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Author: Anne Cassidy

Life Without Chocolate

Life Without Chocolate

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Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, a day I’m embarrassed to say I often dread because for me it’s usually the first of 40 days without chocolate. There have even been years when it’s been the first of 40 days without sweets — a practice so difficult and fraught with deliberation (is granola a sweet? how about Irish soda bread?) as to render most spiritual gains irrelevant.

The trick, of course, is to deprive one’s self for a higher purpose —and not so radically that the deprivation becomes an end in itself.

I think this is possible. I really do. But there are always moments — usually at the end of a long day when a handful of peanut M&Ms would taste mighty nice — when it begins to seem more stultifying than edifying.

Still, like anything else, it gets easier with practice. Usually by Easter I feel like I could live the rest of my life without chocolate.

Of course, I never do.

Photo: Wikipedia

Many Are Called…

Many Are Called…

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I’ve been interested in the reaction to Sunday night’s Oscar snafu. Many have praised La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz for stepping up to the mic and saying there was a mistake, that “Moonlight, you guys won.” Horowitz has been called a true gentleman and a truth teller.

Horowitz did what we all wish we would do in similar circumstances: he handled a disappointing and embarrassing moment with dignity, empathy and humor. He even joked about it the next day, saying he got to win an Oscar for Best Picture, thank his wife and kids and then present the same Oscar for Best Picture. “Not many people can say that.”

In fact, no one else can say that. But what watching him makes me wish is that I could handle all the petty ups and downs of my life in such a generous, big-hearted way.

A worthy goal. Unattainable, but worthy.

Surprise!

Surprise!

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I figure since I won’t be able to sleep for at least another 30 minutes, I’ll write about the strangest thing I’ve seen in the years I’ve been watching Oscar presentations.

After actors Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty opened the envelope and read that La La Land won best picture, there was a flurry on the stage, a waving of red envelopes — and the astonishing announcement: Not La La Land but Moonlight was the winner.

The entire cast of La La Land had assembled on the stage, and they looked stricken. The Moonlight cast looked shocked.

Those who gave up on the Oscars and went to sleep early may reconsider next year. As a newscaster said, “It was a long broadcast but all anyone will remember is the last 30 seconds.”

Amen to that. And goodnight!

Photo: Wikipedia

The Russians

The Russians

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We’re hearing a lot about Russians these days: What do they know? What are they doing? How much influence did they have over our recent election?

But the Russians I’ve been thinking about have nothing to do with Putin.

They’re the Russians whose music has thrilled me since I was young. To listen to them after long absence is to think of Dad and his record collection, the albums of Khachaturian, Borodin and Rimsky Korsakov. Dad air conducting while their music blared on the stereo.

I came upon two Russian pieces on my iPod the other day: a Prokofiev piano concerto and Shostakovich’s Festive Overture.  Big, fresh, urgent — these pieces have great hearts and big sounds. I felt Dad’s spirit in them. I walked faster. And I smiled.

(a hill that seems vaguely steppe-like)

Paring Down?

Paring Down?

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As the weather warms, the mind turns to thoughts of freedom and lightness and paring down.

My friend Kara told me about her decluttering guru, a person who not only helps you sort through your stuff and get rid of it but who also helps you deal with the emotional pull of your keepsakes.

This is a problem of affluence, right, that we should be so buried in our stuff, so loathe to part with it, that we must hire someone to tell us to throw it away?

Here’s the thing, though: I believe enough in this service, and in this person, that I’m afraid to seek her out. What if she actually does what she says? Am I ready to sift through the girls’ schoolwork from 2002? Or the boxes of old letters and birthday and graduation cards?

Motivation is what matters here. I want the final product — the fine, unfettered feeling — but I’m not ready to do what it takes to get there. So until then, it’s a full closet, full garage, full house.

Snowdrops: A Beginning?

Snowdrops: A Beginning?

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Last evening on the way home from work I realized that I had the time and the daylight to take a walk on a Reston trail. It’s the path that I’ll call CCC (Cross County Connector; see yesterday’s post!) because the last part of it merges with my beloved Cross County Trail.

What a walk it was! The birds were singing, the sun was lowering and the flowers were blooming. Great clusters of snowdrops peeping up not from the snow (which has been scarce to nonexistent this year) but from the leaves and brown grass. 
These are wintry flowers, white and delicate, but they are further harbingers of the season. They are proof that this balminess, this lovely light, is not just a preview but maybe, just maybe, a beginning.

Name That Path

Name That Path

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A recent walk through the Folkstone woods led me past a shady glade and creek curve where the girls used to play. They called it Brace Yourself. Maybe there was some feat of derring do they had to perform there, walking across the creek on a log or picking up a crawdad. I’m unclear why they gave it that name, but the point is that they did.

Brace Yourself got me thinking about the joy of naming places. I remember doing that when I was a kid. There was the Valley of Eternal Snows — a sheltered cove in the Ware Farm field behind our house, a place where I had once found some dirty snow late in the season.

And then there were the Block-up Boys — not exactly a place, I know. They were the bullies on the street who wouldn’t let me ride my tricycle to the top of the hill. (So there was a place involved, sort of.)

When we name a place we make it our own.  We look at it with fresh eyes; we see it whole. Why do we stop doing this as we get older? Do mortgages and responsibilities drive it away, this penchant for staking imaginative claim to the places we love?

I made a tiny vow right there at Brace Yourself. I decided to start naming the bridges and paths, the springs and glades. Even if no one else ever hears or knows these names — I will.

A Preview

A Preview

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The witch hazel is an early bird. I’ve seen it bloom when there’s snow on the ground. No surprise that it’s erupted in yellow blooms these winter-spring days.

Looking at the witch hazel, being outdoors over the weekend, with the plants stirring and the birds singing — it’s enough to bring on a bad case of spring fever. Or at least to make us ask, Is this it? Is it really spring?

Of course we have some cold, gray days ahead, but in late February one can hope.

I guess the best way to think about this unseasonable warmth is is as a preview, a glimpse of what lies ahead.

Religious imagery is not always what comes to mind first with me, but for some reason I’m thinking about the Transfiguration of Jesus, when he appeared to his apostles all radiant and glowing from within. That, too, was a preview, a taste of the beyond.

Which is all to say that a preview asks us to see and appreciate, not grasp and pin down.

Staying on Track

Staying on Track

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Yesterday, a return to a favorite hike, the Cross County Trail between Colvin Run Mill and Georgetown Pike. The path was busy with mountain bikers, runners, families with grandparents and kids — including one grandpa who stepped off the fair-weather crossing into this stream.

He righted himself quickly and kept on walking. That’s the spirit: staying on track!

I hope I do that when I’m a grandparent (which, with a married daughter and son-in-law, may not be too far in my future). The key with the hiking and the crossing is the keeping-on part.

Yesterday made it easy: a springlike day that made an unexpected step in the creek not the worst thing in the world.

Urban Trail

Urban Trail

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Ellen and I met for brunch in Bethesda yesterday — our favorite meeting place between Annapolis and Reston — and afterward I slipped on my tennis shoes, took off my scarf and jacket and walked four miles on the Capital Crescent Trail, one of my favorite urban walks.

It was 70 degrees, and the path was clogged with joggers and strollers and bikers and dogs. A carnival atmosphere — and everyone in amazement that we could wear shorts and t-shirts instead of parkas and gloves.

What to say about such an amble and such an afternoon? Only that it was filled with the life force, was virtually overflowing with it. And everyone I saw — whether zooming by on a bicycle or being pushed in a wheelchair — seemed to feel the same way.