “basses” and stare, it seemed like, straight at me. But I kept my head down and for the most part escaped humiliation.

Besides, it was worth it to be even a small part of such music: the swelling strings, the triumphant brass. In the heroic final movement, during the most lyrical sections, the basses only played pizzicato, but I put my heart and soul into every pluck.

This morning, walking and listening, I was back there again, not just listening to the music — but inside of it.

Foot Feel

Foot Feel

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“Nor can foot feel, being shod.” 

I was barefoot this morning when I ran out to retrieve the newspaper, and this Gerard Manley Hopkins line came to mind. My feet feel all too much because they are shod, and when they suddenly aren’t, every speck of gravel is an ordeal.

But my feet have adapted to the world I live in, just as the rest of me has. If tiny pebbles affect my soles, then how much does the rest of it — the clatter, the commute, the deadlines — affect my soul?

More than I can imagine, I think. Which is why I write this blog.

Being Outside

Being Outside

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Working on the deck this morning I have a ringside seat on the busy life of the backyard. The stars of the show are the hummingbirds (a male-female pair, from what I can tell) and a little chipmunk that scampered within three feet of me, then paused for what seemed like minutes (but was probably only seconds) perfectly still.

Given that Copper is now back here with me I doubt I’ll see that little guy again, but the hummingbirds are making regular passes at the nectar. A pair of goldfinches are doing the same with their feeder. Farther out in the yard a cardinal soars from branch to branch, and the summer perennials are just starting to bloom.

Pausing even a minute lets me see the dramas that play out here: the battles for territory, the courting and sparring. It’s a big wide world we live in — and, as always, it’s easier to remember that when I’m outside.

Walking Hots

Walking Hots

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Yesterday’s record-breaking heat brought the words “walking hot” to mind. And that made me think about walking hots.

I remember when my high school friend Susan had a summer job walking hots at Keeneland, Lexington’s jewel of a racetrack. It was the first I’d heard of this practice, and I immediately liked the term. It was pithy, and it required insider knowledge to understand.

“Hots” were thoroughbreds who’d just had their morning work-outs, and hot walkers were the ones who lead them around the ring or shed area until they cooled down. Hot walkers hold the animals while they are sponged down, then walk them some more. Thoroughbreds get sick if they decelerate too quickly. Unlike humans, they’re not allowed to go from 60 to 0 without proper attention.

Hot walkers are usually novices or interns, those on the lowest end of the thoroughbred-care team. It’s their job to slow down high-strung animals who are bred to run — and it must be both boring and terrifying.

Much easier to walk hot than to walk hots.

New Blue Shoes

New Blue Shoes

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Every year or so I buy myself some new tennis shoes. I usually reprise whatever make and model I’m currently wearing, as long as it fits and has held up to my daily battering. Which means that I don’t choose by color, only by comfort.

Some years I end up with garish purples and greens. Others with white. But this year, I hit the jackpot: a pastel beauty that’s mostly the color of sky, with just a hint of aquamarine.

The minute I saw these I thought they should be Celia’s — my youngest daughter loves this color and looks great in it. It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized there’s also a connection with my middle daughter, Claire. One of her favorite books growing up was New Blue Shoes by Eve Rice.

The book is about a shoe-shopping expedition and a little girl who knows what she wants — new shoes, blue shoes, new blue shoes — and will have no other. A perfect favorite for Claire, who has always known what she wants, whether it’s pink stiletto heels or a new puppy.

I like my new blue shoes, even though I didn’t fight for them. Maybe I should have!