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Author: Anne Cassidy

Tea Time

Tea Time

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Driving to the office this morning gave me the chance to lug in something I would not usually lug in — a thermos. And I’m now enjoying a cup of hot tea that could only have come from my own teapot at home.

It’s all courtesy of a thermos, this low-tech marvel, insulator extraordinaire. This one is large, built like a pitcher with a spout that makes it easy to pour from container to mug … which … I just did.

The steam is rising, the thermos is hissing. The page proofs on my desk can wait another few minutes. It’s tea time.

Rethinking March

Rethinking March

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I’ve never been a big fan of March. True, there is basketball to watch, and the first daffodils to savor. January and February are behind us, always a good thing. But March has never been one of my favorite months.

As time continues to speed up on me, however, as March comes sooner and sooner every year, I realize I can no longer afford to dislike it. (Of course, you could make the opposite argument — that the faster time goes, the quicker we will be done with March — but I’m trying to be positive in this post!)

All this is to say that March and I are considering a truce. Take yesterday’s walk, for instance. It was with Copper, which meant melancholy was impossible. Still, I was expending some mental effort trying to figure out what it is about the month that bothers me.

But as I pondered, my eyes kept straying to the gray/white sky, to the birds wheeling about trees still winter bare. A desultory woodpecker drilled loudly from the woods. A crow touched down with wind-swerved wing. The first brave yellows and purples stuck their heads above ground. And suddenly I was struck with the feel of the air and of the moment. There is much to behold in this raw month, much to appreciate in its wild, windswept beauty.

First Flower

First Flower

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I noticed the small bloom late last week, a buttercup yellow flower called winter aconite. Though I’ve spotted crocus and snowdrops in other yards, this was the first one in ours.

But by yesterday, it was gone.

The early flowers are shy, low to the ground, tender of stem.  They are also fleeting, as is all spring beauty.

They are like sculptures made of sand, sunsets made of shifting light and clouds. They remind us to look deeply at first glance.

(No pictures of winter aconite; these crocus will have to do.)

The Watch

The Watch

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After Dad died (a year ago today), I brought his watch home with me to Virginia. He had worn it almost to the end, said it drove him crazy not to know what time it was.

It’s a plain watch with a metal case, easy to read, with a simple leather band bent at the second smallest hole. It sits on my dressing table — one of the last things I see before I go to bed at night and leave for work in the morning.

I brought it home because it’s a small, humble thing that belonged to Dad for years. Now it reminds me not only of him but of all that’s happened since he’s been gone. The college graduations, college returns, graduate school and medical school acceptances, trips to Africa and Afghanistan and back. All the mornings without him at the table, sipping what he liked to call “Brazilian Novocain.” All the trips home without him walking out to greet me, rubbing his hands together in that way that he did.

The watch reminds me, too, that time is the only currency we have. Dad spent his well. Which is why his wife, children and grandchildren, his coffee buddies, basketball buddies and friends old and new — why all of us smile through our tears on this day. How we miss him! But how lucky we were to have him for so long. 

Feeling Sorry for the Circus

Feeling Sorry for the Circus

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I started feeling sorry for the circus even before I heard about the elephants. I knew it was only a matter of time before the elephants disappeared. Now I can’t help but think the whole enterprise may be on the way out.

The posters arrived a few weeks ago, pasted all over the Metro system. The circus is coming, the circus is coming! “Hmmm,” say the children, barely lifting their heads from their iPads, phones and computers.

The circus may be losing the battle, but it’s not going down without a fight. “Believe in the unbelievable,” trumpet the posters. But what is unbelievable anymore? Surely anything can happen, anything does. Dancing dogs, contortionists, trapeze artists, a man shot from a cannon. But how can these compare to even one frame of a computer game, film or TV show?

Yes, the circus is real; humans and animals defy gravity, death, the possibility of humiliation. But what does it matter?

Will the circus be around 20 years from now? I hope so. I’d like to say yes. But then again I like to believe in the unbelievable.

Tender Earth

Tender Earth

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I walk carefully through the meadow, choosing grass clumps and leaf piles and anything else that will keep the mud off my shoes. The snow and rain have saturated our soil; to walk on it now is to sink a little with each step.

Aren’t we all a little tender this time of year? Coats cast aside, jackets unzipped, the feel of the sun on newly bared skin.  There’s a freedom but also a sensitivity.

So it is with the earth. Clover and fescue just starting to take hold. Even the lightest of foot falls leaves an imprint.  I tiptoe to the trampoline to give the grass a chance. I watch with dismay as Copper scrambles after the ball, his every feint and skid leaving deep tracks in the mud. The yard is marked with our play.

But this tender time will pass, I tell myself. Even now new plants are anchoring themselves in the ground, their roots spreading. Soon they will weave a net, a home, a bulwark. Soon the land will be less impressionable. Until then, I’ll tread lightly. 

Visits to Ireland

Visits to Ireland

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“The people here look familiar,” said Mom, a few hours after we’d landed at Dun Laoghaire off the ferry from Holyhead, Wales. At first I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. But after a few days in Dublin I began to understand. The people looked like a lot of the Irish Catholics we knew back home, people like the Bryants, a family with 10 children who lived on Providence Avenue across the street from Christ the King School and Church. They had freckles and round faces and a pleasant way about them.

A week later, down a long lane in County Clare, Mom and I found her cousins, a pair of bachelor uncles who lived in a cottage without electricity. They served us tea in thin china cups that they produced with great ceremony, and they reminisced about meeting my mother’s aunts when they were little boys.

A few days after that, in County Galway, we came across a man named Paddy Concannon, whose connection to us was unknown except that he was the spitting image of my grandfather, Martin Joseph Concannon.

I’ve visited Ireland only once. But I have to remind myself of that fact; it seems like I’ve been there at least a half a dozen times.

March … Well, You Know

March … Well, You Know

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I’m not a sports person, so am probably not the best individual to make this observation: But is it possible that “Selection Sunday,” the art and science of brackets and the NCAA Basketball Tournament in general is a bigger deal than it used to be?

A special section of the Washington Post is dedicated to it today (there have been special sections for years) and a picture of nervous Maryland fans appears on the front page. I missed the televised hoopla but of course there’s plenty of it. And it’s been dominating social media as well.

There are many reasons for this trend, I’m sure, including the prodigious amounts of money wagered on the games. But this year I’m less interested in the why of March madness than I am in the fact that it means there are even more people pulling for Kentucky to lose.

If there ever was an “overdog” my team is it! Undefeated in the regular season. All school records broken. Just a bit of pressure! More than there used to be? Yes. More than they can handle? That remains to be seen.

(View from the University of Kentucky Library … yes, they have a library.)

Writing About the Kids Again

Writing About the Kids Again

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“What will your children think of this,” she asked me, this jolly woman who pens lovely essays and is one of the writers who meets a few Monday evenings a year. We were sitting in a large corner booth at a down-on-its-heels pizza place where the waitress never forgets your name or your order.

“I haven’t asked them,” I said, the words sounding more clipped than I intended.

After sharing anecdotes about my children early and often — making a living from writing parenting magazine articles and a book — I stopped this practice cold turkey after the book came out. Not because I wouldn’t share the stories but because I stopped writing the articles.

And then there were the years of teenage angst. Those stories may never be told.

But my youngest child is 20 now. I thought I was in the clear.  Am I really?

So I fretted and rearranged words — I even considered removing the stories entirely. But in the end I kept them in. And yesterday, just for the heck of it, I told my youngest what I was doing. “That’s OK, Mom — just as long as you don’t use my name.”

I didn’t. I won’t. But I’m sending the piece out today. It’s time.

First Bounce

First Bounce

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I arrived home in the afterglow. The sun had set but the western sky was still blazing.

Copper had been cooped up all day and was happy to see me. We went outside for our little ritual: First I throw day-glow orange tennis balls so he can fetch them — and then I bounce on the trampoline while he runs around the yard as if I’m still throwing the day-glow orange balls.

It was my first bounce of the season, my first bounce of 2015, for that matter. The tramp has been snow-covered for a month.

It felt good to be jumping; the world has that soft edge that it has when one is moving or bouncing through it. The house glowed yellow, a beacon in the dusk. We stayed out till the light left the sky.