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Author: Anne Cassidy

To Capture Rapture

To Capture Rapture

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Underlit can mean inadequately or poorly lit — or it can mean lit from beneath. As in these trees, glowing from within, it seems, though drawing their light from the setting sun.

They shine like this for only a few minutes each evening, and woe to the photographer who thinks she can bounce a few more minutes on the trampoline before snapping a shot. She will be disappointed. 
Because it only takes an instant for the light to drain away, for the trees to move from emerald to forest, to lose their glow, to become ordinary.
But this night, I stopped bouncing, climbed down off the contraption, ran inside and grabbed my phone. It’s difficult to capture rapture. But that’s what I was trying to do. 
Pink and White

Pink and White

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They were selling pink and white carnation corsages at church yesterday — pink if your mom is living, white if she is not. I bought neither, but even the choice made my eyes sting.

I can remember wearing corsages on long ago Easters and maybe I could even fish up a memory of wearing a corsage on Mother’s Day. It wasn’t reliving memories that made me sad. It was knowing that, if I had bought a flower yesterday, it would have been white.

Which is why I was even more grateful to come home, take a walk and spend the rest of Mother’s Day on the deck with my daughters. There were some vague plans for a group hike, but we all agreed that just sitting and talking was best.

There was a fullness to the day that doesn’t come often enough and is all the more precious when it does. There was laughing and talking and cooking and eating. And there was this thought, poignant and comforting : If my girls were wearing corsages, theirs would be pink.

Congratulations, Claire!

Congratulations, Claire!

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Claire never thought twice about what she’d major in. It would be psychology. And since high school she’s been sure of what she wanted for a life’s work: She would be a therapist. She would help people.

Which is exactly what’s she’s done: received her bachelor of science in psychology and, today, will receive her master of social work degree from Catholic University.

As I prepare for her commencement, I think of Claire as a baby, toddler, school kid, teenager, college student and, for the last several years, grad student working on the side.

A huge wash of feelings on this day. But one that rises above the rest: You did it, kiddo. Good for you!

For Dad

For Dad

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It’s been four years now since Dad was alive to celebrate his birthday. I wonder what he would think of the world today. He would laugh about it, I’m sure. Probably shake his head, too.

Cleaning out some files health files last weekend I came across a newspaper clipping from the ’90s, an article from the Louisville Courier Journal on how running affects women’s knees. Written across the top, in Mom’s distinctive hand: “From Dad.”

What a wonderful and unexpected find! Mom’s handwriting and Dad’s idea. He was always after me to stop running. Bad for your knees, he said, all that pounding. Dad, who apart from yard work did no other exercise I can recall.

Dad lacked the earnestness of later, highly buff generations. But he lived to be 90 and he loved life. He took what came — and kept on going, always with a smile and a quip. Can’t think of a much better way to do it.


(Dad posing in front of the house he grew up in on Father’s Day 2011.)

May Evening

May Evening

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After-work walk on a May evening. The air perfumed with spirea and honeysuckle, a trace of lilac. I pass through waves of warmth and coolness.

I’d been thinking of this amble as I sat in meetings and on Metro. Thought of it at home when I pulled on a t-shirt and tennis shoes and left the house in a hurry, before I found something else I had to do.

The real stroll was even better than the imagined one, as I lost myself in the cadence of the steps and the sounds of day’s end: birds roosting, balls bouncing, radio rap from a passing car.

Self-propulsion is marvelous any time of year. But on a fine May evening it’s utterly divine.

Missing Fob

Missing Fob

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It wasn’t in the inside pocket of my too-small purse. And it wasn’t in the roomier confines of my tote bag. It wasn’t on the desk or in a drawer. Which meant one of two things: Either I had lost my fob, my entry ticket to this office suite, or it was in my pants pocket.

It’s the latter, I just learned. And I’m filled with relief. Which makes me think about how closely we hew to the small landmarks of our routine. How the absence of one tiny item can unsettle and disrupt. Today I’ll use the front door instead of the rear, and plan trips out to coincide with receptionist availability.

But maybe this is a good thing, something to keep in mind when routine ossifies. That we are only a loss or two away, not from inconvenience — but from liberation.

Anatomy of a Headache

Anatomy of a Headache

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I am, unfortunately, headache-prone. I’ve learned to live with the dull aches and the sharp pains, with the early awakenings and the late nights. I don’t glorify these as migraines, but they can hang around for days. Sometimes they respond to ibuprofen and sometimes they don’t.

It’s a point of pride that I don’t give in to these headaches — but today I was wondering what it would be like if I did. Would I be one of those neurasthenic Victorian ladies, perfumed handkerchief and rose water, dabbing at my temples and wrists? Would I lie in a darkened room while someone (a Downton-Abbey-style ladies maid) brought me a cup of tea?

Not my style. But that doesn’t stop me from analyzing the headache, especially the one I have right now. Unlike the more typical vague throbbing, this one announced itself with a stab of pain between the eyes. I can pinpoint its arrival almost to the minute. It began sometime between 6:50 and 6:55 a.m., while turning right from Vale to Hunter Mill Road on my way to Metro and the office. One moment I didn’t have a headache, and the next moment I did.

Now I’m imagining another scenario: that the headache skedaddle as quickly as it came. I can almost feel it now: the pressure will vanish, the tightness will disappear. Ah, yes, I’m feeling better already.

Poetry or Prose

Poetry or Prose

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I’ve been thinking about the line between poetry and prose, whether it’s wiggly or straight, dotted or plain. And I’ve decided it is, if anything, the faintest outline of a path, a deer trail in the woods, a bend in the rushes.

The words make a difference, of course, and the care with which they’re placed on the page. There are line starts and breaks, and the music of the cadence — these can separate the two.

But mostly there is one bucket of beauty we dip into and drink from.

Will it nourish us, frustrate us, lead us to lines wiggly or straight? That seems beyond the point when we’re possessed. The point is to translate the beauty as best we can.

Rainy Day

Rainy Day

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Woke up to a rainy day, to puddles and pings, to the music of water on wood and stone. The house is quiet except for these sounds and the ticking of clocks — two of them now, the cuckoo in the kitchen and the mantel clock in the living room.

Outside, the roses are hanging their heads and the bamboo is shooting up, an inch an hour — or so it seems. New leaves are doused and soothed, not used to such drenching.

Nor am I. It’s been mostly sunny most of the time, which I love and need. But every so often I need a rainy day, too. Time to gather thoughts and clean file cabinets and, oh, just stare out the window for a while, like Copper here.

Listening and looking: good occupations for the day.

Long Shadow

Long Shadow

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Driving home last night from book group I saw a strange light in the sky. Was it a low-flying plane or helicopter? A satellite? Or something else … something strange and unexplained?

This sighting took me back to a time in my childhood when I was absolutely terrified of UFOs. I would see lights hovering above the ground in the field behind our house or skimming above the horizon on night drives home, and a crazy fear would seize me. It was only a matter of time before one of these vessels would catch and envelop me and take me back to the mother ship.

Mom and Dad would try to talk me out of these notions. They somehow avoided laughing in my face and calmly consoled me. But I didn’t believe them. I knew the truth: There were alien creatures in the sky, and they were targeting Lexington, Kentucky.

I don’t remember when I grew out of this worry, but I do remember the long shadow it cast, the terror that fills the world when we are just coming alive to it.