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Author: Anne Cassidy

A Writer’s View

A Writer’s View

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Alistair Macleod’s No Great Mischief is a great-hearted tale of family and place. Set on Cape Breton Island and elsewhere in Canada, it makes me remember a trip there more than two decades ago.

What a rugged, misty place it is, the sort of place that would never leave a person. And it never left Macleod. I read this morning that he returned to his ancestral home most every summer to write exquisite short stories and this one fine novel. His writer’s cabin was perched on a cliff where he could look out across the sea to Prince Edward Island.

Some writers prefer to ply their craft in a closeted space, physically confining but mentally liberating. I prefer (though unfortunately do not practice) Macleod’s method — drawn back year after year to the place that created and nurtured me, with a simple desk and a view that captivates and frees.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

October Sky

October Sky

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Out early for a walk this morning, just chilly enough for a light sweatshirt. The skies were clear and bright. I thought, as I often do when faced with the infinite, that I’d like to understand it better.

Not all of it, of course. Just to nibble around the edges of it, to know a little about astronomy, for instance.

Overhead for my walk this morning was one of the dippers, the little one, I think, and also Polaris, the North Star.

What a comfort to walk beneath this canopy of light, to feel both small and enlarged at the same time. Because isn’t that what infinity does for us? Puts us in our place but also connects us with something larger than ourselves.

(Photo: Earthsky.org; title: Homer Hickham)

Open Office

Open Office

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After days of rain, sunshine is once more pouring in the back half of the office, and the National Airport control tower stands out in high relief.

Unlike my old office, which fronted on an alley and whose lighting was controlled by whichever truck happened to be unloading at the time, this new office is like a vacant piece of sky.

Clouds, wind, rain — the place is open to all of these, and as such it takes on the character of the day. On rainy days the place feels cozy, almost like a big house where you stop and chat in the kitchen.

On sunny days, like today, it feels closer to the sun and clouds than the interior world of elevators and conference rooms. It’s a little like a tree house, with the same openness to trees and wind. The windows and the reflected light, the glass and steel — they all bring the outside in.

Farewell to the Van

Farewell to the Van

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“For many families, it was a compromise made long ago,” I wrote back in 2003. “For us, it is a new one. The day we bought our minivan it rained for the first time in weeks. It’s a sign, I said. Even the heavens are crying.”

Now the heavens are crying again, this time because the van has given way to a shiny new Toyota Corolla.

Though initially resistant to van-dom, I grew to love the old car. After all, it was the spiritual heir to the ’60s woody station wagons, and as such reminded me of my youth in the back seat. The van was more comfortable, of course; these are modern children. But the basic principle remained the same: buy large vehicle and pack it with kids.

The van was a workhorse. It lapped up the miles without complaint, and wore its 240k with grace. In 14 years it gave us very little trouble. Though short on style it was long on practicality.  Its motto: I will get you there.

Oh, the carpools that car has known, the cellos and clarinets and sweaty track kids it has transported. The boats it has towed, the trips to college it has made, the moving of furniture into first apartments, including, just last month, the transporting of newlyweds to their home in Arlington. (We threw rice!)

All of which is to say, what a lot of living that car has known! So I can’t let it go without a backward glance.

Thank you, dear van! We’ll miss you!

For Kathy

For Kathy

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Today’s post is dedicated to the memory of my dear friend Kathy Minton, who passed away on September 21. Kathy was a fellow walker and reader, a lover of books and of life who was taken from us far, far too soon.

We became friends as young editors, she at Working Mother, me at McCall’s. We quickly realized we had a lot in common and lived only a few blocks apart, so we’d stroll home together through Central Park, talking all the way.

Kathy was hands down the fastest walker I’ve ever known. A native New Yorker, she could navigate her way through Fifth Avenue crowds at rush hour, sidestepping the slow pokes and adjusting her stride to catch every green light.

A few years after I left New York, Kathy was offered the perfect job — director of literary programs at Symphony Space. She stayed there for the next 25 years, producing the Selected Shorts program and many other literary endeavors, making her living from books and ideas.

But she always made time for walking, so whenever I’d go to New York I’d get in touch with Kathy and it would be just like the old days: a fast walk, a good talk.

I’m a believer, so I’m trying to imagine Kathy in a more perfect place. But it’s hard to do. It’s hard to imagine her anywhere else but New York.  So what I wish for her instead is a perfect New York walk. A crisp fall day, an open stretch of sidewalk, and plenty of friends to share the trail.

Rescue Trail

Rescue Trail

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The commute continues to exhaust and befuddle. It took me two hours to get home last Thursday and almost that long last night. I arrived at the Reston North Park and Ride lot just as the sun was setting.

I had my bag, having parked in the garage, but the round trip there and back would have taken 15 minutes, and in the interest of working in a walk before it was completely dark, I decided to stroll bag in hand (or, I should say, bag on shoulder).

It was a wonderful time to be on the trail. The sun had come out late in the day, and people were making the most of it. There were bikers and runners and walkers. There were commuters in work clothes and exercisers in sweats and spandex.

Goldenrod and grasses hung their heads over the pavement in a shaggy profusion. There was a stillness to their beauty, and it calmed and centered me. What a difference the walk made, better than a drink or a drug. It wasn’t magic; it was the trail.

Bring on the Light

Bring on the Light

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Maybe it was the debate last night or maybe it’s just that time of year, but this morning there was no hesitation. I had barely opened my eyes when I came downstairs and plugged in the full-spectrum light that gets me through the winter.

The lamp adds minutes to the morning, tweaks circadian rhythms and helps banish the winter blahs.

It could be a placebo, but I’ve written enough about seasonal affective disorder to believe that light makes a difference.  So here I sit, a bit warm, if you want to know the truth, because it isn’t cold out there yet, just dark. Very, very dark.

Milkweed on the Fly

Milkweed on the Fly

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A bushwhacking expedition wasn’t on Sunday’s list of activities, but on the way back from breakfast I noticed a brown Fairfax County Park sign in a place I’d never seen one before, at the intersection of Fox Mill and Waples Mill Roads. We doubled around and pulled into a small lot that used to be in front of a great wall of bamboo.

A man was there weed whacking. He stopped and talked, said he lived nearby and was trying to make the area presentable. He pointed out a barely discernible path through the meadow. Bamboo never totally leaves a place, of course; it just bides its time. For now, though, the little park is walkable.

A quarter mile into the tangle of grasses and weeds, there was a small, clogged pond and a stand of cat tails. Milkweed pods filled the air with their fairy fluff; I tried to photograph each cottony morsel as it flew by.

It was next to impossible, but I had fun trying.

Things to Come

Things to Come

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Well, the jig is up. The summer jig, that is. It’s in the 50s as  I write these words on the deck, swaddled in my warm winter robe, the fuzzy white one. No slippers, only my outside crocs. I could use a pair of fuzzy socks, too.

Copper, however, is in his element, prancing in the bars of sunlight that stripe the back yard at this time of day and year.

He responds just to the weather at hand, which, if it were the prelude to a hot summer day, would be just fine, no problem. But I know what he doesn’t: that this is just the beginning of the chill, that there will be rain and snow and early darkness.

Sometimes I long for an animal brain.

In Focus

In Focus

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I walked early today, not still-dark early, but I-don’t-have-to-be-in-an-office early. Which is a great kind of early.

The air was cool enough that I had closed windows an hour or so earlier, cool enough that I wished for a moment I’d worn long sleeves.

But not for long did I think this, because a walk, among other things, is a warm-up. It takes that which is cold, stiff and fuzzy — and renders it warm, limber and clear.

It creates new internal weather; it can bring a whole day into focus.