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Author: Anne Cassidy

Ninety-Three Percent

Ninety-Three Percent

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Just back from a walk in the mist, the air filled with moisture. Good for the skin, bad for the hair (I’ve given up this week) and, when one is out in it, good for the soul.

How can this be?  It’s the first week of June, a time when blossoms should be bursting from the branch, a time of blue skies and not yet broiling temperatures. This year a week of steady rain and heavy mist, of sodden soil and fallen petals.

Look carefully at the air and you can see the droplets there, a drizzle so fine it surprises itself.

I originally titled this post “Ninety-Nine Percent,” because I couldn’t imagine how air could hold more moisture than it’s holding today. But I checked the weather and found that it’s ninety-three.

Six percent more? No way.

June Channeling April

June Channeling April

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It is June channeling April. Rain is pounding the roof, bouncing off the deck, making those musical gutter sounds it does when it means business.  It is weighing down the bamboo and darkening the deck.

The plants love it, so do people who prefer their summers on the cool side.

But for those of us who like our summers hazy, hot and humid, this weather seems out of place, to say the least. Where is the whirring fan, the glass of iced tea with almost all of its ice melted?

About three days away, that’s all. And so, since there is little to do about it, I’ll put on my tennis shoes and raincoat and float away into the day.

Relic

Relic

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We used to search for glasses, keys and phone numbers. Now we also search for passwords.  And yesterday my password search took me here, to the most undigital of places, my old Rolodex, where I used to keep a card with those pesky open sesames.

I never found the card, but I did spend a few minutes flipping through the Rolodex. It’s dusty and neglected, poor thing. I haven’t touched it for months, haven’t used it for years. But oh, the memories it holds, the connections it made possible, the worlds it opened up.

There are editors’ phone numbers, the contact information of long-forgotten sources, strings of numbers I once knew as well as my own. Each card tells a story. There’s that infant sleep expert who took to calling me at all hours, including when I was in labor with my first child! There’s a phone number for the Population Reference Bureau, which I just Googled to find a ticking world population clock (7, 718, 240, 013 — I mean 014, 015, 016 …). 

Before we swiped and tapped, we paged through and wore out. Most of these cards are bent and softened from frequent touching, tangible proof that they were used and treasured.

No one I know uses a Rolodex anymore. Now our contacts are scattered on various media, social and personal. Are we more connected now than we were then? The funny thing is, I don’t think we are.

First Draft

First Draft

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Thinking of yesterday’s title, “First Walk,” and of the difficulty of pinning down the precise rush of feeling from Sunday’s stroll.

What helped was scribbling a few phrases in my journal as soon as I came in. Those crabbed words led me back to the feelings of that walk. They were the rushed but essential first draft.

It’s the perennial problem, letting the words flow enough in the beginning to get you (more or less) where you want to go. Care too little about the final destination and you’ll muddle yourself from the start. Care too much and you won’t be able to put one syllable in front of the other.

Word processing has made the first draft a rare document indeed. How difficult it is to push forward without using the delete key; to hold in mind the perfect image while valuing the imperfect one that materializes in its place.

In so many ways, a first draft is more precious than the final draft it makes possible: rare, ephemeral, a product of struggle, a product of doubt.

First Walk

First Walk

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Yesterday, the walk came first. I strolled out into the morning, the first day of my new year, and felt a sort of awe.

The headphones, they would remain in my hand. There were birds to listen to, morning music free for the taking. There was a bird that seemed to be saying “Judy, Judy, Judy,” a poor imitation of Cary Grant. There were crickets in the woods, chirping as if it were still night.

And then there were sights that made sounds unnecessary: banked clouds that seemed lit from inside, a wind stirring the high oak branches. Most of all there was a hush to the morning, a holding of breath.

I felt a sort of wonder at this new day, at the sheer gift of existence, of being alive. Beyond people and expectations. Part of the natural world for which we surely were made.

Honeysuckle at Work

Honeysuckle at Work

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The car windows were open, the scent of honeysuckle flowing in with the early morning air. So when I was walking to Metro yesterday, on impulse, I snatched a sprig of the plant and took it to work.

I almost forgot it when I arrived at the office. The stem had gotten wedged in a nether region of my bag, the newspaper and file folders of papers almost burying it.

But it revived when I stuck it in some water, and I stationed it as close to my nose as possible.

All day long the honeysuckle brought the outside in. I would catch a whiff of it when I was on the phone or sending an email, when I was reviewing notes for an article I’m about to write. And every time I would feel my shoulders drop a little in response.

It was a busy day, trying in some ways. The scent of honeysuckle helped me through it.

Now You See It …

Now You See It …

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Walking to Metro this morning I noticed a rubble-strewn lot where a block of low-slung buildings used to be. They were ugly little buildings but still … they existed — and now they do not.

Change is our reality, our destiny, what must be embraced.

I wonder if walking helps us better withstand the inevitable comings and goings of life? Not that there’s anything especially marvelous about walkers, of course, but because we are bopping around all the time we are also looking around all the time. We notice the old cars and the new shutters. We see the world in all its transitory glory.

The empty lot I passed today will one day be an apartment or office building, part of the new development taking place near the Reston Wiehle Metro station.

Or take this scene. Every day construction workers dismantle more of the barrier wall for I-395 near my office. Eventually they will install steel beams and girders and a new neighborhood will rise over the top of a busy highway.

Now you see it and now you don’t. And walkers see it (or don’t see it) first.

Abundance

Abundance

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We have come to that point in the month, in the season, when blossoms hang heavy over fence rows and window boxes; when the air itself has taken on the heft of summer and given up the thin, clear bell tones of spring.

It’s always welcome, this time of year, as if we have been waiting to get back here forever, as if this is the season, the only one. And in some parts of the world it is. I can say this now having been to a place where heat and humidity are a way of life, where some people have never worn a pair of closed-toe shoes.

But in those places, in warm places, there is not the same glad recognition of difference we have here. There is not the memory of frost-hardened ground when digging in the warm soil of spring. There is not the acrid taste of snow displaced by honeysuckle on the tongue.

So here we are, finally, in this season of abundance. Stay a while, I want to say, holding fast to the profusion, knowing as I do that holding on defeats the purpose.

That May Morning

That May Morning

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When the weather is exquisite, most any walking path will do. I put this philosophy to the test a few days ago and did not find it wanting.

I started from a Target parking lot, a paved path around a containment pond where there was immediate gratification in the form of a trilling mockingbird. The bird perched on the lower limb of a small, low tree, which gave me a chance to stand and watch (as well as listen to) his performance. I almost clapped when he was done.

The path led to a new concrete sidewalk along a two-lane road. It was the kind of area we have many of in the suburbs, the kind you drive past on your way to somewhere else, the kind filled with self-storage units and auto body shops.

A sad little road if you were traversing it on a gloomy March afternoon. But on a sparkling May morning, the water spurting up in the sterile office park pond could have been the Trevi Fountain. That’s how intoxicating it was to be alive and walking on this late spring day.

(Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The Art of Eating Crabs

The Art of Eating Crabs

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Yesterday there was a graduation in Maryland, so after the congratulations and the photographs and the appetizers it was time for the main culinary attraction — that would be the Maryland blue crabs.

They start off blue but by the time you eat them they are red from the steaming and the seasoning. And eating them is an art. First you pull off the legs, then you find a little tab on the underside of the shell that opens up the critter — almost like a can with a pop top. Then you scrape off the gills and eat the meat inside. You save the claws for last, cracking them with a nutcracker or pounding them with a mallet. The meat is delicious!

Yesterday I sat next to some accomplished crab pickers who made the difficult look easy and left a pile of picked-clean shells. “Eating crabs is not just about eating,” said one of the experts. “It’s about sitting around and talking, the whole experience.”

And this was true. Because it takes so long to eat a crab — and because you have to eat so many of them to fill up — the meal is long and the stories fly. We talked about history and the Bible and Willie Nelson and the singer Meat Loaf, the stories unspooling, the crab shells flying and the perfect May day winding down into dusk.