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Author: Anne Cassidy

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.

See Something; Say Something

See Something; Say Something

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Yesterday I didn’t take my usual walk around the Capitol. And it’s a good thing I didn’t. A man brandished a gun at the Capitol Visitors Center and was shot by police. A bystander was reportedly hit as well, and the whole complex was put on lock down.

I wonder if I’ll take that walk again. Will I vary the route? Go another direction entirely? 

A crazy world is a limited world. It’s a world of fences and walls and bollards; of keeping things at a distance. It’s a world of “see something, say something,” a message I hear repeated on the Metro approximately once every four minutes.

Most of all, it’s a world of suspicion and distrust and fear. It’s not an especially pleasant world — but it’s the only one we have right now.

Early Rising

Early Rising

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The story is the same, but each year has its revelation. This year’s was something I’ve noticed before but not with as much intensity:

On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark, 
and saw the stone removed from the stone.

 “Early in the morning.” “While it was still dark.” Of course!  She was up in the wee hours tending to those who needed her. It’s how most women I know make everything work, by getting a head start on the day.

I no longer juggle a job with young children, but I’m always trying to balance competing duties, to find time not just for the work for which I’m paid but the work for which I’m not. Time for family and friends; for shopping, cooking and cleaning; for emails and phone calls; for connection and solitude.

The early morning hours are my ally in this quest. They are the great elastic clause. They are when I catch up with others — and with myself.  

Lightness of Spring

Lightness of Spring

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Walked out of the office into a perfect early spring afternoon. Jackets slung over shoulders. Tourists everywhere. A long weekend beckoning.

I was exhausted at my desk but quickly readjusted outside. There was a destination, a goal: the Tidal Basin, the cherry blossoms.

It was crowded, as usual. Picnickers, strollers, photographers, all with separate purposes but one mission — to celebrate spring. I thought then as I often do how the walker can take heart from the people she passes — some just coming alive to the world, others happy just to be in it.

I had forgotten the lightness one could have — not just in the air but in the heart.