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Author: Anne Cassidy

Slow Greening

Slow Greening

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When I returned here late Sunday from Lexington, I could tell that spring hadn’t gotten much further than it was when I left three days earlier. And no wonder: Virginia had the same cold rain and snow bursts over the weekend that Kentucky did.

Which means that spring is delightfully long this year. The trees, just greening, are paused at a precious and delicate moment. For some, too much cold now means no blooms later on. The hydrangea comes immediately to mind.

For others, though, the cooler temperatures mean a slower greening — a longer run of “spring green,” a Crayola color I remember from childhood. It’s a hue closer to yellow than to green. “Nature’s first green is gold,” Robert Frost said. “Its hardest hue to hold.”

Some years, that “hardest hue to hold” lasts only hours; other years it might linger for a few days. This year it’s going on a week — a slow greening that’s a long tease and a rare treat. It’s all I can do not to aim my camera at every leaf and tree.

Grand Landscapes

Grand Landscapes

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The drive home was through sun and shadow. The snow that was falling on Friday had stuck in the higher elevations and was still there on Sunday. It was a spring day with a feel of winter, a day to process what has happened and what lies ahead.

In this I was aided by landscape. What is it about a glimpse of long distances that airs out the brain?

There is one spot on the road we took yesterday, one that approaches the area from Maryland rather than Virginia, where the view must be 50 miles or more in either direction. From that vantage point, it’s easy to see how small we are, how busily self-important.

Spend enough time in the company of grand landscapes, and the trivial falls away.

Sweet Adelines

Sweet Adelines

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There are more physically demanding jobs, to be sure. Digging ditches comes immediately to mind. But going through Mom’s letters and papers and jewelry was a different kind of hard. And at the end of the day we were all in need of a stiff drink and a good meal.

It was snowing, sleeting, raining and hailing yesterday, but we went out anyway, into a hopping downtown Lexington Friday night. After the drinks, the appetizer and the entrees, we were …. serenaded.

Turns out we were sitting right next to dozen or so Sweet Adelines. When I heard the pitch pipe, I knew we were in for a treat. Don’t know the name of the song, but it was sublime four-part harmony, barbershop quartet-style, and delivered with a flourish. These ladies could sing! When they finished, the whole restaurant erupted in applause.

It was a cheerful reminder that life offers more than grief and duty. It offers joy, as well.

(The cat did not join us, but she has good taste in beer.)

Sadness, Shared

Sadness, Shared

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It’s a rainy day here, a work-plus-travel day for me as my sister and  I drive out to Kentucky together to go through our parents’ things.

This is a sad duty, one our brother has borne pretty much alone, so it’s time for us to pitch in.

Already I”m imagining the house again without our parents in it. The sofa where Mom and I would  sit and talk, glasses of iced tea on the coffee table in front of us. The chair against which Dad would lean his cane — a cane with a padded handle that he loved and to which he affixed one of those giveaway address labels you get in the mail.

Thinking of the cane, thinking of the emptiness, thinking of how thankful I am not to have to do this alone. It’s sadness, shared.

One Sitting

One Sitting

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It’s been a while since I consumed a novel in one gulp — but that’s just what happened last night. The novel was On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, a 200-page chronicle of Florence and Edward’s  honeymoon night.

The novel is set in 1962, a key fact, given the newlywed’s lack of sexual experience. The setting is an ironic frame handed to the reader, who knows of the sexual revolution to follow.

What amazed me about the book, though, was not the commentary on sexual mores but the nuance with which McEwan describes the nervous couple’s every word and touch. It was as if he was inside their skin — or, I should say, inside their separate skins.

In the final pages, McEwan pans out from this intense closeup. At first this seemed too neat — an easy way to end a book that could have gone on much longer (though it would have kept me up even later!). Upon reflection, though, the denouement is absolutely right. Sometimes our lives rise and fall on a single moment.

 

Possibility

Possibility

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Late last week I accepted an offer for a new job.  In less than two weeks I will be leaving this office, these colleagues, this way of being.

I started my magazine writing career as a freelancer and always feel like one at heart. So one way to view this job change is as a shift of clients. But to be honest with myself, I know it’s much, more more.

A workplace has its way with you. Its dynamics become your dynamics; its mood your mood.  There is no way to erase the fact that one spends many hours a day in one’s place of employ. So when a little voice started telling me that it was time to move on, and when that little voice got louder and louder, refused to be silenced, I had no choice but to listen.

It wasn’t easy to listen at first. At times it was downright painful.

And when I finally did, what I found was possibility.  An old friend, greatly missed and warmly welcomed.

From the Top

From the Top

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Looking at the springtime miracle, watching it unfold. What I notice every year — and most certainly have written about here before — is how it starts at the top.

Those uppermost branches, the ones that scrape the sky and soak up the sun, they are the first to bud. Everything else follows in kind.

It’s an interesting phenomenon, metaphorically speaking (and — given that I’ve forgotten most of what I learned in Intro Biology — that’s the only way I can speak). Flowers, plants, crop, they all grow from the ground up. But blooming starts at the top and works its way down.

There has to be message here somewhere. 

No Fooling!

No Fooling!

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April crept up on me this year. I’d started thinking it might always be March — a month of unpredictability and extremes. A month of forced gaiety — of green beer and basketball.

But time has worked its magic. Thirty-one days of earthly rotation have brought us to a day of  foolishness and frivolity.

There’s been no chance to construct elaborate pranks — or even simple ones. It’s a day for relief and gratitude. No fooling!

Picture Perfect

Picture Perfect

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Yesterday I threw caution to the winds and took my usual route around the Capitol. I thought about what happened there two days before — but walked anyway. It is, of course, what we have to do, which is nothing. Not alter our course in the slightest.

The reward: a picture-perfect almost-April day. Trees just greening on the Mall. Tulips in the Botanic Garden. The sinuous curves of the Indian Museum outlined against blue sky. And in that sky, twin contrails.

Everywhere I looked, everything I saw, spoke of possibility and fresh starts. Winter is truly over; spring has just begun.

Walk West

Walk West

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For me, most days, the trip home begins with a walk west. Yesterday it was a walk into wind and sun. Both specialties of the season. One warms the ground; the other lifts seeds aloft and sets them down oh so tenderly a hundred feet away.

Overlooking for now that those seeds have swollen my sinuses, that the wind whipped my hair and the glare made it almost impossible to look where I was going. Still, with all those things, the walk into wind and sun was surprisingly satisfying.

Maybe it’s the freedom. Maybe it’s heading west, always the way to go. Or maybe it’s the trudge factor: putting one foot in front of the other, staying the course, if you will.

And I will. That’s for sure. I will.