Browsed by
Author: Anne Cassidy

First Cup

First Cup

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My morning ritual has changed through the years. I used to roll out of bed, pull on my running clothes and, in minutes, be chugging along outside, almost unaware of what hit me.

Now my days start in a less, a-hem, active way. I sit with this machine in my lap and wait for my first cup of tea. This is not a passive activity. First, I fill the electric kettle, then I wait for the familiar roaring crescendo that tells me the water is boiling.

What a sound that is! The sound of comfort and covers — the sound of anticipation.

Soon the tea will brew and I’ll be holding a warm mug of it in my hands. Soon my eyes will be fully open.

And speaking of tea, I’m writing this in real time.

The tea is ready. The day has begun.

Walking Lake Anne

Walking Lake Anne

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The other day, looking for some adventure, I ambled around Reston’s Lake Anne. I started at the landmark Heron House, the
16-story condominium building that was the epicenter of Robert Simon’s bold bid
for urban density in suburbia. Lake Anne Plaza doesn’t feel very urban today — or
very dense for that matter — but I know it’s a work in progress. I find a path that hugs the lake, cross a little bridge and walk past town houses adorned with native plants, witty sculptures and small fountains.

In the distance, I hear the clang of
a metal ladder as it’s leaned against a house. Someone is painting. I stroll
along South Shore Drive, steel blue water winking between the trees, and imagine what it must be like to live beside a lake, to take a daily measure
of its moods and colors. From the looks of the canoes and kayaks
along the shore, this lake is not just observed; it is experienced.

Before
long I’m at the far end of Lake Anne — and Wiehle Avenue, which I thought was
farther east. Foot travel often surprises me this way, showing me connections
that car travel cannot. As I swing around to the
northern shore, I catch a whiff of simmering grains and the sharp-sweet scent
of cinnamon. Rice pudding? My stomach rumbles, and I walk faster, back to my car. It’s never far away in
the suburbs.
Reentry Walk

Reentry Walk

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Low skies and gray clouds made for a tough reentry yesterday. The pleasures of the table, of family and friends, of long sleeps and easy afternoons — all reverted to workaday tasks and tedium. Even the knowledge of more holidays in the near future, of how much there is to do between now and Christmas — even those thoughts didn’t move me.

So when I left the house at lunchtime, I made my way to the meadow. I needed the sweep of open land, of a path running through it, of birds on the wing.

And that’s what I found: quiet fields asleep for the season, a pair of robins (so soon? ), and a still pond without last week’s thin skin of ice — a still pond that is liquid once again.

Familiar sights, easy on the eye and stimulating to the brain.

Yesterday’s walk that did what the best walks do: send me cheerfully back into my day.

Getting the Tree

Getting the Tree

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We’re several weeks ahead of schedule, but the girls were here and the weather was fair, so yesterday we drove  to Snicker’s Gap to cut our Christmas tree. After Leesburg, foothills appear on the horizon and the road curves up to meet them. Soon after that, I spot the familiar hillside, parceled in fir and pine.

I breathed in the evergreen scent, took in the scene, livelier than usual this busy weekend. As with any annual tradition, I was measuring, calculating, thinking about where we are now compared with this time last year. A better place, I decide, shoulders relaxing as we trudge up the hill.

The trees are healthy and plentiful, and there is variety in each plot. Old trees and young trees, tall and short — giant blue spruce and scraggly pine seedlings — all share the same southern slope. As I watch the girls stride ahead I realize they aren’t the only ones who’ve grown up. The trees being cut today were babies when we first came here.

We have lived through an entire Christmas tree life-cycle: 10 years of rain and sun and wind and snow. Ten years of growing pains, of hour-long car trips here, some coerced, some not.

And still we return to saw the trunk and topple the tree; to drag it, lash it and bring it home. We drive west to seek the southern slope. We mark the years as best we can.

Home Light

Home Light

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The light these days feels thin, stretched — a blanket too short to cover my toes. But it’s all we have, this light, so sometimes I walk twice, early and late, my breath a cloud, my feet warming to the pace, drawing out the day.

By the time I’m finished, stars shine in the darkening sky and I’ve come to a house where lamp light glows yellow through tall windows and porch lights wink beside the door.

Then I realize: It’s for this light I’ve come — for a glimpse of the familiar through altered eyes, for the light of my own house welcoming me home.

The Great Pause

The Great Pause

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It’s almost December, trees are bare. Paths that seemed endless in summer green are exposed when winter comes. The community forest is not the leading edge of a wilderness; it is a parcel of land that didn’t perk.

But that’s not all. It is also is a landscape stripped to its essence. I take out my earphones and listen. I can almost hear the silence. The great pause. A momentary intake of breath before the hard exhale.

The fields are
empty; the nights are long. Early winter is peaceful, muted. It asks nothing
of us now.

Humble Sides

Humble Sides

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Yesterday’s feast, like every other Thanksgiving meal I’ve ever cooked, was proof that though the turkey gets all the glory it’s the side dishes, the humble sides, that deserve it. They are where the real finesse comes in, the true effort; they are more difficult to prepare and, arguably, more scrumptious to consume.

Here it was fairly light as holiday cooking goes. The yams were baked, the potatoes were boiled — and I wasn’t responsible for the green bean casserole.

But the stuffing involved dicing and stirring, ditto the cranberry salad. And the pies (though a dessert and not a side dish) are always labor-intensive, though I wouldn’t have them any other way.

On the other hand, the turkey is easy to baste and roast — and it sits regally atop the table, the centerpiece, the champ.

The humble sides don’t seem to mind, though. They have long since accepted their relegated roles. In exchange, they avoid the slow, protracted, death march of the leftover — no sad progression from sandwich to salad to hash for them. The turkey, they know, gets its comeuppance in the end.

(What to eat the day after.)

The Parade

The Parade

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The Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade just ended — with all its balloons, bands, commercialism and faux cheer. Still, I had it on in the background as I baked the pies, made the stuffing and popped the bird into the oven.

As I heard the familiar tunes, salutes to the latest toys and cartoons (all of which I’m blessedly oblivious to now!) and, of course the obligatory salute to the Big Apple (“It’s up to you, New York, New York”), I couldn’t help but think about the part the parade played in my childhood.

Was it the parade that made me fall in love with Manhattan long before I had a chance to live there? Was it the parade that filled me full of Big City dreams?

It certainly played a part.

Today I’m thankful for family and friends, for health and warmth and work. I’m also thankful for dreams. They may never quite measure up to reality. But that’s not what they’re for.

32 Degrees Fahrenheit

32 Degrees Fahrenheit

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Once an English major, always an English major. And as an English major, I’ve always appreciated imprecision. The characters are motivated by greed — or maybe it’s ambition. The landscape mirrors the late 19-century love of technology — or maybe it’s the late 19-century fear of technology.

It’s the principle that’s important — and the principle is often imprecise, something to ponder or debate. It’s not black or white but something in between.

Which is all to say that I’m fascinated by the unerring precision of the natural world. Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Not at 34 or 36.

I was tremendously grateful for this fact yesterday, as I crept up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to collect my college student. It took three hours to drive 54 miles. But if it had been three degrees chillier, it might have taken me six hours.

There I go again — thinking like an English major.

(This picture has very little to do with 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s an English major kind of photograph.)

Over the River …

Over the River …

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And through the woods … traveling to the Thanksgiving feast has never been easy. But here in the megalopolis it’s taken on a new degree of craziness.

A nor’easter is expected to dump anywhere from two to four inches of rain in the next 24 hours. Snow and ice have not been ruled out. Flooding is a possibility. Traffic jams are guaranteed.

To gather at grandma’s all you needed was a sleigh and a team of willing horses. To reach family and friends at the modern table requires strategic thinking (should I leave at 2 or 1:30?), nerves of steel (which route through the mountains promises the least chance of snow accumulation?) and a go-for-it attitude.

But go-for-it we will. People are important. Whether they’re over the river and through the woods — or up I-95.