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Author: Anne Cassidy

Boxes!

Boxes!

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It’s not exactly to the break-even point yet, but I’m definitely ordering more holiday gifts online this year, and my sister is, too. So based on this highly unscientific sampling of two, I think there’s a trend here.

(I’m not so far off on this trend definition. When I wrote pieces for women’s magazines, a “trend” was something that you and a couple of your close friends were noticing — after which you dug up enough evidence to convince your editors it was really happening.)

But, back to this year’s shopping stats, I do have real, tangible proof: the piles of boxes in front of the houses in my neighborhood.

Usually you see lots of boxes after the holidays, not before. But no more.

‘Tis the season for FedEx and UPS and even the lowly ole US Post Office — and the containers they leave behind. They’re making the Yuletide jolly. And easier, too.

The Get-Well Project

The Get-Well Project

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It’s been a while since I spent a day in bed, but that’s what I did yesterday. Not a relaxing, lolling-about day, but an oh-so-sick day. In fact, a lost day, 24 hours sucked from the calendar with little to show for it other than survival.

The experience, what I want to relive of it (not much!), was disorienting.  Time was telescoped. Dreams bled from sleep into waking. There was an in-and-out wooziness to it all that was unsettling and unnerving.

Today I managed to make my way downstairs. I tried sitting up but found that lying down feels much, much better. So this will be a halfway day: some work and some resting.

But I’m doing it in a living room transformed. The family tree outing happened yesterday as planned, so while I was incapacitated, Santa and his elves found the tree, chopped it down, transported it here and set it up in its usual corner. All it needs now are lights and ornaments. It’s my get-well project!

Shopping at Night

Shopping at Night

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A window of time opened up, a confluence of hour and place. I understood what I had to do and when I had to do it. So I followed vague directions to the outlet shops I knew were there in theory but had never reached from that starting point.

And when I got there the sun was setting, a disc on fire slipping behind the faux roofs. I watched it slide away, assembled my list, had a bite to eat and gathered my courage.

It was a quiet evening. Who shops on Friday night? People like me, I realized. Women with determination in their eyes and lists in their hands. As the evening wore on, not just lists but shopping bags, too.

There comes a point in the season when you are finally into it. You have gone too far not to be. From here there will be tree-cutting, hauling and decorating. There will be more shopping (I hope not too much more!),  There will be baking and card-writing and stocking-hanging and all of it, right up to the cacophony of Christmas morning.

‘Tis the season, you know.

Bustopia

Bustopia

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Should we coin a word for the way it feels to run to a bus stop only to find no one there and the next bus not due for  30 minutes?  Shall we add in early darkness and a brisk north wind? Shall we also include the uncertainty of whether there even is a next bus?

Lonely doesn’t do it. Bereft … maybe. Some combination of tired and cold and anxious and angry. Bustopia? Like the gloomy imaginings of a dystopian novel only it’s actually happening.

Let’s add a ray of hope, though. The other commuters, when they finally show up, are proof that there will be another bus. They bring gallows humor and crazy stories.

The bus stop is no longer a cold, lonely, windswept place. Now it’s just cold and windswept. Brave New Bustopia.

Roses in December

Roses in December

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I remember the moment but little about its context, so for that reason it has the contours of a dream. I was walking along Hart Road in Lexington, and I came across a walled backyard. “Miranda,” the plaque read. “Roses in December.”

Were there roses? I don’t remember. But I do recall the gray stones of the solid wall and the magic of the place, as if snow wouldn’t stick there, as if I could walk from the cold, gray winter of my life into some warm, enchanted place — just by strolling through the wrought iron gate.

I thought of Miranda today when I passed a still-blooming knockout rose on my walk to the office. It brought me back to “Roses  in December” and that long-ago amble. It was, I realize now, one of the first times I realized the fantasies I could spin while moving through space. Now I have a much better idea.

Messiah Singalong

Messiah Singalong

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I feel like I should be writing about the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, but am filled to the brim with the music we made last night at the Reston Chorale Messiah Singalong.

It was cold and rainy but the church was almost filled. I found the altos, sitting on the left in the back, and struck up a conversation with Annette. “We’re doing Beethoven’s 9th in the spring,” she said. “You should audition.”

It was a warm and welcoming thing to say — especially since I’d yet to sing a note — and it made me feel instantly at home. And “at home” is the way I continued to feel as we made our way through the familiar choruses: “Glory to God,” “His Yoke is Easy,” “For Unto Us a Child is Born” and, finally, “Hallelujah.”

It wasn’t just the words and melodies, so ancient and true, it was being an alto, part of a group and a section. It was fudging the runs of  “And he will purify” with 20 other voices to fudge along with me. It was belting out “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” with the fervor of a community chorus, knowing that this scene was being enacted in church basements and concert halls around the country.

It was singing “And he shall reign forever and ever” — and wanting more than anything for the music to go on that long, too.

All to Pieces

All to Pieces

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On Sunday, when I was doing a spot of shopping (a spot seems to be all I can do these days), I happened upon a manikin in a state of dishabille. Worse than dishabille, actually: The poor thing was in pieces. Head over here. Legs over there. An errant arm on top of a pile of sweaters I was pawing through in search of a size M.

It was not unlike what I was feeling. 
Because as we grow (ahem) older, isn’t bewilderment a prime emotion? We lose people we love and the world shifts on its axis. We change jobs or switch commutes.  One card shop closes and another takes its place. What used to be appears in ever-more-sepia tones.
From small to large the changes mount, until one day we look up and the world just isn’t the same anymore.
This is not to say it’s always worse. Sometimes it’s better. It’s just different, that’s all. 
The Regular

The Regular

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It was the wave that did it. A simple, familiar wave from a man I’ve watched for years, an “older man” (older than me!), who mows his lawn in a circle around a central clump of bushes.

I’ve noticed this man and his wife for years, shoveling snow, planting annuals, vacuuming up leaves (this weekend’s project). He is, for lack of a better term, a regular. One of the folks I see on my walks through Folkstone, one of the ones who (because I’ve never gotten to know him) is known more by the color of his shutters (green) and the method of his leaf removal (tractor) than anything else.

But it was the way he waved to me — familiar, off-handed — that made me realize that, just as I see him as a regular, so he sees me.

I’m the woman in the worn white running jacket, a little worse for the wear, slowing down as the years pass — still at it, though. I’m “the woman who walks” (sometimes runs). A fixture of sorts.

In other words, I’m a regular, too.

Power Walking

Power Walking

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About a mile from the White House in northwest D.C., a small set of kinetic paving “stones” is harvesting the power of footfall and giving a whole new meaning to the term “power walking.”

These triangular-shaped pavers are made of glass-reinforced plastic that are loose at the corners. A footstep jiggles them just enough to depress the corners and move a flywheel that generates the power to illuminate LED lights on park benches nearby.

This is amazing to me, that the footstep, one of the greatest sources of untapped energy the planet has ever known, could be transferred into power. It seems like an idea whose time has come.

Imagine the applications: treadmills and ellipticals on the grid, a home powered by people running up and down the stairs inside it, sidewalks that move you — because you move them.

There is the slight issue of cost — these little pavers are expensive — but their founder says so were Teslas, too, in the beginning. (I thought Teslas were still expensive, but hey, I’ll give the guy a break.) Still, the company, Pavegen, has similar projects in London’s Heathrow Airport and elsewhere around the world.

So, walkers everywhere, vote with your feet. Make your way to these springy, resilient paving stones, give us your best fast walk and light up the world!

Leaving the Bus Behind

Leaving the Bus Behind

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The sky was brightening. The day was clear. I had already been sitting too long. So when the bus stopped, I bolted.

And there was the ground again, the pavement stones, the slanting corners, the walkways littered with thin brown leaves. There was the rhythm of footfall, the comfort of moving briskly into the day.

A woman with two small dogs ambled along, coffee mug in hand. A few briefcase-toting commuters ran to cross before the light changed. Some early morning joggers zoomed by. Only these few guardians of the morning.

But mostly it was just me and the way ahead. Not a bad way to start the day.