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Author: Anne Cassidy

A Building is Born

A Building is Born

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This morning on my way to work I didn’t have to cross the street and cross it again a block later. I didn’t have to walk around a construction site. It seems that finally, finally, the new building is finished.

I’ve watched it fall and rise again, gutted, framed and windowed. The old building was indistinguishable from its brothers, another stone box. This new version is mostly glass, it seems. Shiny and bright, but I’m wondering how it will hold up.

No matter, though. I’m just relieved that my path here is not impeded, that cranes don’t swing across the sky, that First Street no longer narrows to one lane.

It happens all the time, I know, but usually not so close to home. And when it does, it’s worth mentioning: A building is born.

The Volunteer

The Volunteer

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I didn’t plant this flower, didn’t even notice it until last week. A volunteer, I suppose, a morning glory that decided to glorify us on its own, not sought out, not planted (its seed nicked and soaked as the instructions on the morning glory seed packet suggest).

Instead, it grew from escaped seeds, from flowers settled two, three summers ago, blown to the other side of the deck stairs, cosseted by leaf mold and azalea shade. Its green tendrils twined around the evergreen branches, spiraling up and around, through sunlight and darkness. Invisible for one season at least, maybe two.

And now, finally, it finds itself here, at the rag-tag end of summer, glinting in the sunlight of an August morning.

The volunteer proves that nature has its own designs and humans are often not a part of them. Beauty, however, often is.

Empty and Full

Empty and Full

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Yesterday we drove Celia, the youngest, a few hours up the road to college. For the first time since we bought this house in 1989, I awoke to no children living in it.

Until this morning the adrenalin carried me along. The list-making and packing, trying to make her transition as smooth as possible. But now the adrenalin is gone. The children are, too.

All the years of other-oriented living, of pushing my own needs aside for theirs, they haven’t come to a complete halt, of course, but they have come to a new phase.

I think of those amusement park rides that begin with a slow boat float through a cool tunnel only to shoot riders down a channel of water with a stomach-churning drop and a plume of spray.

What I thought would be easy turned out to be hard. Very hard. And at the end of the ride (the end of one phase of the ride, I should say), I’m exhausted, curious, wistful.

I’m empty — but I’m also full.

The van on the return trip. Those bags are empty — but the car is full.

Almost Morning

Almost Morning

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Though waking up in the wee hours has its deficits, it also has its benefits. And one of them is watching the sky lighten, the trees gradually emerge from the dusk, each individual branch making a pact with the light. Yes, we are here.

Today it was after 6 a.m. when this happened. And even now, as we edge toward 7, the morning is still uncertain, unknowable.

Soon the sun will glance through the front oaks and sparkle on the dew. I’ll walk out the door with music in my ears, lace up my shoes, trot down the street and put a stamp on the day.

But until then it is still almost morning. A time of infinite possibility.

Smooth Ride

Smooth Ride

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Road so rough it broke the car wheel. Road that had to get worse before it would get better.

Most of the summer they’ve been stripping years off Fox Mill Road, layer upon layer of pockmarked macadam. Until finally they got to that ripply layer at the bottom, the one you wonder if you should actually drive on but always do because for a few weeks it’s the only road there is.

For years I’ve pondered when this hilly, winding relic would be repaved. Even to the point of thinking the non-repair was strategic, a way to lessen the traffic. (And I’m not so sure that it wasn’t.)

But finally, this summer, the trucks appeared, the orange cones. For once I didn’t sigh at the sight of them. And then, a few days ago, I turned right, braced myself for the bumps and found … brand-new pavement, white and yellow lines fresh from the paint truck.

A smooth ride!

Leaving in Darkness

Leaving in Darkness

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This morning I left the house in darkness. I navigated the front stoop steps in darkness, fumbled for the car key in darkness, backed more slowly down the driveway — that’s right — in darkness.

Inky skies, illuminated instrument panel, sipping my tea as I cruised through silent neighborhoods. The road ahead of me opened only a glimpse of the miles ahead; the rest of the way was shrouded, unknowable.

Beginning the day in darkness gives the eyes time to adjust — the soul, too. I savor these moments of peace.

Still, the best part about leaving in darkness is arriving in the light.

Running Late

Running Late

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The morning has come and gone and I haven’t yet written a post. I don’t even have a good excuse. Busy at work, busy at home, but those conditions are hardly unusual.

Sometimes things just don’t get done in time.

Maybe it’s because we’re in the last two weeks of August, Congress is not in session (not that my blog has anything to do with the legislative branch!) and D.C. is in a sort of cloudy haze.

Or maybe it’s because I jumped into other projects earlier than usual.

Whatever the explanation, I’m running late. So I’m posting now, before I’m even later!

Place, Unexpected

Place, Unexpected

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So I’m reading along in Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, a re-telling of the last months of Thomas Cromwell’s life, riveted by her story of intrigue in the court of King Henry VIII, not expecting a discussion of place, when I find this:

He [Cromwell] is buying land in the lusher parts of England, but he has no leisure to visit it; so these farms, these ancient manors in their walled gardens, these watercourses with their little quays, these ponds with their gilded fish rising to the hook; these vineyards, flower dens, arbours and walks, remain to him flat, each one a paper construct, a set of figures on a page of accounts: not sheep-nibbled margins, nor meadows where kine stand knee-deep in grass, not coppices nor groves where a white doe shivers, a hoof poised; but parchment domains, leases and freeholds delimited by inky clauses, not by ancient hedges, or boundary stones.

 Here is a longing for place that is ancient but real, the pull of the city-dweller toward the bucolic retreat, the dream of land when land is owned but not possessed.

How many of us moderns feel the same?

Run, Don’t Walk

Run, Don’t Walk

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Sometimes it’s harder to walk fast than it is to run slow. So more often than not these days I find myself running. Not like these college girls, fleet of foot, majorly in shape.

No. I’m talking about a middle-aged version of running. Plodding, for sure.

The fast walk must balance speed with dexterity. The roll of the foot, still earthbound. Keeping the pace when gravity argues against it.

Whereas the run, after a while, becomes habit. There is a rhythm there that moves you forward. Kind of like living.

Solar Cell

Solar Cell

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A chill in the air this morning reminds me that we’re closing in on fall — without really having had summer.  A few days of weather in the upper 90s, but for the most part relatively cool and rainy.

Most people rejoice. They say we’ve lucked out. But if you love the summer and don’t mind the heat,  coming to this point in the year with a brisk wind and low humidity feels like cheating.

Where are those long langourous afternoons? The scent of the water as it flows from the hose? The long hot walks down the Mall?

Maybe they’re in the future. If not, they’re in memory.  Meanwhile, there are still black-eyed susans and sitting on the deck at noon, a human solar cell, storing up heat for the winter to come.