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Author: Anne Cassidy

The Basement

The Basement

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I’ve spent the last three days in a basement going through my parents things. By the end of the day yesterday, Ellen, Phillip and I had loaded one car with boxes to save and another car with boxes to discard. One car is bound for Virginia and Maryland, the other car for the county dump.

There’s a lot of Cassidy history in those two cars, and I’m bleary-eyed from going through it all. So many thoughts about the messiness of life and the tidiness of death. Thoughts amplified when Ellen and I drove to the cemetery late yesterday and I saw the clean sweep of grass and stone.

I dash off this post on a beautiful summer morning, window open to crescendo of cicadas and the low hum of a neighbor’s air-conditioning. My parents are gone, but we are still living. I could have called this post “The Cemetery.” But I called it “The Basement” instead.

Suspended

Suspended

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When I traveled to Kentucky regularly I’d hit the road early and be in Lexington by mid-afternoon. But now when Ellen and I drive together we leave late on a workday, drive partway and stay overnight. Traveling becomes less a duty and more a road trip.

Last night we pulled off in Fairmont, West Virginia, and are now cosseted in a roadside hostelry. How sumptuous these places have become! A gym to die for. Bowls of fruit and raspberry tea. Soft lighting. High-thread-count sheets. This is not your grandfather’s no-tell motel!

A funny feeling takes over in these places. You are not quite here, not quite there. You are comfortable, You are just off the road or about to hit it. You are … suspended.

Place without People

Place without People

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It’s been 14 months since I visited Lexington. I’ve never been away longer. To the other bewilderments of these days I add this one: that I’ve been gone so long from my hometown.

There’s much to recommend the trip I’m making there this weekend: It’s summertime and it’s with my sister. But I approach it tentatively, much as a dental patient probes the tender spot where a tooth has been.

What’s missing from Lexington now is why I ever was in Lexington in the first place — and why I returned so often through the years. What kind of place is Lexington without Mom and Dad?

When people are gone, place remains. But what is place without the people who created it?

Porch Light

Porch Light

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An early walk this crisp morning as the day took hold and porch lights still were burning. What a cozy beacon is a porch light, what ease and relief it promises. A welcome to the late arrival. A comfort to the sleeping suburbanite.

Yet it also says, this is our place, this cone of brightness our bulwark. Come closer if you dare, but only if you know us. And if you know us, show your face.

Otherwise, slap your newspaper on our driveway, stuff mail into the box. We do not reveal ourselves to everyone. Only to the those for whom the light burns.

More for Less

More for Less

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Two days ago Metro raised its fares and its parking rates. I now shell out an extra 30 cents for the worst ride in town. Why pay more for less? Why not find another way to get to work?

Truth is, I have. I’ve shrunk the Metro portion of my trip as much as I can, catching a bus six stops earlier than I used to get off, trudging up an escalator and spending the last 10 minutes of my commute above ground.

I could give up Metro entirely, but that would mean either full-time telework (not likely!) or driving every day. And as much as I dread the “Orange Crush” (a fizzy moniker for what happens on the Orange Line from 5-6 p.m.) at least I can read or write when I have a seat.

In commuting, as in life, compromises are made. I like the passive voice there. It suits the situation.

(Besides, I would miss the architecture.)

Power of Love

Power of Love

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A few weeks ago Celia finally convinced me to give the Harry Potter series a try. Last night I started Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third book. This morning I learned that the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, was published 20 years ago today.

By now we know the story, how Rowling, a single mother down on her luck, was sitting on a delayed train from Manchester to London when she imagined a young wizard with a scar on his forehead. The scar, he was told, was from a car accident, the same one that killed his parents.

By the end of Book One Harry has learned that the scar isn’t from a car accident. It’s from a encounter with Lord Voldemort, “he who must not be named,” the darkest of dark wizards whose evil ways were no match for the one magic power all of us have at our disposal:

If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign … to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin.

Three books in, here’s what I take from the series so far: the power of imagination, the power of love.

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)