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Author: Anne Cassidy

Super Scary!

Super Scary!

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Ghosty has been with us for years, a piece of fabric with a stuffed-newspaper head and inexpertly-drawn eyes. He’s been haunting our lamp post for the better part of two decades, and when I at first couldn’t find him in the basement a week ago, I felt bereft.

Compare him with the current crop of Halloween decorations. The 12-foot-tall Skelly, for instance, a plastic skeleton so popular that Home Depot can’t keep it in stock. Or the gruesome, leering werewolf that rears his ugly head from a woods near me. I wouldn’t want to run into him on a dark night.

It’s all fun and games — unless you’re a child with an overactive imagination. Since I was one of those, I feel for the kiddos who see a masked face so scary that a full year later they can’t forget about it.

It’s super-sized Halloween terror, coming soon (already!) to a suburban lawn near you.

(Top photo: courtesy Home Depot)

Blanker Canvas

Blanker Canvas

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I’ve removed the standing desk from my office, a large black metal contraption that sat atop the scarred apple-green desktop. The standing desk was helpful when I spent more hours sitting. Now I’m free to jump up and down scores of times a day — and I do so, probably more often that I should.

But that’s another matter.

What I wanted to mention today is the geography of my workspace, how the terrain has changed. A vast, flat expanse has emerged now that I’ve removed the two-tiered standing desk. And with it gone, I realized I could shift the desk lamp from the far corner to the exact midpoint of the surface, between the windows, so as not to block the view of trees and sky. 

It’s a blanker canvas. A more open vista. It suits me now. 

(The prism that hangs between the windows makes rainbows on the walls.)

Endless Summer

Endless Summer

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There was a freeze warning last night, and the furnace is humming as I type these words. Time to remember warmer weather. 

I’m thinking of a beach: salt air, gentle surf, an inquisitive egret strolling through the waves, eyeing the bait bucket as he passes a fisherman on the shore.

I’m remembering the way my body feels in the sun, loose and warm and grateful to be alive.

I’m reliving walks under palm trees, fronds clicking in the breeze and the air heavy and full.

As the season turns, the mind can mutiny, can claim for itself an endless summer. 

Parental Equinox

Parental Equinox

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Today is the birthday of our oldest daughter. I realized, as I counted the years, that today also marks a parental equinox of sorts for me: I’ve been a parent as long as I have not. 

What do I see from this perch, from this fine balance? Strangely enough, I see continuity. For me, becoming a mother didn’t mark a revolution of caring but an expansion of it. Parenthood has been a way to give back the love that was given so freely to me by my own parents. It is the completion of a circle. 

I can’t imagine a life without motherhood. I’m grateful beyond measure to have become a parent. But I’ve tried always to live as not-just-a-mother, to honor dear friends who live full lives without children, who are wonderful aunts and uncles (honorary and by blood). I hope this message got through to my daughters; I think it has. 

Most of all today, I’m thinking of the baby with a V-shaped mouth who seldom slept, who sang before she talked, who took us to places we never thought we’d go. She has grown and flourished. She has studied and learned. She has traveled to the other side of the world — the dusty red-dirt roads of the Sahel — and back. She has given us three other wonderful people to love: her husband and children. Because of her and her sisters, our hearts are full. A parental equinox, yes. But if I had to pick one side of the divide to live in always, I know which one I’d choose.

(Three-year-old Suzanne holds her baby sister, Claire.)

Aloft

Aloft

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Wind whips the leaves off the witch hazel tree, sets them spinning down into a pile of gold. 

Wind bends the tulip poplar and the bamboo, which is taking bows outside my office window.

Wind sets the jets on an alternate course, sends them scudding, like the clouds, over this house. 

Trees, planes, clouds — may all that belongs aloft … stay that way. 

Accumulation of Misery

Accumulation of Misery

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There is something to be said for writing these posts early in the morning, before I’ve fully inhabited the day or, especially these last two weeks, read the newspaper. 

This morning’s news was no more disheartening or sad than any other day of the last two weeks. 

It’s just the accumulation of misery that’s making it hard to concentrate on the golden leaves of the witch hazel tree, the last few blooms of the climbing rose. 

Autumn Afternoon

Autumn Afternoon

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A late walk through the woods, along the lake, over the bridge, and back to where I started from.

No question what time of year it is. If the leaves didn’t clue me in …

the peg-legged skeleton pirate did. 

But there are still patches of green, remnants of summer left behind. 

Bottom Lines

Bottom Lines

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For many years my professional goals were closely tied to the wages I needed to earn. I made a living from writing articles, editing a magazine, telling the stories of an organization. 

Now I’m glimpsing a different way of being, one where pen and keyboard are no longer expected to bring home the bacon. 

Both ways are worthy. Both ways work. They’re just very, very different, that’s all. 

(To be continued…)

The Zucchini

The Zucchini

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The world is in turmoil. Winter is right around the corner. Time for some positivity, which comes today in the form of a vegetable.

I’ve mourned the trees as they’ve fallen. Now to celebrate the sunniness that has come in their wake.

There’s no better proof of this than the plump zucchini that managed to thrive in the back garden. In fact, it became so large that the only palatable way to eat it will be grated in bread or pancakes.

Still, this is a milestone. I’m not yet rushing out to plant a vegetable garden, but I’ll begin to think of the backyard not as a shady place … but as a sunny one.

Toddler Time

Toddler Time

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To see the world through the eyes of a toddler — what riches that would bring! A kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, smells and textures. A riot of color. What a boon for a writer, to experience such raw sensation. 

The next best thing? Perhaps to follow a toddler around. A lively experience, of course, but difficult to document.

To capture a toddler in motion is like photographing a hummingbird. Too much movement to contain. Only when there’s deep engagement can you move in and snap a shot. Luckily, that happened yesterday.